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

That is completely arbitrary. Whether it was unwitnessed yesterday or 50 million years ago, there is no difference. It was unwitnessed.The whole point is that we use observational science to test our theories of what happened in the past. We test the ratios of isotopes in rocks. We compare genomes. We compare features between living and fossil species. All of this is in the present and is observational science.

Such an arbitrary division of time. Why does evidence only become valid after humans start writing stories in clay tablets? Care to explain? Did the act of using Cuniform somehow magically transform all evidence on earth from invalid to valid?Edited by Taq, : No reason given.

Why can't we use empirical evidence that was produced by the past event that we can test in the present? You know, like forensic science? Forensic science can still be used to reconstruct a crime even if there are no witnesses. You can confirm that the evidence in the present is consistent with your hypothesis. This is known as doing science. None of those methods includes an eye-witness. In fact, they use DNA comparisons to confirm relatedness, just as scientists do for humans and other species. It's the same test. It would be a very weak something since people can write made up stories. Then the laboratory sciences confirm evolution:Just a moment...The authors of that paper use laboratory science to confirm that humans share a common ancestor with other ape species.

I'm sorry, but I do.Absolute proof is obviously off the table since it is unattainable.What we can do is see if an experiment confirms our hypothesis. By the way, confirmation is not the same as proof. The sad part is that you do not even attempt to interpret evidence. You ignore the evidence. You lecturing us on genetics is laughable, at best.

If the climate were different in the past then it would show up in the rings, just as the "Little Ice Age" shows up in those very tree ring records.Edited by Taq, : No reason given.

Bible witnesses are not empirical data sets. That is why they are ignored.As Dr. House says quite often, people lie. Facts don't.

Favorite cop out of religious nuts. Nope, they don't.You have failed already. Yes, it does. It affects the gene pool of populations over time. It affects the morphology of species, both fossil and living.You have failed again. The claims that we have absolute proof are made up crap.

Also false. I can predict protein function using the theory of evolution which can have many uses from bioremediation to design of pesticides.

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PLoS Comput Biol. 2005 Oct;1(5):e45. Epub 2005 Oct 7.

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Protein molecular function prediction by Bayesian phylogenomics.
Engelhardt BE, Jordan MI, Muratore KE, Brenner SE.

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Abstract
We present a statistical graphical model to infer specific molecular function for unannotated protein sequences using homology. Based on phylogenomic principles, SIFTER (Statistical Inference of Function Through Evolutionary Relationships) accurately predicts molecular function for members of a protein family given a reconciled phylogeny and available function annotations, even when the data are sparse or noisy. Our method produced specific and consistent molecular function predictions across 100 Pfam families in comparison to the Gene Ontology annotation database, BLAST, GOtcha, and Orthostrapper. We performed a more detailed exploration of functional predictions on the adenosine-5'-monophosphate/adenosine deaminase family and the lactate/malate dehydrogenase family, in the former case comparing the predictions against a gold standard set of published functional characterizations. Given function annotations for 3% of the proteins in the deaminase family, SIFTER achieves 96% accuracy in predicting molecular function for experimentally characterized proteins as reported in the literature. The accuracy of SIFTER on this dataset is a significant improvement over other currently available methods such as BLAST (75%), GeneQuiz (64%), GOtcha (89%), and Orthostrapper (11%). We also experimentally characterized the adenosine deaminase from Plasmodium falciparum, confirming SIFTER's prediction. The results illustrate the predictive power of exploiting a statistical model of function evolution in phylogenomic problems. A software implementation of SIFTER is available from the authors.

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You telling us what is and isn't constructive in the field of biology is completely laughable. Then actually show that it is a lie instead of making yet another baseless accusation. Find a bird to mammal transitional. Find a rabbit in the Cambrian. Find a bat with feathers.There are TONS of ways to falsify the ToE. The only one lying continuously in this thread is you. Perhaps you should think about that for a second.Edited by Taq, : No reason given.

Perhaps you could actually demonstrate that they are misinterpretations?

It reminds me of the current Republican Party. They are incapable of governing unless they have something from Obama to say "No" to. When you ask them what their position is, they have to wait for Obama to take a position, and then stand against that position.Such is the case with creationists. They have to wait for real scientists to discover more evidence that backs evolution, and then they have to be against that evidence. None of the primary, peer reviewed research papers (where new discoveries are first published) are from scientists using creationism.The last thing creationists want to do is make testable hypotheses because they know what the results of those experiments will be.Edited by Taq, : No reason given.

It's an arbitrary distinction.What you define as "operational science" is still just historical science of more recent events using indirect evidence. All experimental results are gathered by scientists after an actual event, and rarely are they actual direct measurements of the process under question.For example, if I treat mice with a drug and I want to see how that affects gene expression of genes A and B, I would collect blood after treatment. As of that moment, I am now doing historical science, according to your definitions. The evidence I am gathering was evidence produced by a past event, the drug interactions in the mouse. For gene expression, I would harvest RNA, turn it into cDNA, and then use qPCR to measure relative levels of cDNA's using fluorescent dyes. I am indirectly measuring cDNA's using dyes, and those cDNA's indirectly represent mRNA's harvested from cells, and those harvested mRNA's indirectly represent the state of the mice in the past. All historical science, according to you.In fact, I would challenge you to describe an experiment that isn't historical science.

Then it is an arbitrary distinction. There is no reason why eyewitness testimony is any better than other forms of empirical evidence. In fact, rapists have been exonerated by forensic evidence even though they were convicted on the basis of eyewitness testimony.Even worse, we can directly observe galaxies that are billions of lighyears away, and creationists still won't accept it.

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.

I would say that scientists use the word "prove" in much the same way that courtroom dramas do. They mean "proven beyond a reasonable doubt". As you say, they don't mean proven beyond any doubt.Stephen Jay Gould used this for his definition of fact:"confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent."
Top Cash Earning Games in India 2022 | Best Online Games to earn real moneyIn this sense, proven and fact are interchangeable.Edited by Taq, : No reason given.

In the end, it all boils down to "anything goes" in the mind of Faith. From her blog post found here:

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Oh and one more thing. The evidence you keep touting can only be interpreted, not proved. Creationists have a different interpretation (talking about the unwitnessed/prehistoric past here) and since you can't prove yours, so much for your evidence. And (answering Coyote in this case) this is what is meant when we say all you have is theory too. It's unprovable interpretation. This has been explained many times but you continue to recite the party line and claim your theory is more substantial than that. It gets tiresome repeating these simple obvious points.

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The idea that any old interpretation is just as probable or plausible as any other is intellectual nihilism, by which I mean a position that does away with any need to think. All you need to do is invent a story that you like, and that story is as good as any scientific study because . . . well, it's an interpretation.This runs through all of Faith's posts. All she needs to do is say, "I find this plausible," and she is done. No need to support any interpretation with a comprehensive set of evidences and mechanisms. Nope. Just say that it's plausible for no apparent reason, and move one.If the real world did work like this, perhaps it would be a bit easier at times. All a defense attorney would have to do is say, "It's entirely plausible that invisible unicorns planted my client's DNA at the crime scene." According to Faith, this is an entirely valid interpretation. To sane people, it isn't a valid interpretation, but that is beside the point when discussing these subjects with Faith.Edited by Taq, : No reason given.