(April 18, 2015 at 3:55 pm)Nestor Wrote: It was also very difficult to locate evidence for the luminiferous aether. Eventually physicists and astronomers realized it wasn't necessary. Since Darwin, I think we are kind of in the same position with instantaneous, ad hoc "creation events."
Indeed. Because Einstein showed the Lorentz contraction is a direct consequence of Special Relativity. We also have an instantaneous origin event called the Big Bang, even if it can't be accused of having been postulated "ad hoc" (since its underlying physical theory predicts the cosmic microwave background).
I was thinking of the more general problem that it's usually easier to show that something exists than to show that it doesn't exist. Or, if reconstructing the past, easier to show that something happened than to show that it couldn't have happened.
Which renders the thread title odd, given that special creation is attacked via Occam's Razor rather than by trying to find evidence against it.
