RSR Nye/Ham Debate Analysis Pt. 2
This is the show from Monday February 10th, 2014
Summary:
* Bob Enyart and Fred Williams Answer Nye's Claims: The Real Science Radio hosts answer Bill Nye's many wild claims with specifics and show how he repeatedly used claims to back up claims, instead of evidence to back up claims. And we are thankful that Ken Ham put the debate in it's proper biblical context, that his scientific evidence was up-to-date and powerful, and that he shared the gospel with millions of people! See also Part I of this analysis.
Please help RSR reach our telethon goal
of $25,000 to stay on the air for 2014!
Either browse our Science Department or
make a one-time or automatic monthly donation!
RSR vs. Creationist Views of Forensic Science
Does the creation.com article CSI and evolution use good argumentation or poor and arbitrary evidence to justify its claim of a qualitative distinction between observational and historical science? At Real Science Radio, we suggest that the creation movement generally, and in particular the article’s publisher, Creation Ministries International, and Answers in Genesis and Ken Ham in his debate with Bill Nye, err in their effort to diminish forensic science of the past as compared to the science of ongoing processes.
Test Our Analysis: Atheists often make a materialist claim that we can only be certain of what our five senses tell us. We assert that many creationists make a similar error when they try to relegate forensics to a second-class science. In so doing, they are backing into the traditional demarcation problem, trying to decide what does and does not qualify as science, perhaps without carefully considering the implications of their claims. We invite you to test this analysis to see whether or not we easily falsify this claim about forensics. In CMI’s article by wonderful creationist Shaun Doyle, note both the distinction between “present” and forensic science, and the use of quotes around the word science:
…between the science of present processes and the ‘science’ of figuring out what happened in the past… there is far less certainty in the science of past events than there is in the science of present processes.
Real Science Radio asserts this claim is overly broad and therefore incorrect. The excerpts below list all the justifications provided by Doyle. Many events in the past (such as sun flares, the distribution of a genetic mutation, volcanic lava flows, etc.) can have far more certain descriptions and explanations than can any number of explanations for phenomena scientists observe in action. Note that CMI’s reasons for diminishing forensics apply equally to "observational" science:
CMI Excerpts: On Forensic Science
[RSR: Yet all of these apply to all of science]
"facts can't speak… for themselves" * "There are also numerous uncertainties in forensic science"
* data or evidence can be "planted" by the unscrupulous * "technicians" can err
* some particular "experimental method... may be suspect" * "Investigators can draw poor conclusions"
* "the gap between circumstantial fact and [scientific] inference is quite large" * "questionable assumptions"
* "famous" erroneous conclusions * other investigative approaches may "reveal unfounded assumptions"
* extraordinary events "would inevitably produce problems for anyone relying solely on" only one kind of inquiry
* forensic science "is a useful, but fallible methodology."
A Fatal Arbitrariness: Creationists are arbitrary in attributing such concerns to forensic science as though they do not apply also to other science. As a result of this arbitrariness, the argument is meaningless because the exact same body of evidence can be used to argue the exact opposite, that that forensic science provides greater certainty than observational science. Anecdotally, forensic science has even corrected eyewitnesses who identify the wrong suspect in a lineup.
None of CMI’s examples demonstrate any uncertainty peculiar to "historical" science as compared to observational science. Further, consider whether or not these very terms are misnomers and therefore unhelpful. Much "forensic" science overlaps with the science of "present processes", and much observational science overlaps with forensic science.
Past and Present: Is it a trivial matter to distinguish between the historical and observational aspects of an astronomer using a telescope? How about a geologist reading a seismograph? Qualitatively and epistemologically, how great a difference is there between those kinds of investigations and microscopy? If we are crediting ourselves with being precise, then to what degree is our routine scientific investigation of ongoing processes actually a forensic task? Forensics is the study of the aftermath of phenomena. Much of our observational science and even our experimentation is actually observations of the aftermath of phenomena. In Ken Ham’s great debate with Bill Nye, the creationist used precious time to distinguish between observational and historical science. So if that distinction is not the significant factor that many creationists make of it, then why do so many make that argument, and where does it come from?
Your Five Senses: With their forensics argument, creationists are uncomfortably close to the materialist claim that you can only really know that which your five senses tell you. (Rebuttal: Says which of the five?) Can you have a certainty that a house had a builder, even if you did not see your home being built? Yes. No one has to see the builder to know, even in a scientifically certain way, that some house had a builder. Moreover, meeting the builder and even watching him build a house does not give you any more certainty that the house had a builder than is possessed by those who had never seen him. Just as Nye used out-of-date claims of evidence, the claim that scientific knowledge is only really obtainable through observation is likewise out of date with important work being done by philosophers of science (Stephen Meyer, Darwin’s Doubt, 2013, p. 387-389).
Eyes vs. Mind: There are various ways to acquire careful scientific knowledge. Visual observation does not trump reason, math, logic, and the mind the way implied by the creationist argument against forensics. (For the scientific preeminence and even the eternal nature of mathematics, see rsr.org/logical-fallacies#by-creationists and rsr.org/math.) And of course many observations are not repeatable, and plenty of experimental research (which in some respects are repeatable) are never repeated due to various factors including limited resources, interest, commitment, etc.). Ken Ham presented the origin of the term science, from the Latin scientia, meaning knowledge, by which we mean carefully acquired knowledge of the cosmos. Whatever differences there are between observational and historical science, they do not qualitatively prevent one method from obtaining certainty in a scientific sense (again, see rsr.org/fallacies#by-creationists).
Ham vs. Nye: At Real Science Radio, we also argue that in the debate, Ken Ham (like CMI, etc.) trying to diminish the value of historical science is not a winning argument. The message we creationists unwittingly send is that our position fairs poorly if forensic science is valid. Bill Nye so easily countered by pointing out that forensic science is as powerful as other branches of science, and that all of astronomy (including therefore, the astronomy performed at AiG by RSR friends astronomer Danny Faulkner and previously, by astrophysicist Jason Lisle), is historical science since we are observing only the effects of past events. Ken then undermined one of his primary arguments by (rightly) agreeing with Bill Nye that scientists do use observational and repeatable science to evaluate the effects of past events. Creationists trying to diminish forensics are unintentionally mimicking not only the “five senses” error of the materialist, but also, in a sense, their error of uniformitarianism. For many evolutionists insist that you can only use currently observed phenomena to understand past events, while some creationists claim that scientifically, you can only really understand something if it is a current phenomena.
Rebuttal to Airplane and Cell Phone Claim: Atheists like Nye and, right here on Real Science Radio, theoretical physicst (emphasis on the theoretical) Lawrence Krauss, say that creationists contradict themselves because we reject materialist origins yet we use the benefits of modern science, like phones and planes. Rather than responding to this with a nuanced discussion of the various kinds of scientific inquiry, which comes across as a defensive, we can take the offense and simply expose the logical fallacy of argument from authority. We ask:
Because they work at the world's leading aerospace manufacturer making jet aircraft, do Boeing's engineers therefore know how gravity originated? Can they even demonstrate the mechanism by which one atom attracts another a million miles away? Do cellular network engineers at AT&T know where all the electrons have come from? Because they design cell phone towers, can they therefore explain the extraordinary fine tuning of the universe, or why across the universe there is an almost exact one-to-one electron to proton ratio (with a standard deviation of only 1 in 10 to the 37th)? Of course not. So you atheists are committing the logical fallacy of argument from authority, becasue being an authority in the use of energy and materials does not make someone an authority on how those things originated.
So, having exposed the logical fallacy seemingly ubiquitously committed by atheists, we can look at their actual progress in explaining origins from a materialist perspective. First, we realize that if they do not have a theory that accounts for human consciousness, then they don't even have a hypothesis on origins, because our consciousness is both what enables us to investigate the cosmos, and one of its most extraordinary aspects. And regarding the origin of everything else, their failure so far is demonstrable by this pattern:
- the origin of species for Darwin begins with species already in existence
- the origin of stars begins with stars already in existence (the explosion of stars and with protostars)
- the origin of new genes begins with modifying existing genes
- the origin of species for today's Neo-Darwinists begins with existing complex reproducing life
- the origin of life on earth is increasingly seen as seeded from already existing alien life
- the origin of the universe is increasingly explained by appeals to the pre-existing multiverse.
That all adds up to a complete lack of progress that atheists have made in trying to account for origins apart from God. And finally, while all known biological life involves biological information encoded in DNA, atheists have not even provided a mechanism whereby the physical laws can even begin to encode the simplest of instructions, say for building a protein, onto a DNA molecule. They never have suggested a mechanism for accomplishing this, and they never will. Why not? It is as inscrutable as explaining how consciousness could possibly arise from inanimate matter. Just as with amino acids and genetics, the chemistry of ink and the physics that present pixels on a computer screen have nothing to do with the message being carried by such media. The laws of physics do not have any symbolic logic functions! And because genetic information, like all information, is symbolic, therefore chemistry and physics are the wrong tools for the job and are utterly incapable of encoding any information, any way, anywhere.
Three Statements in CMI’s Article: Consider whether the two statements below are damaging, but first, whether or not this innocuous sounding claim is arbitrary, and therefore not valid:
…good eyewitnesses are more reliable because they tend to reveal unfounded assumptions forensic investigators make…
The adjective "good" reveals the arbitrariness of this demarcation. Comparing forensic evidence to observational (or "eyewitness") evidence, one could just as accurately assert the exact opposite. Good forensic evidence is more reliable because it tends to reveal the eyewitnesses' unfounded assumptions. If there really is a qualitative distinction that reduces scientific certainty from historical as opposed to observational science, we assert that manifestly, the creation movement has not demonstrated such a distinction.
Australia’s infamous “dingo case”, cited by Doyle, is no more an example of the problems inherent in forensic science than it is an example of the problems inherent to all science. Unjustified inference from the data is wrong, whether applied to the past or the present.
Doyle then asks this, decidedly not innocuous, question.
…can creationists affirm the (general) reliability of forensic science in criminal trials and yet completely reject evolution and long-age geology? Fair question.
No, it’s not a fair question. The unintended but definite implication here is that if forensic science is generally reliable, then it appears to support evolution and long ages. Thus, the implication that is only barely unstated by much of the creation movement is this: We creationists better undermine the reputation of forensic science; otherwise analyzing the evidence of past events will undermine creation. We assert that the major creation groups would agree with RSR, that such a concern is utterly unjustified. Yet their epistemological strategy is based on exactly this unjustified fear. And what’s ironic about all this, is that uniformitarians claim that chemical, stellar, and biological evolutionary processes are all ongoing (i.e., present processes), so this whole creationist defensive posture is off point anyway.
Here's a question: Even based on atheistic starting assumptions, are evolutionists being consistent? Consider that question when you read this quote from Doyle:
The same forensic approach can be used by creationists, using a different starting point (i.e. different assumptions about the past) to reach a quite different conclusion from the same facts.
Even this is a concession to atheists. It implies that their untenable interpretation of the data follows from their starting assumptions. It does not. Regardless of their assumptions, they contradict the data at every turn. Consider two examples from the Grand Canyon. None of their starting assumptions justify their claim that a million nautiloids in the Redwall Limestone must have been fossilized while standing vertically for tens of thousands of years. None of their assumptions justify their claim that 100 million years passed (the assumed Ordovician & Silurian) without depositing sediments or causing erosion. Regardless of the statement that, “long-age ‘clocks’ can’t be independently verified,” they sure can be falsified. We hear repeatedly that: Science can't prove that a hypothesis is true, but science can falsify a hypothesis. RSR disputes the first part of that sentence, but we certainly agree with the last part. Countless contradictions and inconsistencies in old-age dating scientifically demonstrates that it is unreliable. Further, while Doyle says that there are no courtroom-like “checks and balances” in “evolution and long-age geology”, of course consistency and integrity are always available to those claiming an old earth.
Two or Three Witnesses: Finally, this CMI article concludes with an interpretation of the Bible that virtually all murderers and defense attorneys would be agree with:
This is why two eyewitnesses provide a judicial ground for establishing any matter, according to the Bible…
False. But what a heyday it would be for the murderer or kidnapper (http://biblia.com/bible/nkjv/Ex. 21.15-16" data-version=nkjv" data-reference=) if we avoided punishing them appropriately unless they had committed their crime in front of an audience. We realize that this point might be too much even for Christians who have agreed so far with our arguments above. However, we beg your consideration on this as you consider the decades of biblical studies we have put into this matter. If you use Google to find out what God might say about the death penalty, by googling: God death penalty, or some version of that, like: God and the death penalty, since the 1990s, our article at TOL subtitled, New Testament Support for Capital Punishment, is ranked by Google #1 out of millions of pages. Further, we’ve presented our seminar, now available on CD, God’s Criminal Justice System, in many cities from Honolulu to Pittsburgh. And we’ve argued our biblical case for the death penalty on Court TV. For:
- Jesus demonstrated in the Gospel of John that the two or three witnesses necessary to conclude a matter do not need to be eyewitnesses.
- The Apostle Paul even writes that the church should not consider an accusation against an elder except from two or three witnesses. Of course that does not mean we ignore a woman's claim of being impregnated, or an auditors warning of missing funds, unless we have eyewitnesses. Who does such things in front of others?
- Likewise in the Law of Moses, the criminal who is guilty of sexual assault can be convicted, even though he committed his crime in the wilderness where there was no one to hear the woman’s screams.
The biblical theme of two or three witnesses ultimately is understood only in the context of the triune God, as we explore at rsr.org/euthyphros-dilemma.
However, regarding both criminal investigation and scientific investigation, eyesight does not trump the other many God-given ways of obtaining reliable information.
For your consideration,
Bob Enyart
Real Science Radio (.com) & [url=http://denverbiblechurch.org]Denver Bible Church
800-8Enyart or 303-463-7789
This is the show from Monday February 10th, 2014
Summary:
* Bob Enyart and Fred Williams Answer Nye's Claims: The Real Science Radio hosts answer Bill Nye's many wild claims with specifics and show how he repeatedly used claims to back up claims, instead of evidence to back up claims. And we are thankful that Ken Ham put the debate in it's proper biblical context, that his scientific evidence was up-to-date and powerful, and that he shared the gospel with millions of people! See also Part I of this analysis.
Please help RSR reach our telethon goal
of $25,000 to stay on the air for 2014!
Either browse our Science Department or
make a one-time or automatic monthly donation!
RSR vs. Creationist Views of Forensic Science
Does the creation.com article CSI and evolution use good argumentation or poor and arbitrary evidence to justify its claim of a qualitative distinction between observational and historical science? At Real Science Radio, we suggest that the creation movement generally, and in particular the article’s publisher, Creation Ministries International, and Answers in Genesis and Ken Ham in his debate with Bill Nye, err in their effort to diminish forensic science of the past as compared to the science of ongoing processes.
Test Our Analysis: Atheists often make a materialist claim that we can only be certain of what our five senses tell us. We assert that many creationists make a similar error when they try to relegate forensics to a second-class science. In so doing, they are backing into the traditional demarcation problem, trying to decide what does and does not qualify as science, perhaps without carefully considering the implications of their claims. We invite you to test this analysis to see whether or not we easily falsify this claim about forensics. In CMI’s article by wonderful creationist Shaun Doyle, note both the distinction between “present” and forensic science, and the use of quotes around the word science:
…between the science of present processes and the ‘science’ of figuring out what happened in the past… there is far less certainty in the science of past events than there is in the science of present processes.
Real Science Radio asserts this claim is overly broad and therefore incorrect. The excerpts below list all the justifications provided by Doyle. Many events in the past (such as sun flares, the distribution of a genetic mutation, volcanic lava flows, etc.) can have far more certain descriptions and explanations than can any number of explanations for phenomena scientists observe in action. Note that CMI’s reasons for diminishing forensics apply equally to "observational" science:
CMI Excerpts: On Forensic Science
[RSR: Yet all of these apply to all of science]
"facts can't speak… for themselves" * "There are also numerous uncertainties in forensic science"
* data or evidence can be "planted" by the unscrupulous * "technicians" can err
* some particular "experimental method... may be suspect" * "Investigators can draw poor conclusions"
* "the gap between circumstantial fact and [scientific] inference is quite large" * "questionable assumptions"
* "famous" erroneous conclusions * other investigative approaches may "reveal unfounded assumptions"
* extraordinary events "would inevitably produce problems for anyone relying solely on" only one kind of inquiry
* forensic science "is a useful, but fallible methodology."
A Fatal Arbitrariness: Creationists are arbitrary in attributing such concerns to forensic science as though they do not apply also to other science. As a result of this arbitrariness, the argument is meaningless because the exact same body of evidence can be used to argue the exact opposite, that that forensic science provides greater certainty than observational science. Anecdotally, forensic science has even corrected eyewitnesses who identify the wrong suspect in a lineup.
None of CMI’s examples demonstrate any uncertainty peculiar to "historical" science as compared to observational science. Further, consider whether or not these very terms are misnomers and therefore unhelpful. Much "forensic" science overlaps with the science of "present processes", and much observational science overlaps with forensic science.
Past and Present: Is it a trivial matter to distinguish between the historical and observational aspects of an astronomer using a telescope? How about a geologist reading a seismograph? Qualitatively and epistemologically, how great a difference is there between those kinds of investigations and microscopy? If we are crediting ourselves with being precise, then to what degree is our routine scientific investigation of ongoing processes actually a forensic task? Forensics is the study of the aftermath of phenomena. Much of our observational science and even our experimentation is actually observations of the aftermath of phenomena. In Ken Ham’s great debate with Bill Nye, the creationist used precious time to distinguish between observational and historical science. So if that distinction is not the significant factor that many creationists make of it, then why do so many make that argument, and where does it come from?
Your Five Senses: With their forensics argument, creationists are uncomfortably close to the materialist claim that you can only really know that which your five senses tell you. (Rebuttal: Says which of the five?) Can you have a certainty that a house had a builder, even if you did not see your home being built? Yes. No one has to see the builder to know, even in a scientifically certain way, that some house had a builder. Moreover, meeting the builder and even watching him build a house does not give you any more certainty that the house had a builder than is possessed by those who had never seen him. Just as Nye used out-of-date claims of evidence, the claim that scientific knowledge is only really obtainable through observation is likewise out of date with important work being done by philosophers of science (Stephen Meyer, Darwin’s Doubt, 2013, p. 387-389).
Eyes vs. Mind: There are various ways to acquire careful scientific knowledge. Visual observation does not trump reason, math, logic, and the mind the way implied by the creationist argument against forensics. (For the scientific preeminence and even the eternal nature of mathematics, see rsr.org/logical-fallacies#by-creationists and rsr.org/math.) And of course many observations are not repeatable, and plenty of experimental research (which in some respects are repeatable) are never repeated due to various factors including limited resources, interest, commitment, etc.). Ken Ham presented the origin of the term science, from the Latin scientia, meaning knowledge, by which we mean carefully acquired knowledge of the cosmos. Whatever differences there are between observational and historical science, they do not qualitatively prevent one method from obtaining certainty in a scientific sense (again, see rsr.org/fallacies#by-creationists).
Ham vs. Nye: At Real Science Radio, we also argue that in the debate, Ken Ham (like CMI, etc.) trying to diminish the value of historical science is not a winning argument. The message we creationists unwittingly send is that our position fairs poorly if forensic science is valid. Bill Nye so easily countered by pointing out that forensic science is as powerful as other branches of science, and that all of astronomy (including therefore, the astronomy performed at AiG by RSR friends astronomer Danny Faulkner and previously, by astrophysicist Jason Lisle), is historical science since we are observing only the effects of past events. Ken then undermined one of his primary arguments by (rightly) agreeing with Bill Nye that scientists do use observational and repeatable science to evaluate the effects of past events. Creationists trying to diminish forensics are unintentionally mimicking not only the “five senses” error of the materialist, but also, in a sense, their error of uniformitarianism. For many evolutionists insist that you can only use currently observed phenomena to understand past events, while some creationists claim that scientifically, you can only really understand something if it is a current phenomena.
Rebuttal to Airplane and Cell Phone Claim: Atheists like Nye and, right here on Real Science Radio, theoretical physicst (emphasis on the theoretical) Lawrence Krauss, say that creationists contradict themselves because we reject materialist origins yet we use the benefits of modern science, like phones and planes. Rather than responding to this with a nuanced discussion of the various kinds of scientific inquiry, which comes across as a defensive, we can take the offense and simply expose the logical fallacy of argument from authority. We ask:
Because they work at the world's leading aerospace manufacturer making jet aircraft, do Boeing's engineers therefore know how gravity originated? Can they even demonstrate the mechanism by which one atom attracts another a million miles away? Do cellular network engineers at AT&T know where all the electrons have come from? Because they design cell phone towers, can they therefore explain the extraordinary fine tuning of the universe, or why across the universe there is an almost exact one-to-one electron to proton ratio (with a standard deviation of only 1 in 10 to the 37th)? Of course not. So you atheists are committing the logical fallacy of argument from authority, becasue being an authority in the use of energy and materials does not make someone an authority on how those things originated.
So, having exposed the logical fallacy seemingly ubiquitously committed by atheists, we can look at their actual progress in explaining origins from a materialist perspective. First, we realize that if they do not have a theory that accounts for human consciousness, then they don't even have a hypothesis on origins, because our consciousness is both what enables us to investigate the cosmos, and one of its most extraordinary aspects. And regarding the origin of everything else, their failure so far is demonstrable by this pattern:
- the origin of species for Darwin begins with species already in existence
- the origin of stars begins with stars already in existence (the explosion of stars and with protostars)
- the origin of new genes begins with modifying existing genes
- the origin of species for today's Neo-Darwinists begins with existing complex reproducing life
- the origin of life on earth is increasingly seen as seeded from already existing alien life
- the origin of the universe is increasingly explained by appeals to the pre-existing multiverse.
That all adds up to a complete lack of progress that atheists have made in trying to account for origins apart from God. And finally, while all known biological life involves biological information encoded in DNA, atheists have not even provided a mechanism whereby the physical laws can even begin to encode the simplest of instructions, say for building a protein, onto a DNA molecule. They never have suggested a mechanism for accomplishing this, and they never will. Why not? It is as inscrutable as explaining how consciousness could possibly arise from inanimate matter. Just as with amino acids and genetics, the chemistry of ink and the physics that present pixels on a computer screen have nothing to do with the message being carried by such media. The laws of physics do not have any symbolic logic functions! And because genetic information, like all information, is symbolic, therefore chemistry and physics are the wrong tools for the job and are utterly incapable of encoding any information, any way, anywhere.
Three Statements in CMI’s Article: Consider whether the two statements below are damaging, but first, whether or not this innocuous sounding claim is arbitrary, and therefore not valid:
…good eyewitnesses are more reliable because they tend to reveal unfounded assumptions forensic investigators make…
The adjective "good" reveals the arbitrariness of this demarcation. Comparing forensic evidence to observational (or "eyewitness") evidence, one could just as accurately assert the exact opposite. Good forensic evidence is more reliable because it tends to reveal the eyewitnesses' unfounded assumptions. If there really is a qualitative distinction that reduces scientific certainty from historical as opposed to observational science, we assert that manifestly, the creation movement has not demonstrated such a distinction.
Australia’s infamous “dingo case”, cited by Doyle, is no more an example of the problems inherent in forensic science than it is an example of the problems inherent to all science. Unjustified inference from the data is wrong, whether applied to the past or the present.
Doyle then asks this, decidedly not innocuous, question.
…can creationists affirm the (general) reliability of forensic science in criminal trials and yet completely reject evolution and long-age geology? Fair question.
No, it’s not a fair question. The unintended but definite implication here is that if forensic science is generally reliable, then it appears to support evolution and long ages. Thus, the implication that is only barely unstated by much of the creation movement is this: We creationists better undermine the reputation of forensic science; otherwise analyzing the evidence of past events will undermine creation. We assert that the major creation groups would agree with RSR, that such a concern is utterly unjustified. Yet their epistemological strategy is based on exactly this unjustified fear. And what’s ironic about all this, is that uniformitarians claim that chemical, stellar, and biological evolutionary processes are all ongoing (i.e., present processes), so this whole creationist defensive posture is off point anyway.
Here's a question: Even based on atheistic starting assumptions, are evolutionists being consistent? Consider that question when you read this quote from Doyle:
The same forensic approach can be used by creationists, using a different starting point (i.e. different assumptions about the past) to reach a quite different conclusion from the same facts.
Even this is a concession to atheists. It implies that their untenable interpretation of the data follows from their starting assumptions. It does not. Regardless of their assumptions, they contradict the data at every turn. Consider two examples from the Grand Canyon. None of their starting assumptions justify their claim that a million nautiloids in the Redwall Limestone must have been fossilized while standing vertically for tens of thousands of years. None of their assumptions justify their claim that 100 million years passed (the assumed Ordovician & Silurian) without depositing sediments or causing erosion. Regardless of the statement that, “long-age ‘clocks’ can’t be independently verified,” they sure can be falsified. We hear repeatedly that: Science can't prove that a hypothesis is true, but science can falsify a hypothesis. RSR disputes the first part of that sentence, but we certainly agree with the last part. Countless contradictions and inconsistencies in old-age dating scientifically demonstrates that it is unreliable. Further, while Doyle says that there are no courtroom-like “checks and balances” in “evolution and long-age geology”, of course consistency and integrity are always available to those claiming an old earth.
Two or Three Witnesses: Finally, this CMI article concludes with an interpretation of the Bible that virtually all murderers and defense attorneys would be agree with:
This is why two eyewitnesses provide a judicial ground for establishing any matter, according to the Bible…
False. But what a heyday it would be for the murderer or kidnapper (http://biblia.com/bible/nkjv/Ex. 21.15-16" data-version=nkjv" data-reference=) if we avoided punishing them appropriately unless they had committed their crime in front of an audience. We realize that this point might be too much even for Christians who have agreed so far with our arguments above. However, we beg your consideration on this as you consider the decades of biblical studies we have put into this matter. If you use Google to find out what God might say about the death penalty, by googling: God death penalty, or some version of that, like: God and the death penalty, since the 1990s, our article at TOL subtitled, New Testament Support for Capital Punishment, is ranked by Google #1 out of millions of pages. Further, we’ve presented our seminar, now available on CD, God’s Criminal Justice System, in many cities from Honolulu to Pittsburgh. And we’ve argued our biblical case for the death penalty on Court TV. For:
- Jesus demonstrated in the Gospel of John that the two or three witnesses necessary to conclude a matter do not need to be eyewitnesses.
- The Apostle Paul even writes that the church should not consider an accusation against an elder except from two or three witnesses. Of course that does not mean we ignore a woman's claim of being impregnated, or an auditors warning of missing funds, unless we have eyewitnesses. Who does such things in front of others?
- Likewise in the Law of Moses, the criminal who is guilty of sexual assault can be convicted, even though he committed his crime in the wilderness where there was no one to hear the woman’s screams.
The biblical theme of two or three witnesses ultimately is understood only in the context of the triune God, as we explore at rsr.org/euthyphros-dilemma.
However, regarding both criminal investigation and scientific investigation, eyesight does not trump the other many God-given ways of obtaining reliable information.
For your consideration,
Bob Enyart
Real Science Radio (.com) & [url=http://denverbiblechurch.org]Denver Bible Church
800-8Enyart or 303-463-7789
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