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

No. But manifestly geological ideas can be tested. They can be tested by looking at the evidence.Hutton's reasoning gives a fine example of that.* Hypothesis : The lower strata were turned round after the upper strata were deposited.* Testable prediction : If that were the case the upper strata would have been disturbed by this process.* Observation : The upper strata show absolutely no sign of this, even at the surface of contact between the lower and the upper strata.* Conclusion : The hypothesis has been falsified. (And if you wanted to go further, there are some experiments you can try, like seeing if you can find any way in which you can rotate lower strata without disturbing strata above them. Though in this case the mere application of common sense might be sufficient.)Now I don't see how --- without pleading so special that it rides the short bus --- one could reject this conclusion but allow other inferences such as are used daily in our legal system, or indeed in our day-to-day lives. To the extent that we know anything, we know that the hypothesis has been falsified. A consistent epistemology that denied this would have to deny pretty much everything else as well.

d.p.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Fingerprints need interpreting, Faith, DNA needs interpreting, so you could try this bullshit on a court and see how far you get.However, in the given example, Siccar Point doesn't need interpreting, it is simply compared with the prediction of the hypothesis. Actually, the test was looking at the evidence, as you can see from my description of how the hypothesis was falsified. Next time I do so, you can thank me by actually reading it instead of making crazy shit up in your head. You can't. That's an interpretation of the X-ray diffraction pattern. Either show your working, or show an experiment. Shit you've made up is not admissible to "falsify" anything. You might as well make up a Fingerprint Fairy to "falsify" fingerprint evidence. "If it please the court, the fingerprints were not necessarily left by my client. They could equally well have been left by the Magic Flying Fingerprint Fairy, which I just made up in my head. This falsifies the fingerprint evidence. Ta-da!" Well, let me put it another way. The sort of dumb excuses you're using in your hysterical attempt to deny obvious facts about geology could be used equally well --- or badly --- to deny any facts whatsoever, no matter how completely true, blindingly obvious, and overwhelmingly well-evidenced they are.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

There are, in fact, New Age kooks who talk drivel about the structure of DNA. This doesn't prove that Crick and Watson were wrong. In the same way, the ability of halfwitted religious fanatics to dispute obvious facts about geology does not cast doubt on those facts. You can dispute anything if you're dumb enough.

Faith, the scientific method is the method used by scientists to uncover facts, not the method used by religious apologists to deny them. The latter method is known as apologetics. If you were being scientific, you would come to the same conclusions as scientists.By analogy, if what you make is asparagus soup, you have not been following a recipe for chocolate cake. You may like the soup better, but you cannot reasonably claim that it is more chocolate-y, or a better example of a cake, or that you're the only one who's following the recipe for chocolate cake properly.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

You could at least pretend to have an argument. Y'know, put up some inane smokescreen of verbiage, some feigned and unconvincing imitation of rational discussion.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

No it isn't. Literacy. You could also have answered that you're a small china hippopotamus with singing rhododendron bushes growing out of your porcelain nostrils, it's a free country.

I missed this one.In Faithworld, falsifying a hypothesis by means of making observations incompatible with its predictions isn't testable science.In the real world, it's the defining feature of science and the one thing that makes it testable.It is now actually not possible to be more wrong about a thing than Faith is about the scientific method. The phrase "you couldn't be more wrong" has ceased to be hyperbole and is merely the literal truth.

What you are decrying is in fact the whole of the scientific method.For it is just this: to test a hypothesis H, we calculate the predictions of H, that is, its logical consequences, the things that WOULD be true if H was true. We then test these predictions against observation.So, for example:* Hypothesis : There is an elephant in the room.* Testable prediction : If that were the case then if I looked in the room I WOULD see the elephant.* Observation : I have looked in the room and seen no elephant.* Conclusion : The hypothesis has been falsified.Now, if we are not allowed to make the step from hypothesis to prediction, then we can never test anything, we can never falsify anything, and all the science that's ever been done is bunk.And this illustrates what I've said about your techniques for reality-dodging.First, that they are way too general for their own good. In order to avoid a straightforward conclusion about geology, you have invented an epistemology in which it is forbidden to test anything and impossible to know anything --- even that there's no elephant in a visibly empty room.Second, that it is simply a goddamn lie for you to pretend that this new epistemology you've made up is the scientific method or anything like it. It is radically opposed to it. It is the exact opposite of it. Testing the predictions of hypotheses is pretty much all scientists do besides drink coffee and wash out their test tubes. If you are pleased with your epistemology, don't foist it on them, it would put them all out of a job overnight. Call it the Faithic Method, or the Apologetic Method, or the Willfully Ignorant Method, or the La-La-La-La-I-Can't-Hear-You-Method. But when you propose an epistemological principle that would end all possibility of practicing science, that is not the scientific method.

The fundie mental gymnastics over epistemology are reminiscent of the knots they tied themselves in over gay marriage. You wouldn't have thought there was a resemblance, but hear me out.The thing is, the one thing they couldn't do (in public) was argue their real reason for opposing gay marriage, which was "Gay people shouldn't be allowed to marry because EW TEH GHEY!" That would make them look like halfwitted bigots.What they had to do instead was pretend that there was a rational basis for what they wish to do by producing some sort of general principle which would incidentally bar gay marriage.But the problem was that they never could --- they never will --- produce any such principle which wouldn't do more than they required of it: which wouldn't ban infertile straight couples from marrying; or straight couples who didn't want children; or which wouldn't require them to be mean to groups they don't really object to, such as adulterers, usurers, or people who pick up sticks on Saturday; or which wouldn't allow a Catholic majority to ban Protestant weddings; or ... etc, etc.Now, the same sort of problem afflicts them when it comes to science. They can't argue the real principle they're using, which is "I will reject any fact, no matter how well-evidenced, that conflicts with the teaching of my sect". That would make them look like halfwitted bigots.What they have to do instead is pretend that there's a rational basis for what they wish to do by producing some sort of general principle which would incidentally bar the facts they don't like.But the problem is that they never could --- they never will --- produce any such principle which wouldn't do more than they required of it: which wouldn't involve throwing out all science; or all science relating to the past; or all science relating to things (such as atoms) that we can't see; or ... etc, etc.They will never find the rational basis, any more than someone with coulrophobia will ever find a rational basis for his fear of clowns. But the coulrophobe has this advantage over them: he can and will admit that his phobia is irrational. The fundies have to pretend that they're rational.

And yet your objection to the reasoning re Siccar Point was that it's wrong to say what WOULD be the case if a hypothesis was true. Which is exactly what we did to test the elephant hypothesis. If you will now admit that that argument was rubbish, we can move on. You keep claiming to have read my book on geology, you should really know what "erosion" means.As to what we can and can't prove, I should say that our knowledge of materials science, which tells us what the rocks would look like, is on a par with our knowledge of optics which tells us that I would see the elephant. This is, after all, the sort of science you trust implicitly every time you drive over a bridge, or take an elevator, or just enter a building. Shear stresses and the like are clearly among the things we've got pretty much down cold.It is up to you, then, to propose some way in which the rocks could end up like that and which is compatible with the hypothesis, just as if someone proposed that the elephant was there but that some unusual optical effect was preventing me from seeing it would also have to shoulder the burden of proof. It's not good enough to say "No, you haven't disproved the elephant, because there might be some mechanism, which I can't think of right now, which would make the elephant invisible to you." Ah, that's why you guys spend so much time campaigning against usury. Oh, wait ...See what I mean? Even the whole the-Bible-says-so thing is just an excuse, it's not your actual basis for action.Still, I guess we have open threads to discuss this on if we really want to. I just mentioned it because the resemblance is rather striking.

16.4.

So if someone argued that I wasn't torn to pieces by a lion yesterday, because if I had been I would not be able to write this message now, we should rule that out as a line of reasoning? Since we are now talking about the consequences of a hypothesis set in the past? And although we know what would happen if I was torn to pieces by a lion today we "can't know what would have been the case" if it had happened yesterday?Well, again, this is not the scientific method, it's your method. Don't blame scientists for it.

Well, petrophysics is in fact reconstructing the past in just the way you claim to be impossible, or at least in the way you claim to be impossible when the moon is waning and there's no R in the month (I shall not accuse you of consistency). For example, petrophysics writes: "It is obvious that whatever deformed/bent A did the same to C." Now, isn't this just the sort of thing you've been pretending we can't know?

So it's OK for someone to say that I wasn't eaten by a lion yesterday, but if someone also proposes that I wasn't eaten by a lion in 10,000 B.C. then they've gone too far? Well, see my remarks in post #229. Even in the case of the elephant in the room, we can imagine that there might be special circumstances preventing me from seeing it --- though we can't imagine what these circumstances might be. All facts, no matter how certain, are subject to this sort of vague speculative conjecture. And yet this doesn't stop us from saying, of a room that looks empty, that there is no elephant in it.