This is the sixth in our series of posts about types of predictions. God hates lies. Lies are an abomination to God. Lies oppose God. Sometimes, ungodly thinkers commit fallacies of prediction to oppose God. This quote explains one level of prediction. Some levels of prediction are helpful. Others are deceptive. Speaking about predictions without pointing out the difference between various levels of prediction is deceptive. It’s an equivocation fallacy and a package deal fallacy. You can look those up in The Encyclopedia of Logical Fallacies free for download from RealReality.org.
<quote from Real Faith & Reason, vol 2>
Level-5 Predictions:
Level-five predictions are historical science postdictions someone made after observations.
Examples:
Postdiction is hindsight bias, and postdictions say, “Since we’ve observed X, we’ve decided X is what we would expect if Y happened in the past.” We can sense there’s something squishy about this prediction argument. If we could rationally link expected behavior to reality, it shouldn’t matter whether scientists made the “predictions” before or after the fact. However, the human mind is tricky, and we can easily rationalize we would have predicted an observed behavior had we predicted it before we observed it. “Oh. This observation is what I would have expected.” We might also shoehorn an observation into an actual prediction once we know about the observation. Often, an unexpected observation causes a problem for a sacred-cow theory.
How do scientists protect the sacred-cow theory? They make up a just-so story to explain how the unexpected observation fits into the sacred-cow story. Then they claim the just-so story “predicts” the unexpected observation. The unexpected observation was a problem for the theory. And then, scientists cleverly transform the troublesome observation into proof for the theory. They say the observation fulfills the prediction of the story they made up to explain the observation. Scientists make up just-so stories for unexpected observations like antibiotic resistance or the millions of missing transitional fossils. They’re making up stories to explain the absence of “junk” DNA and soft tissue in dinosaur fossils.
“Postdiction involves explanation after the fact. In skepticism, it is considered an effect of hindsight bias that explains claimed predictions of significant events such as plane crashes and natural disasters.” ~ Wikipedia
Irrationally, scoffers claim the prophecies of Scripture were postdictions. So what’s the basis of this skeptical claim? Scoffers postulate, and the word “postulate” is a fancy way of saying “making up stuff and calling the made-up stuff true.” That means the basis of the skeptical claim is made-up stuff (postulation). And this postulation (made-up stuff) is another example of the way ungodly thinkers project their problems and limitations onto God and onto those who follow Christ.
Biblical predictions aren’t postdictions. For example, we read the Bible and find the human race is all from one bloodline, but science is just discovering this fact. Scripture also told us the earth is a sphere and described the water cycle long before scientists discovered either of these. God recorded these in Scripture long before we confirmed them by observation. Of course, God makes many other true predictions in the Bible.
Consider the following answer to the prediction problem as discussed by evolutionists.
“Evolutionary theory can predict that if a new species is to arise, it will be through modification of another(s) previously existing now: or by anagenetic change inside a lineage, or by cladogenetic splitting originating 2 or more species, or by merging of 2 or more species (hybridization, polyploidy, symbiogenesis, etc.).” ~ researchgate.net, What are the testable predictions of Darwin’s theory of evolution?
But this statement isn’t a prediction at all. Instead, this quote tries to explain away the observations with just-so stories. Then it claims just-so stories are predictions. Then it claims just-so stories prove the conclusion of evolutionism.
Evolutionists sometimes claim the story of molecules-to-humankind evolutionism predicts antibiotic resistance. But evolutionists didn’t predict antibiotic resistance. Rather, they didn’t expect it, yet they falsely claim they predicted antibiotic resistance. By rewriting history in this way, they ignore what really happened.
Antibiotic resistance surprised scientists who, up until 1969, didn’t predict this resistance. They only “predicted” antibiotic resistance after the observation. They had no reason to expect the observation based on the story of evolution. Consider what we observe versus what evolutionism demands. We observe a loss of information that results in antibiotic resistance. However, evolutionists would expect to observe random events adding new information systems. Evolutionists would expect to see bacteria creating new coded information systems. (creation.com/cis-3) But they don’t observe the spontaneous creation of such complex systems. The molecules-to-humankind story wouldn’t predict what we observe. It wouldn’t predict the cells turn on or off preexisting functions, and this on-off action causes positive changes we observe. Therefore, the observation of antibiotic resistance fits better into the Creation model than the evolution model.
“Many evolutionists claim mutations and antibiotic resistance in bacteria (operational science) as being some sort of prediction of evolution (origins science). In fact, genetics (operational science) was an embarrassment to evolution, which could have been a factor in Mendel’s pioneering genetics research going unrecognized for so many years (Mendel’s discovery of discrete genes did not fit Darwin’s idea of continuous unlimited variation). When mutations were discovered, these were seen as a way of reconciling Darwinism with the observations of operational science—hence the ‘neo-Darwinian’ synthesis of Mayr, Haldane, Fisher, etc. . . . Contrary to evolutionists’ expectations, none of the cases of antibiotic resistance, insecticide resistance, etc. that have been studied at a biochemical level (i.e. operational science) have involved de novo origin of new complex genetic information. In fact, evolutionists never predicted antibiotic resistance, because historically it took the medical field by surprise” ~ Don Batten, ‘It’s not science’
The word “prediction” has two parts, “pre” meaning before, and “diction” meaning putting it into language. So prediction must foretell what we will see. A true prediction doesn’t predict what happened previously since that wouldn’t be prediction but postdiction. We could call it second-guessing and confirmation bias. Here’s the point. Real prediction doesn’t claim an observation is what we would have predicted if we would have predicted it. Instead, prediction plainly states what we will observe before we observe it. Prediction has to happen before the observation or it’s not prediction.
When persuaders want to push a certain story, they’ll use postdiction in subtle ways. For instance, they’ll search around for a quote they can apply to a certain discovery. Those quotes are usually vague and don’t predict what they specifically discovered. That’s what happened with Tiktaalik when scientists applied vague expectations to the discovery of a fossilized fish. They shoehorned previous expectations to match the discovery. And they shoehorned the discovery to make it seem like it matched the previous expectations.
In practice, postdictions are just-so stories persuaders use for confirmation bias. Postdiction creates illusions. Since discoveries are often surprises scientists didn’t predict, the existing theories didn’t predict the discoveries. As a way to keep the original story alive, evolutionists created new stories and claimed these stories as predictions for the unexpected observations. But schools still falsely teach these just-so stories as predictions and give the illusion scientists predicted the discoveries.
There’s a problem with the big-bang-billions-of-years-no-Flood-molecules-to-humankind story. The favored story makes no true predictions. And every postdiction for the favored story works better to support the Creation-Flood model. As a result, no postdiction of the big-bang-billions-of-years-no-Flood-molecules-to-humankind story is necessary for any product or benefit of science.
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