From: Tom Davis
To: All Msg #156, Jun-25-93 05:49PM
Subject: A Solid Theory of Creationism
Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc.
From: davis@bedlam.esd.sgi.com (Tom Davis)
Message-ID:
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Last night I was listening to Dr. Gene Scott (channel 38 from about 9
pm to midnight in the San Francisco bay area, but viewable in many other
places), and his lesson was on the creation.
His theory of creation is much harder to refute than most, and I believe
that with a bit of work, it can be converted to a fairly solid Theory
of Creationism (TOC).
Dr. Scott spends a great deal of time analyzing the Bible, and regularly
goes back to the original Hebrew sources when there is confusion in the
English version. I'm no language expert, so I have to take his word
about some of the translations.
He claims that It's nonsense to claim that the world and everything in
it was created ~6000 years ago -- that the scientific evidence to the
contrary is overwhelming. This shouldn't be surprising, since if God
has been around forever, he could easily have amused himself before the
creation of Adam watching the universe evolve or whatever it did.
He also claims that in the original Hebrew, there's no reason to assume
that only a single day passed between the beginning of the universe and
the creation.
The bible says nothing about what happened before the creation --
abiogenesis (not his word, by the way) could have occurred, but somehow
life began, and evolved for the last 3 or 4 billion years. The
evolution even produced manlike creatures, as is obvious from the fossil
record, but it didn't produce man.
The creation did occur about 6000 years ago, and Dr. Scott claims that
the word usually interpreted "creation" can as easily be translated to
"re-creation". At that point, God created Adam from scratch, and
re-created all the birds and beasts, as described in the Bible. Man, of
course, was different, and "had a soul breathed into his nostrils". No
descendents of the manlike creatures exist today. I infer that the
chimpanzees, gorillas, et cetera, were created during the re-creation.
That's about it for what Dr. Scott said. I'd like to add a couple of
additional statements to turn this into a full-blown TOC. In addition
to what's above, I'll add:
Man will never evolve because he is perfect. Other creatures may or
may not. We can test this prediction by waiting a million years and
see what's changed in the species Homo Sapiens. The theory may fail at
any time in the future, but for now, it's OK, and should therefore be
taught in public schools.
All other animals may evolve (Does the Bible anywhere say that they
don't, or does the usual creationist claim that they don't just come
from a total rejection of evolution?), so this TOC will predict the
observed laboratory experiments that generate vastly different kinds of
bacteria, et cetera.
This TOC doesn't require any bizarre interpretations of Noah's Ark,
decreasing speed of light, or movement of Earth from Saturn's orbit to
the present one. All of standard physics, astronomy, ... holds. The
only major change is to biology, which usually claims that mankind will
continue to be affected by the forces of evolution. This TOC says no.
In fact, the only difference between this TOC and standard science is
that everything was re-created 6000 years ago, and a newly created Adam
is different because his species will never evolve. All the newly
created animals could have been arbitrarily close to (including
identical with) those in the fossil record.
Well, what do you think?
-- Tom Davis
===================================================================
A Solid Theory of Creationism
who: davis@bedlam.esd.sgi.com (Tom Davis)
ID:
TD> Last night I was listening to Dr. Gene Scott (channel 38 from
TD> about 9 pm to midnight in the San Francisco bay area, but
TD> places), and his lesson was on the creation.
"Dr." in what field? Honorary? Theological? Proctology? :-)
TD> His theory of creation is much harder to refute than most, and
TD> I believe that with a bit of work, it can be converted to a
TD> fairly solid Theory of Creationism (TOC).
[I made some cuts here. Sorry! If folks are interested, read the
original in ]
TD> Man will never evolve because he is perfect. Other creatures
TD> may or may not. We can test this prediction by waiting a million
TD> years and see what's changed in the species Homo Sapiens. The
TD> theory may fail at any time in the future, but for now, it's OK,
TD> and should therefore be taught in public schools.
TD>
TD> All other animals may evolve (Does the Bible anywhere say that
TD> they don't, or does the usual creationist claim that they don't
TD> just come from a total rejection of evolution?), so this TOC
TD> will predict the observed laboratory experiments that generate
TD> vastly different kinds of bacteria, et cetera.
[more cuts]
TD> Well, what do you think? -- Tom Davis
Well Goddess! How can you call this a theory when it isn't?! It is
pure conjecture on Dr. Gene Scott's part to that he can get his
theological square peg hammered into a scientific round hole. Nowhere
in your article did I see how Dr. Scott intends to prove his "theory"
wrong. More to the point, IN NO WAY can I figure out how *I* could
design a test to prove it wrong. If no test can prove a hypothosis
wrong, then it is not a theory.
-- David Rice
====================================================================
From: Tom Davis
To: All Msg #118, Jun-30-93 10:39AM
Subject: Re: A Solid Theory of Creationism
Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc.
From: davis@bedlam.esd.sgi.com (Tom Davis)
Message-ID:
Newsgroups: talk.origins
As a result of all the feedback I've gotten on my Theory of Creationism
(TOC) as of this morning, I thought it would be useful to restate it
with improvements, to state why I think it is useful, and to answer a
few more of the questions that have arisen. I'd also like to make some
comments about what it means for a theory to be scientific.
What's the point of the TOC?
It is simply an attempt to reconcile the biological/ geological/
astronomical ... facts as we know them with an almost literal
interpretation of the Bible. I say "almost" because there are
obviously some translation difficulties. For example, Dr. Gene Scott
recently taught about the fact that the same Hebrew word is variously
translated as "Adam", "man", and "mankind" in the King James version.
Although "man" and "mankind" may make the text flow more smoothly,
Scott claims that "Adam" makes more sense in every case. There are
plenty of other similar examples.
[ Random, vaguely related comment: Our modern Bible is ]
[ put together from a bunch of sources, mostly the same, ]
[ but with some conflicts due to copying errors, et ]
[ cetera. As Dr. Scott describes the process of trying ]
[ to piece together what the original must have meant, ]
[ it sounds suspiciously like the exact same techniques ]
[ used by geneticists to work out inheritance patterns. ]
[ It includes relative dating by noting when differences ]
[ appeared, selecting the "correct" text because it is ]
[ more common, and so on. ]
If you just say that the Bible is wrong in a whole bunch of places, how
can you ever know which places those are? I'd find it pretty hard to
believe in a religion where I knew that the main sacred text was riddled
with errors. If anybody has been following Doonesbury in the funny
papers, there's recently been some stuff about "reborn" yuppies shopping
for a religion -- "I'll go for Christianity, but hold the guilt stuff.
We'll celebrate Hannakuh, and do Zen meditation. And this church has
the advantage of child-care and racquetball." This roll-your-own stuff
is not religion; it's self-indulgence.
The TOC says:
That sometime between about 6000 and 10000 years ago, the creation, as
described in Genesis, occurred. During the creation, God created Adam
(and later, Eve) in his own image, and also all the other plants and
animals, most of which (excluding extinctions) are still around today.
The Hebrew word for "creation" can equally well be translated as
"re-creation", and the Bible says that God "replenished the earth" --
he did not "plenish" it. In addition, there's no indication in the
Bible of the time period between the creation of the universe and the
"re-creation" that included man and beasts. It could easily have been
14 billion years, and the beginning of life on earth (perhaps even by
abiogenesis) and the evolution of species for the last 3.5 billion
years or so may easily have occurred (after all, if God has always been
around, he could have amused himself for the last 4 billion years
watching it happen).
Evolution and standard geological processes generated what we find in
the fossil record, including the generation of man-like creatures
(but not man). Somehow, all life was eliminated 6-10000 years ago
(perhaps a giant blast of radiation, who knows?), and God re-created all
the beasts pretty much as they were, but in addition, made a special
beast we call homo sapiens in his own image.
I don't think many Christians view God as an evolving being, so
man, created in that image, cannot evolve, either. The point is that
man will not evolve from the current state.
Now clearly selection occurs in humans (if you were to take a
population and kill off all those with brown eyes, you won't see many
brown-eyed kids in the next generation) -- it's just that there will
never be another species evolved from this lineage -- where by species,
I mean organisms that cannot interbreed with modern humans.
I don't know exactly what "in his own image" means -- perhaps the
physical form is unimportant, and it's some spiritual thing -- but
non-evolution is definately part of it. Perhaps God's choice of a
man-like creature as a model for Adam was arbitrary, and he could as
well have chosen an elephant or something completely new as the body.
But it seems reasonable to choose a model that was similar in form to
the rest of the re-creation since that creature eats and lives in the
same world. Maybe God just took the man-like creature and made minimal
modifications to prevent evolution.
Further, I don't know the mechanism that prevents human evolution from
occurring. It may be chemical, biological, or spiritual.
How to test the TOC:
I realize that this TOC is tough to test, but it is falsifiable. It
human speciation occurs, the TOC goes down in flames.
I think most people would agree that no speciation from homo sapiens
has occurred in the last 6-10000 years, so it's OK so far. The theory
implies that modern man could not have mated with the man-like
creatures that existed before the re-creation. I suppose some "Jurassic
Park" reconstruction of old humans could disprove it as well.
As I suggested in an earlier post, an experiment where you put people
in a highly mutagenic environment and force them to breed like mad,
adding additional bodies to keep up the population, might aid the
process. Is the fact that it's illegal to perform an experiment a
reason to declare the underlying theory unfalsifiable?
My TOC and science:
As with any scientific theory, the tests above can only disprove the
theory. The time scales are problematical, but what's the cutoff point
where it stops being science?
If my TOC predicts that something will happen tomorrow, that wouldn't
make it un-scientific, right? What about the guy who saw Halley's
comet, checked back through old records, and noticed that it seemed to
come every 75 or 76 years, even though it may have been long before
anybody had a clue about what comets are? If he predicts that the
comet will appear in another 75 or so, would that be science, even
though he and all his peers would be dead (or senile) by the time it
could be checked? How long is too long?
The TOC's claim that "man will never evolve" can never be proven, but
the longer you wait, the more evidence you have. How does this compare
with the theory that protons are stable? You run giant experiments in
huge tanks of water deep in mines, and look at billions of events for
years and years, and see no proton decay. The experiment can surely
prove they're unstable, but can it ever prove they are stable?
The best you can do is some statistical statement like: "With
probability > 99.99%, the half-life of a proton is > 10^50 years." or
whatever.
I agree that with only 6000-10000 years to go on, my TOC won't have
comparable probabilities.
How about if I call it a still-unfalsified HOC (Hypothesis of Creation)?
Is that OK? We'll call it a TOC in 10000000 years if no human evolution
has occurred, or if some other sort of mechanism that would prevent
human speciation is discovered. But the point is, when does it stop
being a hypothesis, and start being called a theory?
I surely don't need a mathematical foundation to make it science. You
make a hypothesis, run tests, and see if it fails. Every day we don't
evolve is another successful test.
So far, I think the major problem with this TOC is the apparent
disagreement between the observed genetic variation of modern humans
and the small length of time since the last bottleneck -- 8 people on
the Ark perhaps 4500 years ago. God did encourage the survivors,
however, to "be fruitful and multiply", and this could have led to an
impressive number of children. Remember that Noah lived for another 350
years and it seems like other lifetimes were similar. The Bible also
notes that some pretty old geezers were able to have children.
Another objection to the TOC from this group is the "Occam's Razor"
argument. I agree that modern evolutionary theory also seems to
satisfy the evidence, but to someone who believes in the infallibility
of the Bible, it's pretty distasteful. I've proposed a theory that
agrees with the Bible and fits the facts. Maybe it's wrong. Einstein
could not believe that "God plays dice with the universe", and it's
looking more and more like he was wrong.
Besides, I hardly believe that Occam's razor is a foolproof guide to
scientific truth; it's just a useful rule of thumb. 100 years ago, it
would certainly have rejected general relativity in favor of Newton's
far simpler: F = GMm/r^2.
Well, I'm sick of typing, so that's it for now. I'm a little terrified
to post this, since I'm on vacation for 5 days starting tomorrow, and
I'm sure I'll have 5000 lines of postings to respond to when I get back.
But don't let that stop you ...
-- Tom Davis
