YEC approaches to empirical investigation

Then keep pushing on the words I used to describe my perspective. I have no underlying interest in making YECs look good. I'm doing it because I think it's a workable perspective, and I think it draws a line in the EvC debate where people don't have to be at each others' throats in every thread.By the way, I'm sorry I snapped at you. You and CK often make small jokes or parodies that exhibit your viewpoint in threads, and I look at those the same as simply asserting your position without addressing arguments. I don't thin that adds value to a discussion.I shouldn't have got mad though. My bad.

Regardless if you've lost faith that EvC can draw a line and find a place for YECs or not, I think it needs to be made explicit. This thread is about defining term of a place for YECs. Can everybody accept it or not? It's high time people stopped working in "truth" and started working in psychology. I'm using an analogy, something that non-believers might be able to relate to. It's not about "seeing the truth." It's about simply being able to characterize each others positions.I didn't say the child was dead. Lots of cases happen where the parent won't give up, and the child's skeleton is found years later and the parent finally grieves. There are many fewer cases, but still cases, where the parent actually finds a path that the experts did not, through simple tenacity and time, and finds the child.I haven't come up with an intuitive case that is exactly analagous to your position AND is more intuitive to the others here. I think the analogy above is a pretty darn good one. I think it's good enough for people who want to understand. Any analogy is not a perfect match, so those who do not want to understand never have to. It is those who want to understand who ask questions, or make tentative statements (see Modulous' post). Those who do not, they tell you how wrong you are.At least, that's my working assumption.

nwr, I think that's a great point. There's a price YECs pay for not being able to use the scientific method, but instead this other method, and I think you've hit on the major one.It's much more likely that they're led to a hyphothesis that is easily falisfied and unrecoverable (i.e. they have to start from scratch). The only way I can really describe this is if you look at the path they're taking in the error space.In the scientific method, you start at some data, and you basically traverse the error space. You only have LOCAL goals (tentative hypotheses) that direct you, but no GLOBAL goals ("the truth"). Thus, you follow the terrain of the error space more closely, because local goals only perturb your path within the error space slightly (as compared to a global goal).In this "forensic science" path, because there's a GLOBAL goal (to create a choronology of events which connect evidence to some final event), you no longer can follow the terrain of the error space. You're basically walking over it as if it's flat. That means, the path you virtually ignores the probability that you're in error. This is only slightly better than saying "you're shooting in the dark."How much you're shooting in the dark depends on the quality of the evidence you collect. In forensic science, unless you get some decent evidence to start with, do they even bother trying? Faith is starting with NO evidence to guide her (at least none that I can see). And that means, she's basically shooting in the dark.That's the inevitable consequence of the method she's taking. But I don't think she, or any YEC, has any choice. And that doesn't logically mean she can't find a way to reformulate science such that it fits YEC premises. It just means there's lots of reasons to think she's behind the 8 ball.Anyway, nice comment.

I agree. I wonder if you can make any sense out of my post to nwr. I don't know how else to describe it... well, maybe I can just copy/paste your comment next time haha.Ben

That's for sure. I think it only appears this way. I opened this thread to try and show why it looks that way, but it's not. Well, that's not something she would want to do, if she's serious about actually finding an explanation of the flood consistent with known observation. She's got her work cut out for her, because she's doing the work of literally thousands of people. So I'm sure she tries to find alternatives that work for her such that she doesn't have to do all the work herself. I can see how that would lead to using discredited assertions. So, I hope when you point it out (by pointing to the evidence that discredits the assertions), she responds by modifying the assertion. This should never happen. This is against the "rules of the game" at EvC. And it's against the heart of what YECs are trying to do anyway. I hope it doesn't happen; if it does, it's up to the admins (including myself) to not let it pass. Yes, I know it's been going on. I also hope that by opening this thread and starting to examine the empirical methods available to YECs, that YECs can understand IT'S TO THEIR ADVANTAGE to face the discrediting evidence directly. That type of evidence is the evidence that will shape their alternative hypotheses the most. This is what I think can be dangerous. I'm sure sometimes Faith DOES simply reject alternative explanations out of hand, because the conclusions go against her faith-based information. So, at least when she's working on finding an alternative model herself, she actually has grounds for rejecting the alternative explanations.Those who reject models without attempting to replace them? I would say, there's no excuse for that type of behavior. Those who reject models while trying to replace them? They may be right or wrong, but I think it's important that we always allow that. I think in the history of science, we see what, 99.9% crackpots and 0.1% visionaries? peaceharris? JAD? Brad McFall? All are doing similar things. Maybe EvC will have a visionary pass through. Maybe it will be Faith. Maybe it will be Brad. It's not gonna be JAD... and I respect peaceharris' efforts and questions, though I can't respect the conclusions yet. I hope we can hold a real debate, where evidence is not dodged, and alternative explanations are not rejected without working on new ones to replace them. It's my goal, both as a member and as an admin, to create a cleaner space for such a thing to happen. Right now, in my opinion, everything ALWYAS get muddled by the emotions and randomized thoughts of off-topic discussion and personal attacks.I think IRH's offer was a generous one, and it outlines exactly what has to happen. I've never seen it follow through. And you can see on that thread, even with all the hoopla and warning about keeping the thread clean... it doesn't stay clean.Let's work together on getting it cleaner.

I think that's a fair characterization and criticizm of YECs in general.I would be tentative to say ALL YECs take that approach. There's a lot of work to be done when reformulating a large number of basic hypotheses in numerous sciences. There could be the Brad McFall: YEC version out there; someone who is working independently (I think Brad is) and who hasn't finished his/her work yet.

Like I mentioned to you before, you're at a disadvantage because of this requirement of the scientific method. You gotta use other methods, and that's to your disadvantage.I think what the board needs to decide is, can it make room for honest empirical investigation which is NOT science, and which, because of that, follows a path towards workable theories that do not resemble the path science takes and, frankly speaking, are more likely to produce easily falsifiable hypotheses that are not robust (i.e. that can't be modified easily in the face of conflicting evidence). That's not a shot at your beliefs, that's a statement about the methodology you have to use.If ultimately we say such a methodology is unacceptable, then I agree with you--I think it needs to be clear in the forum guidelines that the only allowable empirical method of investigation is the scientific method.Honestly, I get a mixed message from the board on whether or not this is allowed. On the one hand, there's the "Theological Creation and ID" board. On the other hand, there's the thread that led to truecreation's exit stage left, where Admin opens by saying he considers this methodology to be nonsense discussion (I can understand why), and that he's not interested in allowing such discussion.I look at this thread as an opportunity to discuss methodology and to represent the opportunity of people to either accept YEC empirical methodology as discussable on this board, or to reject it.I don't see any reason to deny it. It's a creation vs. evolution board. It doesn't belong in science forums. It' doesn't REALLY belong in Faith and Belief boards. Maybe we need "YEC Emprical" forums, where this methodology is the standard, and people must follow the rules of this methodology: I don't see why this would be such a problem. It's structured debate. Those who don't like it can just stay out of it.Faith, do you think these are fair terms for YECs to operate under?

*SIGH*I wish that problem would never happen. It's ... embarrasing. Just a question... does anybody actually take position #1?

PaulK,I was following you until the last part. I see the criticisms as valid (not sure if they're true, I haven't involved myself in following the debates much, they get so messy). But I didn't understand here: Why does this turn it into a sham debate? As long as people address the hypotheses she puts forward in explaining the evidence, I see it as a reasonable debate. She either can find a way to support "the flood happened" AND IRH's evidence, or she can't. Judgement of this is done by the ability or inability to find evidence that conflicts with her supporting hypotheses.If the debate proceeded in that manner, would it still be a "sham debate"?By the way, I really appreciate the tone of your responses. I find them to be informative and constructive / instructive.

Well, that's to their disadvantage... but I don't think that invalidates the approach. Sometimes, that's how developing hypotheses and working incrementally happens. You avoid the hardest problems and you start from wherever you can.In cognitive science, that happens ALL the time. For example, people are constantly dodging consciousness; very few people study it directly (at what level of processing does consciousness come from the brain?), and basically NOBODY confronts the "hard problem" (i.e. is it necessary that consciousness come from physicality? What are the conditions that are present which causes it to be necessary?)Another example is how we dodge all complex behavior, and we work on totally ecologically invalid laboratory tasks. When studying language, we study behavior on individual phonemes. When investigating where language processing happens in the brain, most paradigms use SINGLE WORD paradigms. At the best, single sentence. Is language just words? No... just we're totally incapable to tackle the hard problems, so we do what we can.It sucks. But ultimately, we can only tackle what we can manage to tackle bit by bit. It means we run a big risk of putting tons of time into this work, and we either don't find a way to get over the wall we avoided, and we're screwed, or we find out that we totally took the wrong path and we're out in a small boat in the middle of the Pacific ocean. We're just HOPING that this path will lead us to higher ground and able to hop over the wall.YEC and cognitive scientist alike.

I agree. But I would say that debating both in one thread is too much.I would propose the debates on the bible go into the Accuracy and Inerrancy forum, and debates to try and resolve things we extracted under specific interpretations of the bible to go in a different forum. Otherwise I don't see that either debate could make any progress.Thus, the two debates could happen simultaneously. Anyway, they're actually fairly independent; you can falisfy one and still have reason to proceed with the other. If Faith finds a way to resolve all scientific observation with the Flood hypothesis, that doesn't make the Flood hypothesis unquestionably true. And if a literal interpretation of the Bible's story of the flood is shown to be contradictory within the Bible, that doesn't mean the Flood actually didn't happen. It just means the YEC's underlying reasons for believing in it were shown to be unfounded.It's a subtle distinction, probably too subtle for my imprecise words. Just, I think your idea is good, but that the debates are best served as separate but "interested" in each other.Ben

It's a strange question to me jar, I'm uncomfortable with accepting the terms you phrased it in. The phrase "incontrovertible evidence" doesn't exist in my psychological-perspective world view.Empiricists follow the evidence, except when they have underlying hangups, things that they cannot believe based on faith. I mentioned in another thread, if God appeared in the clouds and waved at me (or, to satisfy Faith, I changed this to if I heard God speak to me), would I believe it's God? I don't know, it depends on how deeply I've accepted the assumption that what I see doesn't exist. I know that some people would explain it as a hoax without even bothering to investigate. Even if I investigated... I don't know. I don't know how deep the assumption lies.Does that give you a hint as to what's in my mind? I'm sorry I can't answer the question directly. I'm not trying to dodge it, just it doesn't fit well in my world view.BenP.S. Jar I always enjoy your "direct questions"

I see. Well if that's the case, then I understand. In that case, somebody trying to skip something like that would need to be stopped; there's no moving on in that case. If a poster can't see that, then that's when the moderation has to step in...P.S. I hope no YEC goes on to debate the validity of your assertions...

Did you see my Post 64? What do you think of the proposal layed out at the bottom of it?

I really want to avoid going into specifics on this thread, I think it's really easy to start debating the positions, rather than the methods....Boy it's hard to resist the temptation. But I'm going to do it. I'll say, I hope we'll have the opportunity to bring that up on a YEC-empirical thread.Ben