If you think the bible is anti science, then you've never understood it.

I would love to understand the basis of creationist so-called science, but in all honesty, nobody has ever explained it to me in a manner that keeps to an understanding of the scientific method.

Creationism describes a supernatural act. Therefore, it obviously stands in direct opposition to naturalistic philosophical assumptions that many scientists hold.

However, that's not the same thing as opposing the scientific method itself. I'm not aware of any aspect of creationism that contradicts the scientific method of observation and testing.

I hope you don't mind the comment.

No, not at all - our discussions have quite invariably been very helpful.

I get what you're saying, and it's what all the websites on creationist science say - that through the scientific method, we can build a model of the universe that is independent of any holy text but seems to be compatible with them as well.

As a scientist, I sit back in my armchair and say "ok, then, show me what you've got" and what follows (and it may just be that I've asked the wrong people) is a description of experiments that don't quite follow into the conclusions, or a misunderstanding of cosmology, or a denial of observed transpeciation mutations, and so on. I'm open to finding new pathways into science - but they have to be solid.

I HAVE acknowledged the philosophical argument, irreligious though I am, that for the universe to come from nothing is an unsolved mystery that - to many people - is suggestive of a divine creation. And it's true! No physicist has yet projected our model of the universe back to time 0 (what we colloquially and misleadingly call the Big Bang moment). It's not evidence that there IS a creator, but it can't be denied that it leaves a big creator-shaped hole in our model of the universe.

But it seems that even that is not enough for the creation scientist, because, it seems, they invariably require this idea that the universe is much younger than the cosmologist has measured and it requires finding evidence against the so-called "big bang" model. (See? I do the "so-called" thing to both sides!) Well, ever since the Hubble Space Telescope mapped out the cosmic microwave background, the age of the universe has been largely settled among the scientific community, and the expansion and acceleration of the universe has been something we've been measuring for the better part of a century.

So with the adamant insistence that not only is there a creator, BUT THAT WE ALSO HAVE TO THROW AWAY OUR KNOWN DATA FOR THE UNIVERSE - that's the part where you lose me as a scientist.

Please, feel free to show me some better science than what I've come across so far! I'm all ears.

Thanks for your reply. I think I get what you're saying, but I'm a bit tired now, so I'll try to come back to it later and give my thoughts on what you've written. If I let it slip, please feel free to remind me (depending on how interested you are in what I have to say). :)

As a clarifying question, are you saying that if someone showed you that the age of the universe was not in fact reliably settled by scientific data at the moment, that you'd be more open to the creationist view (ie, is that your main objection)? Or are there other important data, as well?

I'd be fascinated to hear what you have to say. And I can always relate to being tired!

Each issue is seperate - I was using the age of the universe as an example. If there's evidence that we got the age of the universe wrong, all that means is that the universe is young. If our understanding of genetic mutations is wrong, all that changes is our understanding of evolution - and so on. I realize that it's a tall order to cover everything, but that's what happens when creation science sets an aggressively ambitious scope.

Just so you know something about where I'm coming from, I was an adult convert to Christianity (I wasn't raised in the faith).

When I learned about evolution in high school, I had no strong feelings about the subject one way or the other, and couldn't see any reason to doubt that what the teachers were teaching was basically true (subject to the normal refining and correction of science, obviously - but basically right).

When I became a Christian, I didn't immediately re-evaluate those views. I knew who Christ was and what he'd done, and I wasn't all that concerned with whether or not the Bible matched prevalent scientific views, or not.

My turning point on this particular issue was when I read a creationist pamphlet that detailed about 10-15 physical evidences that the earth and universe are "young" compared to modern standards. Since then, in reading more creationist literature, I have come to hold a relatively settled belief (not one completely impossible to shake, but a pretty strong one) that the creationist model is the only scientifically coherent account of origins, and that the evolutionary model not only contradicts the Bible (which is enough of a reason, for me, to reject that model), but also ignores much of the observed evidence.

I looks like I figured it out! imgflip doesn't seem to work particularly well when I comment from my phone instead of my computer. Thanks for your patience.

Imgflip is eating my responses and I don't know why. When I figure it out, you'll know.

The heart of the issue for me is an epistemological one.

I start from the presupposition that the Bible is the ultimate standard for all knowledge. If something contradicts the Bible, it doesn't count as knowledge; it gets discarded as error.

So from my point of view, your view seems a little bit loopy (I'm not trying to attack you or put you down by using that word - I'm just trying to convey how profoundly different our viewpoints are). Because to me, it seems like you're identifying things as "known" facts (eg, that the universe is more than thousands of years old, or that the observed fact of genetic mutations means evolution happened, etc) which aren't actually knowledge at all. To me, that seems like a profoundly anti-scientific approach (again, not calling you names, just trying to show how far apart our views are).

I imagine that probably doesn't seem helpful at all. If you're looking for evidence as to why creationists believe what they do, you probably weren't expecting to be told that I think your way of identifying and evaluating evidence is fundamentally wrong. But I'm convinced that's the heart of the issue.

[Part 3/3] So that is why I say that creation science is very poor science; it's not because I'm fundamentally opposed to the idea that it can ever be shown - it's that the axioms of science are very precise, and the philosophy of science is very stringent indeed on what we take as tested and accepted models, and I've yet to see a creationist model that truly stands up to scientific scrutiny.
I hope you find that all reasonable. [Part 3/3]

Thanks for taking the time to write the replies.

It sounds to me like you're saying that the fundamental reason you don't believe that creationism is good science is that in your view it imports, by definition, perspectives on God and the philosophy of science (by this I mean ways of viewing what science is, what it's for, and how it interacts with other areas of knowledge) that are unnecessary and foreign to the strict axioms of the practice of science itself.

Yes, that's pretty much it!

[Part 2/3] There are MANY philosophical toys you can play with when trying to fit science into the bigger picture: for example, could it be possible that God himself designed and placed the Cosmic Microwave Background to make the universe LOOK like it is expanding when it really isn't? Maybe - it's not impossible - but understand that when we measure it, it looks one HELL of a lot like radiation from the moment when the universe cooled to a critical level that allows nuclear particles to form, and if you take an even closer look we get all kinds of interesting details about how fast we are moving through the universe and about the kinds of particles that existed just after the universe came to be. We lose all that beautiful information the moment you say that the CMB is an illusion that makes the universe seem like something it's not.

So as scientists, that's more what we're interested in - looking at data, building models, testing models, trying to broaden our understanding of the internal clockwork of the cosmos. Any religious thought at all - including atheist thought! - is inherently unscientific, because you're not letting the universe tell YOU what the story is; the atheist scientist should be willing to say that on the day we can measure God experimentally (fantastic though the idea is) the question would be settled.

When I was growing up in a VERY Christian household and a VERY Christian school, my teachers had no problem teaching us science in its purest form, but would often say "Nobody really knows what the answers to the big questions are, which is why we're studying the Bible in ten minutes."

(They would also say things like "watch out for those crazy Americans who tell you that none of this is true because of the Bible." Unfortunately that kind of dogma they warned about has crept into European culture significantly since I were a young lad.)

My dad would say similar things as I learned more about math and science. I forget his exact words, but when I learned Maxwell's equations of electromagnetism, he said something like "isn't it fascinating to learn how God works?"

I'm not a Christian anymore, as you know - as an adult, I took my own long hard look at the big picture and decided that there wasn't enough aggregate evidence to go on that there is a God - but I never forgot that the realms of science and the realms of theology aren't incompatible; they're just different, separate realms. [Part 2/3]

[Part 1/3] I apologize if any of this sounds condescending, and I don't mean it that way because I know that you are a genuinely intelligent guy, socrates, from discussions we've had on other issues, but I know that if I can explain myself clearly enough you can see where my problem is.

Every philosophical system has a set of axioms - fundamental assumptions that haven't been proven but from which the rest of the system is logically drawn.
When you have the Bible as your philosophical axiom, there is a very specific word for that study - it becomes a theology, not a science. These are very precisely defined terms - this isn't opinion. Theology is an intricate and highly involved field that requires a solid grasp of logic and reasoning, but the axiom that the Bible is your starting point in all knowledge is what makes it a theology.

Science is a branch of philosophy with a very precise meaning as far as axioms are concerned. It is the philosophical construct that happens when you suppose - just for the purposes of curiosity - just suppose for a second that God is not the immediate answer. Let's suppose that the weather isn't controlled by the woodland spirits, that the volcanoes aren't inhabited by dragons, that the flying spaghetti monster isn't what's making the world turn - and for all we know, it could be; but to quote Laplace, "I have no need of that hypothesis".

Rather, the axioms of science restrict ourselves purely to what we can observe and measure and deduce from there, and the question is, can we figure out the internal machinations of the universe solely from observation tested through repeat readings around the world?

There is no reason why a scientist couldn't bring God into the big picture afterwards to figure out what it all means, but the challenge is to work out the rules of the Almighty Chess Game without supposing that something is real when it might not be - and Descartes' greatest contribution to the human understanding was that our own thoughts are the only real scientific certainty we have that anything in our universe exists at all. [Part 1/3]

and which translation of the bible should we be referring to?

Why does that matter?

throughout history there have been different versions of the bible that were standard for the public, for casual reading there is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_Bible_translations and while i don't hold much credibility to wiki, it does give an idea of how many holy books there have been. i don't know exactly how many have been translated from original text but i don't think there is many. a lot of the alterations that were made were done so because "society" demanded it, from royalty deciding what should and shouldn't be included to modern schools using editions that change the (already translated) text to make it more understandable or less offensive (the word "booty" was altered in recent years).

if the people who wrote the holy texts were indeed under divine inspiration, then it is THEIR words we should listen to. not their words, translated through a number of languages, dumbed down and approved by the state.

(Just to be clear, I'm not having a go at you, or trying to shut you down. If you think there's a legitimate reason why the translations would affect the issue of how our understanding of science is affected by the Bible, I'm happy to hear it. I just asked because I don't know why it would affect it.)

all good, i simply wanted to know. i'm getting vague on the specifics here, but i recall one version elaborating on the "7 days" with a term that does not specifically refer to a 24-hour period

It's hard to answer that without knowing more about the specific term. :)

I don't think the understanding of 6-day creation comes from the specific word used anyway. From what I understand, it has more to do with a) the fact that Genesis 1 says "evening and morning" repeatedly, b) the fact that ordinal numbers are used for each day, and c) the fact that in the 10 commandments (Exodus chapter 20), God uses the example of creation as a basis for the human work-week.

Science has proven that we are ignorant of ancient technology, (dumber). So we need dumbed down scripture to inspire us to continue seeking our origins. If that makes sense. I don't usually talk this much.

inspiration from a half truth will never lead to a full realisation. people get confused, the amount of christian denominations should hint at that

Human confusion has made whole truth into half truths and vice versa. I need a purpose, (finding my creator) to use my tool (science).

well that philosophy indeed works, and many scientists throughout the ages have turned to their field to understand god. personally i don't see why people are so divided on subjects, pretty much everything i learn about in science reinforces my belief of greater forces

I'm a Christian and I'm aware of the many different versions of the Bible we have in English.

The reason why I asked is because I couldn't see why the issue of different versions affects the issue of whether or not the Bible is anti-science, or not. The wording varies across different translations, but I don't see that the content varies enough for it to make a difference about the description of creation.