By Daniel Gregg
Evolutionists often try to tell us that biblical creationism is not science based on the assumption that supernatural intervention cannot be scientific. This assumption is simply the convenient mis-definition of 'science' for the purpose of winning arguments. The root meaning of 'science' is knowledge or understanding. We might also call it wisdom or intelligence about how and why things are the way they are or work the way they do.
If one knows by cause and effect that rocks roll down a steep hill, then we make a prediction about a rock that is let loose. It will fall to the bottom. But if in the middle of the night we let rocks loose one by one, and in the morning we find them piled up in a neat little pile half way down the hill, then we naturally assume that someone or something intervened in their natural course down the hill. And we assume, more likely, that some intelligent being (probably a human) caught the rocks and piled them up when we were not looking. So, we correctly determine from the evidence that an intelligent being altered the course of the expected physics of the situation. We assume this knowledge, and consider it wise to assume so. Postulating a personal intervention in the course of the rocks down the hill is scientific, because we observe they did not make it to the bottom, and we observe the orderliness of the pile. Therefore, the conclusion of intervention in the middle of the night is scientific. And if we keep repeating the experiment at night, and keep finding the situation as before, we draw the same conclusion. Perhaps we find some unknown shoe prints next to the pile. That reinforces the conclusion. It becomes a theory. We then find a handwritten note on the pile telling us who made the pile. It now becomes a scientific fact. Someone IS intervening in the course of the rocks falling physics to the bottom of the hill!
Excluding intelligent intervention in the course of nature or physics is not scientific. Nor is assuming that everything has a mundane physical explanation scientific. Excluding the intervention of a higher intelligent being is logically fallacious, especially for an evolutionist who believes that intelligence evolved! If intelligence evolved, then the probability is that there are evolved intelligences beyond the evolutionists comprehension with great powers to intervene in situations. For this reason, evolutionary philosophers, like Richard Dawkins, can appeal to things like 'panspermia' when their ordinary science fails them. However, this is no different than admitting that intelligent intervention is needed to sustain the theory of evolution.
We call this a 'super-natural' explanation because it is above and beyond what is naturally expected. And all that supernatural means is that something is beyond ordinary explanation. And anything beyond the ordinary explanation that can be classed as an intelligent intervention is in the same class as 'super-natural'. The supernatural or "miracle" simply means an explanation beyond our power to comprehend it. So if we read the evidence leading one way, find a gap, and then see the evidence pick up in the same direction, then we have to assume an intervention in what we consider the normal physics. Whatever the intervention, the only difference between a low level intelligent intervention and the high level intelligent intervention that would be called 'supernatural' is the level of power the intelligent being has to change things around.
God, of course, has the ultimate power to order reality according to his thought, or as we call it his 'word'. Imagine computerized beings in a virtual reality program, say like the movie TRON. The programmer can alter this 'flatland' reality with a few lines of code. The programmer may even give his virtual reality beings the capacity to disbelieve in the programmer. And even though flatlanders cannot see the higher intelligence that created 'flatland', the third spiritual "dimension" still exists.
So when the evolutionist tries to exclude intelligent intervention in normal physics from the range of scientific conclusion given observations that suggest the probable interpolation of intelligence, he or she is simply defining the term arbitrarily to suit their own belief system. The Christian does not have to accept this bastardized definition of science. There are many great scientists who would not accept a 'science' that excludes the probability of the supernatural.
To speak in more theological terms, Christians believe in the 'economy of miracles'. What does this mean? Economy means minimal use of miracles or minimal appeals to divine intervention, yet in those cases where the evidence crosses a gap pointing to intervention in the gap, the economy will admit the probability of a miracle.
Somewhere in the philosophy of 'science' as evolutionists want to define it, is the assumption that a hypothesis must be falsifiable in order to be a scientific hypothesis. If a hypothesis is not falsifiable, it only means that you cannot make the observations necessary to confirm or deny it. It, however, does not mean the hypothesis is unscientific. To the contrary, if the gap between the observed dots requires the hypothesis, then it is called 'scientific' when it involves the dark matter needed to sustain the Big Bang theory. Indeed, it appears that this argument only surfaces in quarters where someone with disliked unverifiable hypothesis is susceptible to being duped into thinking their hypothesis is scientifically invalid on that ground alone. And then the elites get off scot-free from having it stick to their own unverifiable hypothesis which they promote as 'scientific'. And all too often evolutionists promote their theory in a non-falsifiable manner, using biological phylogeny to prove geological succession and then using geological succession to 'prove' biological evolution. One might also ask if the Big Bang is falsifiable on scientific grounds. It has already been falsified, but it is never admitted because the elites want to believe it for philosophical reasons! Therefore, it cannot be falsified because it depends on their philosophical promotion for its main support. I am not invalidating assuming beliefs here. Everyone has them, but it is about time that the Evolutionary elites be pinned on the wall for positing non-falsifiable hypothesis of their own while trying to defend themselves by name calling hypothesis they don't like "non-falsifiable."
The reality of the situation with science is that creationists are able to accept a much greater range of scientific fact based on observation, with only an "economy of miracles" than the evolutionists. A case and point is the astronomer Halton Arp who discovered quantized red shifts and the fact that quasars are often nearby and associated with galaxies in pairs. While the Big Bang evolutionists are busy banning Arp and denying the observations, the Creationists have embraced the observations, and have fit them into the Biblical Cosmology without any need for additional miracles. Or we may take all those experiments, like Shapiro-delay or the Sagnac effect that show a variable speed of light. Evolutionary Cosmologists deny this evidence via General Relativity precisely because it allows the Creationist to explain starlight with one less 'miracle'. See the starlight article at http://www.torahtimes.org for a lengthy dissertation on the speed of light and starlight.
Of course, it would take a miracle for Big Bang Evolutionists to be able to fit Arp's observations into their theory. Since it would take a miracle, they deny the observation. There needs to be a tit for tat here. If they point out a miracle in our economy, then we need to point out each observation they deny is real (since it would require a miracle for them to fit it in). Their denial of an observation is not even on the same qualitative level as our use of a miracle where needed. The miracle cannot be falsified, but the denied observation already has! And their goal is not discovery, but to keep people trapped in a narrow and restrictive science with no gates leading to the truth.
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Click on title of this post for link to Dan's dissertation entitled Starlight and the Heavens
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