A  response to several of the points made by Mr. Gaudin.

Timothy Gaudin wrote:

> A response is offered to several of the points made by Ms. Nichols.
>
> Tim Gaudin
>
>> Well, I couldn't stand to see Stephen out on the limb all by himself, so
>> I'll join him--
>>
>> All,
>> Did anyone observe God create life?  Did anyone observe evolution create
>> life?
>> Since life is not currently being created now, then the investigation
>> into the origin of life is a historical investigation, not a scientific
>> investigation.
>
>
> This is nonsense.  On what basis does Ms. Nichols exclude the
> historical sciences from "scientific investigation?"  Does she truly
> think it is not possible to investigate the past scientifically?
> Such a view would exclude not only the historical sciences like
> cosmology, historical geology, evolutionary biology, and physical
> anthropology, which together comprise broad, important, and vibrant
> areas of modern science, but even topics like forensic science. Is it
> not possible to make scientific, repeatable observations about, say,
> crimes that happened yesterday?  If not, our criminal justice system
> is in for serious difficulties.  And if we can accept the validity of
> something like forensic science, why not the others? Clearly,
> historical science is science.
>

The historical sciences are excluded from scientific investigation, i.e.
operational science, because the historical events being investigated
cannot be observed.  That does not mean that operation science cannot
play a role in the historical sciences, or that the historical sciences
are invalid.  Operational science can aid the historical investigation
by determining whether the proposed historical events are probable or
possible.  Such is the role that forensic science plays in criminal
investigations, which are of course investigations of historical
events.  If the fingerprints on the murder weapon contain a double loop
and the fingerprints of the suspect in custody do not contain a double
loop, then it is not possible that the suspect left the fingerprints on
the murder weapon.  But that doesn't mean that he/she didn't use the
murder weapon to commit the crime.

>> Today life reproduces after its own kind.  But, at one
>> point it had to be caused to come into being.  Evolutionists believe
>> that natural forces are the cause of the origin of life.
>
>
> Science restricts itself to natural explanations for natural
> phenomena.  It is this methodological assumption that in large part
> separates science from theology.  This is not to say that the
> supernatural does not exist, or that supernatural explanations cannot
> be true (a matter for philosophers and theologians to debate, and
> well beyond my purview), only that supernatural explanations are not
> Science.
>

You are confusing two separate issues:  the investigation of how the
world works and how the world came to be.
Operational science is the investigation of how the world works.  It is
observable, repeatable, measurable, and testable.  It is the search for
understanding of the laws that order the workings of the universe.
These things are true for all scientists, regardless of their beliefs
regarding the origin of the universe that they are studying.
Historical science, including origins science (evolution and creation),
is not attempting to discover how the world works, but rather how things
happened in the world in the past.  It is the investigation of unique,
nonrecurring events.  You cannot test events in the past.  They depend
on eye witness accounts or historic record, if available, and
operational science to determine if the proposed events are possible or
probable as recorded or believed.

>> Creationists
>> believe that a supernatural force caused life to originate.  Either way,
>> it happened once and in the past.  And the acceptance of either theory
>> is a matter of faith.
>
>
>
> This last statement belies a complete misunderstanding of the
> distinction between science and religious faith.  Science is based
> only on the "faith" that one can make reliable, repeatable, and
> falsifiable observations about the nature of the natural world.
> Scientists do not "believe" in evolution in the same way that a
> Christian believes in some doctrine of Christianity.  Rather, a
> scientist accepts evolution because it is consistent with what we
> observe about the natural world.  To conflate the two misrepresents
> both ways of trying to understand the world.
>

Perhaps Dr. Lewontin can clear up the misunderstanding between science
and faith for us.

Neo-Darwinian champion Richard Lewontin:
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of
its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its
extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of
the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we
have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the
methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a
material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that
we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an
apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying
to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an absolute, for we
cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door." [Richard Lewontin, Billions and
Billions of Demons, The New York Review, 9 January 1997, p. 31.]

>> One's beliefs about the origin of life necessarily colors their
>> assumptions about the way in which the universe works today.  It also
>> biases the way in which one investigate the way in which the universe
>> and the life within it works today.  It's not wrong to be biased.  It is
>> wrong to deny your own bias and vilify others for having a different
>> bias.
>> That brings us back to academic freedom.  It's wrong for one bias to
>> monopolize the discussion and to shut out the opposition.
>
>
> This is a very clever rhetorical slight of hand.  Falsely equate
> "creation science" with actual science, accuse scientists of
> rejecting the former because of "bias" rather than any objective
> evaluation of the evidence, and then invoke academic freedom to
> advance your viewpoint.  However, as I note above, "creation science"
> is not science, and so it is hardly "biased" to exclude it from
> science curricula or scientific discussions.  It is no more a
> violation of academic freedom to exclude creationism from the
> scientific discussions than it is a violation of academic freedom to
> exclude discussions of paleontology from, say, a computer engineering
> classroom.  Moreover, "creation science" is based entirely upon the
> willingness of creationists to discuss matters publicly that they
> know nothing about, and to spread either willful ignorance or
> misinformation under the guise of scientific evidence.  I think this
> was amply demonstrated by the exchanges between Dr. Honerkamp and Dr.
> Nichols concerning carbon dating.  Academic freedom was never
> intended to protect the dissemination of clearly erroneous or
> intentionally misleading information.
>

Creation science is as much a legitimate historical science as
evolutionary science.  Note that I am saying that they are both
historical sciences.  Neither is a legitimate operational science.  But
plenty of legitimate operational scientists accept one or the other as
the philosophical basis for their interpretation of their research in
the operational scientific fields.
The fact that you seem incapable of admitting that you have
philosophical assumptions that color your interpretation and
investigation is quite telling.

>> I don't expect evolutionists to accept a supernatural cause for the
>> origin of life.  I do expect them to be honest enough to admit that
>> their prior rejection of a supernatural cause is the reason that they
>> reject theories that include, for example, a worldwide flood as a part
>> of an explanation for mass extinction and fossilization; coal, oil and
>> natural gas formation; mountain and canyon formation; and the
>> unreliability of radiometric dating.
>
>
> This is in an interesting set of statements.  Of course,
> historically, Western Science began with the assumption that the
> Bible was literally true, and that, as one example, one could explain
> the geological record through the actions of the Biblical Noachian
> flood.  The reason that these biblical explanations were abandoned by
> Western scientists was not because of any anti-religious bias.
> Indeed, most of the people to whom we owe the basics of our current
> understanding of Historical Geology were devout Christians.  The
> problem was that the evidence did not fit.  You simply cannot explain
> the historical geological record with a single, fairly recent global
> flood [an excellent summary of this is contained in an article
> published recently in American Scientist, 1998, 86(2): 160-173; or,
> you could take our wonderful course in Historical Geology (GEOL 112)
> here on campus]
>

Thanks, but I've already taken Historical Geology at another
University.  One of the first things that I learned from my evolutionist
professor was about the assumptions upon which radiometric dating is
based (knowledge of the original ratio of parent to daughter material, a
closed system, and a steady decay rate).  After explaining those
assumptions to us in detail, he was honest enough to admit that they are
unreasonable.  But he still accepted radiometric dating.

Your statements regarding the ability of Flood Geology to explain the
historic geological record are quite inaccurate.   If you are really
interested, I can point you toward some interesting articles on the topic.

>> Or that their same a priori bias
>> against all things Biblical is the basis of their rejection of the
>> creationist theory that the "kinds" of life are separate and distinct
>> from one another, that variation within a kind is to be expected as a
>> result of natural selection on the genetic information inherent to that
>> kind, and that one kind cannot give rise to another kind.  (The idea of
>> "kinds" comes from the KJV interpretation of the Hebrew word bara.
>> Creationists who work in this particular field, small though it is,
>> equate the Biblical bara/kind with the Linnean classification level
>> family-- although there is not a firm consensus on this.)
>
>
> Creationists  are notoriously slippery when it comes to the use of
> the word "kind." It is noteworthy that Ms. Nichols offers no real
> definition, but suggests that the term might be equivalent to a
> Linnean "Family."  In biological parlance, the Linnean "Family" is a
> historical entity, a group of living and extinct species that share a
> remote common ancestor, and that share a set of similarities they
> inherited from that common ancestor.  As such, families do not
> reproduce themselves, nor can they be the subject of natural
> selection.  Natural selection acts on species, on populations, and on
> individual organisms, which are capable of reproduction and the
> exchange of genetic information.  That new "kinds" of animals can
> arise through the process of natural selection is amply demonstrated
> both in the genetics lab and in the fossil record.
>

As I said before, the created kind is similar to, but not identical to,
the Linnean family, therefore it is true to say the following:
The Created "Kind" is a historical entity, a group of living and extinct
species that share a
remote common ancestor, and that share a set of similarities they
inherited from that common ancestor.

To say that the common ancestor reproduced after its own kind is simply
to say that it's offspring all belong to the same kind/family as the
ancestor.  The offspring of the common ancestors of the Family/Kind
Felidae are all felines.  Natural selection acted on the common
ancestors and their immediate offspring to produce a variety of
felines.  Natural selection still works on the offspring of the various
species of the feline kind to produce felines.
Felines beget felines...now there's a hugely controversial statement!
/Mesonychids/ beget whales...now that is controversial, even among
evolutionists.

>> We all have observed mountains and canyons, variation and natural
>> selection, but only a select few get to voice their opinions on the
>> origins of the things that we all observe.
>> No need to respond, I'll just ask Stephen for updates.
>> Suzanna Nichols
>
>
>
> --
> Timothy J. Gaudin, Ph.D.
> Department of Biological &
>        Environmental Sciences (Dept. 2653)
> University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
> 615 McCallie Avenue
> Chattanooga, TN   37403-2598
> Ph: (423) 425-4163     FAX: (423) 425-2285
> e-mail: [log in to unmask]
>