Fait Accompli Science

Let me refer to the Genesis of the Solar System post. (Sorry about it being so long. That is the edited version, incidentally.) When confronted with such a dichotomy as the pressure–gravity barrier, I occasionally have people respond like this. They do not know how, or why, or where it (gas giants in this instance) came from, but it is here. So it must have happened. In other words, it is a fait accompli and they do not need to explain it. They just observe, take data, note regularities, make hypotheses, and test them.

The last sentence is exactly the role and operation of “science.” It does not make things happen. It observes what happens and tries to find an explanation for why it happens. This is “real” science as opposed to historical science which tried to explain things that “are” but which cannot be examined.

Take the gas giants, for instance. Since we know that gravitational energy can hold them together, example Jupiter, then we theorize that the gravitational energy pulled it together and voila` here we are. Fait accompli. The same argument is applied to evolution in general. We see that there are almost uncountable numbers of different types of life and we can trace (supposedly) the trail from simple to elegant and complicated, so therefore they must have evolved. Fait accompli.

When confronted with the staggering barriers to such an occurrence, they say, “Well, it must have happened, because ‘here we are.’” Fait accompli.

When discussing this very problem with a PhD student and asking about Sagan’s comment that the chances of evolution occurring were one with two hundred billion zeros behind it, he glibly replied, “That is the chance of it happening AGAIN.”

I had to agree, that it is impossible for it to happen again, but how did it occur the first time? His answer is classic. “We cannot know that, because we cannot observe it.” He did not see the disconnect between his statement and his belief in (the first) evolution.

This is not to belittle nor demean people who believe evolution. (Are convinced that it is true, actually.) But to help “creation warriors” to know how to approach the discussion. We can focus on facts and not on speculation. This belief–data “barrier” is what we must breach. It does work. I have read and talked to several creation experts who started out to prove that creation was wrong. As they encountered the factual data and not just propaganda, they were convinced that creation fits the data better than macro-evolution.

I just wish we could have a “fait accompli” and everyone would believe.