|
|
|
What is True Science?
On the
Difference in Scientific and Historical Evidence in Relation to
Evolution and the Age of the Earth
By A.T. Ross
See bottom of page for Supplemental writings.
It is impossible not to be actively involved in Creationism and miss
various ‘refutations from science’ brought against creationists—whether
in books, films, television programs, presentations, lectures, school
courses, or internet sites.
On the surface these ‘scientifc’ arguments and objections appear
convincing. Once the silver lining is removed, however, they are found
to fail on several levels—which are repeatedly pointed out by
creationists. In fact, for all of their learning and researching, it is
startling to realize how misunderstood science truly is today. This is
necessarily so, for with the proper understanding of science, evolution
is instantly exposed as the materialistic philosophy it is.
This faulty understanding springs from forgeting the fundemental
difference between scientific and historical evidence and what science
can and cannot address. Evolution required that science be redefined as
methodological naturalism—the rejection of everything by natural causes
for observed phenomena.
What we must now do is examine what scientific and historical evidence
can and cannot address and what scientific and historical evidence is
and is not.
Scientific
Evidence
In order to understand the nature of science and scientific evidence we
must first define science.
A current college-level textbook on physical science has the following
in it’s Prologue: “The methods of
scienc ususally are underscored by keen observations, rational
thinking, and experimentation.” Following after are listed the 5
steps of the Scientific Method, then, a few pages later: “Its [science] domain is therefore
restricted to the observable natural world” (Hewitt 2004).
Thus we know that science is an observation of the natural world. And
since we cannot observe the past, the past is excluded from scientific
inquiry. The future is also excluded from scientific inquiry, though
predictions can be made about it which can be eventually observed. This
is not so with the past, having already happened, can never be observed.
Our textbook also states: “When a
light goes out in your room, you ask ‘How did that happen?’ You might
check to see if the lamp is plugged in, you might check the bulb, or
you might even look at your neighbors’ houses to see if there has been
a power outage. When you think and act like this, you are searching for
cause-and-effect relationships—trying to find out what events cause
what results. This type of thinking is rational thinking. Rational
thinking is basic to science” (Hewitt 2004).
Thus we know that science is a search for cause-and-effect
relationships, and we previously saw that science is observation in the
present. We can now correctly define science.
Science: a branch of
study which seeks to comprehend observable natural phenomena through
continued observation and experimenation. Beginning with broad
understandings though increasingly precise, cause-and effect
relationships are sought in order to predict future phenomena and
comprehend the workings of the universe and make limited, reasonable
assumtions about the general workings of the past.
This does not exclude a supernatural cause of the natural system. As
Walt Brown says: “It is poor logic to
say that because science deals with natural, cause-and-effect
relationships, the first cause must be natural” (Brown 2001).
Figure 1 (Brown 2001)
Figure 1 demonstrates that it is possible to examine the natural system
(blue field) and the cause-and-effect phenomena (yellow dots) without
ever striking upon the supernatural system (white field outside of blue
field) or the first cause (red dot).
Because science necessarily only deals within the blue area, it
therefore can only see relationships within that boundry. These
relationships can be traced backward and forward to each other, all
appearing to be interconnected. However, due to this restraint, science
cannot address the issue of the first cause—be it creation or big bang.
Origins is something totally impossible for science to address. To
claim otherwise is to mislead people and to change the very definition
of science.
In this way, science can never address absolutes, even when dealing
with scientific principles or laws. As Albert Einstein says, “No number of experiments can prove me
right; a single experiment can prove me wrong” (Hewitt 2004).
This is the definition of normal, or operational science. Operational
science addresses the repeatable, observable present and is the science
that took man to the moon, split the atom, created the internal
combustion engine, and allowed man to cure various diseases. Overall,
it has provided a remarkable understanding of the world. Operational
science is subordinate to only repeated experimentation and observation.
There is another aspect of science, commonly called origins, or
historical science. That is what we will address here.
Origins Science
Origins science employs not observation because it addresses the
unobservable and unrepeatable past. One could say that it is the
science of history. In other words, origins science is the inference
and investigation of the possibility for past historical events of the
world to take place. Again, identical to operational science, origins
science can only investigate the possibility of a past event. In and of
itself, it can only determine whether it was possible for an event to
take place. It cannot determine indisputable facts in-and-of itself.
Alone it has no power to determine whether something did happen, only
that it could. Thus, origins science is subordinate to history.
Scientists can spend hundreds of years trying to prove that something,
like evolution, happened using science, but all they can ever truly do
is determine that it is possible for it to occur. Possibility, no
matter how convincing, cannot determine that it actually did. Something
else is required. And that something is history.
Historical
Evidence
In order to understand history and historical evidence a proper
definition of history must be proposed.
In speaking on history, we must first realize that all of our
information regarding past events and conditions must come from a
source. There are two kinds of sources available, primary sources, and
secondary sources.
Primary sources: “To answer the
questions above, historians examine primary sources, the firsthand
accounts of people who lived through the events, people in the best
position to know what happened” (McKay 2003). For example, the
accounts of Josephus or Julius Ceasar are primary sources because they
are reports on experiences. Also chronicles, such as Nennius’s Historia Brittonum or The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.
Unfortunately, few ever come into contact with these kinds of sources,
let alone care to read them.
Secondary sources: A report of a report. Edward Gibbon’s The Decline
and Fall of the Roman Empire may be a “work
of the highest rank; but, nevertheless, it is only report of others'
reports” (Robinson 1904). Most of the books on history one would
find on the average bookshop’s shelves are going to be secondary
sources, or the ‘reports of other’ reports’. These are of course very
important to read, but they are not the real history. They can misquote
or misinterpret or come to wrong conclusions about something just as
easily as the rest of us. That is why primary documents are (or should
be) the primary documents a person or researcher should actively
examine and compare.
Now that we have examined some aspects of history we can properly
define history.
History: a branch of
study which seeks to understand the events of the past through
examination, analysis, and comparison of reliable primary documents.
Beginning with broad, though increasingly precise strokes, confirmation
of events through the comparison of independent sources is sought and a
chronology of past events is compiled.
We have found that history is the only reliable source of determining
and proving past events in history, and the examination of primary
documents specially so. If something cannot be verified through primary
documentation, essentially, it cannot be stated or spoken of as fact
because, simply put, that thing or event cannot be confirmed or denied.
History is often given little consideration by the scientific
community, and for good reason. Unlike science, which is debatable and
flexable to an extent in terms of ‘facts,’ history is iron-clad fact;
actual evidence for events in the past. Science cannot overthrow
established historical fact, which is why history has taken a somewhat
secondary role in education and consideration by many people. If the
world understood the importance of history and the true account of it,
it is highly doubtful that evolution would have been able to take such
root in modern society.
Extrapolation is Limited
Science cannot address the past directly, as established in the above
sections. There is a part of the above definition of science which
should have attention called to it. It is the very end of the
definition, which states that science can “make limited, reasonable
assumptions about the general workings of the past.” This needs
clarification if we are to understand the limitations of science.
When faced with this contrast between science and history, many assert
that science can observe the processes of the present and extrapolate
backwards into the past. Is this a legitimate argument? They would
argue that the object in the present is the result of processes in the
past.
This assertion tries to argue that this process of extrapolation is as
easy as following a trail from the end to the beginning. To put a
different way, if this assertion were applied to vehicles traveling on
a highway, because an observer can see a vehicle passing a certain
point along the highway, they can therefore extrapolate into the past
and determine that the vehicle had traveled the length of the entire
highway to that point! This is, of course, perfectly rediculous. The
radical ‘High Priest’ of Atheism, Richard Dawkins, likens this
extrapolation to a river which one can follow backwards to the starting
point in the distant past (Dawkins 1995).
To say that an object is the result of the processes of the past is
perfectly correct. A person is the result of the past and past
experiences. But to equate that with the idea that one can trace those
processes backward on the basis of the present is pure conjecture. To
be able to trace something backward, one has to know the starting and
ending positions and data. Additionally, if the extrapolation is
correct, then the assumption is correct, but if the extrapolation is
incorrect, then those hypothesizing are guilty of begging the question,
or assuming the answer is correct
before asking the question.
In order to determine the validity of a scientific theory that
addresses the past, historical documents must be presented in order to
determine if it did indeed occur. Science can only ascribe a possibiliy
to something occuring in the past.
To drive this point home, the reader is advised to consider carefully
the following: “It is believed that
in the American Revolution George Washington and his men crossed the
Delaware River to attack the city of Trenton. How would one go about
proving that event? If one used the scientific method, he would do
research on boats, measure the width and flow of the river, do studies
on the rowing of boats, and perhaps even row across the Delaware River
himself. Would all of this data prove that Washington crossed the
Delaware? No. Scientific evidence is not what is needed. Historical
evidence, such as records of eyewitnesses or of persons closely
associated with those who were involved, is what is needed. All the
scientific method could prove is the possibility that Washington
crossed the Delaware, not that he actually did so" (Lubenow 1992)
The problem inherent in this for evolutionists becomes apparent when
one realizes that historical records, or those necessary documents
vital to proving the past, only go back about five-to-six thousand
years, which is readily acknowledged by historians. Anything beyond
that point is ‘determined’ by scientific methods such as the Geologic
Column or Radiometric dating. Given the indications in the preceeding
paragraphs, this is not a legitimate determination of the ages of the
artifacts in question. Additional problems are found when one considers
the many myths and legends in decidedly pagan cultures which support
the Biblical accounts of Creation, Fall, Flood, the Mark of Cain, and
Diversification (Tower of Babel) (Frazer 1918).
So, to conclude, science cannot reliably extrapolate into the past in
detail, as the evolution theory would like.
However, once the history of the past has been determined, science can
propose various theories relating to explaining how such a thing could
occur (these proposals are known as ‘models’). For example, many
pre-christian (read: pagan) cultures traced their origins to Noah and a
global flood (Cooper 1995; Gascoigne 2002) If it were merely a
christian invention, there should be no references to a global flood or
Noah until the world was Christianized, yet there they are.
Philosophy vs. Science
It is unlikely that there is any person able to read this without
knowledge of the debate raging about the evolution vs. creation issue.
They may not have studied it intently as this author has done, and they
may even have misconceptions about the issue, but nonetheless, the
debate rages still and is gathering ever-increasing attention.
The issue is often presented as a debate between science and philosophy
with the presupposition that evolution is science in the first place.
To be perfectly frank (as well as blunt) this is being pusillanimous,
due to the fact that it is more than likely going to confuse the issue
in the layman’s mind. Equally, describing the issue in this mannor is
pure deceitfulness on the part of the press and the evolutionists both
as it fails to take into count the fundemental difference between
science and history.
The simple fact is that evolution is a theory about the origins of the
past (e.g. history of the earth and life) in precisely the same mannor
that creation is a theory about the origins of the past (e.g. history
of the earth and life). Evolutionary models span scientific fields,
giving a history (e.g. chronology) of the past from such fields as
cosmology, biology, geology, anthropology, paleontology, geophysics,
chemistry, and thermodynamics based upon an interpretation of the data
that fits their view. Creationist models also span scientific fields,
the same scientific fields that the evolutionist employs on which they
base their interpretation of the data.
So what’s the difference? The creationist rejects the unfounded and
unverifiable philosophical assumptions of the evolutionist, such as
methodological naturalism (e.g. asscribing a completely natural cause
for everything one can observe) or uniformatarianism (e.g. the
processes occuring now have always occured and occured at the same rate
as they do now), stripping the scientific fields of their invasion by
naturalistic philosophy.
It’s not a clash between science and philosophy, it’s a clash between
to unreconcilable philosophies, two interpretations of the same data.
Consider: we all have the same data, the same observations, the same
facts. The fact is that the Grand Canyon exists. There’s no question it
exists. The question is how it was formed. The majority of
evolutionists today believe the canyon formed over millions of years by
the Colorado River. The creationist has always believed that it was
formed by a Post-Flood Lake that burst a natural (i.e. not man-made)
dam and carved it out rapidly, within hours at the least to a few days
at the most.
Bottom line: Evolution is philosophy, not science. Creation is
philosophy, not science. Both are philosophies which can neither prove
nor disprove the other through science. Only through history.
Conclusion
It now becomes clear that history can address the past where science
cannot. The opposite, however, is not true. History can also address
the present, the present being the history of the future.
So what’s the point of all this?
The point is that no matter how convincing an “argument from science”
may become, it can only ever be a possibility. Modern science seems to
have forogotten this. Only history can prove the history of the past.
The question is to the whole of science itself, not one or another
approach to it. “For example,
suppose a forensic scientist finds a fingerprint on a lamp and
concludes, ‘a horrible murder must have happened here.’ Obviously his
conclusion is nonsense. First you have to know that a murder happened
there, then you can use forensic science to fill in the details and
find out ‘whodunnit’” (Gascoigne 2002).
Therefore science falls into submission of history when dealing with
the past. The past can be proved through history (knowing whether or
not a murder has happened in the above quotation) and then reinforced
by science (determining the culprit of the murder). History and science
serve greatly different purposes in the study of the world and
universe. Different, but not necessarily unequal. They merely play
different parts in the overal scheme.
It should be emphesized that it is not the intent of this author to
conclude that science is useless or unimportant. Not at all! Science is
important, greatly so. It merely serves a purpose wholly different from
the one that is currently being impressed upon it in present scientific
circles, evolutionistic or creationistic. Science alone cannot prove
the age of the earth, be that age 6,000 or 4.5 billion. Only history
can. Science then determines the details.
Supplemental 1: Does the Forensic Science Arguent Stand Up?<br>
Supplemental 2: Does the Watch Factory Argument Stand Up?<br>
Supplemental 3: Does the Laws of Physics Argument Stand Up?<br>
Supplemental 4: Does the Law of Gravity Argument Hold Up?
References
Hewitt et all, Conceptual Physical
Science, 3rd Ed, 2004
Bown, Walt, In the Beginning:
Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood, 7th Ed., 1st Ed.
1980, 7th updated Ed. 2001
McKay et all, A History of Western
Society: From Antiquity to 1500, 7th Ed. 2003
Medieval Sourcebook
(http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/robinson-sources.html), adapted
from James Harvey Robinson, "The Historical point of View", in Readings in European History, Vol
I, (Boston: Ginn, 1904)
Dawkins, Richard, River Out of Eden,
1995
Lubenow, Martin, Bones of Contention,
1992
George Frazer, Sir James, Folk-Lore
in the Old Testement, 1918
Bill Cooper, After the Flood
(1995)
Mike Gascoigne, Forgotten History of
the Western People (2002)
Gascoigne, Mike, TJ,
“Forgotten History,” 16(3),
2002
|
