"Also, when I am talking about the "goal posts", I'm merely suggesting that the data is ever changing and so the conclusions and practical applications change as well. Don's use of the "goal post" is to say that the goal of science has never changed"

Mary,

The above is how I closed my post (the post where I AGAIN forgot to close out a code!!!).

I do think that what you are describing is what I meant (the copernicus/galileo/etc thing) by changing what we hold as "scientific" fact. And what I'm saying is that -- as we functionally USE science (in medicine, in engineering, etc) we are constantly having to change how we do things and how we look at the world.

Don is rightly pointing out that it is not science that is changing -- science goes on like the energizer bunny, merely discovering and analyzing new data. Science "concludes" very carefully -- for instance (back to the topic at hand) science has not "concluded" that the world was NOT created. But that is what is at issue with what is taught in science classes -- not that evolution is taught, but the step too far that science has concluded that there is not "creation".

You are right in that neither one uses the term "moving the goalposts" in the manner that that term was originally intended (unfairly changing the rules mid-game AFTER one side has showed superiority.

Don't mean to speak for Don (he does a fine job for himself). Just trying to explaini how I see the confusion.