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

Deductive arguments can never lead to conclusions more certain than the premises. And when you're dealing with the real world absolutely certain premises are hard to come by.

Faith is responding again and demonstrating her confusion and ignorance, yet again: Wikipedia does not suggest that inductive reasoning is merely good enough for "hypothesis formation" Or, more accurately, when you are trying to prove universal laws. Induction is primarily a means of generalising from observations, not reconstructing past events.So Newton's law of gravity was supported by induction (and it turned out to be not quite right). Lyell's views about the origins of the angular unconformity at Siccar Point are more deductive.Oh and there's some more lying: No Faith you know perfectly well that that's not the case. But that's typical creationist behaviour, Unable to support their argument they just grossly misrepresent the opposition. Edited by PaulK, : No reason given.

What's this, debate by proxy?If she hasn't got the courage to debate it here - leave her to preach to her converted, you're just feeding a remote troll.

Heh, heh ...That is kind of dysfunctional isn't it?

It's just a reaffirmation of her position. Ignoring everything she has no answer for, she makes no attempt to address her view's self-evidently fatal problems.Faith, what you call "their usual strange misconceptions...over at EvC" are not the constructions of a small isolated group trapped in scientific misthinking. They're mainstream views shared by the community of thousands of scientists all around the world. You cannot in any accurate way characterize your views as being opposed only by those at a tiny website.Faith, it's understandable that you prefer the word "plausibility" to "probability". Plausibility is the quality of being credible or believable and is not a term with any scientific precision. Probability is a statistical measure of likelihood. To take a specific example, it is statistically extremely highly probable that tiny particulates will remain in suspension in active water, as you characterize your flood. It isn't just plausible - it's so highly probable that it nears sheer certainty.To take another specific and related example, it is statistically extremely highly probable that heavier and denser particulates will settle out of suspension before lighter and less dense particulates. Again , it isn't just plausible - it's so highly probable that it nears sheer certainty. Your view of layers being deposited without regard to weight and density is not merely improbable, it is unlikely in the extreme, or, to use your own preferred term, distinctly implausible.Or to take yet another specific and again related example, it is statistically extremely probable that footprints, burrows and nests would be destroyed in a violent flood. It is implausible in the extreme for them to be preserved and moved whole. By the way, if all sedimentary layers were formed during the flood, then how does a burrow in a non-sedimentary pre-flood layer get moved whole and then redeposited in a sedimentary layer without preserving any hint whatsoever of the pre-flood layer? Same for footprints. Those pre-flood footprints must have been made on a pre-flood surface that was not sedimentary. How does one move a footprint without preserving any of the material in which the footprint was made?--Percy

It's the nurturing instinct. We have to feed somebody. If she won't come here, then it's meals on wheels.

Actually you bring up a very good point. It addresses the idea that in science we don't deal with proof, we deal with evidence. Even the most highly controlled experiment will not be convincing unless the data is analysed with the appropriate statistical methods and actually shows a statistical significance. We even talk about confidence intervals, meaning that for instance, we can be 95% confident that the results of an experiment are due to the treatment and not due to natural variation. There is not such thing as a 100% confidence interval.I think that non-scientists fail to realize how important statistics are to supporting our conclusions.HBD

I agree. If we really want to find some posts on the internet to debate, Faith isn't the person I would suggest.Ken Ham, for example, also makes a distinction between experimental and observational science. He doesn't do any better a job than Faith is doing. But at least Ham gets lots of mainstream press, so there might be some reason to care what he says.Faith is incoherent. Maybe if Ken Ham and the others on the internet are too. But we already know the nature of Faith's zealotry. I'm not interested in what she posts on her block because I know it is stuff she does not have the tubes to post here.

A general observation I have made is that creationists misrepresent how the scientific method works, either purposefully or unknowingly. One of the big hangups they seem to have is the relationship between hypothesis, observation, and repeatability.For those of us familiar with the scientific method, we know that repeatability refers to the data/observations. For people like Faith, they think repeatability refers to the hypothesis. They think that in order for a hypothesis to be scientific you need to be able to observe the hypothesis in action multiple times.Of course, you don't observe the hypothesis. You test the hypothesis. Nowhere in the scientific method is there an expiration date on valid observations. A 100 million year old fossil is as valid a piece of evidence as a 1 hour old ELISA plate. Both are repeatable observations, and both can be used to test hypotheses.

Before getting to Faith's post about the unwitnessed past I should mention that Faith has posted an "Update" to her blog post of 8/28/2014. It's at the top. It repeats that we're misinterpreting, misrepresenting and abusing her but is remarkably free of specifics. What I mean by the Unwitnessed Past was posted yesterday. There's nothing new here. She repeats the same arguments and addresses none of the criticisms. It's likely she doesn't understand the criticisms since she quotes Taq's Message 459 (which is polite and describes her position fairly accurately), then calls it too abstract to be saying anything meaningful. She still believes that past events with no witnesses cannot be subjected to meaningful analysis despite dozens of examples to the contrary, for example that a dinosaur footprint can be analyzed to determine the species of dinosaur. She thinks evidence from the past presents problems that render analysis and interpretation speculative but cannot muster any reasons why this is so, e.g.: That past events can't be repeated is a meaningless objection. No event in the past is precisely repeatable. Jack Ruby cannot murder Lee Harvey Oswald again, but the evidence that he did is indisputable. There are no dinosaurs to leave behind footprints today, but the evidence that they did in the distant past is indisputable. The ordering of layers tells us their relative ages, and radiometric dating provides their absolute ages. There are no assumptions. Faith has so far been reluctant to discuss radiometric dating or to explain how a flood sorts layers according to the concentration of daughter isotopes.Faith accurately notes that sedimentary layers are often dated using volcanic deposits contained within the same strata. She seems to believe this represents a problem but doesn't explain how.Faith also fails to provide any support for her contention that the results of radiometric dating are often inconsistent.--Percy

Faith's position regarding the "unwitnessed past" is just plain dumb since it contradicts her position that there is NO unwitnessed past, since ALL of history has happened since humans have existed. What she must mean is that when a conclusion about a past event puts it into a category that would make it unwitnessed, then it is not a valid conclusion, since no one was there to witness it. I have called her on this contradiction before, but it wasn't really addressed.I have been thinking about my response to you the other day (Message 457) and I think that if I were to separate science into two categories I might suggest to divide it into that which can be statistically analyzed and that which cannot be statistically analyzed. "Observational science" would be that which relies only on observation and cannot be statistically verified. The other type might be called "Analytical science".I have thought for a while that there are some scientific pursuits that provide more confidence than others, but it has nothing to do with historical verses witnessed. Data that can be replicated and statistically analyzed should provide more reliable conclusions that that which cannot be replicated. Certainly much of geology would fall into this category of "observational science" (that which cannot be statistically analyzed), which is not to say that it is unreliable, just does not provide as confident of conclusions as that which can be statistically analyzed.What do you think? Does that make sense?HBD

duplicate removed.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

I tried that argument a couple of times. In particular I pointed out that the formation of the Grand Canyon formation was neither witnessed nor described in the Bible. I got no response either. Define "statistically analyzed" because I don't believe the term applies to geology. In particular, aging considerations alone are enough to settle the question of whether the GC was formed in a single year, and certainly the measured ages of GC layers are something subject to statistical analysis.Geology is not just looking at rocks and making stuff up.ABE:Should have said that I believe geology is subject to statistical analysis. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

I don't really find much to agree with in the distinctions people have tried to draw between various fields of science. There are many tools in the scientific toolbox for gathering and analyzing the data into a tapestry of evidence upon which to base theory. Some fields lend themselves to controlled experiments to generate data (physics), others must gather much of their data from events that happened long ago (paleogeology) or over which we have no control (meteorology), but this isn't what decides our level of confidence.I don't know how one would compare our confidence in these ideas: that the charge of the proton is +1 (physics), that the universe is 13.8 billion years old (cosmology), and that the earth is 4.56 billion years old (geology). These ideas became accepted because they convinced a preponderance of scientists in the relevant fields, not because we made statistical assessments. Sometimes the scientific tool that does the convincing *is* statistics, as with the Higgs Boson, other times it is other scientific tools.--Percy

She always complains about being misrepresented when you talk about what she said instead of what she wishes she said.In this case what she wishes she could say cannot be said; she wants to describe an epistemology that does just what creationists want it to do and which is based on propositions less arbitrary than "because we say so". It can't be done, but it's what she wishes she'd said. Pointing out what she actually said is so unfair.