Knowing

epistemology, science, kinds of knowledge, methodology

Explaining everything

Eureka! I found it! What is it? A principle that proves every mathematical theorem! Amazing, isn’t it? Now mathematics is completely solved. Everything is proved–everything. How is this done? Well, it turns out to be quite simple. No, I’m not a math genius. And you don’t have to be a math genius to understand it, […]

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The creation paradigm (2)

Simply put, an historical paradigm is a storyline of history. A storyline is a theme that similar stories have. Compare this with what Imré Lakatos called “research programmes”: For Lakatos, what we think of as a ‘theory’ may actually be a succession of slightly different theories and experimental techniques developed over time, that share some

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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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Assertions

Motivating Example According to the Gospels, there was an inscription above Christ on the cross which said (in English translation): Matthew (27.37): “This is Jesus, the King of the Jews. ” (ABD) Mark (15.27): “The King of the Jews.” (D) Luke (23.38): “This is the King of the Jews.” (AD) John (19.19): “Jesus of Nazareth,

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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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Uniqueness and uniformity

If everything were completely unique, we would have no way of identifying them as to what they are. If everything were completely identical, or uniform, we would have no way of distinguishing them. We conclude that the world is somewhere in between: everything is a combination of the unique and the uniform. If all events

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Science and statistics

Here is a story about two statisticians and two scientists. They are given a problem: what are the frequencies of the letters in English texts? The junior statistician has no research budget whereas the senior statistician has a modest research budget. Similarly, the junior scientist has no research budget but the senior scientist has a

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Superseded science

Science is an iterative process and so theories that were once widely accepted may later become superseded, but what does that entail? A superseded theory may be thoroughly undermined by its consistent failure to match expectations. Contrary to falsificationism, it usually takes more than a few anomalies to bring down a theory. Theories are part of

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