[meteorite-list] Origin of the Moon

From: Francis Graham <francisgraham_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:21:02 2004
Message-ID: <20030711031005.66859.qmail_at_web40110.mail.yahoo.com>

  I'll try to make peace in this controversy.
  Science is NOT like religion, and people who say so
have not considered the matter very well. Science
depends on observations and experiments that can be
done repeatedly and at will. The physical laws known
to us are based on those kinds of hard work.
  Religion offers other kinds of knowing. Science
cannot say there is or is not a God, because one
cannot do repeatable at-will experiments or
observations on God. We cannot at will see the vision
that Ezekiel saw, for example. Anyone who says that
science presumes there is no God, or should presume
there is One, is not well versed in the limitations of
the methods of science.
  When scientists say the Moon began in possibly such
and such a way,such as impacts, inherent in this idea
is that the laws of physics operated then as now. If
God miraculously created the Moon in some different
way we have no way of knowing. In fact, we have no way
of knowing that God did not create us five minutes
ago, complete with memories of lives which never
really existed. This is the Omphalos argument, made by
Rev. Philip Gosse.
   But the idea that the moon was made by physical
processes much as they are today has evidence behind
it; we see physical processes much as now occuring in
parts of the Universe 4 billion light years away, the
light of which took that long to reach us, so they
occurred four billion years ago, near when the moon
formed. Of course, once again, there is no way of
knowing this too is not a ruse.
   Science takes the simplest course, governed by the
logical dictum called Occam's Razor. We see physical
processes now that occurred four billion years ago;
the laws of physics are the same, therefore, the Moon
could have formed in a non-miraculous way by physical
processes of the laws of physics. It may all be a
Divine ruse or error of not considering all the
possible miracles that could give us the same
appearances, but that is not the simplest explanation.
   Galileo met astronomers who thought, following
Aristotle, that the Moon was smooth. He showed them
lunar mountains through telescope. "But," they argued,
"These mountains have a transparent invisible layer on
top of them which has a smooth top."
    Without batting an eye, Galileo replied, "Yes, but
there are invisible mountains on the smooth layer."
One can make many ideas beyond the simplest. They
might be correct. But science must take the simplest
until evidence based on repeatable and at-will
observable phenomena compels further.
    I tell my students who have any number of
religious ideas about origins (and they widely vary,
even among Christians) that to learn scientific ideas
of origins involves understanding the simplest
explanations with repeatable experiments and
at-will-observations, and their children, the laws of
physics, as a matrix. Anything they wish to add or
subtract from it is based on their own personal faith,
but that is not the domain of science, no more than it
is possible to recreate Ezekiel's unique vision in a
test tube.
Francis Graham
   
   

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Received on Thu 10 Jul 2003 11:10:05 PM PDT


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