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

So we can, as you I persuaded you to concede on the other thread, know that stegosauruses lived. Hooray, we're getting there. But then ... ... apparently we're not allowed to say that stegosauruses didn't fly from tree to tree, because that would touch on how they lived. The idea that they didn't fly sounds suspiciously like something an atheist would say. Or pretty much anyone with a lick of sense, really.Similarly, it seems that we can't say that a tyrannosaur and a stegosaur aren't brother and sister, since this claim about their genetic relationship is untestable.One can learn so much from creationists about science, such as how not to do it.However, there's something more you should tell us. On what principle do you declare that we can know that stegosauruses lived, but not whether they could fly. Now that you've retreated from your general claim that we can't know the unwitnessed past, what criterion are you using to decide what we can and can't know?Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

OK ... so we can't know how fossil creatures died or what the weather was like when they lived. But wait, what's this you say on the other thread ... ? So ... we can't know how fossil creatures died or what the weather was like ... and also it's obvious that they were killed by a big flood, one would have to be stupid or dishonest to deny it.

What do you suppose you're invoking when you correctly conclude that there were once living stegosaurs?

Well yes, reconstructing-thing-A-in-the-past is always going to be slightly weaker evidence than seeing-thing-A-in-the-present. Living stegosauruses which we could see would have to be somewhat stronger evidence for living stegosauruses than the bones that we actually have.But that doesn't necessarily mean that it's weaker evidence than seeing-thing-B-in-the-present. For example, which would you be more confident of --- the proposition that stegosauruses once lived, or the proposition that the latest heart disease drug has fewer side-effects than the last one? The former, of course, although the latter is testable in the present.(By analogy, a murder case against person X is always somewhat more plausible if you have a confession. But that doesn't mean that the case against X with a confession is stronger than the case against person Y without one.)Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Well, exactly --- the evidence is in the present, the thing it's evidence for is in the past. But people like Ham want to divide science not according to the nature of the evidence, but according to the time when the thing it's evidence for occurred.

Well, when we infer living dinosaurs from the bones, we are, very automatically, using the uniformitarian principle that you need to have a living animal first before you get bones, and that this is true of these particular bones, that they didn't just fall out of the sky, or grow in the ground, or get magicked out of nothing by God. Without uniformitarianism, we wouldn't be able to infer the living dinosaurs, we would have no grounds on which to do so.

So you'd reject any creationist attempt to explain away the evidence for age by positing varying rates of the speed of light or of nuclear decay?

And yet the absence of these clues and witnesses doesn't stop you from believing that there were once living stegosauruses. So that's not actually the criterion you're using, is it?

If the problem is that "There are plenty of clues and witnesses in historic time that don't exist in the prehistoric past" then that is a problem with once-living stegosauruses.

Bumped for Faith.

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.

I've got some time, let's look at this crap. We can see what Hutton wrote about Siccar Point by the daring expedient of seeing what Hutton wrote about Siccar Point. This is so subtle and ingenious an idea that I'm not surprised Faith didn't think of it. As Hutton was a notoriously bad writer, I shall elucidate quotations from his book with my own notes.So, what was Hutton actually up to? In his explorations of Scotland, he observed lower strata of schist with the bedding planes nearly vertical, and upper strata of sandstone and clay with the strata nearly horizontal: This led Hutton to wonder as follows: That is, did the sequence of events look like this:(1) Deposition of the lower strata; deposition of the upper strata; uplift of the lower strata.or like this:(2) Deposition of the lower strata; uplift of the lower strata; erosion of the lower strata; deposition of the upper strata.In favor of point (2) Hutton adduced the point that the upper strata were remarkably flat: He also wondered whether the erosion in sequence (2) took place above or beneath the sea. He reasoned that if it took place on land, water could have washed away the clasts; if it took place underwater and was followed by marine deposition of the upper strata, the clasts would still be there forming a very thick layer between the lower and the upper strata. While there were some clasts (confirming, incidentally, that the lower strata were lithified before they were eroded) there weren't enough of them to justify the latter hypothesis. Now it is obvious that both these points are best elucidated by looking at the surfaces of contact --- the unconformities --- between the upper and lower strata, where they are exposed in cross-section: which is what we can see at Siccar Point. So Hutton writes about Siccar Point as follows: What makes Siccar Point particularly interesting, from the point of view of the history of science, is that it is, as Hutton says (in the title of the section in which he describes it) one of the "Observations made on purpose to elucidate the subject". That is, in his hands geology had finally attained such maturity as a subject that he and his friends could distinguish between hypotheses by going and looking at, indeed looking for evidence: they could say to themselves "If things were like this, then the unconformity will look like this, but if things were like that, then the unconformity will look like that --- so let us go and find the unconformity."(If we compare even this primitive state of affairs with modern-day "flood geology", we can see that Hutton was already more of a scientist than the "flood geologists" ever will be.)As to why Faith is so howlingly wrong about Siccar Point, I think we can clear her of actual malicious falsehood. As usual, she has been too lazy to find out what she's talking about, and too arrogant to realise that this disqualifies her from opening her big yap and talking about it.And Faith, this is not the first time this has happened. Perhaps in future you might take steps to avoid it.

But this is not true.On the one hand, you have not argued for your assertions; and on the other hand, we can read what Hutton wrote. You great loony, we rejected your dumb hypothesis for the same reason Hutton rejected it with respect to his unconformity. We considered it, like him; like him, we saw that all the evidence was against it.

Well, again, on the one hand we have your assertion, on the other hand, we have Hutton's book, which I quoted. Now plainly he is using evidence to test hypotheses, the exact thing you say he wasn't doing.