I can see it now, a game called: Grand Unified Theory!
You play Science Cards consisting of Research Facilities or Scientists to be able to play combinations of Research cards called Published Theory.
Each Published Theory collects follower tokens, and depending on the combination of Research Cards making it, it attracts one of the three Follower Groups (Religious, Scientists or Media).
The player with the most followers in the follower group which they has least followers in, wins. (Like Tigris&Euphrats)
Example of Science card:
Type: Scientist
Name: Stephen Hawkfins
Play cost:
Choose and discard a Research card from your hand when you put Stephen Hawkfins into play or Stephen Hawkfins is discarded.
Effect:
In discard phase you may keep one additional Research Card on your hand.
Followers:
Religious:
Scientists: -1
Media: +2
Example Research Card:
Type: Discovery
Name: Hole
Publish criteria:
Berkley laboratories in play.
You must have at least 3 Religious followers on one of your Published Theories.
If Worm is also part of this Published Theory: Religious +1
Followers:
Religious: +1
Scientists:
Media: -1
Right, exactly! There are so many assumptions you need to make just for science to get started that I’ve always found it hypocritical of scientists to perceive themselves to be breathing such rare air (and I say this as a professional scientist, lest my remarks be misconstrued).
Quite so; someone once said “he who marries his worldview to today’s science will be a widow tomorrow”. I’m sure that person said this much more elegantly, but the point is obviously that we envision ourselves to be vastly superior to those who have come before us, but that probably overstates our case.
It’s interesting that you grant the inherent limitation of science to disseminate truth, yet you also treat those who disagree with the current state of the art as if they’re morons.
First, let’s grant that the layperson would be equally confused by the discussion you guys are having here as the hypothetical creationists in your audience, so appealing to the beliefs of the non-specialist is hardly compelling in determining truth.
What you might be surprised to find is that there are those who do understand radioisotope dating just fine, and yet interpret the measurements differently. More on this below...
I completely agree with this definition, and I think it throws bare the issue that’s at hand: that’s there’s a fundamental difference between that ingredient of scientific knowledge amassed by assembling observations, which leads to this sort of statement: “I pointed the telescope at NGC 45-678 and observed the following red shifts” , and the ingredient that interprets these observations, of this type “this means that NGC 45-678, under such-and-such an interpretive framework, is X light years away”.
The key here is the distinction between the observation and the interpretive framework that gives the observation meaning. The business of science is to constantly amass more observations, to constantly refine the dominant interpretive framework. Every once in a while, that paradigm changes, but this can happen slowly and with great resistance. In that sense, I think that mawibse considering “facts” to be “whatever the current majority of scientists thinks” is misguided in the extreme; the history of science shows just how tenuous those kinds of “facts” would be. What doesn’t change, though, are the experimental observations (although they may grow more precise as equipment and techniques improve).
The creationists that you belittle would actually stipulate to all of the observational facts that you would, they’d just disagree with how those facts are to be interpreted. And because of that, I don’t see that you have any grounds available to look down on them, if you’re going to be internally consistent with the statements you’ve already made.
With respect to radioisotope measurement, the facts are merely the presence of various types of elements in a sample, but interpretation, and several assumptions (that the decay rates have always been constant, that the amount of parent and daughter present at the sample’s origin are known, etc), are required to convert this information into a date.
You might be interested in the following articles:
www.icr.org/pdf/research/Helium_ICC_7-22-03.pdf
Long story short, measuring the amount of He retained in zeolite crystals, (emitted as alpha-particles during radioactive decay), and measuring the rate at which He diffuses out of such crystals indicates that there is way too much He present in the crystals; based on the amount of He and the measured diffusion rate, the maximum age is 6000 years. (check it out, it’s pretty amazing)
www.icr.org/pdf/research/Helium_ICC_7-22-03.pdf
In this one, among other results, it’s shown that an ostensibly pre-Cambrian diamond shows measurable C14, which is a real problem since, because of its short half-life, no detectable C14 should be present in anything older than about 100,000 years. Incidentally, it’s also my understanding that all coal samples found worldwide, all supposed to be >1 million years old, show detectable C14; this seems to present a similar problem.
I’m primarily trying to get you to revise your thinking here. If someone stipulates to the same facts as you, then the point of disagreement really becomes the way that those facts are interpreted. I agree that there are rules that guide the formulation of an interpretive framework, and among these are, for example, that the framework should be economical. However, not among these, in my view, would be a requirement that one’s view should coincide with the majority opinion of scientists.
Just something to think about...
-Jeff