Applying Science to Past Events

I was addressing your analagy. And trying to show where it comes short.
All that you have shown is the verification of the hypothesis today about the temp to boil.
YET when I ask you to show how the scientific method is able to determine the boiling point in the past/present you just show the testing of today or yesterday (by a test yesterday).
Then you say WE will ASSUME conditions were the same in the past/present.
Perhaps so and probably so. However an assumption is only just that. It is not the product of the Method. Otherwise it would not be an assumption.
For example if you said we know the future boiling point of water say in 2222A.D and yet a time machine shows it is 96 degrees (if at all possible) then your theory of temp to boil would be shown to have beed poorly founded.This has been a good example of where we disagree with you guys on when the scientific method has been applied.
It really should be forcing one side to re-examine its stance. There shouldn't be such a disagreement at this point in our discussion.
Someone is just plain wrong and I've been over it in my mind and can't see where I'm wrong. Your analagy(s) always support my side.
Rob

I read carefully what you said Loudmouth and with all respect you didn't address why I said this analagy fails as an example of the scientific method being applied to a past event. Our great contention.Usually you do directly answer everyone so thats why I point it out.I understand what you said and don't disagre.
Yet it still remains that the hypothesis was not tested here. The culprit ball did not have a test/observation of a prediction of its involvement.As I said this is a close equation but we are beyond entry level and I'm holding up my end.
My objection has not been addressed and if not then this analagy should be pulled as support for your position. and we struggled over this for a while.
Rob

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

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

It was the baseball analagy we have been contending about. Post 155 then post 170 then post 192.
Rob

I don't repeat my premises anymore then anyone else. This is just not correct analysis.The impact of geology on the oil industry has nothing to do with histiorical geology. Where to find oil is simply based on present geology factors. In fact how and when it got to where it is has nothing to do with oil exploration. Its there and any further ideas of why is another subject for them. first they found it and then came origin speculation.The archelogy thing likewise is about present evidence and not related to the scientific method.
Unless you could show how. But your track record of the past on these analagies is evidence (though not scientific) isn't promising.
Rob

I don't repeat my premises anymore then anyone else. This is just not correct analysis.The impact of geology on the oil industry has nothing to do with histiorical geology. Where to find oil is simply based on present geology factors. In fact how and when it got to where it is has nothing to do with oil exploration. Its there and any further ideas of why is another subject for them. first they found it and then came origin speculation.The archelogy thing likewise is about present evidence and not related to the scientific method.
Unless you could show how. But your track record of the past on these analagies is evidence (though not scientific) isn't promising.
Rob

The key phrase is tentatively thru the scientific method. (The method is key)I agree physical laws have never been observed to vary thru time and space.
I agree we can tentatively say what boiling temps were in the past.BUT and However the past boiling temps you have not shown to have been established by the scientific method or how they could be.
So you havn't made your analagy work for you yet.
Rob

What you wrote me was about establishing that there was no difference between now and in the past boiling temps.
This was not showing by this analagy how boiling temps of the past/present can be done by the scientific method.I understand you believe this is a another way of getting to that point but I feel it is throwing ne a curve ball.
You seem to be saying you are proving past temps are the same as now because you are proving they couldn't be different.
Yet this is not the same thing.
The past temp is still just an assumption and not a result of the method. However reasonable.Also by the way the Observation part was fine but the Test part was relying on assumptions like since light travels at a certain speed then it did so in this case. etc
The boiling point of water of the past/future must be testable today without assumptions of the very point being tested.
Rob

Fine. What you said was true.
However this about using the scientific method.
And this method was not used to test the past.
All that happened was a resonable conclusion that the past is the same as the future.You guys just can't keep this straight. Indeed it is a equation to pay attention too.
Crashfrog either the past is testable or it isn't. Now these other guys seem to be worn out trying to demonstrate the past is testable by using analagys or whatever arguement.
Can you help save your side?
Rob

What I said I stand by. i know you have read in books that historical geology is used in the oil industry but in OUR discussion I have been demonstrating this is wrong. They only search on basic information on basic findings. They later make interpretations however this has nothing to do with geology theory aiding the search for oil.
Rob

I understand what books say about historical geology aiding the search for oil but its a mistake.All these people do is search for oil in the sequence of rocks where they usually find it. Then later they make interpretations of why the rocks hold oil here and not there.
In fact oil is a favourite creationist point to indicate quick creation by events and not slow. The flood event created and stored all oil sources.When a archeolgist finds pottery of the past it is only a snapshot from the past. A piece of evidence needing interpretation but useful for the scientific method.
It is only a present observation and not a test of the past.
Rob

Yet in the analgy you gave me and insisted that the hypothesis had been tested you did not show in fact the culprit ball having a test/observation of a prediction of its involvement.
This was what I was correcting you on.Now you bring up ways that the ball on the floor could be tested.
Yet this was not in your hypothesis. This you only suggest can still be done but you didn't do.Your hypothesis was that THIS ball caused this situation.
You said the matter could by the scientific method lead to a theory.
I said a past ev...remainder of message lost, sorry...

Yes this analagy showed the scientific method looking at a past event.
Or did itNow you asked me what is ordinary analysis and how is it separate from scientific analysis/method.
You said mothers and everyone employs the scientific method everyday and is a simple rational extension of everyday life.Yet here is the great rub of misunderstanding.Ordinary analysis and mothers for everyday life do not need to use the scientific method. And they don't. They can make excellent conclusions because the data is so COMPLETE. Any past event is for all intents a present event save for actually being on camera.
All this is opposite to the whole point of the scientific method being employed in the first place.The method exists to bring a competent assesment of data to draw conclusion where otherwise it is not obvious.
The method is about making hypothesis. In everyday life people do not do this including the baseball example. In the baseball thing a mother would not make a hypothesis because the data is so complete.The method exists for a reason and is not a definition of ordinary thinking as you said.The method is a agressive testing of hypothesis to draw conclusion and so this is why it is not used in origin subjects. Because there is nothing to test relative to the great hypothesis made.
And so creationists say origin subjects do not emoploy the method. And this is true.
However then I went further and said any past event can't have the Method applied to it. This is strictly speaking not so as the baseball analagy seems to show.
However in real life the method would not be employed here because the data is so complete no extra method is needed to draw a clear conclusion.
Because the method should not be employed here one might say it was wrongly used as an analagy of bringing the method to bear on past and gone events. One might say one could use the method on a past event where as part of the evidence/test was a video of the event.
No way. The method exists for where the conclusion is not obvious and needs scrunity even if it can also be used where the conclusion is obvious.
I know this is a close equation but thats science.
Rob

You asked how do mothers know they have all the data.
It doesn't matter. They are just drawing conclusions on the data. And because the data is so complete thioer common sense tells them the conclusion is right. In fact in the baseball case falsification could of said the ball was a plant with even of had been sent thru another window to put glass in it to coply the room in question. Yet a mother wouldn't go this far in testing her "hypothesis".To be clear the scientific method is not a analysis statement of what takes place when we in daily life draw conclusions. Otherwise we all would literally be scientists.
NO it is a METHOD to examine systematically data to draw conclusion.
The Method is needed where it is needed. And it is needed where the data does not clearly tell the tale.
YES the method can be used step by step as in the baseball analagy to determine a past event. However the data is so complete as to nullify any actual need for a Method to draw a conclusion. Its practically (but not) observed.
Indeed one could offer a video of the event as a test of the hypothesis but why the hypothesis in the first place with such great evidence?
In origin subjects the Method is a needed thing to draw conclusion on scant (your word) evidence.
And creationists say the method is not employed here because it can't be. Not just that conclusions are wrong but that the method isn't used at all. It can't test its hypothesis about past events and processes.
And then I went too far in saying NO past event can be used by the Method. It seems it can but only because the data is SOOOO complete. In fact so complete as to make it irrelvant to use the Method in the first place.You said science looks for plausible natural mechanisms. Agreed
However for it to claim it has found one by its special method,well this must be demonstrated.
That what it found was by the method.
And past and gone events and processes in these cases have not been brought under the scrunity of the Method. They are historical speculation.
Our great question here is still Is it Science? When dealing with what Toe etc asserts.
And we say No it is not science.
Rob