Education Series: Lesson 03
Starting to get more technical now. These first three lessons are the “foundation” for the rest of the series. After this, I introduce the concept of a “folk-science” and compare/contrast this to standard laboratory science. Then the fun really begins!
Enjoy!
June 22nd, 2008 at 11:42 am
Best yet! Your analogies, as always, are very good.
June 22nd, 2008 at 11:50 am
I love the fresh way you approach these topics and tie them in together in ways I hadn’t seen before. This demonstrates how conversant you are with this stuff and gives me confidence that the next 9 will be just as good. I can’t wait to show these videos to Christian friends and loved ones.
June 22nd, 2008 at 1:28 pm
I can’t wait either; in fact I am not waiting! I hope you don’t mind that I have already recommended these “beta” version releases to my blog readers.
June 22nd, 2008 at 2:34 pm
No problem Cliff. I’d actually some feedback from some non-ECs before going mainstream with these. That’s the target audience, not us!
June 22nd, 2008 at 4:24 pm
Stephen, I hope the future installments live up to your expectations! I had to do lessons 1-3 to bring folks who are unfamiliar with the nature of science and faith up to speed — even though they might be boring for ECs and TEs. Lesson 4 introduces the concept of a “folk-science” and then the real fun begins!
Lesson 5 is a brief history of Christian folk-science, followed by (6) an obvious modern case that most evangelicals will reject as wacky (modern geocentricism). But then I show how YEC (7), flood geology (8), special creation (9-10), and ID (11) are really no different then the obvious cases of folk science presented in 5 and 6 in terms of scientific utility (zero), hermeneutical consistency (none), and effect on the Gospel (stumbling block).
I really hope they get people thinking. It takes a lot of time and energy (and some personal expense) to put something like this together. The key will be exposure. All of you folks with blogs can help there.
June 22nd, 2008 at 5:20 pm
So should I begin linking to these videos on my blog? Sounds like you’re not likely to be changing them significantly anyway.
June 23rd, 2008 at 5:31 am
Stephen, I’m definitely re-shooting Lesson 01. And will probably add some graphics to Lesson 02. Didn’t sound like Lesson 03 needed much. You can certainly direct readers to my site. But I’d like them, in Cliff’s words, that these are “Beta” versions.
Also, I don’t have a video page yet where all of the lessons will appear in order for easy viewing, but I never turn down more readers!
June 23rd, 2008 at 12:24 pm
Good stuff. I’m looking forward to when you get into the nitty-gritty.
June 24th, 2008 at 1:55 am
As far as graphics and flow go, this one is the best yet.
I take issue with Ultimate causation being out of the realm of science. Behavioral and political science is centered about motivations, drive, and objectives. Additionally, Wikipedia describes evolution as an ultimate cause. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proximate_and_ultimate_causation. When set up this way, as science gets better at describing behavior at the motivational level, you’ll see the gap closing in.
June 24th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
Behavioral and political sciences are “soft” sciences. You might be right that the line between ultimate and proximate is blurred here. I don’t spend much time in that arena. But when considering the “hard” science (biology, chemistry, geology, physics, etc…), I think my reasoning holds up.
June 24th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
Hi, Tom!
But if there is a still more ultimate causation behind those things it would not be observable, either. But I hesitate with the term “ultimate cause”, because it implies intervention, whereas philosophically an ultimate deity along the lines of the Judeo-Christian God is fully capable of creating a full self-sustaining, self-motivated, self-causing system, and that’s what I think we’ve got. Determining “ultimate” causes to our universe gives the false impression to atheists that the bounds of meaning have been exhausted, when all along there is an ultimate meaning that is not limited to or recoverable for each minute piece (why I ate oatmeal this morning, etc.), but is greater than the sum of its parts. As infuriating as it probably is to atheists, God’s meaning for the universe itself is the ultimate causation, and it’s securely beyond the realm of science.
June 24th, 2008 at 11:40 pm
Is it just me? Every time I try to click on the lesson 03, I get lesson 1 instead. I also tried it with Firefox, which I had never downloaded any of the lessons to make sure it wasn’t a caching issue.
June 24th, 2008 at 11:58 pm
jtandy,
No, its not you. Something happened today, and Lesson 01 is playing in this position.
Gordon? …
June 25th, 2008 at 8:14 am
Sorry, I was playing around with something and messed it up. It’s fixed now.
June 25th, 2008 at 10:38 am
Gordon and Stephen,
The intent of this thread is not really to discuss ultimate causation, so I am not going to go down that path. We can discuss it over the course of our blogs in time.
I can imagine, however, that people who want to know more of the discrepancies of proximal and ultimate causes will do what I did and Wiki it. There they will see Evolution as the only example of an ultimate cause. This is liable to confuse people because as Gordon presents it, ultimate cause is about meaning and out of the domain of science. Evolution, from a YEC point of view, is total meaninglessness and it certainly is a “hard” science. All I’m saying is that you’ll probably want to address this somehow, even if you want to denigrate evolution’s ultimate cause as “to simply have more offspring capable of having more offspring.”