SCIENCE: -- "observational science" vs "historical science" vs ... science.

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There's no point in continuing to talk to you at this stage. You disagree, I am wrong about everything in your mind.
Ok.

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I guess that means you know that you're wrong, too. We both know that creation is a far "grander" claim than evolution by the standards you set forward. And you know that the idea that humans have existed forever isn't tenable either. So really your argument only reinforces evolution as the best explanation for the evidence.Too bad that you didn't think more carefully, and too bad that you don't have the courage to face up to the truth.Edited by PaulK, : Correct typo

You are entirely correct. IF Nature operated in a different manner yesterday than today, then the assumptions geologists make today about the rocks would be invalid.However, it is not an unreasonable assumption for geologists to make that Nature operates in a very similar manner today as it did yesterday. Our evidence for this are the many rock formations, rock textures, rock mineralogies, rock types, etc. present in the rock record that have modern sedimentary analogs. Examples of these I've mentioned many times in the past include, sand dunes, stream channels, beaches, etc. An unreasonable assumption to make is that Nature operates substantially different today than it did yesterday when there is no evidence to support it. If you do make that assumption, then YOU have the obligation to provide the evidence in support of this assertion. Until you do so, you are presenting nothing but personal opinion and the rest of the world has the right to ignore it. Therefore, a global flood must still follow the rules of Nature.Making the reasonable assumption that Nature behaved similarly in the past, the first stages of the global flood, an extremely high-energy environment, would erode and deposit in the same manner of floods today -- except at a much more massive and extensive level. We should -- AT THE VERY LEAST -- see in the rock record evidence of :-- mass wasting and landslide deposits -- deeply carved canyons (MANY!) in many parts of the earth (particularly at the bases of large mountain chains or high altitude plains)
-- mass graves containing a multitude of KNOWN animal skeletons (not dinosaurs, unless there was a secret valley where all these strange and unknown animals lived)
-- and immense marine deltas (with many lobes due to intense upriver erosion) where eroded material shedding off the continents was deposited in the marine basins These deposits would form the base of the flood rock record and any Creationist should be able to find this sequence of rocks and .Below this sequence of rocks, you should be able to find and put your finger on the rocks upon which man lived. Above these deposits, would be evidence of the flood waters deepening, some quiescence, and then recedence of the waters. Each of these three hydrologic regimes will deposit sediment in distinct manners because of how the water is behaving. These rocks should be in the rock record and Creationists should have already identified, described, and explained them in minute detail.When the Creationists can point out all these rocks and explain EVERY SINGLE ROCK TYPE, then and only then will they be taken seriously. To date, NONE of you have been able to do so. In fact, I am still waiting to hear from you, Faith, how flood waters deposit carbonate when today, carbonate depositing environments require very specific water chemistry, water temperature, environmental, and sunlight conditions.You are correct in suggesting that modern geology requires a lot of speculation. Geologists are notorious for disagreeing with each other. We agree on what constitutes a sandstone, granite, gabbro, fault, limestone, a coral fossil, a tectonic plate, what a sand dune or stream deposits look like, and anything that has been specifically defined or identified, but we often disagree on individual interpretations of how landscapes evolved, timing of faults, types of faults, why rocks are deformed, how gold or other metals end up where they are found, and thousands of other things.Geology is hard. There is a lot of guessing, assuming, speculating, hypothesizing, and arguing about the past in order to figure out why the rocks are the way they are today. That even happens in my group of 8 geologists on rocks that have been studied continuously, in detail, over the last 100+ years. But that's why we research geochemistry, mineralogy, isotopes, mineral assemblages, and why we go out into the field and map the geologic units in as much detail as makes sense. We can never know exactly how the past happened, but we can construct a very nice picture of it using the data we collect.Creationist assertions that the rock record is unknowable, untestable, and unpredictable are completely unfounded, and spoken from a place of abject ignorance. This is refuted by the sheer number of books and technical papers detailing the research upon which our interpretations are based. And of course refuted by the fact that we can predict the rocks, fossils, ore deposits, and a multitude of other things that we will find in the subsurface.

What good is putting a dead rat under the bowl?Edited by Parasomnium, : changed 'it' to 'is'

How do you know its dead?Maybe its Shroedingers rat?

He's repeating the experiment. The previous time the rat died. He didn't mention a new rat. So it's obvious the rat is dead.

Well, exactly --- the evidence is in the present, the thing it's evidence for is in the past. But people like Ham want to divide science not according to the nature of the evidence, but according to the time when the thing it's evidence for occurred.

They want to divide science into those they agree with and those they don't.

Certainly anything we can measure and document and classify in the present is repeatable and part of operational observational science.And this is the problem for creationist positions on (pre)historical sciences, because what we know of the history is what we can measure and document and classify in the present, and this is repeatable and part of operational observational scienceDo we need to repeat the past to test hypothesis regarding the past? No, we just need predictions that can be tested ... and these can be predictions of things we should see in the past that hasn't yet been observed (validation), or what we should not see in new observations of the past (falsification).All validation results result in higher confidence in the hypothesis, rather than prove them.Creationism -- if it requires different behavior rather than predicts it -- needs to demonstrate that it did occur, how it occurred and how it affected all the evidence.Edited by RAZD, : .st

there was a point that wasn't articulated well in the debate.ken ham kept saying they believed in the uniformity of natural laws and their ability make predictions for the future based on present observational evidence. and then would say in other parts of the debate that you can't know the past, as if that same uniformity of natural laws no longer applied. it's interesting that uniformity only applies in one direction.

I see no connection. I consider the stegosaurs to have been killed and buried and fossilized in the Flood, which was a worldwide catastrophe that uniformitarianism does not take into account. Uniformitarianism has most of the creatures in the strata dying by normal means over normal spans of time as seen today. But the "fossil record" doesn't show that. It shows the creatures that lived before the Flood, many of them killed off in that catastrophe and no longer living on the planet at all.

The creationist objection to uniformitarianism does not imply an objection to natural laws, but only to EVENTS, as it interprets the fossils and strata as having been built up over time as we experience it today rather than in a singular catastrophic event. No laws were different.

events that break the natural laws? that is to say, miracles, acts of god, etc? i'm a little confused. in the other thread, you were arguing that the strata were evidence for the flood. now they're not?

The above statement is true, but I think it misses a point.Essentially nobody believes in Creation Science because of anything like the scientific method. YECs believe that Eve was created from Adam's rib because the Bible says so. They may believe in a few other things like a vapor canopy because their pastor told them it was true.Why then should a YEC proponent care if there is no acceptable non-historical scientific evidence for Genesis given that he is accepting it on faith anyway? Isn't it pointless then to argue that the scientific basis for their own beliefs is even shakier than what they reject?The flip side of the coin is that the observational science argument is a farce anyway. The argument has nothing to do with how they formed their beliefs, it is simply a rationalization for a conclusion already reached. Using the argument is the verbal equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears. It is pretty easy to show that YECs use and accept the results of investigations that are not qualitatively different from the science they reject.

Well, when we infer living dinosaurs from the bones, we are, very automatically, using the uniformitarian principle that you need to have a living animal first before you get bones, and that this is true of these particular bones, that they didn't just fall out of the sky, or grow in the ground, or get magicked out of nothing by God. Without uniformitarianism, we wouldn't be able to infer the living dinosaurs, we would have no grounds on which to do so.

So you'd reject any creationist attempt to explain away the evidence for age by positing varying rates of the speed of light or of nuclear decay?