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

Are you certain you aren't actually talking about religion? because this post accurately describes religion, not any branch of science, biology or otherwise. I think you are attributing to the TOE what you actually see in your faith, not what you actually know about evolution and the study thereof. This belongs in the comments section of Youtube on a VenomfangX video, not here with educated people. That should tell you something..... Well, it would if you bothered to think about it for yourself instead of being scared of it. Again, save this crap for Youtube comments. You don't actually think this and you know how bonkers it sounds. I mean, really, a scientific theory that, at its core, serves to do nothing more than explain the diversity of life has diddly to do with culture, dignity or social anything. Again, I think you are confusing yourself for an evolutionist and you think you are speaking to a creationist. How can science misenterpret ANY of that stuff if it uses those interpretations to create things not evolution related? How can you interpret something wrong, yet still successfully and repeatedly use those interpretations in other aspects of life?At any rate, you need to recruit some help. I actually applaud you for sticking around being basically the only creationist here. I just wish you would argue more honestly and with more thought and less venom.

Why the One Appealing Part of Creationism Is Wrong

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Ham often stresses a line of argument made within the broader creationist community, which resonates, at least somewhat, with the public at large. There’s experimental or observational science, as we call it. That’s using the scientific method, observation, measurement, experiment, testing, he said during the debate. When we’re talking about origins, we’re talking about the past. We’re talking about our origins. You weren’t there, you can’t observe that.

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In the first place, science doesn’t involve merely telling stories about history. If it did, scientific explanations might not have any claim to a higher level of veracity than religious stories. The stories that science does tell have empirical consequences, and make physical predictions that can be tested.

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In this sense, all science is historical science. We make observations about past events, based on everything from data gathered in the laboratory yesterday to remnants of phenomena, like meteor impacts or stellar explosions, which may have happened billions of years ago. We then use them to make predictions about the future, about experiments or observations that have not yet taken place. To quibble about how long ago the original data was generated is to miss the point. Predictions about the future, rather than a focus on the past, is what gives science its ultimate explanatory and technological power.

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Predictions about future events, or future observations of what happened, such as future fossil finds. These predictions are testable and refutable, and thus they ARE science.

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Or, take my favorite example: the prediction of a genetic relationship between the great apes and humans via a common ancestor, as taught in many (I wish it were all) introductory biology courses. Humans have twenty-three pairs of chromosomes, where all the great apes have twenty-four pairs. If they have a common ancestor, this difference must be explained. One possibility is that two of the chromosomes in the great apes fused together at some point in the human lineage. But this makes two testable predictions. Each chromosome has a characteristic end, called a telomere, and a distinctive central part, called a centromere. If fusion had occurred, then one of the human chromosomes should, in its central region, include the remnants of the two fused telomeres, lined up end to end. It also should have, at between roughly a quarter and three-quarters of the way along the chromosome, a structure identical to that of the centromeres of the great-ape chromosomes. This prediction, tested in the laboratory today, and not in the distant past, has been beautifully verified.

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A tested prediction that proved to be true. Science done.Edited by RAZD, : ..

Bumped for Faith.

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.

You are never going to get to something credible they way you are doing it. Geology is not simply about looking at rocks and making stuff up, but that's all of the credit you are giving geologists in your approach. You apparently believe they are total idiots.I cannot even tell where you are going with your attempt at biology.I'd recommend that you start with the basics of how the ages of geological features are estimated. A good place to start might be with Dr. Adequate's book. I don't expect you to be convinced by anything you find, but perhaps you'll learn a bit about geology as a science.Alternatively, you might start with something a bit simpler. I would suggest dating the ages of the pyramids that scientists believe were built right around the time Ussher dates the Flood. Almost impossible for the Flood have happened at that time if scientists are correct.

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.

That pretty conclusively demonstrates that you have no real interest in the truth of the matter. I will grant that making an honest attempt at dealing with either subject would likely be a significant amount of effort but that hardly justifies passing off uninformed opinions (to be generous) as fact.If you were honest you would at least admit that your entire case was personal opinion that you lacked the knowledge to defend.

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.

This topic seem to be fragmenting into a variety of things that deserve their own topics, be it existing or new.Please find a better place for things.Go to the "Whine List" topic if you wish to discuss the state of this topic (but don't just carry the off-topic there.Adminnemooseus

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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.

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Then you will have no problem providing detailed evidence to support your claims.Go on. Do it. Show us that you've done the work.And keep the Moose happy by proposing it as a new topic. It would be worth one.Edited by PaulK, : Suggest starting a new topic.

Wrong.Why don't you find out how radiometric dating actually works? It was in my book, you know.

And wrong.Really, you should try to find out something about what you're talking about.

Which God only know what will happen now?Adminnemooseus