Applying Science to Past Events

It seems to me it was getting somewhere. It was getting to the error of one side here under intellectual cross exanmination.
I insist someone is right and someone is wrong and surely the creationist one should by now on this matter of been shown to any candid observer to have his reasoning wrong.
Yet this did not happen and i could Percy go anywhere in any science journal and argue likewise with the same result. Toe is not shown untenable however claiming origin subjects as scientific subjects is untenable. They are intellecetual, prestiges and difficult subjects but they are not science. They are history except in special cases where they may employ the scientific method.Origin subjects and the successes of science are two different gangs.
Rob

All this has made me realize something. All this time some people are saying they don't believe in an after life. Usually scientists. So what do they do? They spend their lives looking for answers, and trying to make a name for themselves, so that when they are gone, something will remain of them. Kind of like an afterlife. Why bother if you don't believe in an after life? What sense does it make to leave behind something if you can't even enjoy it?
Aren't you trying to create your own personal afterlife?

You didn't react to the baseball thing so is the pennant mine?NO I don't understand how the testing occured!
I don't see how tentatively thru the scientific method that water boiled at 100 degrees in 1066A.D.!It would require assuptions that themselves can't be demonstrated thru the scientific method.
Rob

But they're not. What you call "origin subjects" have many successes, too.Take the oil industry, for example. They study geological evidence from the past by to make predictions about where to find oil. If their science were unsound we would quickly abandon it after drilling too many dry holes. But we keep finding oil, Robert. How do you explain the success of oil industry geologists if evidence from the past is invalid?Or take archeology. All our archeological evidence comes from the past. The location of the ancient city of Ur was found through satellite photographs that revealed ancient travel routes. If evidence from the past is actually invalid, then how did this ancient evidence lead us to the city?Until you actually start addressing the points people have raised instead of just repeating your premise that evidence from the past is invalid because it somehow violates the scientific method, you don't really need to be carrying on the discussion yourself. A parrot would suffice.--Percy

The key word is tentatively. Physical laws have never been observed to vary across time and space, so we tentatively accept the theory that physical laws are invariant across all time and space. Last time I checked, 1066 AD existed within all time and space. Therefore if water boils at 100^oC at one atmosphere pressure today, then we tentatively accept that it boiled at 100^oC at one atmosphere pressure in 1066 AD.--Percy

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NO I don't understand how the testing occured!
I don't see how tentatively thru the scientific method that water boiled at 100 degrees in 1066A.D.!

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Observation: The boiling point of water is a direct result of intermolecular forces that are constant between all molecules of water. These forces are a result of atomic interactions. For these forces to change the atomic forces and atomic properties of oxygen and hydrogen have to change as well.Hypothesis: The boiling point of water at one atmosphere varied in the past.Test: We can look at distant stars to see if atoms behave as they do on earth. Since light takes time to travel across large distances, we can look into the history of atomic characteristics. Therefore, if atoms acted differently in the past it would be detectable by looking at distant objects, such as stars.Observation: Distant objects containing atoms act the same as they do on earth. They have the same characteristics that pertain to the boiling point of water.Conclusion: The hypothesis fails. In order to conclude that boiling points changed in the past we would have had to observe changes in molecular and atomic properties. Those observations were not made. In fact, the opposite observation has been made, the constancy of atomic characteristics.Anything else?Added in edit:

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You didn't react to the baseball thing so is the pennant mine?

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Could you give me a mssg #? I might have missed it.This message has been edited by Loudmouth, 09-23-2004 04:10 PM

I hope you understand I do not discount evolution completely.
I do believe we were created, just how, remains a mystery.

*double post*
I checked, I swear This message has been edited by riVeRraT, 09-23-2004 05:29 PM

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I hope you understand I do not discount evolution completely.
I do believe we were created, just how, remains a mystery.

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I hope that you understand that no one here is saying that the theory of evolution is an absolute fact. All science is tentative, and we only trust a theory as far as the evidence will allow us. The less evidence, the more tentative we are in trusting the theory. Given the heaps of evidence supporting evolution it is trusted to a high degree. However, this doesn't mean that scientists accept it as absolute fact. I would characterize scientists as accepting evolution with a high degree of certainty, but not completely.This is in stark contrast to religious faith, where belief in a deity is absolute in the absence of empirical support. If God's existence were as easy as finding fossils, then what reason would there be for faith? If God could be demonstrated in a test tube, then why would there be any other religion than christianity? Humans tend to TRUST things they can touch and test while they have blind faith in things that defy touching and testability. This is why science is a different endeavour than religion, they rely on two different mind sets and two different sets of evidence.

Ok, lets compare apples to apples please. Evidence in a case has nothing to do with the sun rising. Here is why: What about the evidences we can't see? Or don't know about yet? We have faith in the unseen then, if we truely believe the the sun will rise everyday without fail.I understand perfectly the difference between religious faith and faith in general. But the two feelings are so close, and I find it amazing how everyone in life has some kind of faith or another. Scientists will get all offended when you compare this faith to religious faith, but the the fact that we have any faith in anything at all says something.BTW, I am not saying that my belief in God is objective. It is to me, but not to anyone else. Most anyone can feel the same, I know many who do. In order to really complete the method in which you find him, takes a lot and if any of it is missing, it won't work. It's not a scientific method, but very close to it. I've been through all this before, I don't want to go over it here. I am just telling you that God is there for you, I know this with all my heart, whether you believe it or not.Is there any particular reason why you can't find God?

Well, the most obvious reason would be because there's no such thing as God.

Oh yes they are. It was made very clear to me from the very first thread I participated in, that evolution is fact. That is the belief of some I suppose.As far as God is concerned, that is the driving force why I came in here to begin with. I am here to share with you that it is easy to find God. You just have to look for him, just like digging up a dinosaur. Sometimes the answer is so simple, yet so hard. If you do find him, your gonna be like " I can't believe it was right in front of me all this time". Then try to explain it to others, and get the same treatment I get now

Oh, so you've proved this?Tell me how, so I can do a peer review and see if your data holds up.

It's obvious to the most casual observer who's not afraid to look at the world with open eyes.Don't you think that, if there was no God, millions of children around the world would starve to death while, in the richest nation in the world, the number one health problem was that we ate too much?Don't you think that, if there was no God, religious rivalry and armed conflict would proceed apace with a desparate rush to invent horrible new ways to kill people not just like you? Don't you think that wars would inflame, manipulated by those seeking nothing more than to profit from both sides?Don't you think that, if there was no God, calamity would fall at random, without rhyme or reason or consideration for how good a person you were? Don't you think we would live in a world where cancer would cut short the life of an innocent child, but a rapist serving time for the brutal assaults of women would win the lottery?Don't you think that, if there was no God, wickedness and just plain bad behavior would be rewarded for some and punished for others; that inequity would be the human condition and anything good, anything of merit in this world would be the result of humans working hard against almost impossible odds?Don't you think that, if there was no God, that the entities who live on an insignificant planet on the edge of an average galaxy would feel the need to offset their ignominious position in an outright hostile universe by inventing an imaginary friend with all of the positive traits they knew of and none of the negative; a friend who would make them feel like they were at the meaningful center of the universe, if not the physical?In short, if there was no God, wouldn't the world be exactly like it is now?How can you look at the universe, at the world, and conclude that this is the plan of an all-powerful, benevolent entity? You'd have to be delusional to believe in that kind of God.This message has been edited by crashfrog, 09-23-2004 11:41 PM

Those two phrases are *not* contradictory. The second one talks of the FACT that life forms have changed with time on the planet.The first one offers a theory as to how that happened. Evolution is fact upon which a theory was built.This message has been edited by NosyNed, 09-24-2004 12:24 AM