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

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.

Faith is responding again and demonstrating her confusion and ignorance, yet again: Wikipedia does not suggest that inductive reasoning is merely good enough for "hypothesis formation" 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: 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.

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: 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.

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.

By my understanding error bars imply a confidence limit (and are only meaningful if the confidence limit is stated).

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.

Well Percy, I'm still satisfied to have shown that statistics are rather more widely used and more important than your original assessment.

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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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?

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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 ?

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: 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.

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.