Comment on EducateTruth.com promoted on 3ABN by Sean Pitman M.D..
Not even mainstream science places everything on the footing of direct evidence. Science is based on a reasonable inference starting with very limited evidence – reasonable inference that produces a useful degree of predictive value.
Of course, the scientific inference goes beyond what the evidence itself can directly support. This is why science requires a “leap of faithâ€, so to speak, that goes beyond what can be absolutely known. This is also why scientific conclusions are never 100% certain. The leap of faith is “reasonable†however, given the limited data available and the degree of predictive value that has been established for the leap of faith.
The very same thing is true of reasonable “religious†faith. When you say that faith in this or that is “reasonableâ€, you are basically claiming that you have some sort of evidence to back up your leap of faith. In other words, the moment you argue that you have good reasons for your faith, you are no longer arguing for the value of completely blind faith. And, any logical reason you may have can only be useful for someone other than yourself if you can produce some sort of predictive value for your reason(s). What good are reasons if they can’t be tested in any sort of falsifiable manner? – if you can’t, even in theory, be wrong?
For example, I might argue that I have good reason to believe that little green men live inside the moon. You might ask what my reasons are. I might tell you that reason tells me that all the UFO sitings are most likely explained by an alien outpost close by – why not the middle of the moon? Given this as my “reasonâ€, you’d most likely just brush me off as completely nuts – I hope so anyway! But why? Because my reason here does not remotely resemble a testable potentially falsifiable hypothesis and therefore carries no useful predictive value.
The very same thing is true of your “reasons†for believing in certain biblical interpretations or any other “reasonable†idea you may have. As far as I can tell, there simply is no way around this concept if a person really wants to be reasonable to a useful degree of predictive power. If your reasons have no useful predictive power, how do you know how reasonable you really are? – if you can’t measure or quantify your reasonableness?
In short, the scientific method is a very basic method that can be used to approach all kinds of “truth†– from the very mundane, to the truly magnificent. I think it is nothing more and nothing less than the God-given basis of all logic and reason given to intelligent minds.
Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com
Sean Pitman M.D. Also Commented
EducateTruth.com promoted on 3ABN
@Geanna Dane:
Um, I think the evolutionists are the ones who informed us about ice ages.
You’re mistaken. Evolutionists were not the first ones to propose ice age theories – theories which were around well before Darwin published Origins in 1859.
For example, Andrew Ure (1778-1857) was one of the top chemists of his day with an international reputation as a meticulous scientist, a prolific writer and an effective teacher. But he was also one of those brilliantly versatile men of science in the early 19th century. In 1829 he published A New System of Geology in which he proposed some new theoretical ideas for the reconstruction of earth history, one of which was one of the earliest conceptions of an ice age, which he speculated would have resulted from the Flood. One of the author’s he quoted was Jens Esmark (1763-1839)
Jens Esmark also argued a sequence of worldwide ice ages well before Darwin. In a paper published in 1824, Esmark proposed changes in climate as the cause of those glaciations. He attempted to show that they originated from changes in the Earth’s orbit. Adding to Esmark’s work, Bernhardi, in a 1932 paper, speculated about former polar ice caps reaching as far as the temperate zones around the globe.
http://creation.com/british-scriptural-geologists-in-the-first-half-of-the-nineteenth-century-part-4
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jens_Esmark
They have given us more information about ice ages than creationists have and nothing, I repeat nothing, is going to change that. They have no problem with ice ages whatsoever.
They have no problem with ice ages, true. But, they do have a definite problem with the idea of very rapid, even catastrophically sudden, formation and regression. It wasn’t until just a few years ago that scientists began to realize that glacial melts can happen many times more rapidly than they tought possible just 10 years ago – to include the melting of Greenland’s ice-cap as well as the Antarctic ice. No one thought that such rapid melting could ever happen as rapidly as it is taking place today.
www.DetectingDesign.com/AncientIce.html
What is it with Adventists suddenly talking a lot about Las Vegas, card games, houses of cards, gambling and betting? I’m bewildered.
It is often a very good way to get important statistical concepts across to those people who don’t usually deal with numbers and the scientific usefulness of statistical odds analysis… like you ; )
Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com
EducateTruth.com promoted on 3ABN
@Geanna Dane:
So…ice ages are scientifically impossible and therefore could only result from a global supernatural flood. The arctic seas became hot which caused very high precipitation. Then an extreme cold spell came along that made an iceberg out of high elevations and high altitudes, decreased the ocean sea level and dried out the Mediterranean basin. I assume these explanations fit within the 1000 gsaar threshold (geologically supportable argumentative age reasoning) of explanatory complexity
Ice ages are not scientifically impossible. They are certainly consistent with a global catastrophe that involved massive volcanic activity. And, massive meteor impacts may indeed have provided the sudden release of the huge quantities of energy needed to produce the initial catastrophe on a global scale. Also, it is well-known that ice ages would indeed reduce ocean levels quite dramatically – easily below the level needed to maintain water in the Mediterranean basin (which is known to have been dry during the last major ice age).
I fail to see what it is about this scenario that you find so “complex” and unbelievable given the starting premise of a sudden massive release of energy on this planet?… What would you expect to happen? Orderly weather as usual? The whole surface of the planet was broken up by the massive impact that set the whole catastrophe in motion… the aftershocks of which we are still feeling to this day.
Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com
EducateTruth.com promoted on 3ABN
@Geanna Dane:
So did the mammoths dies of cold or starvation? Maybe it wasn’t the intolerable cold, perhaps it was too much snowfall that spoiled access to the vegetation they depended on. Unless most or all of the fossils had identifiable food in their mouths or stomachs (I have heard that some did), how could one possibly know?
It really doesn’t matter if they died directly because of the cold or indirectly because of starvation (though I favor the former idea). Either way, the evidence suggests that they, along with millions of other types of animals, died out very suddenly in line with a sudden global cold snap. That’s the key point here. The cold snap would result in a rapid decrease in the ocean’s water level, resulting in an opportunity to dry out the Mediterranean basin…
Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com
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Thank you Ariel. Hope you are doing well these days. Miss seeing you down at Loma Linda. Hope you had a Great Thanksgiving!
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Thank you Colin. Just trying to save lives any way I can. Not everything that the government does or leaders do is “evil” BTW…
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Where did I “gloss over it”?
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I fail to see where you have convincingly supported your claim that the GC leadership contributed to the harm of anyone’s personal religious liberties? – given that the GC leadership does not and could not override personal religious liberties in this country, nor substantively change the outcome of those who lost their jobs over various vaccine mandates. That’s just not how it works here in this country. Religious liberties are personally derived. Again, they simply are not based on a corporate or church position, but rely solely upon individual convictions – regardless of what the church may or may not say or do.
Yet, you say, “Who cares if it is written into law”? You should care. Everyone should care. It’s a very important law in this country. The idea that the organized church could have changed vaccine mandates simply isn’t true – particularly given the nature of certain types of jobs dealing with the most vulnerable in society (such as health care workers for example).
Beyond this, the GC Leadership did, in fact, write in support of personal religious convictions on this topic – and there are GC lawyers who have and continue to write personal letters in support of personal religious convictions (even if these personal convictions are at odds with the position of the church on a given topic). Just because the GC leadership also supports the advances of modern medicine doesn’t mean that the GC leadership cannot support individual convictions at the same time. Both are possible. This is not an inconsistency.
