She's not wrong. Libby Anne, a writer for Patheos has latched onto something that has been an issue with Ken Ham for quite some time: he is scientifically ignorant. One of Ham's persistent arguments is that we can't know historical science (or predictive science) because, as he puts it, “Were You There”? A moment's thought about this perspective reveals it to be facile. Libby Anne agrees:
Ham argues that some science uses observation and experimentation (what he calls “experimental or observational science”) while other science (what he calls “origins or historical science”) does not. Throughout his publications, he insists that young earth creationists do real science, but even as he does so, he uses terms scientists simply don’t use. Ham uses the term “observational evidence” here because he wants to contrast what he argues is “real” science with what he claims is a separate, less reliably category of scientific research: “origins science” or “historical science.”
Ham's insistence that we cannot know past events because we “weren't there” ignores the vast amount of detective work that goes on every day to reconstruct past events in criminology, biology, genetics and may other fields. He is the only one who believes this.
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