What is this, taken from Fossil Butte in Wyoming? The likely answer is a fossil fish, and why is this even a question? However, was that answer a matter of observational science, historical science, or is that a invalid distinction to begin with, abused by creationists to allow for their untethered fabrications to be presented as equal alternatives to scientific rigor?
What seems obvious now was by no means as self-apparent to prior generations. From Aristotle to the 1600’s, the dominant opinion was that these were never alive but were impressions made in the earth for various reasons, given that fish do not swim in rock and trees do not grow deep underground. English naturalist John Ray in 1692 was the first to argue with vigor that everything in nature exists for a reason and purpose, and so fossils would not be pointless buried reliefs.
Nature makes nothing in vain. But these teeth, were they just formed in the Earth, would be in vain; for they could not have any use of teeth… Nature never made teeth without a Jaw, nor Shells without an Animal inhabitant, nor single Bones.
Others added their reasons for fossils having once been alive, and few today would even recall there was ever any dissent. So is that observational or historical science, or is that an altogether spurious question? How do you know that was a living fish, after all, were you there? Perhaps you are just believing what you have been taught by vain and arrogant scientists who proclaim that such a fossil was once a living fish, afraid to express their real doubts and risk their careers. Most people, though, would be on team fossil, and would reply that they know a fish when they see it.
Life leaves its impression upon the earth, documenting its existence by a record of fossils, remains, minerals, and incorporating the chemical and isotopic composition of environmental ingredients. Much more than an impression is observed and analyzed. Just as important, the matrix by which a fossil is formed also offers troves of observable information spanning the granular to the formation as a whole. From the imprint to isotopic analysis, it is all observational science.
Yes, even “operational science” includes inferring past events from the evidence. Arguably that is the only way to understand any event - direct perception is a myth.
All it comes down to is the quantity and quality of evidence - there is no fundamental difference. But the whole point is to dismiss the evidence because it goes so firmly against the YEC dogma.
Creationists much prefer lolling in pointless rhetoric to practically evaluating evidence or advancing knowledge. This is because in their hostile war on science, they need to relocate the battle to the ground of their choosing. Given that discussion of historical science will elicit a shrug or a yawn in most quarters, why is it that there are so many impassioned or adamant articles across YEC sites? They do not hide their explicitly ulterior motive, with the goal of deflecting from evidence and measurement, and legitimizing their amalgam of apologetic philosophy and theology.
Safarti states“Normal (operational) science deals only with repeatable observable processes in the present”, thus relegating counting tree rings to abnormal science.
The difference between evolutionary origins science and creationist origins science is that creationists realize the historical nature of the questions, and therefore turn to a historical text—i.e. Scripture—to inform them about what sort of big historical events may have caused what we see today.
As @UncensoredPilgrimsPrice broadens this to write, "Neither experimental nor historical science are of much value without Scripture", so that recognizing a fish fossil is as much a matter of exegesis.
So the calculated agenda is to put a finger under the scale so that the balance of evidence is always outweighed by YEC dogma, but to retain a veneer of science to suit apologetic evangelism. In the mind of creationists, all they have to do is come up with a story, any story, no matter how strained, absurd, or utterly lacking in evidence, and with their dogma on the scale, the odds are ever in their favor, because when they speak of historical science, it is their interpretation of scripture that defines the history.
You can post your dishonest denialism all you want, I’ve already proved my point. You can go find my writings on the topic where I document the usage of this distinction by modern non-YEC philosopher of science Carol Cleland in her writings, and the distinction goes back as far as the 1930s. But even in an imaginary world where YECs did come up with this distinction out of whole cloth, so much the better! It would be to our credit if we had. This is a very clear, obvious distinction that any intellectually honest person should be making between science that is directly testable and repeatable, and science that isn’t. Operational and historical science.
Clearly this touches a nerve or you wouldn’t feel the need to keep bringing it up.
Events from the past can and do often leave traces in the present. Such traces are interpreted and that interpretation can lead to predictions about further traces still to be found. We go looking and either find these, or not. If we don’t, the interpretation is weakened, and if we do, it is strenghtened.
And yet we can still test historical hypotheses by comparing their predictions to new data, and by the consilience among independent lines of evidence.
Yes yes, you then pile more excuses on top. Scientists cherripick data, discard outliers, bla bla. These are all just bald assertions and you’ve no actual evidence that the consilience among different methods of radiometric dating (for example) are due to elaborate schemes of cherrypicking and data discarding.
It’s a story you tell but can’t support. So in the end what you have is worthless distinction between scientific categories that doesn’t imply what you want it to, and when this is pointed out you have another set of worthless assertions you can’t support.
The YEC conception of historical science incorporates aspects which go beyond the simple orientation to the past. They constantly conflate history with eyewitness accounts, which presents an immediate irrelevance in that almost all of geology involves prehistoric time, rendering written history irrelevant. They reply that scriptural revelation was eyewitness, but of course that is not a scientific assertion of any sort and begs the whole question.
In any event, YEC timelines for the flood do not align with eyewitness history as recorded in Egypt. The great pyramids of Giza were already in place by Usher’s date for the deluge, and there were other civilizations at the time. Realistically it would have taken a millennium or two to build up the population from the eight individuals on the ark. Further, Noah would have descended a gang plank onto a wet, saturated, sloppy, mess, and the pyramids are quarried out of dry, hard, fossiliferous limestone. So much for the verdict of history.
Independent methods of radiometric dating, archaeology, and history find a nice cross check at Hezekiah’s tunnel, where
Here we report radiocarbon and U–Th dating of the Siloam Tunnel , proving its Iron Age II date; we conclude that the Biblical text presents an accurate historic record of the Siloam Tunnel’s construction.
Insofar as dating confirms the Biblical record, the Biblical record confirms the applicable radiometric dating.
Hey, you are the one who posted about banging that drum 100,000 times.
It is telling that Paul advocates for cross checking scientific data against his interpretation of history, but brushes off cross checking the data against the body of other independent data, which is what consilience is.
Count tree rings. Count varves. Creationists find this counting business all so confusing - one, two, three…, what is a poor flood geologist to do? Cosilience is the cross check between carbon dating and the number of annual rings and varves, and they agree. Is this repeatable? Oh yes, calibration runs numbering into the thousands have been repeated. Are there controls? You bet. Do labs send each other blind samples for quality testing? Absolutely. This is as methodical as the scientific method can get.
Carbon dating, tree rings, varves, there is more. Solar activity leaves an imprint on the radiocarbon record preserved in tree rings and ice, with solar storms identified on a global basis. Some are prehistoric, others are…ta daaaa…historic, and match with records from medieval astronomers in asia and europe.
The usual YEC dodge is forget all about observational science and to just assert that the pace of things was speeded up, dozens of annual rings per year, varves resulting from multiple super storms, radioactivity ablaze. But unless everything was accelerated at the exact same pace and to the precise same degree, this would not match the deep and extensive data we have. These are independent phenomena, the mechanisms of one having nothing to do with the other.
Science is possible because we live in a coherent, orderly world, and consilience is a necessary aspect of investigation of nature, which applies to the present and past. It is core. Anyone who downplays its vital role is at odds with science as a whole including what is termed observational science.
No. I will try to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume your problem is simply a lack of careful reading comprehension. Cleland distinguished between “experimental science” and “historical science” (not observational science and historical science) and uses definitions quite different from what Young Earth Creationist leaders try to assign. Moreover, Cleland doesn’t treat one as inferior to the other—nor either as less rigorous than the other.
Cleland speaks of nature being “overdetermined” regarding the past. Why? A single past event leaves behind MANY types of evidential paths/traces (my terminology here) which serve as “smoking guns.” My favorite example is the question, “How do we know that the Hawaiian Islands are not just a few thousand years old?” One sees the historical evidence as clear as day in the plate tectonics and hotspot theory, conveyor belt effect, radiometric dating, age gradients, volcanic shield building, erosion evidence, adaptive radiation, founder effects, etc etc. Scientists from very different disciplines can come together to share their findings and put together one big impressive revelation of the islands’ story.
So, far from being at a disadvantage, the historical sciences enjoy a bounty of evidence which is often overwhelming in clarity. And that brings us to one of my favorite things about the power of scientific investigation: the consilience of evidence.
Obviously, Young Earth Creationism relies upon convincing the uninformed (and often the gullible) that science is unreliable—because then and only then can their underwhelming and even self-contradictory arguments have any sort of fighting chance.
Of course, YECism also relies all too often upon quote-mining and dishonesty. But I will leave that tangent for another day as I try to keep the “peaceful” in Peaceful Science.
I think what is odd to me is how selectively YEC treats observations. They acknowledge that there are real geological strata that need explanation via past events, hence flood geology. They acknowledge that paleomagnetic bands on the ocean floor and fossil matches across continents imply continental drift in the past, hence catastrophic plate tectonics. They acknowledge at least some instances where millions of years of radioactive decay have happened, hence accelerated decay.
So it’s not true that they disregard all evidence about what has happened in the past.
But they stop short of dealing with all the evidence. The agreement of multiple forms of radiometric dating in the same rocks. The Pollen Problem. The agreement between carbon dating in varves and tree rings. The staggeringly small chances that there things agree by chance.
It doesn’t strike me as particularly odd – they acknowledge just enough to give the impression that they are engaging the evidence, but not nearly enough to run into the straitjacket of keeping their claims consilient with all the observed evidence.
This results in a form of Cargo Cult science – whereby they engage in the forms of science, without satisfying the underlying reasons behind these forms.
