Observation, Mediation, Speculation

[Suggestion Box]

Consider the following scriptures:
Deuteronomy 19:5
Matthew 18:6
John 5:30-47

These passages are about witnesses of crimes, and witnesses that Jesus is who he says he is. There seems to be a clear indication in scripture that we find repeatedly, that two or three (presumably credible) witnesses are enough to believe a testimony. Scripture is considered a witness about Jesus. The works that the Father does through Jesus are considered a witness from the Father. John the Baptist is also considered a witness who testifies about Jesus.

I think this may give us some insight into this: how do we determine if an event reported by a scientist actually happened, or how accurate is his/her testimony? Too often we just hear the word "scientist" and assume that whatever comes next is a fact. What if the scientist is not a credible witness? What if the institution of sciences is not a credible institution? How do we tell the difference between true science and false witnesses who might be motivated by power or money or some other conflict of interest? How do we tell the difference between massive conspiracies and legitimate institutions? (If you don't believe in massive conspiracies, you are a holocaust denier.)

I am developing a framework for assessing the credibility of scientific information. The places where I find this most often necessary are with regards to issues surrounding creation. This is important because my son is learning to read, and I want to be able to give him a clear way to separate fact from fiction from opinion from lies from educated guesses, etc. What I am trying to figure out is a systematic way of discerning whether any given statement is credible. I find myself classifying statements that I read into 3 categories:

Observation: through my senses, I directly witnessed something. I am an eyewitness. (Note an eyewitness does not necessarily have to use the eyes; any direct senses will do.)

Mediation: I have received a report of someone else witnessing something. There is someone who at least claims to be an eyewitness, even if that person is not me. This person may be more or less credible. There can be a chain of mediators, people who pass on the report of an eyewitness. These people are effectively witnesses of a witness, and each one has his/her own credibility that affects the credibility of the report that I receive.

Speculation: I have received a report which does not even claim to have an eyewitness. This is an educated guess. Speculations can also be mediated, but they are not being mediated from an eyewitness, they are being mediated from a guesser. The extent to which this guess is educated affects its credibility, but it cannot be verified through direct observation by anyone.

Here are some examples:

Say you are walking around in your garden and you discover a piece of greenbrier. You have heard that greenbrier leaves are edible. You bend down and pluck one off the prickly stem, taking caution not to poke yourself. You munch on it. It tastes good. You eat the rest. You find that later, you are feeling good, and you are neither dead nor sick to the stomach. You conclude that greenbrier is in fact edible, at least for you. This is an observation. You are an eyewitness to the fact that greenbrier is edible. Though you heard about it through a mediator, you were able to repeat the experiment and observe it for yourself. You could then find another observer or two, and partner with them to spread your testimonies to other people, and they could benefit from that testimony.

Say you are reading a book about dinosaurs with your child. You come across the following statement: "The Triceratops had three horns". I would classify this as a Mediation, and a credible one. I know that I have been to a museum and see the bones of a Triceratops. It is possible that the museum manufactured these bones, but I find that unlikely because I know that there are multiple museums which display these, and I have heard and seen independent reports about this from a variety of sources. I believe that two or three witnesses have actually observed this fact, and the report has reached me from a variety of independent mediators, so I believe it is indeed a fact.

Say you are reading the same book, and you come across the statement, "The Stegosaurus was an herbivore, meaning it only ate plants." I would classify this as a Speculation, and a credible one, but still not nearly as credible as the fact that the Triceratops has three horns. This is because no one has ever reported having observed a Stegosaurus eating anything, so there is no eyewitness of the event. It is possible that Adam witnessed such a thing, but we have no report of it, so we cannot count him as an eyewitness. The statement is a result of deductive reasoning: if an animal has square teeth, and not pointy teeth, then it is likely that the animal would only eat plants. A Stegosaurus has square teeth. Therefore, we can hypothesize that the Stegosaurus only ate plants. And there the scientific method comes to a grinding halt. No one can verify this hypothesis through experimentation. No one can verify it through application of the principles to see if it is useful for everyday life. It is at best a novelty - something we can marvel at, and appreciate, but not something that we can base our decisions on. Whether it's a fact or not is completely unverifiable, and I would hesitate to even call it science.

Say you are reading the stock report for a company, and you look at the stock prices over the past year. The stocks predictably rose in a linear pattern over that year. You then wonder what the stock price was the year before... but the website is broken and it won't let you see the 2-year data. So you figure it out mathematically. You open up Excel and plot a linear regression, using an enormous mountain of evidence consisting of 300 data points per day for 365 days, which is over 100,000 data points, and forecasting the stock prices backward one extra year, using only the present year's data. Miraculously, you even notice that the increase in prices was perfectly linear. The price increased by exactly the same amount from every data point to the next. You then go and tell people that you checked the stock prices 2 years ago. You have made a Speculation, and a wildly inaccurate one at that. Where are you getting the baseless assumption that the rates of things continue being consistent in the unmeasured past, just because they seem consistent within the range over which you measured them? Did you think that, because you had a mountain of evidence suggesting the rates always stay constant, that you could then extrapolate outside the measured range? What is a mountain of evidence? How much is enough? Whatever seems like enough must be enough? Nope. Just because it seems like a lot of evidence does not mean it is enough evidence. You have zero observations, and zero reports from eyewitnesses or mediators, for the stock prices 2 years ago, so you have zero information. 100,000 times 0 is still 0. This is an incredible Speculation.

Say you are reading the weather report, and it says "The high temperature in 10 days will be 41 degrees Fahrenheit." This is a Speculation, and its credibility depends on the weatherman's track record of accurate reports, and whether there are other weathermen predicting the same thing. However, no matter how many weathermen are predicting it, and no matter how good their track records are, it is not observable... yet. When 10 days pass, and I measure the weather and I find it to be 45 degrees, I will then conclude that the Speculation was incorrect. If I measure it to be 41 degrees at the high, then I conclude that the Speculation was correct. This is an educated guess, and its accuracy varies greatly. It is not unverifiable forever, but in the present it is unverifiable.

Please provide feedback as to whether you think this is a correct and useful framework for discerning facts.

 

[The Barbarian]

Please provide feedback as to whether you think this is a correct and useful framework for discerning facts.

Epistemology (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

 

[Suggestion Box]

I'm not sure if epistemology is what I'm getting at here.

Plato’s epistemology was an attempt to understand what it was to know, and how knowledge (unlike mere true opinion) is good for the knower. Locke’s epistemology was an attempt to understand the operations of human understanding, Kant’s epistemology was an attempt to understand the conditions of the possibility of human understanding, and Russell’s epistemology was an attempt to understand how modern science could be justified by appeal to sensory experience

I can't say much about Kant or Russell or Plato, but Locke I can. In his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, he spends an inordinate amount of time talking about sensation and reflection, the inputs by which he says we get all information. I'm calling this Observation. Though he talks a lot about the meanings of words, he barely touches on the credibility of person-to-person transfer of information (which I am calling Mediation). This does not get the emphasis I think it needs. This is because the vast majority of the knowledge I have came from sources outside of myself. I make a lot of observations. But these are not how I get most of my information, and I think most others also rely more heavily on mediate knowledge than direct observation. The credibility of that information cannot be assumed. As information becomes more and more easily transferrable (through technology), I think it's becoming less and less credible. I can't count the number of times I have heard "a quick Google search reveals..." or "we know that...". Who's we? Why is a random website credible? Very little time is spent on this, and more needs to be.

The reason I think my idea could be useful in the Creation & Theistic Evolution sub-forum is because it could help us assess the credibility of sources of information. Credibility of sources is something I think is often overlooked, not questioned, or at least its importance is minimized. I want to elevate the importance of the task of assessing the credibility of mediators.

 

[The Barbarian]

I'm not sure if epistemology is what I'm getting at here. I can't count the number of times I have heard "a quick Google search reveals..." or "we know that...". Who's we? Why is a random website credible? Very little time is spent on this, and more needs to be.

The reason I think my idea could be useful in the Creation & Theistic Evolution sub-forum is because it could help us assess the credibility of sources of information. Credibility of sources is something I think is often overlooked, not questioned, or at least its importance is minimized. I want to elevate the importance of the task of assessing the credibility of mediators.

So it's how do we know that a source is credible? I'm not sure that's different from "how do we know what we know?

Moreover, when we can't even get Christians to agree on what the Bible says in many different places, the problem isn't entirely about the credibility of the source, but the interpretation of what the source says.

One possible way is statistical. If one suggests an hypothesis, and repeatedly tests it in the real world, most people would acknowledge that the data is real and significant, assuming the test has been adequately designed and controlled to test for the hypothesis.

And it's easy to show mathematically a confidence interval for say a 95% certainty of the results being significant. But the vast majority of people who doubt science, won't be able to comprehend the math involved. Like the creationist who denies mutations produce new information, it does little good to apply information theory to a case and show that it does. Most will ignore the result, for deny that it's "real information" in the same way that creationists who admit the fact of speciation will deny that it's "real evolution", even though speciation is descent with modification and a change in allele frequencies in a population.

Ultimately, one comes up to cases like creationist Harold Coffin, who testified that if it were not for his religious beliefs, he would consider the world to be many millions of years old. He's being completely honest and I can respect that. But he finds his personal religious convictions sufficient to overrule science whenever he sees a conflict.

Two completely different ways of thinking. And sometimes both are working in the same person. John Woodmorappe, who wrote the Ark Feasibility Study also wrote scientific papers assuming the fact of evolution.


And there's Glenn Morton who moved from creationism to acceptance of science, who nearly became an atheist.

On the other side, there's Richard Dawkins, who simply denies that there's any way to learn anything about God and completely rejects scripture as a valid source of information.

It's not hopeless, but it's difficult. There are scientists like Francis Collins, who moved from atheism to Christianity without turning his back on science. There are also scientists who moved from atheism to creationism.

Part of the issue is that for most of us, science is a rational position, arrived at by reason and evidence, while faith is received and a matter of inspiration. Not all of us; C.S. Lewis apparently came to believe largely on reason.

As Lewis recounted the conversation in his autobiography, Surprised by Joy, Tolkien insisted that myths were not falsehoods but rather intimations of a concrete, spiritual reality. “Jack, when you meet a god sacrificing himself in a pagan story, you like it very much. You are mysteriously moved by it,” Tolkien said. Lewis agreed: Tales of sacrifice and heroism stirred up within him a sense of longing—but not when he encountered them in the gospels.


The pagan stories, Tolkien insisted, are God expressing himself through the minds of poets: They are “splintered fragments” of a much greater story. The account of Christ and his death and resurrection is a kind of myth, he explained. It works on our imagination in much the same way as other myths, with this difference: It really happened. Perhaps only Tolkien, with his immense intelligence and creativity, could have persuaded Lewis that his reason and imagination might become allies in the act of faith.


Lewis’s objections melted away, like ants into a furnace. “The old myth of the Dying God, without ceasing to be myth, comes down from the heaven of legend and imagination to the earth of history,” he wrote after his conversion. “We must not be ashamed of the mythical radiance resting on our theology.”
https://www.heritage.org/civil-society/commentary/how-c-s-lewis-accepted-christianity

I've had repeated discussions with vaccine opponents. No matter how many studies I show from journals like Lancet or JAMA, they merely assert that the researchers are being paid to lie. Ultimately, the postmodern idea that the truth is whatever we want it to be, has infected society to the point that many of us can no longer agree on what would be a standard for truth.

Having tossed pessimism on your idea, let me now say that your idea has merit, it would be great if one can find a way to bring people to discuss how to vet sources rationally. I'm all ears. And I hope you can show us something.

 

[Gottservant]

That facts need a framework, is new to me.

I think it's encouraging to think, that if our faith is a fact to God, God is able to give us a framework.

God bless the framework, He gives the Church (knowing the Church's faith is a fact).

 

[Suggestion Box]

Teachers are mediators of information. The Holy Spirit, through the apostles, has given us warnings against false teachers, and instructions on how to identify and avoid them.

Here are some points that decrease the credibility of a teacher:
Bearing bad fruit: Matthew 3:8, Matthew 7:15-20, Matthew 12:33-37
Enticement by sensual passion and the promise of freedom: 2 Peter 2:18-19, Jude 1:4
Exploitation motivated by greed: 2 Peter 2:3
Rejection of authority: Jude 1:8
Reliance upon one's own authority: John 7:18
Devotion to endless genealogies: 1 Timothy 1:4
Denying the Lord Jesus Christ: Jude 1:4
Failure to confess that Jesus Christ has come in a physical body: 1 John 4:1-3

I think it's more than fair to apply these same principles to scientific information. The vast majority of information, even scientific information, is mediated to us through teachers. And it changes hands many times. Most of us don't even get information from teachers... we get it from the internet, from people we don't know, and whose core motivation is not to tell the truth, but to get our attention so that they can earn money from advertising. But even scientists do not directly observe most of what they believe to be factual. They get it from other scientists, because science is inherently collaborative. Experiments take a lot of time, and a lot of money, and most results are inconclusive. It isn't feasible or possible for every individual to rely on direct observation. Each has his or her own field of study where they make observations. And outside of professional science, there is everyday observation, which benefits from a large number of independent sources. Without trust, there is no knowledge. Therefore assessing the credibility of people is paramount. God has given us tools to assess credibility, and we should use them.

 

[mindlight]

Consider the following scriptures:
Deuteronomy 19:5
Matthew 18:6
John 5:30-47

These passages are about witnesses of crimes, and witnesses that Jesus is who he says he is. There seems to be a clear indication in scripture that we find repeatedly, that two or three (presumably credible) witnesses are enough to believe a testimony. Scripture is considered a witness about Jesus. The works that the Father does through Jesus are considered a witness from the Father. John the Baptist is also considered a witness who testifies about Jesus.

I think this may give us some insight into this: how do we determine if an event reported by a scientist actually happened, or how accurate is his/her testimony? Too often we just hear the word "scientist" and assume that whatever comes next is a fact. What if the scientist is not a credible witness? What if the institution of sciences is not a credible institution? How do we tell the difference between true science and false witnesses who might be motivated by power or money or some other conflict of interest? How do we tell the difference between massive conspiracies and legitimate institutions? (If you don't believe in massive conspiracies, you are a holocaust denier.)

I am developing a framework for assessing the credibility of scientific information. The places where I find this most often necessary are with regards to issues surrounding creation. This is important because my son is learning to read, and I want to be able to give him a clear way to separate fact from fiction from opinion from lies from educated guesses, etc. What I am trying to figure out is a systematic way of discerning whether any given statement is credible. I find myself classifying statements that I read into 3 categories:

Observation: through my senses, I directly witnessed something. I am an eyewitness. (Note an eyewitness does not necessarily have to use the eyes; any direct senses will do.)

Mediation: I have received a report of someone else witnessing something. There is someone who at least claims to be an eyewitness, even if that person is not me. This person may be more or less credible. There can be a chain of mediators, people who pass on the report of an eyewitness. These people are effectively witnesses of a witness, and each one has his/her own credibility that affects the credibility of the report that I receive.

Speculation: I have received a report which does not even claim to have an eyewitness. This is an educated guess. Speculations can also be mediated, but they are not being mediated from an eyewitness, they are being mediated from a guesser. The extent to which this guess is educated affects its credibility, but it cannot be verified through direct observation by anyone.

Here are some examples:

Say you are walking around in your garden and you discover a piece of greenbrier. You have heard that greenbrier leaves are edible. You bend down and pluck one off the prickly stem, taking caution not to poke yourself. You munch on it. It tastes good. You eat the rest. You find that later, you are feeling good, and you are neither dead nor sick to the stomach. You conclude that greenbrier is in fact edible, at least for you. This is an observation. You are an eyewitness to the fact that greenbrier is edible. Though you heard about it through a mediator, you were able to repeat the experiment and observe it for yourself. You could then find another observer or two, and partner with them to spread your testimonies to other people, and they could benefit from that testimony.

Say you are reading a book about dinosaurs with your child. You come across the following statement: "The Triceratops had three horns". I would classify this as a Mediation, and a credible one. I know that I have been to a museum and see the bones of a Triceratops. It is possible that the museum manufactured these bones, but I find that unlikely because I know that there are multiple museums which display these, and I have heard and seen independent reports about this from a variety of sources. I believe that two or three witnesses have actually observed this fact, and the report has reached me from a variety of independent mediators, so I believe it is indeed a fact.

Say you are reading the same book, and you come across the statement, "The Stegosaurus was an herbivore, meaning it only ate plants." I would classify this as a Speculation, and a credible one, but still not nearly as credible as the fact that the Triceratops has three horns. This is because no one has ever reported having observed a Stegosaurus eating anything, so there is no eyewitness of the event. It is possible that Adam witnessed such a thing, but we have no report of it, so we cannot count him as an eyewitness. The statement is a result of deductive reasoning: if an animal has square teeth, and not pointy teeth, then it is likely that the animal would only eat plants. A Stegosaurus has square teeth. Therefore, we can hypothesize that the Stegosaurus only ate plants. And there the scientific method comes to a grinding halt. No one can verify this hypothesis through experimentation. No one can verify it through application of the principles to see if it is useful for everyday life. It is at best a novelty - something we can marvel at, and appreciate, but not something that we can base our decisions on. Whether it's a fact or not is completely unverifiable, and I would hesitate to even call it science.

Say you are reading the stock report for a company, and you look at the stock prices over the past year. The stocks predictably rose in a linear pattern over that year. You then wonder what the stock price was the year before... but the website is broken and it won't let you see the 2-year data. So you figure it out mathematically. You open up Excel and plot a linear regression, using an enormous mountain of evidence consisting of 300 data points per day for 365 days, which is over 100,000 data points, and forecasting the stock prices backward one extra year, using only the present year's data. Miraculously, you even notice that the increase in prices was perfectly linear. The price increased by exactly the same amount from every data point to the next. You then go and tell people that you checked the stock prices 2 years ago. You have made a Speculation, and a wildly inaccurate one at that. Where are you getting the baseless assumption that the rates of things continue being consistent in the unmeasured past, just because they seem consistent within the range over which you measured them? Did you think that, because you had a mountain of evidence suggesting the rates always stay constant, that you could then extrapolate outside the measured range? What is a mountain of evidence? How much is enough? Whatever seems like enough must be enough? Nope. Just because it seems like a lot of evidence does not mean it is enough evidence. You have zero observations, and zero reports from eyewitnesses or mediators, for the stock prices 2 years ago, so you have zero information. 100,000 times 0 is still 0. This is an incredible Speculation.

Say you are reading the weather report, and it says "The high temperature in 10 days will be 41 degrees Fahrenheit." This is a Speculation, and its credibility depends on the weatherman's track record of accurate reports, and whether there are other weathermen predicting the same thing. However, no matter how many weathermen are predicting it, and no matter how good their track records are, it is not observable... yet. When 10 days pass, and I measure the weather and I find it to be 45 degrees, I will then conclude that the Speculation was incorrect. If I measure it to be 41 degrees at the high, then I conclude that the Speculation was correct. This is an educated guess, and its accuracy varies greatly. It is not unverifiable forever, but in the present it is unverifiable.

Please provide feedback as to whether you think this is a correct and useful framework for discerning facts.

I tend to see this in much the same way that judges approach to evidence in a courtroom. Do we have enough evidence to convict or not? The scientific method has proven an incredibly powerful way to sift fact from fiction and to dispel fanciful theories, even ones like the Ptolemaic system that demonstrably worked and made predictions. If you have DNA evidence that a rapist's sperm belongs to a certain man that is enough evidence to convict them even if there were no eyewitnesses. But if you have 2-3 eyewitnesses that is also sufficient evidence to convict someone.

So scientific evidence is something that can be proven by the scientific method, by empirical or mathematical near-certainty.
Historical evidence is something that can be proven by reference to historical witnesses or primary sources.
Theological evidence is something that comes from an accurate reading of scripture in synch with the interpretations that the mainstream church has applied to those readings through the broad sweep of time.
I would also add experiential evidence when you have a direct experience of something no one else witnessed and which cannot necessarily be proven but about which you have subjective certainty. This certainty could be overthrown by the other three methods but mainly cannot be.

Applying these four approaches to the truth to your schema we have stuff

1) that we know is true,
2) stuff we are testing,
3) and then plausible scenarios.

We would place our words according to the level of evidence we can apply to their verification.

 

[Suggestion Box]

scientific evidence is something that can be proven by the scientific method, by empirical or mathematical near-certainty.

Here's something I question. I think scientific evidence is really not much different from historical evidence. In both cases, people are relying on the testimony of other people, often recorded, often handed from person to person. The former is composed of testimonies that have not happened very long ago, and the latter is testimonies that happened a long time ago. But in both cases, credibility is a dominant factor. Just because someone says something is science, does not mean it is science (or to use the Latin root, knowledge). Just because someone says they are an expert does not mean they are really an expert. Just because an institution publishes information does not mean it is true, even if it is a very big institution. For me, the vast majority of scientific evidence is not observed personally, but mediated from other people. And I'm okay with that - because Jesus taught me that two or three witnesses is enough. Any experiments which can actually be verified by observation, I am fine with. But much of what is called science refers to events that have never been observed, and never even claimed to have been observed, and cannot be reproduced or ever observed again, but are speculations that people find so convincing that they believe they have observed them, when they in fact have not. This is true for any events that scientists say happened, which happened before any people were around. They may have happened, but they were not observed. This means the scientific method cannot move past the hypothesis stage, and this means that prehistory is inherently unscientific.

 

[mindlight]

Here's something I question. I think scientific evidence is really not much different from historical evidence. In both cases, people are relying on the testimony of other people, often recorded, often handed from person to person. The former is composed of testimonies that have not happened very long ago, and the latter is testimonies that happened a long time ago. But in both cases, credibility is a dominant factor. Just because someone says something is science, does not mean it is science (or to use the Latin root, knowledge). Just because someone says they are an expert does not mean they are really an expert. Just because an institution publishes information does not mean it is true, even if it is a very big institution. For me, the vast majority of scientific evidence is not observed personally, but mediated from other people. And I'm okay with that - because Jesus taught me that two or three witnesses is enough. Any experiments which can actually be verified by observation, I am fine with. But much of what is called science refers to events that have never been observed, and never even claimed to have been observed, and cannot be reproduced or ever observed again, but are speculations that people find so convincing that they believe they have observed them, when they in fact have not. This is true for any events that scientists say happened, which happened before any people were around. They may have happened, but they were not observed. This means the scientific method cannot move past the hypothesis stage, and this means that prehistory is inherently unscientific.

Science can give precise answers. As I said in the example of the rapist. DNA sampling can give 99.999% certainty that this man was there at the scene of the crime. I know the process and the checks and balances the police and courts have for this properly collected and processed evidence. This is enough to convict without any human witnesses (even the victim who may lie or be dead).
We know that the earth is not flat and is in fact spherical because we can go up in a spaceship or view videos of those who do and see that it is. That is irrefutable empirical proof.

Modern science confuses historical and scientific evidence and argues that the scientific approach can simply absorb a historical analysis into its models but in fact the methods are distinct.

Historical evidence is a lower grade of evidence and can be subject to manipulation and political bias or cultural prejudice. It takes time to debunk and clarify the value of sources and to determine what are primary sources and what is not. We have to trust the reliability of the witnesses to what is spoken about.

 

[Suggestion Box]

DNA sampling can give 99.999% certainty that this man was there at the scene of the crime.

I don't have much reason to doubt you on this, but let's practice.

In order to directly observe the fact that DNA sampling is 99.999% certain, one would need at least 100,000 pairs of diverse samples of DNA. Half of them would need to be non-matching, the other half would be matching pairs. The observer would have to know before testing which were matching and which were not, so that they could verify the test method. Then the test would commence, and the results would be monitored. If only 1 was wrong, the observer could then say that, by direct observation, they know that this particular instance of using this particular test method was 99.999% accurate. Let's say that most people don't have time to make multiple observations so tedious, so we set up the experiment and have 2 people observe the results. Then we repeat this experiment with many different instances of the test method. Maybe it's a sequencing machine, and we need to repeat this across different copies of the machine to make sure they are built reliably, and we need to repeat across different makes and models to certify certain manufacturers. We also need to repeat this test at regular intervals somehow, to make sure the machines stay consistent over time. At this point, the original 2 observers are not relying on direct observation for all the other machines at all times... they are reporting their eyewitness testimony, and others are also reporting their testimonies. If all the observers of all the machines at all times are generally agreed upon to be credible witnesses, then some certifying standards organization can come into existence and publish the data to the general public, or perhaps to journals that then mediate the testimonies to experts, who then mediate the information to teachers, who then mediate the information to the public.

To say that DNA sampling in one particular test gave 99.999% certainty there are as many observers as watched the test. But to say that DNA sampling generally gives 99.999% certainty of a DNA match, there is no direct observer. Instead there are several groups of witnesses of particular events that are grouped together by mediators, and that information passes through yet another chain of mediators before reaching the average person. Even the original observers must rely on a chain of mediators to know that DNA matching is 99.999% accurate generally. I think it would be very difficult for the same witnesses to observe testing of all the machines that may exist, continually over time. Perhaps this could be someone's full-time job; in any case, our direct witnesses would still need to mediate this information. Therefore, the vast majority of the credibility for this fact relies on Mediation, and a few people if any know this information by Observation. All that said, all it takes is a whole lot of credible mediators to distribute this information, and then people like me can believe it. And I think there's a good chance that there are enough credible mediators, and I think there's a good chance that there are standards in place to verify that these machines are working correctly, and that people with conflicts of interest are kept out of the chain. I hope so anyway. So I'll take your word for it... unless I'm ever falsely accused by a DNA match... then I'll go digging deeper.

One more step: to go from "DNA is 99.999% accurate" to "John committed the crime", and if there are no eyewitnesses, we must enter the world of Speculation. The DNA itself did not commit the crime - it was just found there. Maybe somebody else was in the room hours earlier and left DNA behind. Maybe there's an intricate frame-job. Maybe there's corruption in every level of government all the way to the top, and the checks and balances break down, and false accusations are politically advantageous. Hopefully none of these things are true, but it is certainly worth considering in the assessment of credibility - "for there is no one who does not sin" (1 Kings 8:46). "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." (1 John 1:8)

So here we have Observation, Mediation, and Speculation, and I think this makes a good practice example for how I'm envisioning assessing the credibility of things that are called facts.

 

[mindlight]

I don't have much reason to doubt you on this, but let's practice.

In order to directly observe the fact that DNA sampling is 99.999% certain, one would need at least 100,000 pairs of diverse samples of DNA. Half of them would need to be non-matching, the other half would be matching pairs. The observer would have to know before testing which were matching and which were not, so that they could verify the test method. Then the test would commence, and the results would be monitored. If only 1 was wrong, the observer could then say that, by direct observation, they know that this particular instance of using this particular test method was 99.999% accurate. Let's say that most people don't have time to make multiple observations so tedious, so we set up the experiment and have 2 people observe the results. Then we repeat this experiment with many different instances of the test method. Maybe it's a sequencing machine, and we need to repeat this across different copies of the machine to make sure they are built reliably, and we need to repeat across different makes and models to certify certain manufacturers. We also need to repeat this test at regular intervals somehow, to make sure the machines stay consistent over time. At this point, the original 2 observers are not relying on direct observation for all the other machines at all times... they are reporting their eyewitness testimony, and others are also reporting their testimonies. If all the observers of all the machines at all times are generally agreed upon to be credible witnesses, then some certifying standards organization can come into existence and publish the data to the general public, or perhaps to journals that then mediate the testimonies to experts, who then mediate the information to teachers, who then mediate the information to the public.

To say that DNA sampling in one particular test gave 99.999% certainty there are as many observers as watched the test. But to say that DNA sampling generally gives 99.999% certainty of a DNA match, there is no direct observer. Instead there are several groups of witnesses of particular events that are grouped together by mediators, and that information passes through yet another chain of mediators before reaching the average person. Even the original observers must rely on a chain of mediators to know that DNA matching is 99.999% accurate generally. I think it would be very difficult for the same witnesses to observe testing of all the machines that may exist, continually over time. Perhaps this could be someone's full-time job; in any case, our direct witnesses would still need to mediate this information. Therefore, the vast majority of the credibility for this fact relies on Mediation, and a few people if any know this information by Observation. All that said, all it takes is a whole lot of credible mediators to distribute this information, and then people like me can believe it. And I think there's a good chance that there are enough credible mediators, and I think there's a good chance that there are standards in place to verify that these machines are working correctly, and that people with conflicts of interest are kept out of the chain. I hope so anyway. So I'll take your word for it... unless I'm ever falsely accused by a DNA match... then I'll go digging deeper.

One more step: to go from "DNA is 99.999% accurate" to "John committed the crime", and if there are no eyewitnesses, we must enter the world of Speculation. The DNA itself did not commit the crime - it was just found there. Maybe somebody else was in the room hours earlier and left DNA behind. Maybe there's an intricate frame-job. Maybe there's corruption in every level of government all the way to the top, and the checks and balances break down, and false accusations are politically advantageous. Hopefully none of these things are true, but it is certainly worth considering in the assessment of credibility - "for there is no one who does not sin" (1 Kings 8:46). "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." (1 John 1:8)

So here we have Observation, Mediation, and Speculation, and I think this makes a good practice example for how I'm envisioning assessing the credibility of things that are called facts.

Trained specialists operating in controlled circumstances and following the protocols can produce a reliable DNA result. If the DNA of the criminal is the DNA that is tested and the result of that test is shared properly then that evidence will convict him. But you are right even in the rigorous structures of Police DNA departments the remote possibility of switching samples, corruption of samples, or results exists. So in a sense, a Forensic team is still human witnesses which you can trust or not trust according to how much discipline they show as they collect observations, process them, and reveal their results.

 

[Suggestion Box]

Another thing I thought about is practicability. Do you think that if a fact can be relied upon for regular practice, that increases its credibility?

If true then, by the example above, DNA matching gains some credibility by continuous practice. People keep doing this experiment over and over again. It's used on a daily basis, and the results mean something. Life and death decisions are made based on these results. If false results were gotten, bad results would follow. Someone might be wrongly convicted and go to jail; that person's family would have an incentive to dig into the process and find the bug, if there was one. If they found a problem and cleared the name of the accused, then the guy who made the machine or the lab who processed the DNA would get in trouble, and an incentive would exist to improve the process. DNA matching is practicable - meaning it can be practiced.

I'm always a little hesitant to mention this point, because I don't want to imply "useful means true". We should care about the truth independent of its usefulness. However, if something is useful - if it "bears fruit" - that doesn't make it true, but that does help us know if it's true. If a statement is practicable that increases its credibility. If we rely on the fact "DNA matching is reliable", we might find through continued practice that... yes... it seems to be working... okay... months go by... now I trust it.

 

[The Barbarian]

Modern science confuses historical and scientific evidence and argues that the scientific approach can simply absorb a historical analysis into its models but in fact the methods are distinct.

This comment reveals a basic misunderstanding about what evidence is in science. It starts with someone thinking about what something might be. He considers a possible answer, and if it has testable predictions, it is a scientific idea. But it won't be a settled theory until the predictions have been tested and verified.

So, based on anatomical data, Thomas Huxley hypothesized that birds are descended from dinosaurs. One of the predictions of such a hypothesis is that there would be transitional forms between known dinosaurs and birds, and that we would see bird characteristics in some dinosaurs.

As time when on, more and more transitionals were found, and more and more "avian" characteristics, such as feathers, turned out to have been characteristics of many dinosaurs, too. And so we have direct evidence for this relationship. Indeed, it has now been verified that birds are dinosaurs.

Another prediction was that genetically, birds should be related to other archosaurs like dinosaurs and crocodiles. And that has also been verified. Among the apomorphic characters of archosaurs are scutes, particular scales found on dinosaurs, crocodiles and birds. DNA matching is practicable - meaning it can be practiced.

Later, when a small amount of dinosaur heme was found in T-rex fossil bone, it turned out to be more like that of birds than like that of many modern reptiles. And once again, direct evidence. Heme matching is practicable, meaning it can be practiced.

 

[mindlight]

Another thing I thought about is practicability. Do you think that if a fact can be relied upon for regular practice, that increases its credibility?

If true then, by the example above, DNA matching gains some credibility by continuous practice. People keep doing this experiment over and over again. It's used on a daily basis, and the results mean something. Life and death decisions are made based on these results. If false results were gotten, bad results would follow. Someone might be wrongly convicted and go to jail; that person's family would have an incentive to dig into the process and find the bug, if there was one. If they found a problem and cleared the name of the accused, then the guy who made the machine or the lab who processed the DNA would get in trouble, and an incentive would exist to improve the process. DNA matching is practicable - meaning it can be practiced.

I'm always a little hesitant to mention this point, because I don't want to imply "useful means true". We should care about the truth independent of its usefulness. However, if something is useful - if it "bears fruit" - that doesn't make it true, but that does help us know if it's true. If a statement is practicable that increases its credibility. If we rely on the fact "DNA matching is reliable", we might find through continued practice that... yes... it seems to be working... okay... months go by... now I trust it.

Yes, agree with that, "practice makes perfect". But with one proviso. They only ever have a limited sample size in most crime scenes and so the possibility of repeating the experiment, again and again, is not always there.

 

[mindlight]

This comment reveals a basic misunderstanding about what evidence is in science. It starts with someone thinking about what something might be. He considers a possible answer, and if it has testable predictions, it is a scientific idea. But it won't be a settled theory until the predictions have been tested and verified.

So, based on anatomical data, Thomas Huxley hypothesized that birds are descended from dinosaurs. One of the predictions of such a hypothesis is that there would be transitional forms between known dinosaurs and birds, and that we would see bird characteristics in some dinosaurs.

As time when on, more and more transitionals were found, and more and more "avian" characteristics, such as feathers, turned out to have been characteristics of many dinosaurs, too. And so we have direct evidence for this relationship. Indeed, it has now been verified that birds are dinosaurs.

Another prediction was that genetically, birds should be related to other archosaurs like dinosaurs and crocodiles. And that has also been verified. Among the apomorphic characters of archosaurs are scutes, particular scales found on dinosaurs, crocodiles and birds. DNA matching is practicable - meaning it can be practiced.

Later, when a small amount of dinosaur heme was found in T-rex fossil bone, it turned out to be more like that of birds than like that of many modern reptiles. And once again, direct evidence. Heme matching is practicable, meaning it can be practiced.

Ptolemies model actually worked to predict where stars would be at certain times and it was wrong.

The kind of "predictions" you are talking about are not predictions they are the discernment of shared features (code libraries in effect). They do not predict evolution that has not happened yet, they describe a model which has already accepted common ancestry as its fundamental assumption. If we assume that the Creator made all these creatures then we could explain these relationships in terms of design with shared design features being the links in the model.

 

[The Barbarian]

Ptolemies model actually worked to predict where stars would be at certain times and it was wrong.

No. That's why it was abandoned. It required all sorts of corrections to make it work. Copernicus initially offered his system only as a more accurate and simplified way of calculating planetary motion. Darwin's theory is like that. If explains the diversity of living things without all the exceptions, non-scriptural miracles, and self-contradictory claims of creationism.

The kind of "predictions" you are talking about are not predictions

Perhaps you don't know what "prediction" means. It's a statement of what will be found in the future. As you know, the many predictions of evolutionary theory have been since verified. The large number of transitional fossils and transitional series are just one example.

Evidence for not just one but for all three of the species level and above types of stratomorphic intermediates expected by macroevolutionary theory is surely strong evidence for macroevolutionary theory. Creationists therefore need to accept this fact. It certainly CANNOT be said that traditional
creation theory expected (predicted) any of these fossil finds.
YE creationist Dr. Kurt Wise Toward a Creationist Understanding of Transitional Forms

They do not predict evolution that has not happened yet

No, that's wrong, too. For example, it was predicted that a very cold winter in Chicago would lead to larger average size of sparrows in the following years. It was predicted that exposure of bacteria to a new food source would lead to the evolution of a new enzyme.

they describe a model which has already accepted common ancestry as its fundamental assumption.

That's wrong, too. Darwin started out assuming that species were immutable. He only revised his ideas after a massive amount of evidence. You were misled about that.

If we assume that the Creator made all these creatures

He did. You just wish He hadn't done it the way He did.

then we could explain these relationships in terms of design with shared design features being the links in the model.

That wouldn't work, unless you assume the designer is incompetent. You see, suboptimal features are perfectly understandable in terms of God's creation by evolution, but they make no sense at all in terms of special creation.

 

[Suggestion Box]

Ok, here's another example we can use for practice. Here's a claim:

"Birds are descended from dinosaurs."

Has this series of events been directly observed by two or three credible eyewitness Observers?

If so:
What chain of Mediators got the information from those Observers to you?
What criteria are you using to assess the credibility of the Observers?
What criteria are you using to assess the credibility of the Mediators?

If not:
What chain of Mediators got the information from the Speculators to you?
What criteria are you using to assess the credibility of the Speculators?
What criteria are you using to assess the credibility of the Mediators?

For this exercise, you have to be careful. You can't say things like "we have evidence", without saying who "we" are. "We" refers to people, and the point of this is to assess the credibility of those people. If you are not a direct observer, then you're getting your information from people, probably - unless you have a revelation from God on the matter, in which case I want to hear your eyewitness report of this encounter.

 

[The Barbarian]

Ok, here's another example we can use for practice. Here's a claim:

"Birds are descended from dinosaurs."

Has this series of events been directly observed by two or three credible eyewitness Observers?

Actually, birds are dinosaurs. If you doubt this, name me a characteristic of birds not found in dinosaurs.

The evidence is very clear and requires no witnesses. You can look at it yourself.

For this exercise, you have to be careful. You can't say things like "we have evidence", without saying who "we" are.

Anyone who observes birds, and knows something of their anatomy. Museum curators and paleontologists who examine the fossils. Those who see the fossils and the analyses in journals. People who go to museums to see the evidence. Guys like that.

And there's an easy way to refute this; give me a few basic characteristics in birds that aren't in dinosaurs. What do you have?

 

[mindlight]

Actually, birds are dinosaurs. If you doubt this, name me a characteristic of birds not found in dinosaurs.

The evidence is very clear and requires no witnesses. You can look at it yourself.



Anyone who observes birds, and knows something of their anatomy. Museum curators and paleontologists who examine the fossils. Those who see the fossils and the analyses in journals. People who go to museums to see the evidence. Guys like that.

And there's an easy way to refute this; give me a few basic characteristics in birds that aren't in dinosaurs. What do you have?

God characterized creatures by their locale. So creatures of the land, the sky, and the waters. That he used design features present in one type of creature in another type does not prove common ancestry but rather a shared functionality and similar configuration. Pterodactyls could fly T-Rex could not. One is a creature of the sky one of the land. The family designation dinosaurs include creatures of the land, sky and waters.

 

[The Barbarian]

God characterized creatures by their locale. So creatures of the land, the sky, and the waters.

That fits the theme of Genesis 1 and 2, which is about the kinds of creation, rather than a timetable.

That he used design features present in one type of creature in another type does not prove common ancestry but rather a shared functionality and similar configuration.

Here, you've confused analogy and homlogy. Let's take a look at that confusion...

Pterodactyls could fly T-Rex could not.

So could birds, dragonflies, and bats. All analogous with pterosaurs. But not homologous. They fly by different means, with different structures and tissues. So pterosaur wings and T-rex hands are homlogous, even though they look very differently. They are evolved from the same structures. This is an unsolvable puzzle to creationists, but is very understandable to biologists.

The family designation dinosaurs include creatures of the land, sky and waters.

The only flying dinosaurs are birds. Pterosaurs are not dinosaurs. But birds are.