1 + 1 = 2? Prove It.
Creation and evolution is not simple mathematics, despite one of my favorite Aussie bloggers’ assertions. Angry Aussie said:
I’ll start with a self-evident fact. 1+1=2. There’s no shades of grey there, it’s a simple, irrefutable mathematical fact that 1+1=2. Now imagine someone comes along and wants to propose that 1+1 in fact =4. I don’t know why they want to assert something so ridiculous. Maybe a magic bloke in the sky told them. Or maybe they have a book that they declare is the divine word of this magic bloke in the sky despite the fact it’s nothing more than a bunch of fairy stories invented centuries ago to scare illiterate goat herders into behaving themselves.
Whatever. They’re being very loud about their belief that 1+1=4. No amount of evidence will sway them. The fact that every credible mathematician in the world tells them that, no, your point of view isn’t valid, 1+1 is definitely 2 doesn’t even slow them down. They trot out someone they call a “creation mathematician” who says that because the magic bloke in the sky created everything including numbers, whatever he says about numbers must be true, therefore 1+1=4.
This post, though, tells me he needs to look up the definition of empirical evidence. His metaphor breaks down pretty quick, in light of that definition.
Simply put, no one observed creation (or evolution), therefore one’s conjecture and evidence interpretation is as good as another for justifying a worldview. In the context of his post, anyone who would argue over this is simply justifying a worldview and not really interested in finding out what happened 6000/10,000,000 years ago.
Conversely, I can observe two apples sitting on a counter, and understand that one apple plus one apple equals two apples.
No one can observe spontaneous creation of life, nor can they watch a single celled organism change into a complex life form. No one can observe a Creator inventing existence. Depending on your worldview, the evidence you assemble can point to multiple conclusions. Typically, if you believe in God as an absolute being with absolute control over the nature of reality, you’ll see evidence of an intelligent hand at work. By the same token, if you’re a person who has faith in science and the human ability to discover his world, you’ll see evidence that we pulled ourselves up from our bootstraps out of the primordial ooze.
I'm reading again your comments and trying to make sense of them. On the one hand, it seems that you criticize people desperately seeking for evidence to support their own world views. And I totally agree with you on that point, particularly that you can easily find people doing precisely that "on both camps".
However from that you seem to conclude that, therefore, both views are "as good as another". But that is just plain wrong. Evolution is not just some theory that someone made up in order to justify their own world view. Unlike creationism, evolution has been subject to a great deal of scientific discussion, inquiry, evaluation, and testing. Scientists don't "believe" in evolution because it agrees with what they already believe, but because it agrees with what can be seen in reality.
I'm not talking about scientists who "believe in evolution over another belief" and I never cast a judgement in anything I said showing preference of one belief over another.
I have my beliefs. If you look for them you can find them somewhere else. My point is, typically in these debates online and off, no one is either a scientist or a theologian, and the debates are just the facts assembled by those involved that support their worldview. Very few people actively look for facts that contradict what they believe. I don't know about you, but it's apparent that many who commented there on the site as well as "Mr Angry" himself are there to grind an axe, and couldn't care less as to what the other side has to say (much less is informed by the best apologists from the other side).
I think my larger point, which got lost in the comments of the appropriately caustic Angry365 (I shoulda known that would be the case), is that the type of folks who do battle over this stuff, like mister Angry himself aren't really concerned with science, likewise with the folks who aggressively argue for creation science, are both not concerned with much of the science involved.
They're usually desparately trying to grasp at evidence that supports their worldview. 90% of the time, people like Mr. Angry and their counterparts in the Creationist camp are only looking to belittle those who don't believe as they do. They don't have any scientific qualifications.
There are sincere and interesting minds on both sides of the fence on this one. Scientific ones. Yes, I'll say it again, on both sides.
These folks, though, who aren't looking to support a worldview but are simply interested in learning, rarely hate on each other in the manner that Mr. Angry exemplifies.
I don't think the word observation means what you think it does in a scientific sense. We do observe evolution all the time. It's called the fossil record. We also observe it when we study adaptation in everything from selectively bred animals to random mutation in bacteria.
Again (I explained this in the comments at his blog) observing evolution and evidence of evolution isn't the same thing as reproducing the spark of life. This hasn't been done, and hasn't been observed, scientifically or otherwise, to date.
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