Register | Sign In


Understanding through Discussion


EvC Forum active members: 65 (9162 total)
2 online now:
Newest Member: popoi
Post Volume: Total: 915,817 Year: 3,074/9,624 Month: 919/1,588 Week: 102/223 Day: 0/13 Hour: 0/0


Thread  Details

Email This Thread
Newer Topic | Older Topic
  
Author Topic:   The Nature of Scientific Inquiry; Is Evolution Science?
PaulK
Member
Posts: 17822
Joined: 01-10-2003
Member Rating: 2.2


Message 31 of 86 (196031)
04-01-2005 12:48 PM


Creationism is not science
As this post demonstrates:
http://EvC Forum: Splintering our Education System based on FAITH -->EvC Forum: Splintering our Education System based on FAITH
Faith starts with religious dogma nad assuems that the evidence must conform to it. Science starts with the evidence and works to conclusions.

Replies to this message:
 Message 33 by Faith, posted 04-01-2005 3:07 PM PaulK has replied

  
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1445 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 32 of 86 (196056)
04-01-2005 3:00 PM
Reply to: Message 28 by mark24
04-01-2005 7:08 AM


You missed the point. The point is that you must have SOMETHING in the past that is known, which includes witnesses if there are any. In a crime scene in recent time you are STARTING from knowns: you have the dead body and can figure out when it happened, and there's other evidence to work from to get at what may have happened. Try to follow the argument here. Are you going to send a man up for murder on nothing but your inferences from the physical evidence? Now, I'll agree that DNA is pretty definitive if you have it, depending on where it is found and whatever is known about a possible relationship between the deceased and the suspect, but the rest could have been planted. In any case you have MUCH evidence of many kinds that may eventually solve the crime for you. And witnesses would be a BIG help. The victim was seen in the company of the suspect at such and such a time etc. etc. Ideally you want a believable confession from your suspect.
In the case of the Geo Timetable the thinking processes are similar but you have very few known facts from the scene of the crime to guide you. You have layers of sediment that have turned to rock. You have to construct methods to guess their age and there is no way to verify your guesses as there is no KNOWN age of a particular rock to guide you back past actual observations -- all ages are assigned from inferences built on inferences, even if they are dated by radiometry, because that too is not verifiable before whatever is actually KNOWN in the past which isn't anything older than a few thousand years or less. You have fossils in the rocks. They've been studied so you know how they were formed, but you don't know their age either, and again you have methods for guessing at it but there is no way to verify the guesses as there is no KNOWN age of a fossil to work from. You can't extrapolate from observable processes because they may only hold up for short periods and you can't find out if they hold up for longer because there's no way to set up an experiment in the past.
For the ToE, however, I think the genetic evidence points toward variation within a species only, natural limitations to processes of evolution within the species -- the fact that genetic variability or "plasticity" as one creationist calls it, is reduced by selection processes that isolate populations, and this reduction is increased with each further such selection until you have a new "species" which is really a genetically severely limited variation on the species it was isolated from, that is, it has the most severely limited genetic capacity for further change and adaptibility, in other words the exact opposite of what the ToE predicts. Maybe eventually this kind of evidence will become definitive. The ToE is based on unsubstantiated conjecture only at this point.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 28 by mark24, posted 04-01-2005 7:08 AM mark24 has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 34 by crashfrog, posted 04-01-2005 3:25 PM Faith has not replied
 Message 36 by pink sasquatch, posted 04-01-2005 4:03 PM Faith has not replied
 Message 37 by mark24, posted 04-01-2005 4:17 PM Faith has not replied
 Message 42 by Loudmouth, posted 04-05-2005 6:19 PM Faith has not replied

  
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1445 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 33 of 86 (196060)
04-01-2005 3:07 PM
Reply to: Message 31 by PaulK
04-01-2005 12:48 PM


Re: Creationism is not science
No, Mr. K., I start from the only actual witness account of events in the past that we have. This gives Biblical YEC's an advantage, far from the opposite. You dismiss it as "religious dogma" but that's just your unsubstantiated assumption, really nothing but glorifed namecalling. It is in fact witness evidence which is a LOT more than evolutionists have for ANY of their wild speculations about the past.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 31 by PaulK, posted 04-01-2005 12:48 PM PaulK has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 35 by PaulK, posted 04-01-2005 3:31 PM Faith has not replied

  
crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1467 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 34 of 86 (196064)
04-01-2005 3:25 PM
Reply to: Message 32 by Faith
04-01-2005 3:00 PM


Try to follow the argument here. Are you going to send a man up for murder on nothing but your inferences from the physical evidence?
Yes. Yes we are, and can, and have.
So we might as well open the jails, right? If we can't "know anything about the past", then we certainly can't know that anyone is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, right?
Unless, maybe, your doubts about our ability to reconstruct the past simply aren't reasonable?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 32 by Faith, posted 04-01-2005 3:00 PM Faith has not replied

  
PaulK
Member
Posts: 17822
Joined: 01-10-2003
Member Rating: 2.2


Message 35 of 86 (196066)
04-01-2005 3:31 PM
Reply to: Message 33 by Faith
04-01-2005 3:07 PM


Re: Creationism is not science
Time to show that you can support your claims.
Where's your evidence that the Bible is an eyewitness account of the creation of the Earth and it's history up to the supposed Flood ? If you can't produce that then all you've got is a religious dogma and a closed mind.
And I've got one BIG piece of evidence that what you have is religious dogma - your posts. The way you make lame excuses - for instance trying to deny the point that the appearance of birds in the fossil record is a change towards the pattern of life we see now by talking about what you imagine birds would do during the Flood. And the way you dismiss the evidence for evolution without even caring to know about it - or even denying that it could exist (e.g. island species aren't REAL species because that would be inconvenient for you).

This message is a reply to:
 Message 33 by Faith, posted 04-01-2005 3:07 PM Faith has not replied

  
pink sasquatch
Member (Idle past 6023 days)
Posts: 1567
Joined: 06-10-2004


Message 36 of 86 (196072)
04-01-2005 4:03 PM
Reply to: Message 32 by Faith
04-01-2005 3:00 PM


riddled with misunderstanding
Are you going to send a man up for murder on nothing but your inferences from the physical evidence?
Physical evidence is more reliable than eye witness accounts. Of course you should already know that from participating in the Reliability of Eyewitness Accounts thread.
Truely, you point out this fact with your statement:
Ideally you want a believable confession from your suspect.
If you can't always trust a confession, how can you eye-witness accounts any more?
- the fact that genetic variability or "plasticity" as one creationist calls it, is reduced by selection processes that isolate populations, and this reduction is increased with each further such selection until you have a new "species" which is really a genetically severely limited variation on the species it was isolated from, that is, it has the most severely limited genetic capacity for further change and adaptibility, in other words the exact opposite of what the ToE predicts.
Your ramblings on genetics here are riddled with misunderstanding - again, much of which I believe was explained to you in the first thread you participated in on your return here.
It has been well-established that small founder/bottleneck populations show increases in genetic diversity much greater than that of large parental populations. Your attempt to intuitively logic your way through the issue gave you a result quite the opposite of what is observed in reality, I'm afraid.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 32 by Faith, posted 04-01-2005 3:00 PM Faith has not replied

  
mark24
Member (Idle past 5195 days)
Posts: 3857
From: UK
Joined: 12-01-2001


Message 37 of 86 (196077)
04-01-2005 4:17 PM
Reply to: Message 32 by Faith
04-01-2005 3:00 PM


Faith,
You missed the point. The point is that you must have SOMETHING in the past that is known, which includes witnesses if there are any.
And my point is that you don't. We have a body with deep cuts all over it that couldn't have been self inflicted. We don't know in advance that there was a murder, we infer it from the evidence; that there were signs of a struggle, & fatal wounds that the victim could not possibly of inflicted on herself. Ergo, we infer a murder occurred without a witness. What do you think was the most likely explanation? What hypothesis does the data best explain?
In a crime scene in recent time you are STARTING from knowns: you have the dead body and can figure out when it happened, and there's other evidence to work from to get at what may have happened. Try to follow the argument here. Are you going to send a man up for murder on nothing but your inferences from the physical evidence?
Yes, I am going to send a man up for murder on inferences from physical evidence, & it happens all the time. I AM figuring out what happened, it is you that refuse to send a murderer to prison, not I. If you think there is mitigating evidence, then you need to show it. Otherwise the evidence easily supports the hypothesis that X murdered the victim.
Are you seriously suggesting that we cannot 1/ determine a murder occurred, & 2/ determine that X committed the murder?
Now, I'll agree that DNA is pretty definitive if you have it, depending on where it is found and whatever is known about a possible relationship between the deceased and the suspect, but the rest could have been planted.
Yeah, but without an eyewitness you can't infer that evidence was planted, right? Seriously, you can hypothesise that the evidence was planted (I'd love to know how you think X's spunk got inside the witness, how his fingerprints got on the murder weapon, & how bits of X's skin got under the fingernails of the victim without him realising he was being set up), but unless your hypothesis has evidence in its support, it must be rejected.
In any case you have MUCH evidence of many kinds that may eventually solve the crime for you. And witnesses would be a BIG help.
Not necessarily, they may be lying, mistaken, &/or have alterior motives of their own. This is why eyewitness evidence is so inferior. Physical evidence does not lie.
What, based on the evidence, is the most likely explanation of the facts?
A response message 12 would be appreciated, thanks.
Mark

There are 10 kinds of people in this world; those that understand binary, & those that don't

This message is a reply to:
 Message 32 by Faith, posted 04-01-2005 3:00 PM Faith has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 38 by mick, posted 04-01-2005 4:38 PM mark24 has not replied
 Message 41 by mark24, posted 04-05-2005 4:43 AM mark24 has not replied

  
mick
Member (Idle past 4986 days)
Posts: 913
Joined: 02-17-2005


Message 38 of 86 (196088)
04-01-2005 4:38 PM
Reply to: Message 37 by mark24
04-01-2005 4:17 PM


mark,
After lightly chopping herself a few times, the woman killed herself with the axe. A man came across the body while he was walking in the woods, quite innocently. He grabbed the axe in horror and surprise, getting his fingerprints on it. Then his carnal desires took over. He stripped off his clothes. He grabbed the dead womans hands and raked them over his body for purposes of sexual gratification. He then made love to her corpse. After his exertions, the man relaxed by planting a few fossils obtained from a triassic rock layer into a rock layer he knew to originate in the jurassic, and loosening the screws on the tripods of some astronomer's telescopes so that they mistakenly saw a red shift when they looked into the night sky. Then the police arrested him and he went to jail.
This happens all the time, it's a tragedy.
mick

This message is a reply to:
 Message 37 by mark24, posted 04-01-2005 4:17 PM mark24 has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 39 by Nighttrain, posted 04-01-2005 6:13 PM mick has not replied

  
Nighttrain
Member (Idle past 3994 days)
Posts: 1512
From: brisbane,australia
Joined: 06-08-2004


Message 39 of 86 (196105)
04-01-2005 6:13 PM
Reply to: Message 38 by mick
04-01-2005 4:38 PM


We had a classic here a while back. The naked body of a woman was found in a river with her hands and legs tied behind her back. the headline read 'Police suspect murder'.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 38 by mick, posted 04-01-2005 4:38 PM mick has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 40 by mark24, posted 04-01-2005 6:26 PM Nighttrain has not replied

  
mark24
Member (Idle past 5195 days)
Posts: 3857
From: UK
Joined: 12-01-2001


Message 40 of 86 (196107)
04-01-2005 6:26 PM
Reply to: Message 39 by Nighttrain
04-01-2005 6:13 PM


No, death by natural causes, maybe suicide, without a witness, you can't infer murder, remember!

This message is a reply to:
 Message 39 by Nighttrain, posted 04-01-2005 6:13 PM Nighttrain has not replied

  
mark24
Member (Idle past 5195 days)
Posts: 3857
From: UK
Joined: 12-01-2001


Message 41 of 86 (196849)
04-05-2005 4:43 AM
Reply to: Message 37 by mark24
04-01-2005 4:17 PM


bump

This message is a reply to:
 Message 37 by mark24, posted 04-01-2005 4:17 PM mark24 has not replied

  
Loudmouth
Inactive Member


Message 42 of 86 (197035)
04-05-2005 6:19 PM
Reply to: Message 32 by Faith
04-01-2005 3:00 PM


quote:
Try to follow the argument here. Are you going to send a man up for murder on nothing but your inferences from the physical evidence? Now, I'll agree that DNA is pretty definitive if you have it, depending on where it is found and whatever is known about a possible relationship between the deceased and the suspect, but the rest could have been planted. In any case you have MUCH evidence of many kinds that may eventually solve the crime for you. And witnesses would be a BIG help. The victim was seen in the company of the suspect at such and such a time etc. etc. Ideally you want a believable confession from your suspect.
There are people on death row who are there on the weight of physical evidence alone. Yes it could be planted, but eyewitnesses could be bought as well. I know it is fiction, but do you remember the book "To Kill a Mockingbird"? The weight of the prosecutions case was the eyewitness testimony of the victim and the father of the victim, both, as it turned out, were lying. Eyewitness accounts are actually less reliable than physical evidence. When the physical evidence makes the eyewintess acounts impossible the physical evidence wins.
As to Genesis, the creation account is not written in the first person. At best, it is a second hand account. At worst, it is wholly fiction. How do we tell which one of these it is? The physical evidence. None of the evidence supports a 6,000 year old earth, or a global flood for that matter. The physical evidence wins.
quote:
You have layers of sediment that have turned to rock. You have to construct methods to guess their age and there is no way to verify your guesses as there is no KNOWN age of a particular rock to guide you back past actual observations -- all ages are assigned from inferences built on inferences, even if they are dated by radiometry, because that too is not verifiable before whatever is actually KNOWN in the past which isn't anything older than a few thousand years or less.
False. We can positively date historic lava flows using Ar/Ar dating. We can do exactly what you claim we can't. We can also corroborate carbon dating with lake varves, ice cores, and tree rings. Age Correlations and an Old Earth: Part II
quote:
You have fossils in the rocks. They've been studied so you know how they were formed, but you don't know their age either, and again you have methods for guessing at it but there is no way to verify the guesses as there is no KNOWN age of a fossil to work from.
We do know their ages beyond a reasonable doubt. Plus, we also know that certain fossils are never found in the same layers, which also lends credence to the theory of evolution. Just because you refuse to accept it doesn't make it untrue.
quote:
You have fossils in the rocks. They've been studied so you know how they were formed, but you don't know their age either, and again you have methods for guessing at it but there is no way to verify the guesses as there is no KNOWN age of a fossil to work from.
We do know their ages beyond a reasonable doubt. Plus, we also know that certain fossils are never found in the same layers, which also lends credence to the theory of evolution. Just because you refuse to accept it doesn't make it untrue.
quote:
You can't extrapolate from observable processes because they may only hold up for short periods and you can't find out if they hold up for longer because there's no way to set up an experiment in the past.
You use extrapolation all of the time. When you get on an airplane do you extrapolate the laws of fluid dynamics into the future? Or do you think that your airplane will suddenly fall out of the skies because the laws of physics are fickle?
The characteristics of atoms, including radioactive half lives, are as much a constant as the laws of fluid dynamics. Why is it wrong to extrapolate the laws of physics when you find no problem doing the same in your day to day life?
This message has been edited by Loudmouth, 04-05-2005 05:20 PM
This message has been edited by Loudmouth, 04-05-2005 05:21 PM
This message has been edited by Loudmouth, 04-05-2005 05:22 PM

This message is a reply to:
 Message 32 by Faith, posted 04-01-2005 3:00 PM Faith has not replied

  
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1445 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 43 of 86 (197999)
04-10-2005 1:30 AM
Reply to: Message 10 by LinearAq
03-30-2005 3:49 PM


Re: Your Thoughts?
quote:
Faith writes:
I don't consider the scientists themselves to be dunderheads at all, merely the victims of this theory which is unquestionable, not subject to proof or disproof, testing, falsification or replicability. Remember it is the THEORY that I'm saying does not meet these normal standards of scientific method, not any given scientific observation.
For this THEORY, could you show any specific part that cannot be falsified?
What part is not subject to testing?
What, as you understand it, constitutes replicability as far as this theory is concerned?

You cannot falsify (or prove) that the fossil record is a record of evolution from one species to another. There's no way to test this and there's no way to set up an experiment to replicate any facet of it that I can think of except the chemical processes of fossilization itself perhaps, but that isn't going to tell you anything about the theory of its evolution. This is because it is a theory about the past about which nothing at all is independently known. It is based only on a plausible inference from the appearance of the fossil record, and only part of the fossil record at that.
I would have said that you can't falsify (or prove) or test or replicate anything about any part of the theory of descent of species from other species, but the test sfs suggested about setting up an experiment to determine a certain kind of genetic connection between species that is already KNOWN to reflect that particular relationship would be a good one. I have yet to get to his answer to my post, when I'll see what is known about this if anything.
You cannot falsify (or prove) the age of any rock or fossil find. You can test its age with radiometric methods but you can't falsify or test the validity of those methods themselves, you can only assume that radioactive decay always does what it appears to do within measurable/historical time frames.
For the recent past, the historical past, you may have independent evidence, but for the prehistoric past, nada.
quote:
Faith also writes:
You cannot prove anything that happened in the past {Edit: without some kind of witness corroboration from that time}.
I agree that you can't PROVE anything that happened in the past except I would go so far as to say that even witness corroboration can be considered suspect.

Great. I'm glad you agree that you can't PROVE anything about the past. That's the point I'm making. And if it can't be proved that means it's not falsifiable and there are no tests that can prove it and no way to replicate it.
quote:
Be that as it may, I suspect that you are saying that we can't even make come up with anything close to the truth about what happened in the past. Does this mean that we should not consider forensic evidence or conclusions when bringing someone to trial?
No, of course not. Within historical time there are many more possibilities of independent verification, including witness reports, but also forensic evidence. I should probably change my definition to reflect this difference somehow. It is simply possible to KNOW a great deal more about events in recent time, and yet when it comes to PROOF of what actually happened, you can only get more or less good reasons to believe this or that, not actual proof.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 10 by LinearAq, posted 03-30-2005 3:49 PM LinearAq has not replied

  
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1445 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 44 of 86 (198004)
04-10-2005 2:10 AM
Reply to: Message 13 by sfs
03-30-2005 4:27 PM


I'm only talking about extrapolations about the past, and these are not falsifiable
quote:
As has already been pointed out, this is wrong. Some events don't leave any trace behind, but lots of events do. If you visit a dormant volcano, observe the cooled lava flows and see the remains of thousands of trees, all broken and lying pointing away from the crater and covered in ash, you have a pretty good idea that the volcano erupted at some point in the past don't you? That's all science does when it comes to past events: look at the traces left behind and infer what happened.
I said that it's the THEORY of evolution that can't be tested, falsified or replicated, but that of course you can do these things with given observations or events like a volcano. Yes, of course you can make such inferences, yes, I certainly haven't denied that, but my point is that that is ALL you can do. In some cases you can come up with excellent ideas about what happened, but all you have is more or less plausible ideas.
I agree, that's a scientifically formulated question and it should have scientific proof one way or another, as both human and chimpanzee DNA is available for study and there's every reason to suppose genetics always operates by predictable knowable laws, even if they aren't all known yet
quote:
Excellent. We're in agreement on this basic point. But, contrary to your statement elsewhere, this is exactly the same kind of reasoning that is applied to any other part of evolutionary biology. Some ideas can be tested with great precision, some with less. Some can't be tested at all, and can never be more than speculation. The parts that science has reached conclusions about all fall into the testable category, however.
That is the ONLY test I've ever heard of that seems to me to actually hold some promise of determining something true about past evolution, an actual test, something replicable, therefore falsifiable, and that's why I'm curious about it. But if all you have is inference and speculation, you don't have testability or falsifiability, and that is the case in general for all events in the past. Some inferences hardly require it, such as the inference from the position of the trees in the path of the lava, but some, such as the descent of one kind of creature from another as shown in the fossil record certainly do, and there's no way to come up with such a test for that. Genetics, however, DNA, yes, I can see potentials there for something better than mere inference.
quote:
(unlike radiometric dating which could only be proved valid for ancient ages by KNOWING the age of some ancient rocks already, which can't be known without a reliable dating scheme that's not just extrapolations from extrapolations, and there we are going around in circles).
Huh? Radiometric dating, at least in its more sophisticated forms, depends on knowing how physics works, and doesn't depend at all on having some sample whose date you know. As we DNA, we have the isotopes, and we know the processes that are involved in radioactive decay, so we can make valid inferences about how long the rock has been accumulating decay products.

But there's no way to test/verify/falsify that the rate of decay is constant for all spans of time and all conditions and the only way this could be verified is with a sample whose date is known. YOu are in the position of simply trusting that it holds up, but you can't know that.
quote:
My comments come from my professional experience with genetic data; I've seen the utility of evolution in practice. I've tried (for years) to think of ways of getting them to fit a YEC scenario, and I can't come up with one...
yes, I'm no scientist but I don't have any problem fitting all of it into a YEC scenario. There's nothing in any observation that requires long ages, and nothing that requires descent of one species from another. I don't know what the problem would be. And I'm still curious about what sort of genetic factors you would expect to see between species you think are genetically related.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 13 by sfs, posted 03-30-2005 4:27 PM sfs has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 85 by sfs, posted 04-15-2005 10:08 AM Faith has not replied

  
Adminnemooseus
Administrator
Posts: 3974
Joined: 09-26-2002


Message 45 of 86 (198006)
04-10-2005 2:40 AM


A caution to you all!
The The lack of emperical evidence for the theory of evolution, according to Faith. topic was recently closed, due to bad behaviour by various members (and I'm not at all trying to pick on Faith here). In my opinion, the topic was badly flawed from the beginning - I would not have advanced it from the "Proposed New Topics" forum.
I strongly encourage all to be very careful with this (The Nature of Scientific Inquiry; Is Evolution Science?) topic. If I (and the other admins?) find it going the ways of the above cited, I (we?) might just have to take some harsh actions against some members (suspensions).
Please be focused, be nice, or don't post messages in this topic.
Wish to respond to this message? Please take such to the "General discussion..." topic, link below.
Adminnemooseus

New Members should start HERE to get an understanding of what makes great posts.
Comments on moderation procedures (or wish to respond to admin messages)? - Go to:
General discussion of moderation procedures
Thread Reopen Requests
Considerations of topic promotions from the "Proposed New Topics" forum
Other useful links:
Forum Guidelines, Style Guides for EvC and Assistance w/ Forum Formatting

  
Newer Topic | Older Topic
Jump to:


Copyright 2001-2023 by EvC Forum, All Rights Reserved

™ Version 4.2
Innovative software from Qwixotic © 2024