The Dark City Dodge
Aug. 13th, 2015 01:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wingedbeastIn the Creationism v Evolution debate, there's a common claim made to defend Creationism as a science equal to evolution. It's the notion that the scientific method simply does not apply to the past. This is, perhaps, farther than people might want to go.
The scientific method, boiled down to the most simple possible description, is looking at the evidence and drawing conclusions accordingly.
To see why this is too far, let me go to the movie Dark City. The premise of the movie is that an alien race had abducted human beings and proceeded to experiment on humans by altering their memories directly, as well as the entire world around them.
Every memory the abducted humans has, at any one point, specifies a specific reality. All of the world around them matched that specific reality.
All of the evidence available to them about the past... could only be interpreted incorrectly.
Now, is it the case that we're in such a world? There's no evidence I can find. But, can you prove we're not?
That is where this distinction between "observational science" and "historical science" brings us. To claim that evidence cannot factor in on the past, but does still work in matters of record and memory, is special pleading.
Hence, why I will call this move the Dark City Dodge. It puts us into a world where we cannot draw any conclusions about anything at all, all in order to protect Creationism from the available evidence.
The scientific method, boiled down to the most simple possible description, is looking at the evidence and drawing conclusions accordingly.
To see why this is too far, let me go to the movie Dark City. The premise of the movie is that an alien race had abducted human beings and proceeded to experiment on humans by altering their memories directly, as well as the entire world around them.
Every memory the abducted humans has, at any one point, specifies a specific reality. All of the world around them matched that specific reality.
All of the evidence available to them about the past... could only be interpreted incorrectly.
Now, is it the case that we're in such a world? There's no evidence I can find. But, can you prove we're not?
That is where this distinction between "observational science" and "historical science" brings us. To claim that evidence cannot factor in on the past, but does still work in matters of record and memory, is special pleading.
Hence, why I will call this move the Dark City Dodge. It puts us into a world where we cannot draw any conclusions about anything at all, all in order to protect Creationism from the available evidence.
