Re: TOBS: WDDK - comments from Porter Kier and Karl Popper, Norman Cousins on SM

From: Mark (nospam_at_nspam.com)
Date: 10/05/04 

Date: Tue, 05 Oct 2004 12:37:26 GMT

SNIP long winded 'argument'

Karl Popper was a great philosopher, and his work on the nature
of science is wonderful. He was not an evolutionist, and
unfortunately he was not here for the modern work on evolution
which has included experimentation with microbial populations,
observation of natural populations evolving in response to
pressure (eg drug resistance), and molecular phylogenetics. These
things have contributed to evolution as science. No such work can
be claimed for creationism.

What Gould et al have been talking about is that science must be
falsifiable "in principle". That is, one should be able to
conceive of experiments, which may be carried out now or in the
future. The reason creationism fails this test is that it
involves a supernatural being, the "creator". Including the
supernatural automatically removes the subject from the realm of
science, since by definition a supernatural entity will not be
subject to natural laws. Thus it is inherently unpredictable.

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