Two types of science

Why does it need to be falsifiable by other means?Anyway, cosmological theories have been tested with Neutrino and meson detectors, not just telescopes.

So the senses issue is a complete red herring. Understood. Do you have any others? So wait - you assert something is true, but instead of backing up your assertion you think the onus is on me to disprove it?Why is using long range viewing technology an inappropriate method for studying objects at long range? Should we dispute various microbiological ideas because they can only be verified or falsified using a microscope, for example? Is this the new criteria, number of instrument 'kinds' that can be used to verify the claims? Well, astronomical ideas can be tested and falsified. There are certainly challenges unique to cosmology and astrophysics - but that could be said of any number of sciences.It is legitimate to question any idea to see if it is tested or falsified. ID has failed. Cosmology has not. If you want to convince me otherwise, you should do the heavy lifting. I would do the same if this were a thread about ID. You can explore, but where would you look? Evolutionary theory is essential to curing certain diseases. I'd be interested if you can find someone talking about 'common ancestor atheism'.I'm not sure how using natural history to hypothesize about oil locations or using an established theory of biology in epidemiology (etc) is 'blending' vague science with non-vague science. I don't know of any such science. Science has since it began been intended to weaken the hold of bad ideas that cannot strand up to scrutiny. I have no idea of any conspiracy to 'sweep Weinberg's remark under the rug'. Sure, there are scientists who would prefer the general population have a better understanding of the universe and who find religion gets in the way of this goal. Not all scientists though. I'm not stopping you.You've already seem to have conceded that 100 words of your OP about senses was more or less pointless, if even you are abandoning 1/3 of your OP that seems like a bit of a hash to me. But please, fit it all together for me. I see. So you are engaging in the philosophy of science by referencing laymen talking about science, not scientists performing science. Interesting tactic.I invite you to show me how some cosmological or evolutionary concept is unverifiable or unfalsifiable or is in some other way comparable to some disputed concept in ID.

I would disagree with whoever made these statements. There is no requirement to "believe" in billions of years or common descent to make scientific discoveries such as oil exploration or curing disease. What is required is that you have a working model - ie. a model of the system that actually works to make predictions. The model that works for oil exploration is one that suggests that the earth is billions of years old. That model WORKS!. You can "believe" that the earth is 6,000 years old, but use the old earth model to decide where to drill and still be successful. There is no YEC model that works for oil exploration.In order for ID or YEC to be accepted as valid scientific pursuits they need to have models that actually work - that's it. It's not about belief or atheism or a scientific conspiracy - it is about what WORKS! There is only one type of science ... the kind of science that develops working models of reality based on empirical (that what we can detect with our senses) observations. We call that science, not actual science or real science, just science. That is simply what science is.Do people make inappropriate metaphysical conclusions based on scientific inquiry? Yes, certainly they do. But that doesn't become metaphysical science, it is simply metaphysical conclusions that science is not intended to address.Your title made me think that you were going to talk about science and pseudoscience as the two types of science. Maybe that's what you mean by metaphysical science. However, rather than inventing a new term, you could just use one that already covers that issue.However, pseudoscience is actually an unfortunate term since the word "science" doesn't really belong in the term at all. The reason these practices get put into this category is that they try to pass themselves off as science. I mean, just read through the list and see some of the ridiculous ideas that have been passed off as science. And why have these ideas been rejected as unscientific? Because 1) they do not have working models, 2) they rely on knowledge from non-empirical sources and 3) they cannot be subjected to adequate scrutiny and possible falsification (or they have already been falsified and continue to be promoted as science). Are you trying to show that Evolution, Cosmology and whatever other sciences conflict with your worldview are not scientific because they do not follow the scientific method?Or are you suggesting that science can be informed by "other sources of knowledge" and still be legit? Or is your point that people make metaphysical conclusions based on physical data and those metaphysical conclusions are being passed off as science? Or ... ??? Why didn't you just present your case in the OP? What's stopping you? Are you still making it up? HBD

As the many examples given have illustrated, the number of human senses involved is not relevant at all. The issue for you is the conflict with your beliefs.There is nothing vague about the distance to SN1987A being determined by multiple methods to being approx 170,000 light-years away. What is vague is your articulation of any reason other than your interpretation of the Bible for you dispute what scientist say about it.Your post here gives your entire agenda away to anyone who was not familiar with it before you posted.Your claim is that there are two kinds of science. And that phoney science is used for studying stars "hundreds of light-years away".
So tell me what difference between the techniques used for studying Alpha Centauri, a mere 4.3 light years away and those used for studying Betelgeuse which is 650 light years away makes the latter studies unscientific.ABE:
It's clear that there is no qualitative difference and that your position here collapses to objecting to science that disagrees with your beliefs and politics.More importantly, why didn't you come up with a position before you started this thread? Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Edited by NoNukes, : change years to light years

I'll try to keep it concise. Not sure how a book or a worldview should be a test for scientific information gathering, but ok -- onward:So doing this pattern matching we find that each of the three living trees have the same pattern of ring width vs ring count. But that's not all:There are also dead Bristlecone pines, some still standing that have over 7000 tree rings, still preserved by the high and dry climate at the top of these mountains. We don't know from just looking at them when they died: it could be 50 years ago (minimum - they were found in 1960) or 100 years ago ...So is there any problem with applying the same process of scientific information gathering to count the rings in these additional standing dead trees, to measure the thicknesses of the rings in these trees, to determine the patterns of ring thickness as a function of ring count, and then to compare these patterns for each of the three trees ... any by this process determine when these standing dead trees died by matching their patterns with the three living trees ... ?... let's say for the sake of argument that the tree ring pattern for a 7,000 ring dead standing tree matches rings from the living trees at the 60th tree ring and also for each ring back to the the earliest ring of the 5,064 (2014) year old living tree ... so the tree ring count would then reach back 7,060 years into the past.So is there any problem with applying the same process of scientific information gathering to determine that these are also annual rings in the standing dead trees and thus conclude that the earth has been in existence at least as long as these trees have been standing, undisturbed by any cataclysmic event ... back to 5,037 BCE at least?Again, based on this objective empirical evidence, I conclude that the earth is at least 7,060 years old this year (2014) .If you don't reply, that's fine, but it may indicate that you have no answer to this set of questions.Again I await your reply.

What our eyes and our instruments detect are particles emitted by the stars in the same way those particles are emitted by the sun.The Hubble Telescope detects light with photon sensors and can "see" frequencies that the human eye cannot detect.Heat can also be detected by humans and heat detectors, and they can detect the heat of the sunlight hitting the earth.These instruments have the advantage of being able to quantify the intensity of heat\light particles, record those intensities and allow us to compare them with different stars or galaxies.These particles are objective empirical evidence that we observe directly. Their direction gives an idea of the location for the source. And these measurements and angular references are repeatable and testable.Thus we can collect and record the photons that come from SN1987A, and we can measure the angle between the star core and the ring, and we can measure the time delay between light bursts from the star nova event directly, and from the ring when 'lit up' by the bursts and then traveling to earth. This information gives us all the information needed to determine the distance to this star.Edited by RAZD, : clrty

I just wanted to add something to your list of definitions Scientific Model: a logical framework intended to represent reality, similar to the way that a map is a graphical model that represents the territory of a city or country. (source)I like to stress the importance of scientific models in discussions like this for a couple of reasons.1) The idea of a theory is so often completely misunderstood, and while educating as to what a scientist actually means when they say "theory" is a good thing, it usually falls on deaf ears.
2) Typically the objections raised are areas of science where direct observation is difficult or impractical, as Marc9000 is doing.
3) Much of the scientific work being done today falls into this category of not being directly observable. The easily observably facts are old news. We have to rely on models to make testable predictions.
4) My 4th reason may be a bit more controversial, but I would say that science doesn't actually study reality directly. If we could study reality directly, we could arrive at absolute truths. Instead, what science studies is what reality appears to be. Reality is an abstract idea, and science needs to deal with concrete, empirical concepts. In other words, everything we know about reality could be wrong, but the scientific process is designed in such a way as to give us the best representation of that reality. That is a model.
5) A lot of creationists and ID proponents claim to have theories about different aspects of their ideas. While they don't meet our strict definition of theory, there is no law against attaching the term theory to any idea (ie. hyroplate theory, hydro-sorting theory). So they can then say, "well we have theories about how this or that can happen." "We are all dealing with the same facts." OK, but what they utterly lack is a unified, working model.Ultimately, these arguments are philosophy of science arguments and need to be approached from that direction. No working model ... no science.HBD

Not much of a leading light anymore, he hasn't done anything for years and can't even hold down a job at a third-tier seminary. He's a full time shill for the Discovery Institute now.

Well, the typical response is that 7,000 is a lot less than billions and billions.What puzzles me is that most YECs allow for an age of up to 10,000 years. But if the Biblical chronology is infallible and it suggests an age of 6,000, then an actual age of even 7,000 would mean the chronology is in error. But maybe it allows for an error of +/- 67% (which would be the error if the actual age was 10,000 years).HBD

So typical. You find a list about "knowledge", do not bother to read the rest of the site and end up with no idea what they are actually talking about.Did you see their information on "Skepticism" and how it relates to these areas of knowledge you listed? No.Not only did you not consider this you did not consider that what they were talking about is that this list of yours are ways to gather "knowledge" as in "information", not "knowledge" as in some universal TRVTH^TM. These are the sources of data; data inputs for ... wait for it ... the scientific method!Can you even fathom where data from "introspection" could possibly be used in a science of some sort somewhere? You really think this puts some kind of chink in the scientific armor? You really have no conception of what it is you are reading, do you. You are so bent on finding something, anything to use as a weapon against science you throw thin air at it.What this says is that we have to be cognizant of what information actually pertains to the problem at hand and what information does not. That is pretty much what study design, experimental protocols, control groups and peer review are all about in the scientific method.Why do creationists do these things in such a half-assed manner?No. Don't answer that. That was rhetorical. We already know why.[abe=just because I have the time]That site for the above quote talking about being cognizant of the information? It also list these as "sources of knowledge":Racial Memory
The Collective Unconscious
Extrasensory Perception
Recollection from a past life
Spiritualism
The Occult
Ouija boards
Tarot cardsand your favorites, I'm sure ...Faith
Supernatural RevelationFallacy of Presumption anyone?[/abe]Edited by AZPaul3, : Addition. Not the math type but as in appending additional verbiage to an existing screed.Edited by AZPaul3, : oopsEdited by AZPaul3, : more oopses.Edited by AZPaul3, : had the timeEdited by AZPaul3, : OK, I stop now.

Yet billions of years is not necessary to show that 10,000 years is invalid.And this evidence shows that no cataclysmic event disturbed the growth of those trees during that time. No flood reached that location in this time. It would seem that the output is different for different people using the same input, so their model is of questionable value.And when you get OECs using the same basic model but getting vastly different results it would seem that the model has no predictive value.

I was just thinking about this earlier today. There is for example one type of science that observes how the constants of the universe are finely tuned to allow for life. Tweek them just a little bit in either direction and life is not possible. Then there is the other type of science that insists that the speed of light and the nuclear decay rates must have varied in the past. Clearly these two types of science contradict each other.Oh wait, these are two types of creation science.
My bad.

There's a third view, which is that the laws of nature are so inimical to life that it can only exist as a result of God performing a miracle. And this is also creation science.

Yes there are many types of contradictory creation science aren't there?But the OP is concerned with dividing real science into two types. The type that posses no threat to his particular flavor of creation science, and the type that falsifies the same.The third type you mentioned may soon be falsified as well. It is this process of falsification that must be stopped otherwise there will not be as much variety among people and their beliefs as previously. Surely this cannot be good for America and the political process (However, it's fine for Canada). Social parties will not be as robust. As people become more alike they will tell the same jokes, etc. We must put a stop to this kind of communism, otherwise very soon the world will be following the same trajectory that it would have been following had Hitler won the war! And don't get me started on AI and robots. They will take over the world. In short Arnold will be back with a vengeance!!I have to rest now.

I have about a dozen messages to respond to tonight - I won't be distracted by any cut ins. I'll try to respond to anything anyone else posts tonight sometime next week, if it's worthy of a response.