Science and nonscience



Creationists often bleat that some-such piece of science is not science. The only science they bleat about is the science that makes conclusions that falsify their precious preconceptions.

They often complain that these conclusions are not based on "observational science", that they are not based on observations that can be made repeatedly, in the here and now, and they are not falsifiable. 

(A falsifiable result or conclusion is not one that is false, but one that could potentially be falsified by some test or new observation. As creationists pre-supposedly
 decide that their ideas cannot be wrong, they are never falsifiable (in the creationist mindset), thus, "creation science" is an oxymoron.)

The thing is, that with all real science, it is necessary to observe, but also to rub some brain cells together and reason objectively, with no preconceptions or presuppositions.

Here, I present two lines of evidence that falsify creationist "science". They are based on observations in the here and now that can be made to your hearts' content, and are potentially falsifiable by tests and contrary observations.

The first is based on observations of a supernova event, detected in 1987, that show, by simple trigonometry that the event occurred approximately 170,000 years ago. Creationists bleat that this conclusion assumes that the speed of light has not changed significantly. The event could have occurred within a YEC timeframe, if the speed of light had changed radically in the past. This is highly ironic. Such a speculation is not based on observational science, and contravenes the scientific guiding principle of parsimony - you don't complicate things unnecessarily, in the absence of evidence.

At the link you will find one interesting confirmation that the speed of light could not have changed significantly - if at all. The confirmation is drawn from observations of pulsars, observable in the here-and-now, repeatedly, which fail to show the decline in pulsar rates which should be observable if the speed of light had changed significantly in the past. This does indeed falsify YEC notions of speed-of-light  decay, but they cannot regard this as a falsification, because such a falsification is impossible. Because.


http://chem.tufts.edu/science/astronomy/sn1987a.html

The second line of evidence is my favourite evidence for common descent. It is based on observations, able to be made repeatedly in the here-and-now. As mentioned above, it is necessary to apply some reasoning to the evidence. Creationist 'objections' are again not based on observational science and basic reasoning.

In short, endogenous retroviruses (ERVs) are remnants of retroviral integrations in germ-line DNA. The existence of large numbers of these in what evolutionary science had already concluded are closely related kinds of organisms confirms common ancestry spectacularly. Creationist "objections" are not based on "observational science" in the creationist sense of the phrase.

Yes, some components of some ERVs serve useful, even essential functions, but this is wholly inadequate to argue that they were designed. Apparent design, as evidence against evolution, has long been regarded as an inadequate argument. Other "objections" are not based on observable science. All this is gone into in the FAQ at the following link.


https://barryhisblog.blogspot.com/p/endogenous-retroviruses-frequently.html

It is extremely telling that even when a piece of science meets the (unreasonably restrictive) criteria of creationist "observational science", it is not accepted, and is objected to by bleats from the creationists that never pass their own criteria for what is "good science" themselves. Good science must be prepared to overturn ideas with new ones if observation renders them false. Creation "science" never does this, and in fact explicitly shields itself from any such eventuality.


See https://barryhisblog.blogspot.com/p/aig-statement-of-faith.html

Feedback on this is most welcome, either in the blog or on Facebook.

No comments:

Post a Comment