What IS Science And What IS NOT Science?

That's what the man said in the seminar. I've posted his email, I believe on page one or two of this thread. Email him and tell him your problem. I'm quite sure he'll give you an answer. Do you have specific knowledge that he's mistaken? My understanding is that it's common knowledge that some tropical animals have been discovered in the arctic ice. Open a thread and falsify that if you wish to persue it. You don't think there's any high-tech geologists? Likely he does more than digging in the dirt and rock. I'm sure he's involved in geophysical tech as well. You were'nt in the seminar. I was and he used evolutionist theory extensively to make his points. As I said early in the thread, this man debates evolutionists. Do you think he would challenge debate having little knowledge of evo? I don't know the extent of his guppy research. I didn't ask the details. You may email him if you wish. My point for the purpose of this thead is that he is an IDist creo scientist doing science.

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BUZSAW B 4 U 2 C Y BUZ SAW ---- Jesus said, "When these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads, for your redemption draws near." Luke 21:28

My friend, what ever did I post which gave you the notion that this man was going around to churches doing guppie fish research seminars. I thought I made it clear that he was doing seminars covering the whole creo/evo spectrum including flood geology, plate tetonics, big bang vs creation, dinosaurs, geometric dating, et al. Somewhere in the seminar as an aside he briefly mentioned his guppie research to lend credence to his point that mutations go so far within the species and appear to have a bounds as to how far they can mutate. I'm sure there's a better way of putting that which he surely did than I'm able to do. He did not elaborate on how many tanks or to what extent. He did, as I remember, say there were hundreds of guppies involved in the project. He observes the variations that come up in the mix for one thing as I understood it and gave a number which I forgot as to how many specific variations could emerge. I didn't take notes on all these incidentals.

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BUZSAW B 4 U 2 C Y BUZ SAW ---- Jesus said, "When these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads, for your redemption draws near." Luke 21:28

It seems, Buz, there are a couple of ways of learning about things. One is the process defined as "science" which has been described here. You put forward your guppy breeder as an example of science and at least some posters have agreed with you that it might meet the definition given however poorly it is actually being conducted.Perhaps you could clarify a bit. Do you agree that the process described (however it is named) is a very good way to learn about things?If you don't agree do you have another way that you would suggest?If you do agree can you itemize what you understand the process to be and why each piece is there?

Hi Holmes. I didn't mean to leave the impression that we were close friends since the seminar was the first time I met him. We did become acquainted there and since he lives in my region of the state, I hope to come to know him better. You are assuming that he has a lack of experience in biology. I'm not aware of his life history as to how much of his career has been in what he's doing now and what all he's been into. He has however done enough and learned enough to debate the whole science spectrum. This man is, imo, a lot more careful in his approach than Kent Hovind. I'm afraid we're getting into another topic here and I haven't contacted him regarding the specifics of these things yet.

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BUZSAW B 4 U 2 C Y BUZ SAW ---- Jesus said, "When these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads, for your redemption draws near." Luke 21:28

Well that's a little more to the story. But I still smell a rat, and it's NOT a lab rat ... Why use a species that (1) is not commonly used in the scientific literature, especially in the area of mutations (where there is a LOT of pre-exisiting knowledge of how many mutations have already occurred) and (2) takes a relatively LONG time to breed the next generation?There are currently available lab animals\organisms that breed in days if not hours, and that have a significant history of research to use as a starting point.As Ned said, this MAY be scientific in it's application of methodology, but it is juvenile in concept, and certainly is not chosen to challenge the concept (of mutation limitations) as rigorously as possible. He may be trying but not very hard.Anybody can put on the trappings of science and do BAD science. That doesn't really accomplish anything though does it?In fact I bet a grad student with a week of library\access time could put together a compendium of all scientific studies that have talked about mutations in species, find a species where thousands of mutations have been documented, and at the end of the week have a list that is factors of 10 times the numbers of variations that he has accumulated in years of study.If a person can accomplish more in a week without needing to do further research than he has in years of work, then the point of his experiment is a worthless waste of time -- unless his goal is NOT to disprove his concept, but to APPEAR to do science.The scientific approach would be to do the literature study, determine from that what species to use that has the largest record of mutations and variations, and start with that to see how many different directions you can force mutations to extend that number.That was NOT done here.Enjoy.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
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RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist
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Ned, I'm not sure I understand what you're asking. Are you asking me if I believe Chris Miller's process of doing science with his guppies is good science? If that's it, he can explain what he's doing better than I. As I understood his purpose in the seminar for this research he seemed to be doing a good job of working to falsify his creo hypothesis on mutation. Just what this all involves I am not apprised enough to say. You people are making a big thing out of something I have a very limited knowledge of so far as the extent of this project he is doing. He most assuredly does a lot more science than this one rather insignificant project that I used as one example. After all, geology is a form of science, involving a number of aspects of science.

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BUZSAW B 4 U 2 C Y BUZ SAW ---- Jesus said, "When these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads, for your redemption draws near." Luke 21:28

Razd, you are judging this scientist as to his work without neither of us having enough information to make a judgement regarding the quality of the science he is doing. You're making all kinds of judgemental assumptions which you have little to go on for making judgement. I believe I've made my point as to what is science relative to this matter. Let's not hijack this thread by straining at guppies and swallowing whales.

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BUZSAW B 4 U 2 C Y BUZ SAW ---- Jesus said, "When these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads, for your redemption draws near." Luke 21:28

Please reread my post and notice that the miller work is not the main point.Please answer the questions asked.

The fact that he is using guppies is enough to look at the applicability to a true scientific endeavor to find limitations to the possibilities of mutations.I compared this to what a scientist interested in the question would do.The reason for chosing guppies is what is highly questionable. What you chose to study is part of the scientific approach: you want something that produces results and truly tests the concept. I can do a scientific study of the probability of flipping a coin to test the prediction that it will be 50% heads and 50% tails, and I can spend YEARS doing it, documenting results.It is scientific, but it is also a waste of time. Especially if it has already been done - that's another reason for doing a literature search before starting the experimentations.Enjoy.

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RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist
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probably a moot point, but: Duane Gish? Kent Hovind? Randman? Herapton? ICR?I mean, come on, there are a ton of people who debate things without knowing a damn about what they're debating. And they will actually issue the challenges! You don't really think that those four people and one group really get evolution, do you? And what stops them from issuing challenges and debating on evolution and trying to disprove it?I'm not sure if the statement you made is a fallacy, but it defintely is not a good argument to use. Knowledge is, apparently, not a requisite for debate.

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yes, yes i would. many people on this board challenge evolutionary theory without knowing a damn thing about it, ICR,DI and tons of YECS do this everyday I agree with DA, not to pick on faith, but on many occations she said she was an evolutionist then changed to a YEC later in life, but she really doesn't seem to know much about evolution i'm confused, what does trying to refute specification have anything to do with ID or creationism?
this is part of the problem buz, the creationist "scientists" arn't really doing anything with creationism, what your example is doing is simply trying to test that part of the theory, though as far as i can tell not very well, but still what he is doing has nothing to do with eather ID or creationism
he could be an evolutionist and still do what he is doing.what people are asking is, is there anyone doing anything to test the mechanics of ID or to test the mechanics of creationism, like the flood or showing intelligent design.
this would be science, the testing of the hypthosis or theory you are trying to show as an explanation through evidenceshowing part of evolution is faulty is needed, but as i and a lot of people have said, showing a part of one theory is wrong doesn't make another righthe isn't doing IDist or creation science he's just trying to refute something in evolution, its not the same tihng

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Razd, you are judging this scientist as to his work without neither of us having enough information to make a judgement regarding the quality of the science he is doing.

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Yet you were quite happy to insist that it was science and use this man as an example of "good science" when apparently all he is doing is preaching things that you like to hear and running an experiment that is probably pointless and quite likely completely incapable of actually addressing the question it is supposed to address.(How long does he intend to run the experiment, anyway ? Even if he gets everything right the "rapid" speciation of Punctuated Equilibria is supposed to take centuries - maybe around 1000 years. So unless he has set up his experiment so that it will continue to run that long I doubt that it could ever support the conclusion he wants)

Well, I can't find it, and an automated search can't find the @ character. I bet he can't cite me a reference to this anywhere in the scientific literature. Care for a wager? Well, I know the difference between the tropics and the arctic circle. This is why I feel his claim is extraordinary and needs to be validated by more than his say-so. You are wrong. This is not common knowledge. It's not even a common creationist claim. You want me to prove that there are no tropical zebras in arctic ice? Yes. Ignorance of the theory of evolution seems to be almost a necessary precondition for arguing with it. Indeed, I have several times on this forum issued a challenge which I will now repeat: can you show me a single creationist website which does not get the theory of evolution wrong?Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

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He has however done enough and learned enough to debate the whole science spectrum.

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One of the things to know about scientists these days, buz, is that as a general rule they are highly specialized.For example, my husband is a Cognitive Psychologist (he studies how the human brain works). His research has been largely in visual perception and working memory. Ask him any very technical question about the particular kinds of working memory or visual perception issues he studied (he didn't study all that exist, of course) and he will likely be able to give you an immediate and highly informed and detailed answer.But if you were to ask him about auditory or olfactory perception, for example, his ability to give an informed answer would be less, as he has some expert knowledge of these research areas due to his specialized and advanced education in the subject, but he is not expert in these aspects of perception like he is in vision.If you weere to ask him further questions about various subfields of reseach Psychology like research on emotions, childhood development, autism, and many other subjects, he would only be able to give you the barest response as he is largely unfamiliar with any of the work in these areas.He knows more than an informed layman about Clinical Psychology, but that's only due to his exposure to it when he was a Psych student, and because he has occasion to attend talks given by clinical Psychologists who also do research.But he knows no more than an informed layperson about other fields of science such as Biology or Geology, and there are definitely much more expert laypeople than him on these and many other scientific subjects. He would be the first to tell anyone that he is quite ignorant of many things in other scientific fields (and even within Psychology).The point I am making, buz, is that just because a scientist is quite an expert in his subfield doesn't make him "able to debate the whole science spectrum". Quite the contrary, actually.Remember Uri Gellar? He was able to fool a couple of Physicists into thinking his illusions were "real", but it was fellow illusionists and magicians like Johnny Carson and James Randi who saw through his illusions because they were experts in magic and the Physicists were not.

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This man is, imo, a lot more careful in his approach than Kent Hovind.

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"More careful that hovind" is not much of an endorsement, buz.

Quite a few others have already posted in response to this and they have basically said that this is an example of "poor science" at best. Actually, I'll come out and state that as described by you in the above quote, this is not a valid scientific experiment in any way. Look at the hypothesis. He's working to falsify his own hypothesis that guppies can mutate into a "new" species by showing that they can't. WTF...are you kidding me? Think about this. Chris Miller is trying to prove that something he states can happen (guppies will eventually mutate into a new species) by showing that actually it can't happen. That's not science Buz, that's bullshit. Seriously dude, think about it. At what point does Chris get to say “I’ve done it, I have proven that guppies can’t mutate out of species” (whatever the hell that means)? One generation? Two? Three? Ten-thousand? When does the experiment end? When does Chris get to say the he has disproved the Theory of Evolution? Admit it Buzsaw, this is nothing more than a totally bogus “experiment” designed by a creationist to use at his “church seminars” to further convince his audience that the Theory of Evolution is not valid and the God did it all . nothing more. It’s a sham perpetrated on the scientifically naive and I find this sort of thing reprehensible, as should you.And to show you that Chris Miller’s experiment is total BS, think of it this way. I can do the same thing Buz. I have a hypothesis which says that God can mutate guppies into whales, and I’m now going to set out to disprove that hypothesis. I have hundreds of guppies in tanks located in my basement and I will start the experiment tonight. When do I stop? When do I get to say that I have disproved the existence of God, Buzsaw?