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From: mmt@dciem.UUCP (Martin Taylor)
Newsgroups: net.misc
Subject: Re: More on Creationism
Message-ID: <688@dciem.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 8-Feb-84 18:20:37 EST
Article-I.D.: dciem.688
Posted: Wed Feb  8 18:20:37 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 9-Feb-84 19:52:13 EST
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Organization: D.C.I.E.M., Toronto, Canada
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===============
conversation that I had with him.  But here I am tempted to believe that
his view of creationism is largley a product of anti-creationist writing
and not of an objective reading of both creationist and anti-creationist.

Paul Dubuc
===============

Are we then to assume that reading non-creationist literature is a bad
thing?  Or that all creationists came up with the same ideas from their
own objective consideration of the evidence (not the scientific literature)?
How on earth are we supposed to understand even a tiny fraction of what
science has discovered, without reading about it?  We can't replicate
all the experiments ourselves, and according to Larry Bickford, we can't
even in principle replicate the experiments that might lend some
credibility to the creationist view.

I agree with Dubuc that this "debate" is getting boring, but it is also
frustrating to see people misconstruing science so badly as the
creationists do.  If science isn't enquiry into things that seem odd,
then what is it?  They seem to think science is a recitation of facts,
and since they have the facts (from their Good Book), they also should
be considered to be scientists.

Scientists have been known to consider data pointed out by creationists
as difficult to explain by current theories.  Usually, as with ESP data,
they turn out to be naively misinterpreted, fraudulent, or otherwise
untrustworthy.  But there always may be some nugget on which a revolution
in scientific understanding may turn.  That revolution will not come
about by accepting the assertion that there is nothing to explain, because
it was God's work.
-- 

Martin Taylor
{allegra,linus,ihnp4,uw-beaver,floyd,ubc-vision}!utzoo!dciem!mmt