Noah's Ark and the Cheetah

[Mr Strawberry]

double post. (This new forum is seriously annoying.)

 

[SkyWriting]

This just gets better and better. Forensic testing? Archaeology? What's that?

That is the overlap that occurs in the imagination. Science-Fiction.
You know (buried deep) that Forensic experts testify against
each other with competing imaginary tales....right?

And Archaeology is so much a joke that people rarely even
bother to dispute anothers findings until they come up with
enough new evidence to support their even taller tale.

 

[Armoured]

That is the overlap that occurs in the imagination. Science-Fiction.

*weakly* seriously?

 

[SkyWriting]

Exactly. If the bible wasn't all over the place the whole field of apologetics would be unnecessary. The fact that apologetics exists, and is such a big field, is rather a giveaway that their book has more than a few problems.

That's not what apologetics is about.
It has nothing to do with "problems."

 

[SkyWriting]

*weakly* seriously?

That's about as strong a rebuttle as I've seen in years.

 

[Armoured]

That's about as strong a rebuttle as I've seen in years.

You claimed that archaeology and forensics are science-fiction. I'm honestly having difficulty knowing how to respond to that at all. "Not even wrong" comes to mind.

Just out of interest, do you have an actual paying job in the real world? If so, I'm curious to know in what field?

 

[Mr Strawberry]

That's not what apologetics is about.

It is what it spends most of its time doing.

 

[The Cadet]

The fields of Science and History are diametrically opposed.
History cannot see into the future, and Science cannot see into the past.
Scientists can predict the outcome of future observations, in the imagination.
But cannot test past events.

And yet, if someone breaks your knee with a baseball bat, I guarantee you you will drop this ridiculous, asinine pretext in an instant when it comes to prosecuting that person in court. Seriously, this whole argument, that science cannot see into the past... It's completely false. Inference does not suddenly stop working just because the object of inference is in the past.

The past leaves traces of itself in the present constantly, and once we learn what those traces are, we can follow it back into the past. We know, for example, that large-scale flooding leaves a very distinct deposition pattern in the strata, so if we wanted to know, "Was there a global flood 4000 years ago", we could look through the geologic column for the signs that should be there if everything was flooded, and see if what we find matches what we think we know we ought to find. It doesn't.

In fact, every single inference we've been able to make about the past either fails to support or completely contradicts the genesis account! Genetics tells us that if a species was brought down to 2 individuals a mere 4000 years ago, we would see that in that species's genetic diversity! Geology doesn't find the flood deposits we would absolutely expect if the world was flooded. Dendrochronology finds trees with enough rings that they would have had to have been growing long before the flood and even before the beginning of the universe, according to Usher's chronology. And the list goes on and on and on.

Anyone claiming that science (empirical observation and inference) cannot make statements about the past is both wrong and, if they're not completely inconsistent, incapable of leading a modern life. How do you know anything about the past beyond your immediate senses and memory? And how can you even trust those?

Now, as for your claim about Judas...

Now, given that is likely, the council could have used the silver that Judas threw at them,
and purchased the field in Judas name.

But that's not what the text says. Look, it's one thing to make things up to make contradictions go away. The idea that he fell from somewhere he was hanging and died not only seems to contradict the purpose of the passage in acts, but is simply not stated anywhere in the bible. You have to make it up to try to fit the two contradictory deaths fit, but okay, fine, maybe they just didn't list every little detail, like how he actually died. No objective observer would consider this ad-hoc excuse a reasonable one.

But in this case, you are directly contradicting the scripture.

He acquired it with the rewards of his wickedness. What's so hard to understand about that? Not "they bought it in his name", he went and got the field for himself! If no objective observer would consider the previous ad-hoc excuse reasonable, in this case, I have trouble even believing you believe what you're telling me!

And the point of his death was that he had no one to take his body down from his hanging.
So his body hung there and bloated till it was juicy and splatted on the ground.

If I were doing a literary interpretation of "Acts", the meaning of the passage would seem blatantly clear: Judas bought the field, then god struck him down and he died. It's only if you have to twist the two separate books of the bible to not contradict each other that you run into this ludicrous, completely ad-hoc explanation.

And it's trivially easy to do! Check this out:

MAT 1:16 And Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ.

LUK 3:23 And Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age, being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph, which was the son of Heli.

"Well, it's obvious that his name was Jacob Heli!"

MAT 27:46,50: "And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, "Eli, eli, lama sabachthani?" that is to say, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" ...Jesus, when he cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost."

LUK 23:46: "And when Jesus had cried with a loud voice, he said, "Father, unto thy hands I commend my spirit:" and having said thus, he gave up the ghost."

JOH 19:30: "When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, "It is finished:" and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost."

"He said all three things!"

Et cetera, et cetera. If you're allowed to just make stuff up, then you can excuse away basically any contradiction.

 

[SkyWriting]

And yet, if someone breaks your knee with a baseball bat, I guarantee you you will drop this ridiculous, asinine pretext in an instant when it comes to prosecuting that person in court. Seriously, this whole argument, that science cannot see into the past... It's completely false. Inference does not suddenly stop working just because the object of inference is in the past.

If that were true, we'd only have scientists on a jury. Guess what.....we exclude them on purpose.

Please do link to any scientist who claims I'm wrong.
I've got one...on your subject:

The scientific method, a time-honored approach for discovering and testing scientific truth, does not and cannot work for the forensic sciences in its standard form because it does not work for past events. Past events cannot be observed, cannot be predicted or deduced from physical evidence, and cannot be tested experimentally.


As for Judas...all accounts are true and accurate based on information
from multiple witnesses. The story goes, Judas hanged himself, hung there
till he bloated, fell and his guts gushed out.

Why else would the passage mention his guts gushing out?
Lots of people dies in scripture, rarely do their guts gush out.
So why in this case? Because it helps complete the story
of how it actually happened.

Lets go the other route. The two accounts of how Judas dies
and sitting in front of the person (or team) who wrote the account.

"Ah.....I don't know. I'll just put in both versions"

The simple and accurate idea where both are correct fits better.

 

[SkyWriting]

You claimed that archaeology and forensics are science-fiction. I'm honestly having difficulty knowing how to respond to that at all. "Not even wrong" comes to mind.

Just out of interest, do you have an actual paying job in the real world? If so, I'm curious to know in what field?

You'd thin' you could come up with something stronger.
When cornered.....think about finding fuel for an ad hominem attack?
Transparency is your middle name, I'll give you that. You are not sneaky.

 

[SkyWriting]

The past leaves traces of itself in the present constantly, and once we learn what those traces are, we can follow it back into the past.

Nope. Well we can, but only in our imagination. We can't test past events.
We don't have the ability to know all the original conditions.

First of all, one cannot observe the past. Items in the past may be remembered by some, but they cannot be seen, smelled, heard, tasted, or sensed in any way. Observation is an activity in the present that requires the use of the senses.

Secondly, one cannot predict the past. Prediction is an activity in the present that looks to the future, not the past. An attempt to use the scientific method to determine what happened in the past would be “retrodiction.” “Retrodiction” is a neologism for good reason: science cannot “retrodict.” This will be explained subsequently.

Thirdly, one cannot design experiments or controlled observations to determine what happened in the past. Experiments or controlled observations might help one see if a situation is possible or not possible under a set of defined circumstances, but one cannot design an experiment that will replicate the complex variety of conditions that existed in the past — conditions that are often not known in full detail. An experiment or set of controlled observations also cannot provide information about the order and timing of past events.

Fourthly, a hypothesis confirmed by multiple experiments and observations in time may become a theory, but forensic science is not and should not be concerned with the formation of theories. Forensic science may use theories derived from the work of natural and physical scientists, but determining what happened and who is responsible are not scientific theories.




But we can dream. A number of scientists are science fiction writers just for that reason.
Most are...but I mean many are recognized as such authors. Do they loose credibilty
as scientists? No. Their creds are enhanced because every knows that bad science
needs good fiction writers.

 

[SkyWriting]

double post. (This new forum is seriously annoying.)

I often hit REPLY because EDIT is harder to see... resulting in double posts.

 

[Loudmouth]

Nope. Well we can, but only in our imagination. We can't test past events.

You don't test observations. You test hypotheses. Why can't we form hypotheses about what happened in the past and use observations to test them?

We don't have the ability to know all the original conditions.

We do have evidence for the original conditions. Why can't we use that evidence?

First of all, one cannot observe the past.

You don't observe the hypothesis. Until you can understand the basics of the scientific method, this won't go anywhere.

Items in the past may be remembered by some, but they cannot be seen, smelled, heard, tasted, or sensed in any way.

These are items from the past. You can't see them?

Our DNA comes from our ancestors. We can measure it in the lab. If two species share an ancestor, then we can use DNA to test for common ancestry.

Secondly, one cannot predict the past.

Prediction refers to future observations. That's what a hypothesis is. That is what testing a hypothesis is. Please learn how the scientific method works.

Thirdly, one cannot design experiments or controlled observations to determine what happened in the past. Experiments or controlled observations might help one see if a situation is possible or not possible under a set of defined circumstances, but one cannot design an experiment that will replicate the complex variety of conditions that existed in the past — conditions that are often not known in full detail.

"Given the size of vertebrate genomes (>1 × 109 bp) and the random nature of retroviral integration (22, 23), multiple integrations (and subsequent fixation) of ERV loci at precisely the same location are highly unlikely (24). Therefore, an ERV locus shared by two or more species is descended from a single integration event and is proof that the species share a common ancestor into whose germ line the original integration took place (14)."
http://www.pnas.org/content/96/18/10254.full

That's the test for the hypothesis that humans and chimps share a common ancestor. In controlled experiments, you an measure the presence and locus of ERV's in the human and chimp genomes. In controlled experiments, you can measure the pattern of retroviral insertion.

Or are you arguing that magic made everything different in the past, like dad does?

Fourthly, a hypothesis confirmed by multiple experiments and observations in time may become a theory, but forensic science is not and should not be concerned with the formation of theories. Forensic science may use theories derived from the work of natural and physical scientists, but determining what happened and who is responsible are not scientific theories.

Common ancestry and evolutione are among the most well supported theories in science.

 

[Armoured]

You'd thin' you could come up with something stronger.
When cornered.....think about finding fuel for an ad hominem attack?
Transparency is your middle name, I'll give you that. You are not sneaky.

It's a straight question. I'm curious to know what role science plays in your daily life.

 

[SkyWriting]

It's a straight question. I'm curious to know what role science plays in your daily life.

My 1st 2 years after college I was in Polymer Development R&D at Amoco Chemicals, part of Standard Oil (now BP.)
Most of our work was on Torlon. A few jobs in OIL and 2 part epoxies, then I settled in adhesive development for a decade
where we created Nip-Weld adhesives. It was already patented before I started working on it, so I missed my chance
to be on the patent. You know how candy bars just have one wrapper now? If you peel open a candy bar wrapper you'll find
it is one flat piece of printed film and they just take the wrapper and fold it around the candy bar and the adhesive sticks to itself. What is unique is that it sticks to the film when wet, but when it dries it only sticks to itself. So the wrapper film can be pre-glued and put on rolls and stored. The film then just pulls off the roll, wrapped around the candy bar, and only sticks to other glue stripes but not to film. We also created the construction process for disposable diapers. Each of layer uses a fine swirl of glue and it all goes together very fast. There are the tab adhesives, binding adhesives, and one formula that goes on like spray glue, but forms the "elastic", but it's actually just another formula of glue. After that I've been in product development for a plastics company that worked on various projects for UPS, Harley Davidson, and Target. Nothing ground breaking there though. The company wasn't going anywhere so I quit a couple weeks ago. Moving on with my career.

 

[Armoured]

My 1st 2 years after college I was in Polymer Development R&D at Amoco Chemicals, part of Standard Oil (now BP.)
Most of our work was on Torlon. A few jobs in OIL and 2 part epoxies, then I settled in adhesive development for a decade
where we created Nip-Weld adhesives. It was already patented before I started working on it, so I missed my chance
to be on the patent. You know how candy bars just have one wrapper now? If you peel open a candy bar wrapper you'll find
it is one flat piece of printed film and they just take the wrapper and fold it around the candy bar and the adhesive sticks to itself. What is unique is that it sticks to the film when wet, but when it dries it only sticks to itself. So the wrapper film can be pre-glued and put on rolls and stored. The film then just pulls off the roll, wrapped around the candy bar, and only sticks to other glue stripes but not to film. We also created the construction process for disposable diapers. Each of layer uses a fine swirl of glue and it all goes together very fast. There are the tab adhesives, binding adhesives, and one formula that goes on like spray glue, but forms the "elastic", but it's actually just another formula of glue. After that I've been in product development for a plastics company that worked on various projects for UPS, Harley Davidson, and Target. Nothing ground breaking there though. The company wasn't going anywhere so I quit a couple weeks ago. Moving on with my career.

I'm surprised. Sounds like fascinating stuff.

So... given your petrochem background, if you don't think science can tell us anything about the past, how do you figure geologists work out where the oil deposits are?

 

[SkyWriting]

I'm surprised. Sounds like fascinating stuff. So... given your petrochem background, if you don't think science can tell us anything about the past, how do you figure geologists work out where the oil deposits are?

Those who make assumptions about the unknown can be surprised. You are in good company.
"“It really surprised us,” said Kevin Feldheim, manager of the Pritzker Laboratory for Molecular Systematics and Evolution at Chicago’s Field Museum. "
They have not-a-clue where oil used to be. They are good at finding patterns.
Patterns based on where we find oil now....and they can use those patterns to
predict where they may find oil in the future. Science can only look forward.
But, like they say about stocks, "past performance is not a guarantee of future success."
So every educated guess is a gamble.

So are we talking about oil speculation? Or Gambling science? Or geology research?

Secondly, one cannot predict the past. Prediction is an activity in the present that looks to the future, not the past. An attempt to use the scientific method to determine what happened in the past would be “retrodiction.” “Retrodiction” is a neologism for good reason: science cannot “retrodict.” This will be explained subsequently.

I'll just keep refering back to science cannot “retrodict.”

 

[The Cadet]

Nope. Well we can, but only in our imagination. We can't test past events.
We don't have the ability to know all the original conditions.

I'll be honest, I haven't the foggiest who these Heartland Forensics guys are (looking at their website and Google Streetview, it appears to be one dude running an "organization" out of his home); what they're saying is just wrong. Here's a simple chart outlining the scientific method:

What, exactly, cannot apply to the past there? It becomes more difficult to make observations or testable predictions, but it's by no means impossible. We observe things about the past constantly. Given these observations, we can make testable predictions based on things not already known about the past, and actually check those predictions against other observations made in the past. Tiktaalik is a great example of this; based on observations of the past (based on fossil evidence), scientists predicted where to find a transitional form between fish and therapods, and what it would look like, and what they found confirmed this prediction in a spectacular manner.

Not only is this simply not true, it also (and here's a big, fat, useful hint for anyone curious about how true these claims are) runs directly contrary to the way science has been practiced for the past 200-odd years. Tell this to a geologist, a paleontologist, an evolutionary-developmental biologist, an anthropologist, a climatologist, a cosmologist, an astrophysicist, or almost any other scientist in any other discipline, and they'll laugh you out of the room! You will not find any serious scientists who agree with the statement made by these people, because, well, it's asinine. It's like saying "science can make no statement about human emotions" - not only can it, but it has been doing so for quite some time, and I'm sure quite a few researchers would be quite interested to know that what they're doing is not science.

 

[SkyWriting]

I'll be honest, I haven't the foggiest who these Heartland Forensics guys are (looking at their website and Google Streetview, it appears to be one dude running an "organization" out of his home); what they're saying is just wrong. Here's a simple chart outlining the scientific method:

What, exactly, cannot apply to the past there?

Outlined in green. Sentence #2.

You can easily side step my quotes, but you must never try to face them head on. Nobody has ever tried.
I'm not trying to play this expert court witness as the expert that he is. I present his logic and observations as irrefutable, which so far, they have been. Don't bother trying to impress us with Geneology Science or what have you. It's not science. That's juts a nice way to say somebody is obsessed with something and that he is the supreme obsessed person in his "science" field. I don't care how offended they are when they hear it's not hard science.

First of all, one cannot observe the past. Items in the past may be remembered by some, but they cannot be seen, smelled, heard, tasted, or sensed in any way. Observation is an activity in the present that requires the use of the senses.

Secondly, one cannot predict the past. Prediction is an activity in the present that looks to the future, not the past. An attempt to use the scientific method to determine what happened in the past would be “retrodiction.” “Retrodiction” is a neologism for good reason: science cannot “retrodict.” This will be explained subsequently.

Thirdly, one cannot design experiments or controlled observations to determine what happened in the past. Experiments or controlled observations might help one see if a situation is possible or not possible under a set of defined circumstances, but one cannot design an experiment that will replicate the complex variety of conditions that existed in the past — conditions that are often not known in full detail. An experiment or set of controlled observations also cannot provide information about the order and timing of past events.

 

[The Cadet]

Outlined in green. Sentence #2.

"Thorough testing requires replication to verify results"? But if my data is "this burial shroud can be carbon-dated to 1200 AD", why wouldn't I be able to replicate that result? It'd be pretty trivial; just pick another sample area and test that. You're confusing the event with the data. The event cannot be replicated, but the data that led us to the hypothesis about the event can be.

You can easily side step my quotes, but you must never try to face them head on.

Are you kidding me? I already did:

Not only is this simply not true, it also (and here's a big, fat, useful hint for anyone curious about how true these claims are) runs directly contrary to the way science has been practiced for the past 200-odd years. Tell this to a geologist, a paleontologist, an evolutionary-developmental biologist, an anthropologist, a climatologist, a cosmologist, an astrophysicist, or almost any other scientist in any other discipline, and they'll laugh you out of the room! You will not find any serious scientists who agree with the statement made by these people, because, well, it's asinine. It's like saying "science can make no statement about human emotions" - not only can it, but it has been doing so for quite some time, and I'm sure quite a few researchers would be quite interested to know that what they're doing is not science.​

The statements are just wrong. PZ Myers also took them on head-on:

We can reconstruct the evolutionary history of fruit flies. We do this by observation. That does not mean we watch different species of fruit flies speciate before our eyes (although it has been found to occur in reasonable spans of time in the lab and the wild), it means we extract and analyze information from extant species — we take invisible genetic properties of the flies’ genomes and turn them into tables of data and strings of publishable code. We observe patterns in their genetics that allow us to determine patterns of historical change. Observation and history are intertwined. To deny the history is to deny the observations.

Paleontology is often labeled a historical science, but it doesn’t have the pejorative sense in which creationists use it, and it is definitely founded in observation. For instance, plesiosaurs: do you think scientists just invented them? No. We found their bones — we observed their remains imbedded in rock — and further, we found evidence of a long history of variation and diversity. The sense in which the study of plesiosaurs is historical is that they’re all extinct, so there are no extant forms to examine, but it is still soundly based on observation. Paleontology may be largely historical, but it is still a legitimate science built on observation, measurement, and even prediction, and it also relies heavily on analysis of extant processes in geology, physics, and biology.

(Emphasis mine.)

I'm not trying to play this expert court witness as the expert that he is. I present his logic and observations as irrefutable, which so far, they have been.

No, I'm sorry, his logic is just straight-up wrong. As Myers points out:

I can dig into the ground with a spade and see the rich dark loam of this country — the product of ten thousand years of prairie grasses building dense root systems, prairie dogs tunneling through it, the bison wallowing and foraging. This isn’t an illusion, it’s the observable result of millennia of prairie ecosystems thriving here, and it’s the source of the agricultural prosperity of the region. I can sieve through the muck that has accumulated in prairie lakes, and find pollen from the exuberant flora that grew here: clover and grasses, wildflowers and the flowering of the wetlands. I can track back and see the eras when the great eastern deciduous forests marched westward, and when they staggered back. It’s all in the record. It all contributed to what we have now.

[...]

“Were you there?” Yes. Yes, I am here, embedded in this grand stream of history, aware of my place in it, seeing with open eyes the evidence that surrounds me. And I pity those unable to see the grand arena they are a small part of, who want to deny that history is observable.

There's nothing to debunk there. Ask any real scientist what they think about the matter, and you'll hear "yeah, you can make repeatable observations about the past". Or, to put it another way:

If I show you this picture, and your life depended on it, could you tell me to any degree of certainty what kind of natural disaster is going on here? I think you could, just like I think most people could. You can do that despite the fact that we can't repeat the events that led to that photo. We can draw inferences from what is contained in the photo, as well as concordant other lines of evidence, to conclude that this was most likely a hurricane. Much in the same way forensic science can look at a bloodstained fingerprint on the wall and the murder weapon and conclude that the murderer is whoever has those fingerprints (the fact that it's a forensic science lab claiming that you cannot use science to investigate the past is doubly disturbing). The observation of the fingerprint, the observation of the damage from the hurricane... These are things that lay in the present that point to an event that happened in the past repeatably and consistently.