The "Observational Science vs Historical Science" Error.

Nothing in science is directly observable. 

 

This article on Panda's Thumb tells us that:

Montana considers a bill that allows teaching of “scientific facts” but not “scientific theories”. ....

The bill in question is Montana Senate Bill 235, introduced by freshman Senator Dan Emrich. Prof. Coyne quotes the bill as saying

WHEREAS, [sic] the purpose of K-12 education is to educate children in the facts of our world to better prepare them for their future and further education in their chosen field of study, and to that end children must know the difference between scientific fact and scientific theory; and

WHEREAS, [sic] a scientific fact is observable and repeatable, and if it does not meet these criteria, it is a theory that is defined as speculation and is for higher education to explore, debate, and test to ultimately reach a scientific conclusion of fact or fiction.

Matt Young, the writer of the Panda's thumb article, goes on to say:

Very little in science can be considered an indisputable fact, so if this bill passes and becomes law, schools will not be allowed to teach, say, the theory of relativity, quantum theory, ideal gas theory, the germ theory of disease, or, for that matter, string theory or the theory of the leisure class. Or, what they are really after, the theory of evolution.

In other words, Sen. Emrich and his cosponsors are a trio of ignoramuses who do not have the foggiest idea what a scientific fact or a scientific theory is. They are very dangerous because, as Dr. Scott shows, they almost certainly have the Supreme Court on their side.

Matt Young is completely right. Senator Dan Emrich, on the other hand, has a toy-town notion of scientific epistemology which looks as though it has its origins in the religious fundamentalist's (Islam, Christian, etc.) notion of science. They use the crude and contrived bicategory of "observation vs. history" to dismiss historical science that doesn't fit in their worldview: Their misleading claim is that history isn't observational & therefore fundamentalist histories can then be patched in willy-nilly.

 In this blog entry I reference a discussion I had with a Christain Fundamentalist I called "Joe Smith". This discussion was largely centred around my criticism of the fundamentalist misrepresentation of scientific epistemology as having an "observational science vs historical science" distinction.

Origins of Life Research

Picture from: Searching For The Origin Of Life On Earth : 13.7: Cosmos And Culture : NPR

This brief web article on the state of abiogenesis research was compiled by the writer after he attended an Origin and Life conference. The article tells us that:

Not only is there no consensus yet on how life might have started on Earth, there is not even any agreement on where it started. Hypotheses presented at the meeting included:

1. life was brought to Earth from outer space by meteorites 

2. life started around hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor life originated in shallow volcanic/sulfuric rock pools 

3. life first appeared on the clay surfaced ocean shores exposed to tidal wet-dry cycle

4. life came into being at sub-freezing temperatures on a snowball Earth

The writer also tells us that there is sufficient optimism in the OoL community to believe that the abiogenesis question will be answered perhaps in 10 to 50 years and that no one at the conference doubted that the answer was within reach. The article is dated 2013, so they've already hit that lower limit. Moreover....

Despite the prevalent optimism, it was also clear that we still have significant hurdles to overcome. Which reminds me of a wonderful anecdote Bill Martin (yet another giant) told the audience during his lecture. A few years ago, Bill had been one of several researchers invited to speak to the Pontifical Council on the origin of life. After he had explained to them how we — as scientists — are trying to understand how the (spontaneous) transition from pure chemistry to living cells might have happened, one of the cardinals asked him: "Wouldn't a little bit of God help there, Dr. Martin?" Yes, science would be a lot easier if we were allowed to simply insert "a little bit of God" here and there. But then it would also be a lot less interesting and exciting, no?

....now that's a clear expression of dualism! ....that is, the idea which is an unholy cross between deism and God of the Gaps. As the writer opined: 

More and more of the gaps and details are filling in with each year that passes.

One might think that the writer has no theology driving his thought, but he does in fact have a concept of God even if he doesn't believe in God. That concept whispers within and instructs him as to what to expect or not expect if God existed. In this case, presumably, with the filling in of those gaps the writer thinks that "God's bit" is being crowded out! Such thoughts have their foundation in the instinctual notion that the cosmos is a mechanism capable of maintaining its own dynamic. But science's merely descriptive mechanical explanations can never have the property of Aseity: that is, those explanations can never contain their own explanation and tie up all the logical loose ends. Explanatory completeness isn't the task of science - its task is description: Though those descriptions may be cleverly succinct & mathematically compressed narratives, in the final analysis they are logically obliged to contain a hard kernel of brute contingency to muse over.

According to secular theology "the God bit" only serves as a desperate resort of the religiously minded as they conceive God to be the explanatory filler in those explanatory gaps before they are eventually filled in with scientific description. But if science is a purely descriptive discipline, then those descriptions necessarily will never attain to logical completeness; that is, they will never have Aseity. The cosmic dynamic that generated life may well be completely describable in terms of a mix of equations and statistics, but that such equations & statistics (and the material particles they regulate) exist at all everywhere and everywhen remains a brute fact absent of Aseity. If one insists on trying to get logical completeness (i.e. Aseity) from the descriptive algorithms & statistics of science all one ends up with is a regress; in this case an "algorithms-all-the-way-down" regress.

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In a blog post dated 23 January and titled Did Simulating “Cosmic Evolution” Get Evolutionists Closer to the Origin of Life? Christian fundamentalist theme park manager Ken Ham raises a question over the relevance of research proposing that the amino acid building blocks of life came from space.  I didn't strongly disagree with Ken on anything he said except when he finished on this note:

Life in all its incredible diversity, from microscopic bacteria and fungi to plants to animals to mankind, was created by God just 6,000 years ago. Those who reject God will go to all sorts of lengths to try to prove life arose by natural processes.

 Once again that's classic dualism: In short our Ken has a similar theology driving his thinking as that of our OoL researcher.  But, because Ken is a subliminal God vs "natural forces" dualist and a theist, he doesn't believe those "gaps" can be filled in with "natural processes". Therefore, he is necessarily committed to the a priori belief that abiogenesis could not come about by any of the hypotheses above. As a theist this crypto-dualism commits him to the idea that an overt divine interventionism fills in the gaps. He therefore sees creation as a binary choice between abiogenies or God; his religious instincts tell him that these are exclusive choices, and his Young Earth literalist interpretation of Genesis 1 further supports his a priori dualistic instincts.  Therefore, Ken is necessarily committed to maximizing "the God bit" in order to keep his faith propped up just as, conversely, strong dualistic atheists are committed to minimizing "the God bit".  But Ken goes further: He uses his subliminal dualism as a shibboleth which tests for Christian orthodoxy. Those who fail this test become the target of his spiritual invective. 

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Christian Creation dualists forget that those so-called "natural processes" were created by God himself and not by an incompetent demiurge. Therefore, these processes are far from natural, and we shouldn't take it for granted that they are not capable of working miracles. What many Christian Creation dualists don't understand is that the heroic yet desperate secular project is engaged in trying to show that the information content of the cosmos has no surprisal value at all and that the cosmos originates from an information base of zero. But that is a mathematically impossible task! If this impossibility is understood, then there need be no worry about what those secularists are going to come up with: Whatever secularists come up with will in the final analysis be some form of creation or other in so far as it will necessarily be a blend of contingent initial information and a given processing time: That has to be the assumed starting point or, if you like, The Creation Point. But in actual fact it is less a point than it is a creation volume that fills the points everywhere and everywhen.