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Title: Evolution or Creation Science?
Source:
Orthodox Church in America
URL Source: https://oca.org/reflections/fr.-law ... /evolution-or-creation-science
Published: May 30, 2012
Author: Fr. Lawrence Farley
Post Date: 2018-02-14 09:59:32 by A Pole
Keywords: orthodox, creation, evolution
Views: 24598
Comments: 211
In my years as a priest and of sharing the Gospel, I have heard many reasons offered for not becoming a Christian: scandals associated with clergy, the wealth of the Church, the Crusades, the Inquisition, etc. etc. I thought I had more or less heard it all, and so was unprepared for a reason one young man offered to justify his rejection of Orthodoxy—namely, that dinosaurs were not in the Bible. I blinked a few times, and was left temporarily speechless (something of a rarity with me, to which those who know me well can attest). His idea was that since dinosaurs obviously existed (their skeletons adorn our museums), then if the Bible was God’s Word, he should be able to read about dinosaurs in the Bible. Since he could not find them there (I refrained from mentioning certain fundamentalist interpretations of Leviathan and Behemoth in the Book of Job), then obviously the Bible could not be God’s Word and he could not remain Orthodox. He was referring of course to the old supposed conflict between Science and Religion, and in this arm-wrestling match, it was clear to him that Science had won. No Biblical dinosaurs, no more church-going. So, what’s the deal about dinosaurs? Why aren’t they in the creation stories in Genesis? Apart from the absurdity of supposing they’re not there because they aren’t mentioned by name (the duck-billed platypus isn’t mentioned by name either), it’s a valid question, and one that leads us headlong into the question of how to interpret the early chapters of Genesis. Interpretation of the creation stories too often degenerates into an argument between the theory of evolution vs. what is sometimes called “creation science”. By “evolution” the average non-scientific person means the notion that Man descended from the apes, or from a common ancestor of apes and men. The name “Darwin” is usually thrown about, regardless of how the ideas in his On the Origin of Species have fared in the scientific community since Darwin wrote it in 1859, and most people’s knowledge of evolution is confined to looking at the famous evolutionary chart in National Geographic, showing how smaller hominids kept walking until they became human beings like us. By “creation science” is meant the view that the Genesis stories are to be taken as scientifically or historically factual, so that the earth (often considered to be comparatively young) was created by God in six twenty-four hour days. Since the time of the “Scopes monkey trial”, the argument between “evolutionists” and “creationists” has been going strong, and is often fought in the nation’s courts and departments of education. Arm-wrestling indeed. Happily for people with weak arms like myself, the Church does not call us to take part in this arm-wrestling match. The creation stories in Genesis were not written, I suggest, to give us a blow-by-blow account of how we got here. Rather, they were written to reveal something fundamental about the God of Israel and the privileged status of the people who worshipped Him. We assume today that the ancients wanted to know how we got here, and how we were created. In fact, they were mostly uninterested in such cosmic questions, and the creation myths that existed in the ancient near east spoke to other issues. Most people back then, if they thought of the question of cosmic origins at all, assumed that the world had always existed, and the various gods they worshipped were simply part of that eternal backdrop. That is where the creation stories were truly revolutionary. Their main point was not merely that God created the world; it was that the tribal God of the Jewish people was sovereign over the world. We take monotheism for granted, and spell “god” with a capital “G”. For us, God is singular and unique by definition. It was otherwise in the ancient near east. That age was populated by different gods, each with his or her own power, agenda, and career. And this is the point: in the Genesis stories, none of these gods are there. In the opening verses we read, “In the beginning God (Hebrew Elohim, a Jewish name for their God) created the heavens and the earth” and “This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that Yahweh God made earth and heaven.” The creating deity is called “Elohim” and “Yahweh”—the names for the Jewish God. Other rival deities are simply not there. It is as if they do not exist. They had been dethroned and demoted by their omission from the story. The opening verse of Genesis is a salvo fired into the world of polytheism, a ringing declaration that their gods were nobodies. We keep reading and discover that this Jewish God made everything that existed by His simple word of command. He simply said, “Light—exist!” (two words in the original Hebrew), and light sprang into existence. In the creation myths of the pagan cultures of that time, the gods created by lots of huffing and puffing (in an Old Babylonian myth, the god Enlil uses a hoe), but not so the God of the Jews. He is above all that. For Him, a simple sovereign word suffices. In fact, in the first chapter of Genesis, all the cosmos was brought into being by Him uttering ten simple commands (yep, it does foreshadow the Ten Commandments, given later). And Man is portrayed in these stories as the sum and crown of creation, giving the human person a dignity never before known. Man is said to have been made “in the image of God”—a revolutionary statement, since in those days, only kings were thought to be in the divine image. Despite this, Genesis invests the common man with this royal dignity. And even more: it says that woman shares this image and rule with him. In the ancient near east, women were chattel; in Genesis, she is a co-ruler of creation with the man. The stories of Genesis cannot be read apart from their original cultural context, and when we read them as they were meant to be read, we see that the creation story was a gauntlet thrown down before the prevailing culture of its time. The creation stories affirmed that the Jewish God, the tribal deity of a small and internationally unimportant people, alone made the whole cosmos. That meant that He was able to protect His People. It meant that, properly speaking, all the pagan nations should abandon their old gods and worship Him. These stories affirm that the Jewish God is powerful enough to have created everything by a few simple orders. They affirm that Man is not the mere tool and slave of the gods, whose job it is to feed the deities and care for their temples. Rather, Man is a co-ruler with God, His own image and viceroy on earth. And Woman is not a thing to be sold, inferior to Man. Rather, she shares Man’s calling and dignity. These are the real lessons of Genesis. It has nothing to say, for or against, the theory of evolution. Its true lessons are located elsewhere. So what about dinosaurs? I happily leave them in the museums, to the makers of movies (I love “Jurassic Park”), and the writers of National Geographic. The creation stories of Genesis give me lots to ponder and to live up to without multiplying mysteries. As Mark Twain once said, “It ain’t those parts of the Bible that I can’t understand that bother me; it’s the parts I do understand.” 
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#11. To: A Pole (#0)
How would one ever prove evolution is "falsifiable?" That means there are circumstances under which evolution could not possibly be true. That is the current definition of what is science. Evolution is a religion.
This is a complex question. First I do not respect much Popper's falsification/verification theory. Putting this aside, there are several evolution theories like Lamarck, Darwin, popular Neodarwinism as taught in American high schools and Jurassic Park movies, and they are still evolving [pun intended] rapidly. Certainly for many it is , especially for those who do not know biology very well.
Then you don't understand modern scientific principles. Falsification is an absolute requirement in science. We must be able to test our theories and we must discard those whose experimental results cannot be replicated. Without this, there is no science worthy of the name.
Then you don't understand modern scientific principles. I know his theory well. I just think it is shallow and flaky. Burn me on the stake! And I am not the only one, if it is an argument for you. Here is an initial fragment of sample text: Debunking Popper: A Critique of Karl Popper's Critical Rationalism, by Nicholas Dykes [...] Critical Rationalism has also been referred to, by Popper himself and by others, as the theory of falsification, or falsificationism, and as fallibilism. It would be tempting, for the sake of brevity, to employ 'fallibilism' throughout, but the term is also associated with the founder of Pragmatism, C.S. Peirce, who actually coined it long before Popper began his career.4 This paper therefore follows the lead of later Popperians such as W.W. Bartley III5 and David Miller6 in employing Critical Rationalism, which in any case better encompasses Popper's thought. The Critical Rationalism of Karl Popper [henceforth CR] begins by rejecting induction as a scientific method. The actual method of science, Popper maintained, is a continuous process of conjecture and refutation: "The way in which knowledge progresses, and especially our scientific knowledge, is by unjustified (and unjustifiable) anticipations, by guesses, by tentative solutions to our problems, by conjectures. These conjectures are controlled by criticism; that is, by attempted refutations, which include severely critical tests. They may survive these tests; but they can never be positively justified: they can be established neither as certainly true nor even as 'probable'..." [C&R vii]. [...] Popper built his philosophy on foundations borrowed from Hume and Kant. His first premise was wholehearted acceptance of Hume's attack on induction. The second, to be addressed in the next section, was agreement with Kant's view that it is our ideas which give form to reality, not reality which gives form to our ideas. Hume, whom Popper called "one of the most rational minds of all ages" [PKP2 1019], is renowned for elaborating the 'problem of induction' - a supposedly logical proof that generalisations from observation are invalid. Most later philosophers have accepted Hume's arguments, and libraries have been filled with attempts to solve his 'problem.' Popper thought he had the answer. "I believed I had solved the problem of induction by the simple discovery that induction by repetition did not exist" [UNQ 52; c.f. OKN 1ff & PKP2 1115]. What really took place, according to Popper, was CR, knowledge advancing by means of conjecture and refutation: "... in my view here is no such thing as induction" [LSCD 40]; "what characterises the empirical method is its manner of exposing to falsification, in every conceivable way, the system to be tested" [LSCD 42]. Hume, said Popper, had shown that: "there is no argument of reason which permits an inference from one case to another... and I completely agree" [OKN 96]. Elsewhere he referred to induction as "a myth" which had been "exploded" by Hume [UNQ 80]. He further asserted that "There is no rule of inductive inference - inference leading to theories or universal laws - ever proposed which can be taken seriously even for a minute" [UNQ 146-7; see also RASC 31]. The Problem with 'The Problem' Popper's solution was certainly correct in one respect. The problem of induction would indeed vanish if there were no such thing as induction. However, the issue would be resolved much more positively were it to turn out that Hume had been wrong, and that there never had been any problem with induction in the first place. And, in point of fact, this is the case. Despite his great skill as a thinker and writer, Hume missed the point. Induction does not depend for its validity on observation, but on the Law of Identity. Hume stated, in essence, that since all ideas are derived from experience we cannot have any valid ideas about future events - which have yet to be experienced. He therefore denied that the past can give us any information about the future. He further denied that there is any necessary connection between cause and effect. We experience only repeated instances, we cannot experience any "power" that actually causes events to take place. Events are entirely "loose and separate.... conjoined but never connected."8 According to Hume, then, one has no guarantee that the hawthorn in an English hedge will not bear grapes next autumn, nor that the thistles in a nearby field won't produce figs. The expectation that the thorn will produce red berries, and the thistles purple flowers, is merely the result of "regular conjunction" which induces an "inference of the understanding."9 In Hume's view, there is no such thing as objective identity, there is only subjective "custom" or "habit." However, Hume also wrote: "When any opinion leads to absurdities, it is certainly false"10 and the idea that one might gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles is surely absurd enough to qualify. And false is what Hume's opinions most certainly are. Left standing, they lead to what he himself called "the flattest of all contradictions, viz. that it is possible for the same thing both to be and not to be."11 The crux of the case against Hume was stated in 1916 by H.W.B. Joseph in An Introduction to Logic: "A thing, to be at all, must be something, and can only be what it is. To assert a causal connexion between a and x implies that a acts as it does because it is what it is; because, in fact, it is a. So long therefore as it is a, it must act thus; and to assert that it may act otherwise on a subsequent occasion is to assert that what is a is something else than the a which it is declared to be."12 Hume's whole argument - persuasive though it may be - is, to borrow Joseph's words, "in flat conflict with the Law of Identity."13 Existence implies identity. It is not possible to exist without being something, and a thing can only be what it is: A is A. Any actions of that thing form part of its identity: "the way in which it acts must be regarded as a partial expression of what it is."14 Thus to deny any connection between a thing, its actions, and their consequences, is to assert that the thing is not what it is; it is to defy the Law of Identity. It is not necessary to prolong this discussion. Entities exist. They possess identity. By careful observation - free from preconception - we are able to discover the identities of the entities we observe. Thereafter, we are fully entitled to assume that like entities will cause like events, the form of inference we call induction. And, because it rests on the axiom of the Law of Identity, correct induction - free from contradiction - is a valid route to knowledge. The first premise of CR is therefore false. [...]
Popper did go too far in his philosophizing about the nature of knowledge and how he believed it progressed, the entire thought process and other philosophical implications of theorizing. However, he was dead right about how he applied the principles of falsification to hard science. And that is why he is still a titan as a philosopher of science. We do not, after all, dismiss all of Newton's ideas about physics because he wasted much of his life pursuing alchemy.
Not being a great scientist nor philosopher. I have problem with recalling any significant scientific discovery made by Popper or thanks to him. Can you help me? Unless we count his doctrine of Open Society.
Obviously, you hate Popper. Fine.
Ridiculous. I just see his ideas as lame and ideological. Same way I could say that you are in a passionate love with Popper, and it is blinding you. But I am not letting you get of the hook, so easily. My question still stands: "I have problem with recalling any significant scientific discovery made by Popper or thanks to him. Can you help me? "
You do understand that Popper was not a scientist? He was primarily a philosopher of science, an intellectual. He also did work in social philosophy and other areas of philosophy, none of which interest me at all but which seems to be most of what you know about him. He is routinely considered the greatest philosopher of science in the twentieth century and, to some people, of all time. Questions like "how do we know what we know?", "how can we prove to others what we think we know?", "what is the proper metric for formulating and testing a hypothesis?", these are typical of the matters he dealt with.
Not by me.
There are no replies to Comment # 55. End Trace Mode for Comment # 55.
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#12. To: no gnu taxes (#11)
(Edited)
How would one ever prove evolution is "falsifiable?"
Evolution is a religion.
#16. To: A Pole (#12)
First I do not respect much Popper's falsification/verification theory.
#19. To: Tooconservative (#16)
First I do not respect much Popper's falsification/verification theory.
#23. To: A Pole (#19)
Debunking Popper: A Critique of Karl Popper's Critical Rationalism
#29. To: Tooconservative (#23)
Popper did go too far in his philosophizing ... However, he was dead right about how he applied the principles of falsification to hard science ... And that is why he is still a titan as a philosopher of science.
#30. To: A Pole (#29)
#31. To: Tooconservative (#30)
Obviously, you hate Popper. Fine.
#32. To: A Pole (#31)
"I have problem with recalling any significant scientific discovery made by Popper or thanks to him. Can you help me? "
#55. To: Tooconservative (#32)
He is routinely considered the greatest philosopher of science in the twentieth century and, to some people, of all time.
Replies to Comment # 55.
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