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Words of a Fether

I am the way, the truth, and the life;
no one comes to the Father except through me. ~Jesus

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Falsifiability: the watershed of real science

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This article from Berkeley is a simple overview of what the secular world considers good science. Ironically, it violates its own standards by calling the interpretation of facts science in the case of evolution, yet also says such interpretations are not facts and thus not science. But here is their definition in a nutshell:

1. Scientists are human. Sociology, politics, psychology, and similar aspects of human nature all have a profound influence on how science is conducted.

2. The Scientific Method (hypotheses are formulated from observations, and theories develop from these hypotheses) is usually, but not always, followed.

3. Facts are based on observation, while theories are based on inferences. (This is where they put evolution in the fact category even though it is not observed. So much for science.)

4. Hypotheses that cannot ever be disproven are not real science. This is what I will focus on. Note in the article that this is where they admit that paleontology is not disprovable, yet they use the oxymoronic term historical sciences to make it somehow scientific! (What they’re doing here is committing the logical fallacy known as equivocation. They are playing on two different meanings of science: the observable kind which is supposed to be the subject here, and the theoretical reconstruction of UNOBSERVED events of the distant past. It is this same kind of tactic that is used to call evolution science.)

5. Peer review and publication-- what a joke. They admit that the influence of human nature is involved, yet use it as a way to insure that only reasonable theories are allowed to be reviewed. There is much discrimination against viable scientific theories by their own standards, based upon ideology.

6. Replication: other scientists must be able to duplicate a claimed finding. They use the reptile to bird story as an example of something that violates this principle and is really just a made-up story which is unsolvable. Yet in spite of the common practice of blending of inference from scientific data with a dose of imagination and speculation, there is no outcry from the scientific community against it. Why? It serves the purpose of getting the masses to blindly assume and accept evolution as fact. And the only motivation for that is not science but religious hatred of all things theistic.

Now let’s look at the issue of falsifiability, number 4 above.

Evolution suffers from this problem in two areas. One, it’s said to be too slow to observe, and it’s claimed to do it’s transitions in spurts that are too fast to leave fossils. (Too fast to leave fossils is of course the poorest science, since speedy burial is the only way to form them! This lame theory known as punctuated equilibrium was popularized by S. J. Gould.-- see This Link)

Number two is the excuse commonly used that the theory’s constant need of adjustment is proof of openness to scientific discovery (and used to mock the never-changing truth of Genesis. More about that in a minute.) Any overall theory that constantly changes is impossible to falsify! We’re not talking about minor details of a theory, but the theory itself that is in a constant state of flux. By their own definition then, evolution is not scientific. It is the very sort of wild speculation and dogmatic religion that it purports to exclude from the realm of science.

Those who compare the ever-changing opinions of evolutionism with the never-changing truth of Genesis are comparing apples and oranges anyway. Truth, by definition, can never change; if it could, it wouldn’t be truth. Evolutionism, on the other hand, is not even considered truth by its worshippers, but only fact, and they make a distinction between the two: ’Fact’ in a scientific context is a generally accepted reality (but still open to scientific inquiry, as opposed to an absolute truth, which is not, and hence not a part of science).

Yet since we know evolutionism is not falsifiable, it is no more factual than Genesis, humanly speaking. But Biblically speaking, creation week described therein is written not as allegory or some vague moral lesson, but as fact. God tells us what he did and in what order.

And that’s the truth.

Posted 2007-01-01 under science, science, falsifiability, watershed