It's a long way to the bottom of this tin
In blog post entitled “More Evolutionary
Fiction” and dated 19 February Ken Ham confidently pronounces:
The book of Genesis tells us that God created every creature
“according to its kind” (Genesis 1:25)—meaning creatures also reproduce after
their kinds. And, unlike molecules-to-man evolution, we can directly observe
creatures reproducing after their kinds in the world around us!
With this statement Ham is
deceiving both himself and his followers. Reproduction “according to kind” is a concept that cannot be observed directly;
we can adduce data samples relevant to the very general theoretical proposition
of “reproduction according to kind”
but we can never, of course, observe the super-set entailed by “reproduction according to kind” in its
entirety. Compounding the problem of moving from observation to theory here is
Ham’s failure to put the Biblical text in its historical context and
therefore obscure what the text meant to the arcardian people in whose times it
was written. In that context “Biblical kind” would not be a precisely defined
category as per what one would expect of modern science, but a fuzzy category
based on what was available to the senses of arcadian people. The inevitable
fuzziness in this arcadian category and the fact that it refers to the n+1 th
generation means that it actually provides enough latitude for it to be entirely
consistent with a substantial drifting in organic form for the n+m th
generation, where m is large; given what Ham stands for this is very ironic! If
one attempts to give a more precise definition of “kind”, say along the lines
of species, it inevitably leads into a more theoretical concept thus removing “reproduction
according to kind” even further from “direct observation”.
Ham’s motive, of course, is that
he seeks an epistemic criterion that allows him to declare so called “observational
science” to be “real science” on the basis that this kind of science’s
theoretical objects somehow have an assured connection to his senses, whereas historical
science, he naively thinks is not “observational”. Ham’s distorted notion of
observational science sets the scene for the grosser distortions of the Flat
Earth society who attempt to give observational authority to their opinions with
their so-called “Zetetic Method”, a method which labours under the false belief
that the observations of “honest and true” people can lead very directly and
logically to the “truth” of Flat Earth doctrines, thereby bypassing what Flat
Earthers think of as highly theoretical speculations.
Observationally speaking the Sun
is very different from the stars; so much so, in fact, that it is no surprise
the arcadian Biblical writers put the Sun into a different category to the
stars; after all, like the theories of geocentrism and Flat Earthism, this is a reasonable approximation
given the very practical everyday farming concerns of arcadians!. However, one Biblical
literalist has used this natural Biblical distinction to claim (“from the Bible” of course) that the Sun is not a star! It goes to show how raw observation seldom gives us a
very direct depiction of reality. The kind of thinking behind “the Sun is not a star” is the same sort
of self-deception that has motivated Biblical geocentrists and Flat Earthers –
and, I might add, Answers in Genesis
– all of whom are inclined toward the same kitschy sentiment which leads them
to believe that solid no-nonsense right-wing rubes and Biblical literalists can trust the
common sense of their direct perceptions and use these perceptions to challenging
the theoretical subtleties of the much hated publicly funded academic
community!
Relevant Links
http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.co.uk/2011/04/beyond-our-ken-on-mature-creation.html
