Quote:
Originally Posted by Orruar
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Ham's whole distinction between "observational science" and "historical science" is a false dichotomy. As Nye pointed out, all observational science is historical science to a degree, since information never travels instantaneously. But I'm sure that point was lost on most of the followers of Ham.
The way I would have attacked this idea would be to first ask why the distinction exists. Ham doesn't explicitly say why "historical science" is less reliable than "observational science", but the implicit reason (as I understand it) is that god, being omnipotent, could have acted in the past to make things look older than they really are. When he created the earth 6000 years ago, he could have also created galaxies that really are billions of light years away, and then put light beams out there at 6000 light years away coming from the direction of those galaxies, so that it looks like light has actually been traveling from them. In Ham's view, "observational science" is more legitimate because we can run experiments in the present that aren't subject to this possible error (the god created things like that 6000 years ago to fuck with us problem). However, if god is omnipotent, isn't it just as likely that he can fuck with our experiments in the present as well? This makes "observational science" every bit as prone to the same error as "historical science".
tl;dr
As soon as you accept that there is a god that is willing to fuck with nature in the past, invalidating our scientific tools of understanding the past, you must accept that this god could be still fucking with nature in the present, and therefore we can't understand the present with scientific tools either.
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Definitely, the distinction is completely made up. You create scientific models to predict reality as it behaves under certain parameters. It doesn't matter if the time is in the past, or the time is now, so long as the given parameters are there, the given outcome should occur, and will occur to the best of our knowledge. To say you haven't been there, so you can't say for certainty, you mine as well give up any predictive power as well, because you're not in the future, so you can't say something is going to happen.
Nye was good in pointing that out, I'd just have liked to see him provide more context for why all science is inherently historical, and that it doesn't invalidate it unless you're going to take an anti-empirical approach all together.
I definitely like the idea you bring up that if God intentionally fucked with the tools of the past, you're making a big assumption that he isn't now if you try to use scientific tools, and therefore there is no way to have consistent knowledge, and so the endeavor is fruitless. Interesting way to present it.
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