SCIENCE: -- "observational science" vs "historical science" vs ... science.

I'm sorry but you don't know the difference between interpretation and proof or confirmation.ABE: All the lab science can do in this kind of case is speculate and interpret the DNA evidence too, especially considering how much you guys admit to not knowing, as made clear on the Introduction to Genetics thread I just brought up from oblivion this morning.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

The favorite cop-out of the interprettive historical sciences.The hard sciences do have proof, and they must have proof of hypotheses that affect human life, which is often the situation. Evolution doesn't really affect anything of a scientific nature, it just destroys culture and truth and all the good things of human life on that level. But you don't need proof because it's all imaginative speculative made up crap.

Your dating ignores the Bible witness. That's the end of that.

There is not one useful constructive thing you can do with the ToE. All the genuine sciences it affects are merely corrupted by it, but they manage to contribute valid information in spite of it. But the ToE is a lie, the most pernicious delusion ever foisted on humanity, supported nevertheless by a whole battalion of scientists who pride themselves on their ability to think but can't think their way out of this tissue of cobwebs, this sheer fantasy. They just go on believing in it because there is no clear way to prove it wrong, because it IS all nothing but imaginative interpretation, so every fact that comes to hand gets swallowed up by it. And meanwhile it goes on destroying culture, human dignity, social stability, the meaning of life, and Truth. And you all aggressively defend it.You misinterpret DNA, you misinterpret mutations, you misinterpret the fossils, you misinterpret the strata, you misinterpret the archaeological record, you misinterpret history, you get it all wrong but you hate those so much who try to show it to you there's no saving you from it.So stew in it.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I EXPLAINED a number of times why what you expect of intermediates wouldn't occur. And what you call history that I'd supposedly have to alter is based on wrong dating so it isn't true history.

Where did I say I know almost nothing about genetics? I think I know a fair amount for a layperson, especially about population genetics. Which isn't claiming to know a great deal, but not the same as saying I know "almost nothing."And I can say all that again:You misinterpret DNA, you misinterpret mutations, you misinterpret the fossils, you misinterpret the strata, you misinterpret the archaeological record, you misinterpret history, you get it all wrong ..This is what we creationists argue, what else would you expect me to say..Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Just so you know: I've been reading through this thread and seeing that it's mostly a lot of arguments about definitions. I'd like to come up with a new approach if possible, one that tracks a particular historical claim through all the steps of Scientific Method if possible, but I have to think a lot more about it.

Just can't cope with this right now. Have to find examples then arrange them in relation to the tenets of Scientific Method as I find it defined here or there and this is not an easy project. I may never get to it. Here's a rough sketch of what I have in mind:HISTORICAL SCIENCE:
Siccar Point:
Hypothesis: took millions of years to form.
Observation: vertical and horizontal sections of strata.
Reasoning/Assumption: upper horizontal section was laid down after lower vertical section was tilted.
Evidence: None
Replication or testing: Nothing to replicate or test. Other angular unconformities subjected to the same reasoning, also based on no evidence. It's all theory, no proof.
(All this was already treated as fact before radiometric dating came along and that too is unprovable.)TESTABLE SCIENCE:
Need "hard" science for contrast. The structure of DNA?
Observation: Years and years of observation by many researchers in many labs,
Replication, testing: one lab being able to use the work of another lab.
Evidence in hundreds of microscopes. Theory of double helix confirmable by all those other researchers.Etc etc.ABE:
Here's some more questionable stuff about DNA, Parasomnium's Message 32. The questions always arise when there are claims about time or age. Assertion: (Why bother with an Hypothesis?) Just by comparing two DNA strands it's possible to know the common ancestor of two different species and how long ago that common ancestor lived.Assumption: The whole ToE, that is, all species are related, one descended from another.
Observation: Two different DNA strands, some portion thereof unidentified.
Method: Subjective interpretation of similarities between two different genomes.
Replication or testing: None possible, but if you know what one person's interpretation was then you can just have the same interpretation.
Evidence: None, it's all mental conjuring.
Conclusion: What a joke.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Siccar Point was interpreted by one man looking at it and arriving at his conclusion. He argued others into accepting his conclusion. That's all there was to it.

How about
Radiometric Dating which is taken as proof of the age of this that or the other.Method: It is known that some kinds of atoms decay into other kinds of atoms at a particular rate.
Therefore the amount of one or the other atom in a substance can tell you how old that substance is
Method: Extracting some portion of that substance and analyzing it for the amount of either or both atoms
Assumption: Whatever portion you are able to get and analyze should tell you about the age of the whole
Assumption: How much of either atom was already present at the origin of the substance
Assumption: What exactly the origin of a substance is supposed to be. When it came out of the volcano? When it was laid down in the strata?
Assumption: Any errors you find can just be discarded. What exactly is an error anyway and how would you know?
Replication/testing: Too much slippage for this to be reliable from one testing lab to another. You really have only whatever result you are willing to accept, that fits with your other assumptions about time etc.
Conclusion: Carbon 14 dating may be somewhat reliable for events within a few thousand years involving organic material, especially where the age of the material is already known so you have a witness to test the dating method itself by, but there are lots of errors possible there too.
Conclusion: Radiometric dating cannot be proved as reliable.

Ha ha. You guys will just always defend the indefensible won't you. Even my rough sketch has enough truth in it to show the unscientific nature of historical science.

I read an entire biography of Hutton which of course included his discussion of Siccar Point, as well as his ineptness at writing, and how the idea got discussed in the scientific clubs and picked up and popularized by Lyell, so you can't accuse me of being too lazy to find out about this.I have to take a break but will try to give this some thought later.

The point is that there is no way to confirm what he concluded, it is ALL his own interpretation, it's a subjective judgment. There is nothing that can be tested, there is no hard evidence, it can only be submitted to others' subjective judgment. There is no way to know for sure if his judgment was correct. Was the order of the deposition as he surmises? There no way to know for sure. Can we be certain that the strata would always look as he surmised if the situation were as he surmised? There is really no way to know for sure. His thoughts may be reasonable, but a lot of hypotheses in science sound good until they are tested and his can't be. That's the difference between a historical and a testable science.I did think it interesting, however, that he actually considered the possibility that the vertical strata had been broken and set upright while the upper horizontal strata were in place, something nobody here will admit as a possibility as I've brought it up many times.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

What I said is true.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

There may not be any creationists quite crazy enough to be interested in this idea except me. I pondered for years how to set up such an experiment and nothing really feasible or conclusive occurred to me. Finally a while back one occurred to me that seems to have potential. I described it somewhere here. I'd have to get organized, motivated, go to a crafts store for the materials, but maybe eventually I'll try it out. "A chunk of similar strata" is of course impossible if you mean real strata, but perhaps a collection of clays with something added for different textures would make a reasonable miniature stack of strata for such a test.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.