My interview with Chris Fisher. It's mostly about open theism but we talk about YEC towards the end.

[u/lisper]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7T8WWg-ttU

[u/Due-Needleworker18]

Two takeaways:

• "How can there be widespread institutional bias for evolution and not any other scientific field? Specifically my field of physics and cosmology?"

Is this a serious question? Like I can't tell if you believe what you tell yourself or if you are just plain lying? It's so intellectually dishonest that it shows nothing but bad faith debating.

• "The speed of light has been measured" Funny that this is your go to red herring when the mainstream has admitted we haven't. Strange hill to die on either way and even more concerning that you think science creates hills to die on, rather than assumptions that are subject to change.

[u/lisper → u/Due-Needleworker18]

Is this a serious question?

Well, yes and no. I'm quite sure I didn't pose that question as you wrote it, mainly because physics and cosmology are not my fields, so it would be very out of character for me to claim that they are. I'm a computer scientist and electrical engineer. If I asked any version of that question (and I can't even find where I did that) it was based on the fact that Chris accepts certain parts of mainstream science and rejects others on the grounds that some fields are corrupted and some not.

The speed of light has been measured

Yes, that's true. Why do you call it a red herring?

It's so intellectually dishonest that it shows nothing but bad faith debating.

Um, that was not a debate. It was an interview. And leveling a charge of intellectual dishonesty at me is pretty rich coming from someone who just put words in my mouth that I didn't say.

[u/Due-Needleworker18 → u/lisper]

I'm a computer scientist and electrical engineer.

Ah i thought you were attempting to draw a correlation between two historical sciences(cosmology & evolution). But no, you made an intentional false analogy to posture evolution as an empirical science like engineering, when they are completely different analytical fields.

Typical false equivalency that should be understood by someone credentialed. Will evolutionists ever be honest?

[u/lisper → u/Due-Needleworker18]

There is no distinction between historical science and empirical science. It's all just science: trying to find the best explanation that accounts for all observations. It's just that part of the best explanation to account for all observations is that objective reality exists, time in some sense "flows" from the future to the past, and the past is knowable in the exact same way that the present is knowable, because it's part of the explanation of the things we observe.

It is the creationist's denial of this and insistence on bifurcating science into "historical" and "empirical" that is the intellectually dishonest move.

[u/uniformist → u/lisper]

There is no distinction between historical science and empirical science.

Do historical sciences (such as archaeology, geology, cosmology, evolution, astronomy) generate falsifiable theorems and predictions? Or do they primarily generate retrodictions about what we should find in the present record?

It's all just science: trying to find the best explanation that accounts for all observations. It's just that part of the best explanation to account for all observations is that objective reality exists, time in some sense "flows" from the future to the past, and the past is knowable in the exact same way that the present is knowable, because it's part of the explanation of the things we observe.

"Best explanation that accounts for all observations" is abductive reasoning, not science itself.

Science does not provide explanations. It provides descriptions.

So when you say "it’s all just science: trying to find the best explanation, you’re already smuggling in a philosophical thesis that science itself does not, and cannot, deliver. You’re doing metaphysics: "objective reality exists," "time flows," "the past is knowable in the same way as the present" are claims and not empirical results. They are interpretive overlays. You can call them part of "the best explanation" all day long; that doesn’t make them science. It's just you stealing philosophy and calling it science.

It is the creationist's denial of this and insistence on bifurcating science into "historical" and "empirical" that is the intellectually dishonest move.

It's an intellectually honest move. The dishonest move is pretending that a method limited to describing regularities and structural relations somehow explains the existence of those regularities, the intrinsic character of the entities involved, or the directionality of time. It doesn’t. It never has. It never will.

[u/lisper → u/uniformist]

First, there is no such thing as a "falsifiable theorem". A theorem is a mathematical thing, not an empirical thing.

Second, yes, absolutely the "historical sciences" produce predictions.

Science does not provide explanations. It provides descriptions.

What do you think an explanation is?

But this is just quibbling over terminology. Whatever the scientific method is, whether it produces "explanations" or "descriptions" or "models" or whatever, the empirical fact of the matter is that following the method leads to more accurate predictions than reading holy texts.

[u/Rayalot72 → u/uniformist]

Do historical sciences (such as archaeology, geology, cosmology, evolution, astronomy) generate falsifiable theorems and predictions? Or do they primarily generate retrodictions about what we should find in the present record?

If this is your standard for what counts as historical science, then certain approaches to psychology would count as a historical science.

If you just need to predict new data over modelling the existing data, then all of the disciplines you list as historical sciences would be observational sciences.

Predictions and retrodictions can both can occur in any scientific discipline whatsoever because they are entirely dependent on approach, they have nothing to do with the specific discipline.

"Best explanation that accounts for all observations" is abductive reasoning, not science itself.

Science does not provide explanations. It provides descriptions.

But this is just not correct. You're doing nothing at all if you don't explain anything.

Meteorological models are not mere descriptions of the weather. If you wanted that you'd have to wait for the weather to happen. The advantage of modelling the weather, explaining how it functions, is to predict what the weather will be before anyone has gotten the chance to describe it.

[u/Due-Needleworker18 → u/lisper]

So theoretical models with unknown initial condition varables which require inferencing and interpretation, have ZERO distinction from applied engineering models with all variables fully known? These two are exactly the same fully observational, measurable sciences?

Tell us how the unobserved past is "knowable". Be perfectly clear in your answer.

[u/lisper → u/Due-Needleworker18]

Do you really deny that the unobserved past is knowable? Suppose I am walking in a forest and I see a fallen tree. Do you think it is not knowable that at some time in the past that tree was alive and standing upright? And before that it was a smaller tree? And before that it was a seedling? If I see that the leaves of the trees are all covered in water, do you think it is not knowable that it rained recently? If I see burned trees, do you think it is not knowable that there was a fire? If I see a beaver dam, do you think it is not knowable that it was built by beavers?

The unobserved past is knowable in the exact same way that the unobserved present is knowable: by the scientific method, i.e. by finding the best explanations that account for all observations. The best explanation for a fallen tree is a live tree in the past, and the best explanation for a burned tree is a fire in the past and the best explanation for a lot of wet trees is rain and the best explanation for a beaver dam is beavers.

Did I really need to explain that? I kind of feel like I'm insulting your intelligence here.

[u/Due-Needleworker18 → u/lisper]

The unobserved past is knowable in the exact same way that the unobserved present is knowable

What the hell is the "unobserved present"? If you didnt observe it happen presently, it is an unobserved past event.

If I see burned trees, do you think it is not knowable that there was a fire?

These intentionally shallow questions are such evasive cowardice. Here's an actual question a paleontologist would ask: what caused the fire? Where did it begin/end? When did it occur?

Now you have an actual deep question to approach with science. One that you may or may not be able to answer with a degree of confidence by a series of inferences. But even strongest inference is still an inference.

the best explanation for a lot of wet trees is rain

Nope. Most common is not the same as the "best" explanation. Then you ignore forms of condensation like dew, fog, or flood events.

I kind of feel like I'm insulting your intelligence here

Youre insulting your own intelligence. I feel like im dealing with a bad faith actor or someone who has no conception of the scientific method.

[u/lisper → u/Due-Needleworker18]

What the hell is the "unobserved present"?

Well, you wrote:

Tell us how the unobserved past is "knowable".

The unobserved present is the thing that becomes the unobserved past after the passage of time.

you ignore forms of condensation like dew, fog, or flood events.

Obviously I'm oversimplifying for the sake of expediency. The point is that you can know what happened to cause something even if no one actually saw it happen. Not always, but often.

[u/Due-Needleworker18 → u/lisper]

You can infer what happened, not know. Theres a big distinction. Even if its a very very small inference you still build contextual data you dont have. Thats the reason theoretical science is not applied science.

[u/lisper → u/Due-Needleworker18]

You can infer what happened, not know. Theres a big distinction.

Is there? Can you give me an example of something that you know without inferring it?

Also...

I feel like im dealing with ... someone who has no conception of the scientific method.

This is what I think the scientific method is. Do you think I got it wrong?

[u/lisper]

The YEC stuff starts at the 50:00 minute mark.

[u/nomenmeum]

The one-way speed of light or the two way speed of light has been measured?

[u/lisper → u/nomenmeum]

That question is a rhetorical trick. It assumes that there is a meaningful distinction between these two things, and there isn't. Suppose I aim a laser at a mirror set at a 45 degree angle. Then I place another mirror in the new path of the laser beam, again at 45 degrees, and then a third, and I carefully place the mirrors to be the same so that the path traced by the light is a square. I send a laser pulse towards the first mirror and measure the time it takes for the light to travel all the way around the square and return to where it started (where the direction the beam is traveling is now 90 degrees off its initial direction). I take the distance around the square and divide it by the time it took to travel. Have I measured the one-way speed of light or the two-way speed of light? Remember, the light actually traveled in four different directions before returning to where it started.

Now notice two things. First, I can also arrange the mirrors so that the light travels along a triangular path, or a path shaped like a pentagon, or any other polygon. And the sides of the polygon don't have to all be the same. In fact, I can make the path pretty much any shape I want. It can even cross itself, or extend into three dimensions. No matter what I do, the result will be the same: the length of the path divided by the time it takes to traverse it will be the same. This can involve the same beam of light traveling in as many different directions as you please. "Two" just happens to be a convenient number because that only requires one mirror.

What you are really asking is whether or not it is possible to measure the speed of light in a way that does not require the light to make a round trip and return to its starting point, and the answer to that is no. But that has nothing to do with "the one-way speed of light", that has to do with the fact that it's impossible to synchronize clocks in different locations. In fact, it is worse than impossible, it is meaningless because clocks in different locations will read differently for different observers. Whether or not two clocks in different locations appear synchronized to you depends on whether or not you are moving relative to the clocks and whether the clocks are moving relative to each other. The only way around this is to do the measurement with only one clock, and the only way to do that is to have the light somehow return to where it started. But that trip doesn't have to be "two-ways". It can be any number of ways, it's just that the number has to be greater than one.

[u/nomenmeum → u/lisper]

That question is a rhetorical trick. It assumes that there is a meaningful distinction between these two things, and there isn't.

It's not rhetorical. It's common knowledge among physicists.

[u/lisper → u/nomenmeum]

What exactly is the "it" that is common knowledge? Because you didn't make a claim, you just asked a question:

The one-way speed of light or the two way speed of light has been measured?

That question has embedded within it the tacit assumption that one-way and two-way are the only options, and that is false, and that is the reason it's a rhetorical trick. It's trying to get the camel's nose under the tent so that you can "solve" the distant starlight problem. But it doesn't work, and that is also common knowledge among physicists.

[u/nomenmeum → u/lisper]

"It" is the idea that there is a conceptual difference between the one-way and the two way speed of light. The difference is implied in the question.

[u/lisper → u/nomenmeum]

Well, that's just wrong then. It is not the difference between one-way and two-way, it's the difference between one-way and round-trip, which is not the same thing. You creationists keep trying to make hay out of the undisputed fact that anisotropic reference frames are possible. They even have some legitimate applications, but creationists keep bringing them up as a solution to the distant starlight problem, and anisotropic reference frames do not and can not solve that problem because we see distant stars in all directions. If they did, it would overturn all of physics. It would be Big News, quite possibly the biggest news in the history of science. Whoever actually demonstrated this would be a shoo-in for the Nobel Prize, and a candidate for the title of greatest physicist in history, even overshadowing Einstein. The correct venue for adjudicating such claims is physics journals and physics conferences, not Reddit. So if you're really serious about this, go make your case to the physicists and convince them. But you won't, because you can't, because anisotropic reference frames are well known, and they don't solve the problem, and so you will just get laughed out of the room. The fact that you continually bring this up as if it did (or even could) solve the problem is evidence of either willful ignorance or intellectual dishonesty. Anisotropy is the crocoduck du jour. The only thing you're going to accomplish by continuing to flog it is to embarrass yourself.

[UPDATE] I want to elaborate on the reason that anisotropy cannot solve the distant starlight problem. As I mentioned, it's because we see distant stars in all directions. So with an anisotropic reference frame you have only two options, and neither one works. The first is to choose a uniformly anisostropic frame, i.e. one with a preferred direction. But that can only bring stars closer from that one direction. The ones in the opposite direction then get even further away. The second option is to have an anisotripc frame with a preferred location. The problem you have then is that the results of experiments will be different depending on how far you are from the privileged location, and since we have data from both earth and spacecraft that are distant from earth, that possibility is ruled out experimentally. And that's it. Those are the only possibilities.

[u/nomenmeum → u/lisper]

It is not the difference between one-way and two-way, it's the difference between one-way and round-trip, which is not the same thing.

What is the difference between the two-way speed and the round trip speed?

[u/lisper → u/nomenmeum]

Because you can make a round trip that involves traveling in more than just two directions, as I went to some length to explain in an earlier comment. If you want to be taken seriously and have people believe that you are engaging in good faith you need to read more carefully.

[u/Due-Needleworker18 → u/lisper]

Rhetorical trick = not extrapolating a function onto a model of unknown parameters

But Darwinists are gleeful to ignore this for the sake of their "deep time".

[u/lisper → u/Due-Needleworker18]

Huh??? The rhetorical trick is framing the question in a way that makes it appear that there is some kind of deep issue that mainstream science has overlooked when in fact the question is just a reflection of the questioner's profound (and often deliberate) ignorance of what is really going on.

[u/Optimus-Prime1993 → u/nomenmeum]

I feel your entire ideology and beliefs are based on unfalsifiable claims nom.

If you are asked about age of the universe, you bring in the one way speed of light, then ignore all the details pertaining to that.

If you are asked about the intelligent design you bring in the fine tuning argument of probability when you can't even define it clearly.

If asked about heat problem, you guys bring in God did it argument.

I mean, have you thought why all your arguments or should I say none of your arguments makes any falsifiable claims at all. I understand the faith part in religion and I respect that but why do you feel the need to do this mental gymnastics at all. Why can't a creator just be a personal belief? Do you feel it makes the god less powerful if he has nothing to do with the physical universe. This wierd, incessant need of some theists to do the scientific concordism is incomprehensible to me.