User talk:Ed Poor/Terms used in the creation-evolution debate

Ed, I think your second description is far too restrictive and conflates belief and science. Science can only use naturalistic explanations, but that does not mean that scientists themselves are restricted to naturalistic explanations for everything. You could also use your definition to conclude that people don't believe in meteorology, because most people (even many atheists) will pray that a hurricane will avoid them. But that doesn't allow a meteorologist to factor the hand of God into his models ("There is heavy praying for Galeveston, so I predict that Rita will veer east, but not too far east because there's a lot of praying for New Orleans as well.") If a person falls out of a window and starts praying, does that mean that s/he does not believe in gravity? Guettarda 18:15, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Way too restrictive. In the first definition, even a Creationist may believe in evolution, if it only means that new life forms have emerged over time. Creationist is probably the wrong term here - a creationist is one who believes that God (or some other supernatural power) created the universe. You probably mean a Young Earth Creationist. Most creationists (and many Young-Earthers) believe that there have been at least variations in life. DJ Clayworth 18:20, 29 September 2005 (UTC)


 * AFAIK most YECs accept some amount of evolution - post-Noachian evolution "within kinds". The second def only applies to the application of the scientific method and is true for any scientific undertaking.  Guettarda 18:27, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Thank you both for your creative engagement. For a long time, both of you have helped me out of tight spots, and this certainly is one! I told a friend on IRC that I was re-opening the creation-evolution debate, and his jaw dropped (figuratively).

The thing about conflating belief and science: what I'm trying to do - as someone who respects the scientific method immensely yet has adopted a specific religion - is to describe the different usage of a single term. (Later, I may add other ambiguous terms). I know that we have an exhaustive article called Evolution (disambiguation) which lists every possible usage, but the present article is concerned only with those usages:
 * which are used in the evolution-creation debate AND
 * which are used differently by parties on different sides in the debate

If by conflate you mean "to fail to differentiate from an often similar or related other" then obviously I'm doing just the opposite: I am differentiating two different (but similar) uses of evolution. And I'm also trying to differentiate between (a) what scientists believe and (b) what non-scientists and other opponents of naturalistic evolution believe.

It's good to make these sorts of distinctions, isn't it? Uncle Ed 19:01, 29 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Sorry, couldn't wait for an answer: I just stumbled onto Evolutionism! Squirreled away in this obscure corner of Wikipedia is a sizeable nugget explaining one sorely neglected reason that scientists and Creationists are at odds. Uncle Ed 19:43, 29 September 2005 (UTC)