This post is an appendix to the previous “Evolution vs Creation” debate post, which takes a step back from the original post. Based on the comments received, perhaps the original post had poor language usage and lost its intended wider meaning, and sadly may have offended both researchers in the field of biology and also believers in literal creationism. To better “position” myself on this issue, here is the original intent of the post:
My post is primarily a philosophical one–not one that’s focused on biology or even statistical theory, although I do mention them quite alot in the argument. I did not claim to be a 7 day creationist, nor an evolutionist. I also do not claim to know any more about biological theories than a high school graduate who took an AP course. That being said, this is the main point of my post:
I don’t believe that all creationists are anti-intellectual. Sure, many creationists we know of will accept the bible and the literal use of the word “day” with absolute faith, and as a result there is no room for discussion about scientific evidence that suggests the contrary (you can’t discuss theories about the big bang or the origins of the universe, which I find absolutely fascinating): hence a lack of intellectual discussion due to failure to find common ground. However, two creationists may be able to engage in a mutually interesting, though non-scientific, discussion about the Garden of Eden and the creation account in the bible. They may also be arguing about interpretation. This is all an intellectual exercise, no less than scientists arguing about the theories of evolution. Just because the majority believe in one thing doesn’t make the minority less intellectual. They simply use different axioms.
More importantly however, note the key words that I used in the previous paragraph: “evidence” and “suggests”. The scientific paradigm is one that rests on the burden of “proof”. However, unless you are in a purely mathematical field (i.e. playing with abstract ideas), scientific “proof” rests on inductive axioms that can never really be “proven”. It can only be supported by statistical evidence and models constructed based on such statistics, and much of it rests on the assumption that what was observed in the past still holds today. At least, this is how it’s done in the engineering discipline, in theory and in practice. You can only engage in an intellectual discussion if both of you believe in the theories/models/techniques behind it. And personally, I wouldn’t be employing models at work if I did not believe in them (with high probability 
). As I said before, I am not a biologist and am therefore unfamiliar with how much evidence exists to support different evolutionary statements about the origins of different species that exist today or in the past. That analysis is up to the experts in the community. However, my claim is that the scientific philosophy rests on these fundamental assumptions about observability and regularity.
Along those lines however, I am also stating that “miracles” by definition cannot be scientifically proven (except with a set of probability zero or near zero) because they are things that are observed perhaps only once in a lifetime, if at all. If miracles could be reproduced in practice, they would cease to be miracles and at best would be scientific “phenomenons” (i.e. things that can be made to occur, but the cause is not well understood). 7-day creationism (if true), Noah’s ark (if true), Jesus’s resurrection from the dead (if true), would fall under the category of “miracles”. They must be accepted by faith because they are inherently non-reproducible.
What is my conclusion? Basically, open-mindedness. I am not asserting that you have to doubt what you currently believe, whether by religious faith or by scientific faith. I am not advocating some type of relativism. However, it would probably benefit you to put on two different thinking caps when discussing issues of religion versus issues of science, because they rest on two fundamentally different axioms that seem to be contradictory, but at their core are not. A scientist should be able to resolve the idea of “miracles” , since not everything is reproducible (at the moment at least, e.g. the Planck epoch of the Big Bang). Likewise, I do not see a reason for a Christian to take offense when entertaining ideas based on observation and statistics, including evolution. After all, you probably use similar assumptions all the time in your card games or dice games. All else being equal, if God exists, so do unreproducible miracles. If He does not, or He simply chooses not to intervene with the universe that He created, then our best guesses can only be constructed by what is more or less, regularly observed.
