It is but a preconceived notion, with preconceived experiments and preconcieved results to bear it out while maintaining a smugness bereft of all emotion.
I see--and since universal gravity can only be demonstrated by looking at light that's millions of years old--I assume you have the same thing to say about the universal law of gravitation?
"That is to say, theories that can be tested using material evidence?"
With that kind of wishful thinking I have good reason to believe Santa Claus will visit you this year. Let me know when you have the eight-million-year old scene set up.
Old data can provide for new experiments for the following reason: you haven't yet dug up, or received all the old data that might be available. Therefore, you can test hypotheses by seeing how well they do in predicting the nature of evidence you subsequently recover. This is sometimes called post-diction in the literature. This is all that, for example, astronomy, paleo-meteorology and galactic astro-physics has to work with. Just how much of the scientific work of the last three centuries are you willing to throw away?
Sure. These are your assumptions, not mine. It is you who assume "universal gravity can only be demonstrated by looking at light," all the time not knowing for certain whether there may be more involved.
In the scheme of things we know less about the universal law of gravitation than appears. Ask ten scientists "What is light?" and see if they all agree. See if they have an absolute answer.
Strange how - in your opinion - the amount of accepted data is somehow more indicative of reliability than any other factor. Why is this so? Why should the pure volume of so-called knowledge plus the three centuries of scientific study carry any more water than pure emotion? Do these things indeed affect reliability? How do you know for certain? Do you assume, just because so many have have said it and claimed to have seen it, that is must be true?
The ostrich ought to be the world mascot for evolutionists, as they refuse to even consider the possibility that other unknown forces may be involved in all they observe. Shame on their silly asses.
Whether the light is old or not we can see it in real time and thus we can test the laws of gravity in our own time. Also, most of the testing of the theory of gravity and relativity has been done using what we see from our own solar system, so that statement is false to a great extent. Evolution claims it is totally untestable in the present - although it should be testable if it were true. We certainly should be seeing, at the minimum, species in different stages of developing greater complexity. We do not see even that.