Finally some respect!
Nate Anderson at Arstechnica has written an astonishingly even-handed account of the Nye vs Ham debate. For the first time in living memory, a writer for the cool side has treated the square side with respect, instead of the universal standard barrage of nonsensical schoolyard insults.

Anderson focuses on the distinction between observational and historical methods. Ham says that only observational science is valid; Nye says that historical science is also valid.

I don't like those terms.

Observational means experimental or Aristotelian. If you can see or measure something actually happening, you can draw conclusions.

Historical means theoretical or Platonic. If you want a certain conclusion, you can make up a formula or theory that yields your desired conclusion.

I'm a ferociously absolute observationalist or experimentalist, which is a typical attitude among people who have worked as technicians. We know that theories and formulas can be useful for prediction, but we won't trust a theory or formula unless we have made the necessary measurements to see it in action; and we won't trust a theory or formula that wasn't derived in the first place from actual observations. Newton's laws, Ohm's laws, Faraday's laws, special relativity .... all derived from direct observation of Nature plus some applied imagination. All trustable.

Nye's side, the Platonic or theoretical side, yields Global Warming theories, Economics, Sociology, Quantum theories, Big Bang theories, Multiverse theories, and the standard evolution model. All nonsense because all derived purely from imagination and a desire for status and power and money and cooooooooooolness. Some of them are testable and repeatedly disproved; some are not testable at all.

So my sympathy goes with Ham in the context of this distinction, but my sympathy doesn't go beyond this distinction.

Big problem.... Genesis is no more observable than evolution. Both are made-up theories. Ham is violating his own standards by supporting Genesis.

Best answer? Leave both models aside for the time being. Live without theories. Many biologists have taken off their Platonic blinders and started looking closely at the genome, and they're finding a pattern that is converging ever more closely toward the notion of one big creation by one big creator. This creator may well be the God of Ham's scriptures, but it certainly doesn't have many of the attributes listed in the scriptures, and it certainly didn't work on the literal timeline of Genesis.

Labels: Grand Blueprint

  ¶ 8:19 AM