I think that the flavour of young earth creationism you can get from Answers in Genesis is already as steelmanned as it gets. Notably they have a list of creationist arguments they consider weak and suggest not to use. The fact that AiG young earth creationism is still quite weak despite all these efforts, is just evidence that young earth creationism is an inherently untenable position.
So on Pennock’s view, testing young-earth creationism and thereby demonstrating it to be false is not possible without relying on naturalistic assumptions. This creates an opening for the creationist to question whether science needs to rely on naturalistic assumptions, and argue that one could create an equally valid version of science based on (fundamentalist) Christian assumptions.
Not quite. You don’t really need naturalistic assumptions to falsify young earth creationism, you just need reasonable assumptions. For instance, even if you don’t outright assume that God couldn’t have flooded the earth to punish mankind, magically creating water out of nothing and magically destroying it afterwards, you can’t still explain the order in the fossil record, the geographical distribution of living species and fossils, the geological evidence of plate tectonics, and so on. Young earth creationists resort to handwaving at this point, but they can never produce reasonable models explaining all this evidence. The only real assumption that could explain all the available evidence consistently with young earth creationism is that God (or the Devil) forged evidence to make the earth appear much older than it is, but this assumption is not only theologically disturbing to theists, it is also epistemically nihilistic, since it can explain everything and therefore explains nothing.
Well, what’s about postulating that we live in a simulation which is presently at 6000 years by internal clock, and so on and so forth up until upcoming second coming of Christ and simulation shutdown?
One shouldn’t believe in that kind of stuff if one rejects those beliefs in christian framework, because by postulating a specific mechanism (simulation) we only added to the conjunction, making it less likely to be true.
Well, of course one could hypothize that Christ was a space alien (as the Raelians do), or the avatar character of some bored kid running the simulation, etc.
All these hypotheses are largely undistinguishable from the traditional “magic” God. I’m not sure whether we should consider them in a conjunction or in a disjunction, but either way their combined probability mass isn’t going to be significant.
Hearing the Christian God referred to as “magic” reminds me of another apparent lexical gap in English. I think most theologians would be uncomfortably hesitant to call the purported miracles in their faith as the result of magic—although to my knowledge there is no better word to replace it.
I wish that our culture expressed the Divine Magic vs. Arcane Magic dichotomy that exists in Dungeons and Dragons.
Hearing the Christian God referred to as “magic” reminds me of another apparent lexical gap in English. I think most theologians would be uncomfortably hesitant to call the purported miracles in their faith as the result of magic—although to my knowledge there is no better word to replace it.
Well, I’ve used “magic” as a synonym of “supernatural”, which is a term that Christian theologians accept. Christian theologians tend to define “magic” as anything supernatural that doesn’t come from their god, that is “satanic”.
I wish that our culture expressed the Divine Magic vs. Arcane Magic dichotomy that exists in Dungeons and Dragons.
I suppose that Christians would be even more offended by having their belief system compared to a role playing game inspired by a mishmash of pre-Christian folklore. :D
Magic and supernatural might often work as synonyms, but I still think hearing God called “magic” is not generally accepted, even if “supernatural” is.
Your point is well taken about D&D—although I wasn’t proposing that we actually use the D&D system to describe the belief system. I was expressing regret that a similar dichotomy doesn’t exist within the language already.
Your point is well taken about D&D—although I wasn’t proposing that we actually use the D&D system to describe the belief system. I was expressing regret that a similar dichotomy doesn’t exist within the language already.
I suppose that’s because the concept of “arcane magic”, is largely a modern invention of the fantasy genre, where it is portrayed essentially as a fictional science and technology.
Historically, some forms of mysticism such as alchemy and astrology, or more generally “natural philosophy”, had some elements of what we could describe as “arcane magic”, and in fact they eventually evolved into the modern sciences of chemistry, astronomy and physics. However, what was traditionally regarded as “magic” or “sorcery” in Abrahamic religions, was always believed to involve some kind of deal with evil spirits or the devil.
For instance, even if you don’t outright assume that God couldn’t have flooded the earth to punish mankind, magically creating water out of nothing and magically destroying it afterwards, you can’t still explain the order in the fossil record, the geographical distribution of living species and fossils, the geological evidence of plate tectonics, and so on.
I think that the flavour of young earth creationism you can get from Answers in Genesis is already as steelmanned as it gets. Notably they have a list of creationist arguments they consider weak and suggest not to use.
The fact that AiG young earth creationism is still quite weak despite all these efforts, is just evidence that young earth creationism is an inherently untenable position.
Not quite. You don’t really need naturalistic assumptions to falsify young earth creationism, you just need reasonable assumptions.
For instance, even if you don’t outright assume that God couldn’t have flooded the earth to punish mankind, magically creating water out of nothing and magically destroying it afterwards, you can’t still explain the order in the fossil record, the geographical distribution of living species and fossils, the geological evidence of plate tectonics, and so on.
Young earth creationists resort to handwaving at this point, but they can never produce reasonable models explaining all this evidence.
The only real assumption that could explain all the available evidence consistently with young earth creationism is that God (or the Devil) forged evidence to make the earth appear much older than it is, but this assumption is not only theologically disturbing to theists, it is also epistemically nihilistic, since it can explain everything and therefore explains nothing.
Well, what’s about postulating that we live in a simulation which is presently at 6000 years by internal clock, and so on and so forth up until upcoming second coming of Christ and simulation shutdown?
One shouldn’t believe in that kind of stuff if one rejects those beliefs in christian framework, because by postulating a specific mechanism (simulation) we only added to the conjunction, making it less likely to be true.
Well, of course one could hypothize that Christ was a space alien (as the Raelians do), or the avatar character of some bored kid running the simulation, etc.
All these hypotheses are largely undistinguishable from the traditional “magic” God.
I’m not sure whether we should consider them in a conjunction or in a disjunction, but either way their combined probability mass isn’t going to be significant.
Hearing the Christian God referred to as “magic” reminds me of another apparent lexical gap in English. I think most theologians would be uncomfortably hesitant to call the purported miracles in their faith as the result of magic—although to my knowledge there is no better word to replace it.
I wish that our culture expressed the Divine Magic vs. Arcane Magic dichotomy that exists in Dungeons and Dragons.
Well, I’ve used “magic” as a synonym of “supernatural”, which is a term that Christian theologians accept.
Christian theologians tend to define “magic” as anything supernatural that doesn’t come from their god, that is “satanic”.
I suppose that Christians would be even more offended by having their belief system compared to a role playing game inspired by a mishmash of pre-Christian folklore. :D
Magic and supernatural might often work as synonyms, but I still think hearing God called “magic” is not generally accepted, even if “supernatural” is.
Your point is well taken about D&D—although I wasn’t proposing that we actually use the D&D system to describe the belief system. I was expressing regret that a similar dichotomy doesn’t exist within the language already.
I suppose that’s because the concept of “arcane magic”, is largely a modern invention of the fantasy genre, where it is portrayed essentially as a fictional science and technology.
Historically, some forms of mysticism such as alchemy and astrology, or more generally “natural philosophy”, had some elements of what we could describe as “arcane magic”, and in fact they eventually evolved into the modern sciences of chemistry, astronomy and physics.
However, what was traditionally regarded as “magic” or “sorcery” in Abrahamic religions, was always believed to involve some kind of deal with evil spirits or the devil.
In particular it’s rather hard to explain sloths.