history

history

Approaches to origins

Let’s distinguish three approaches to the study of universal origins: Philosophical naturalism with natural science Biblical creationism with creation science or Philosophical creationism with universal history Autonomous Humanism: naturalism with natural history and science

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History and science

Authentic eyewitness testimony carries more weight than physical evidence concerning events in the past – particularly the distant past. Artifacts of the past are always open to interpretations that contradict one another whereas the ambiguities in testimony are minor in comparison. If the testimony is recorded, then the transmission of the recording needs authentication, preferably

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History and law

The main problem with evolution is not that it has the wrong history but that for evolution history is everything.  That’s everything including the laws of nature, philosophy, religion, God, literally everything.  The one law of evolution is that everything evolves.  There is no being, only becoming; there is nothing fixed, only change. But surely they

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Galileo again

It’s amazing how much “Remember Galileo!” is still used as a warning cry for those who dare question current scientific orthodoxy. And it’s amazing how much history has been replaced by mythology, meaning something everyone knows but doesn’t check to see if it’s true. A few salient facts are in order: Galileo was a life-long member

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Old theories

Newton’s theory of gravity was superseded in the 20th century. Orthodox Popperians should therefore throw it on the dustbin of history. But Newton’s theory is not rejected because his laws are still valid within a limited range that is very useful. Similarly, we still speak of the sun rising and setting even though absolute geo-staticism has been

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Creation history

A prima facie case can be made that mainline science conflicts with the Scriptures, that is, the Bible. For one thing, mainline science excludes final causes and follows naturalism so some conflict is inevitable. Naturalism excludes all miracles. The chronology of nature adopted by most science institutions is contrary to some historical parts of Scripture,

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History

In broad terms there are two kinds of history: diachronic and synchronic history. The history of a people or nation over generations and centuries is told by diachronic history. The history of a time or period across peoples or nations is told by synchronic history (also called synchronistic history). The diachronic history of Western Civilization

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Justification of tradition

Like many people born after World War II, tradition doesn’t come easily to me. We’ve prided ourselves on making our parents justify every practice they tried to pass on to us. If it didn’t make sense to us, it was oppressive or foolish and should be stopped. Automatic acceptance of tradition was unthinkable. Tradition was

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Dissident scientists

There is a curious paradox about the science community. On the one hand scientists have a reputation for independent thinking but on the other hand the science community likes to present a solid front. The latter is closer to the truth: most scientists are conformists. It is well known from the history of science that dissent

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Historical sciences

Ben Jeffares wrote a useful article “Testing times: regularities in the historical sciences”  (http://www.ege.fcen.uba.ar/ecodes/Integrantes/Javier/cursos/PDFs/(02)%20Jeffares%202008.pdf): Abstract The historical sciences, such as geology, evolutionary biology, and archaeology, appear to have no means to test hypotheses. However, on closer examination, reasoning in the historical sciences relies upon regularities, regularities that can be tested. I outline the role of regularities

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