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Author Topic:   SCIENCE: -- "observational science" vs "historical science" vs ... science.
PaulK
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Message 451 of 614 (735964)
08-28-2014 4:54 PM
Reply to: Message 450 by edge
08-28-2014 4:05 PM


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.

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PaulK
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Message 452 of 614 (735980)
08-29-2014 10:23 AM
Reply to: Message 450 by edge
08-28-2014 4:05 PM


Faith is responding again and demonstrating her confusion and ignorance, yet again:
I'm going by what everyone agrees with about inductive reasoning, including Wikipedia from which I quoted,, that it can't lead to certainty but is good for hypothesis formation.
Wikipedia does not suggest that inductive reasoning is merely good enough for "hypothesis formation"
Of course you do science inductively when that's all that's possible, which is the case with sciences that are trying to reconstruct the prehistoric, or as I like to refer to it, unwitnessed, past.
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:
(Over and over they fail to take into account that you lose genetic potentials or information with every selection event, which is OBVIOUS, PEOPLE!)
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.

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PaulK
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Posts: 17919
Joined: 01-10-2003
Member Rating: 6.7


Message 470 of 614 (736044)
08-31-2014 10:43 AM


Faith has replies to my point that she was lying. Apparently her excuse is that she can't remember the positions taken by her opponents so she's entitled to misrepresent them.
The most laughable part is the end where she says:
UPDATE 8/30: Occurred to me that maybe PaulK was saying I was wrong to say that they fail to take the loss of genetic diversity into account. If so he'd have to show where anyone did take it into account as all I recall is endless arguments about this. If one or two did concede the point it must have been after all that argument AND I'd guess it was a highly compromised concession.
No Faith. There were NO endless arguments on that. Not at all.
It seems also that the real reason that she can't remember is that she likes to forget her defeats. She wants to pretend that she has a good argument so she can't admit - even to herself - that she had no good answer to the rebuttals.
But the details are really off-topic here, so I'll go no further. If Faith wants to come back and finally give some decent arguments then maybe there will be something worth discussion but by her post she still has nothing that has not been adequately answered.

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PaulK
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Posts: 17919
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Message 471 of 614 (736045)
08-31-2014 10:45 AM
Reply to: Message 469 by Percy
08-31-2014 9:51 AM


Re: Reply to "What I mean by the Unwitnessed Past"
Percy I think that you will find that any quantitative result - and that includes age estimates - will involve statistics. The presentation to the public may often omit them but they will be there in the scientific papers.

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 Message 475 by Percy, posted 08-31-2014 2:47 PM PaulK has replied

  
PaulK
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Posts: 17919
Joined: 01-10-2003
Member Rating: 6.7


Message 476 of 614 (736052)
08-31-2014 2:57 PM
Reply to: Message 475 by Percy
08-31-2014 2:47 PM


Re: Reply to "What I mean by the Unwitnessed Past"
By my understanding error bars imply a confidence limit (and are only meaningful if the confidence limit is stated).

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PaulK
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Posts: 17919
Joined: 01-10-2003
Member Rating: 6.7


Message 478 of 614 (736054)
08-31-2014 4:38 PM
Reply to: Message 477 by Percy
08-31-2014 4:27 PM


Re: Reply to "What I mean by the Unwitnessed Past"
I think that you are confusing the issue here.
Let's keep with the simple point I made earlier. Statistics are used in almost all quantitative results. And if they give error bars statistics have been used to calculate those error bars, and there is a confidence figure associated with them. Any suggestion otherwise is simply wrong.

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PaulK
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Posts: 17919
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Message 490 of 614 (736077)
09-01-2014 4:00 PM
Reply to: Message 489 by Percy
09-01-2014 3:41 PM


Re: Reply to "What I mean by the Unwitnessed Past"
Well Percy, I'm still satisfied to have shown that statistics are rather more widely used and more important than your original assessment.

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 Message 489 by Percy, posted 09-01-2014 3:41 PM Percy has replied

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PaulK
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Posts: 17919
Joined: 01-10-2003
Member Rating: 6.7


Message 492 of 614 (736079)
09-01-2014 4:51 PM
Reply to: Message 491 by Percy
09-01-2014 4:36 PM


Re: Reply to "What I mean by the Unwitnessed Past"
And yet, if the confidence limits on the age of the Earth or the Universe were too large, those results would not be accepted as accurate. It's not true that statistics had nothing to do with their acceptance. The statistics don't tell the whole story, but they are an important part of it.
It's how scientists handle errors in measurements. So if there is any uncertainty in a measurement, you can bet that statistics are involved to try to quantify it.

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PaulK
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Posts: 17919
Joined: 01-10-2003
Member Rating: 6.7


Message 498 of 614 (736089)
09-02-2014 1:17 AM
Reply to: Message 493 by Percy
09-01-2014 9:15 PM


Re: Reply to "What I mean by the Unwitnessed Past"
quote:
I couldn't accept that any quantitative result will involve statistics (your Message 471), and this alternative expression is still a bit unpalatable. Does a measurement include simple counts?
How much uncertainty is there in simple counts ? If there isn't enough to worry about, no need to use statistics. If there is, then how else do you deal with it ?

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PaulK
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Posts: 17919
Joined: 01-10-2003
Member Rating: 6.7


Message 525 of 614 (736453)
09-10-2014 12:58 PM
Reply to: Message 520 by Percy
09-10-2014 10:23 AM


Re: Faith responds about "proof"
In fairness I think that Faith is simply presenting her point very poorly. Facts are not evidence for a claim if they do not support that claim.
Unfortunately for her she immediately undermines her assertion with the following:
Limestones do not normally build up as layers among layers, they had to have formed elsewhere and been transported and deposited as a layer. Water, of course, makes sedimentary layers; this is demonstrated in deltas and along the coastal margins.
Making up irrational excuses to cling to predetermined conclusions in the face of the evidence only shows that the evidence really does support a quite different conclusion.

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PaulK
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Posts: 17919
Joined: 01-10-2003
Member Rating: 6.7


(1)
Message 551 of 614 (736909)
09-14-2014 5:14 PM
Reply to: Message 545 by Percy
09-14-2014 9:52 AM


Of course Faith does not have a legitimate argument. She recognises that we can work out things that happened in the prehistoric past. Claiming that hypotheses cannot be tested when they have been is an obvious falsehood.
And if she uses "prove" in an ordinary sense then desperate appeals to an assumed "systematic error" which affects the many diverse dating methods are clearly invalid. It HAS been proved that the Earth is very much more than 10,000 years old by any standard but a demand for absolute proof.
Faith does it all backwards, of course. She starts with the conclusions and tries to concoct "rules" that will justify them. And in this case she has to resort to inconsistencies.
When we point out that the Flood wouldn't produce the evidence we observe, we can't work out what the Flood would do. When she claims that the Flood would produce the evidence that we see that objection vanishes.
When we point to conclusions about the unwitnessed prehistoric past that she does not object to then she doesn't pretend to defend her claim that we can't reach such conclusions. She jsut accepts that it is possible. When talking about conclusions that she does object to then the assertion that the unwitnessed prehistoric past is unknowable suddenly pops up again.
The only consistent factor in Faith's evaluation is Faith's opinion of the conclusions. Not the evidence. Not the supporting arguments. That certainly is not science.

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