There are plenty of clues and witnesses in historic time that don't exist in the prehistoric past.
Two things.
(1) The tree rings exist today and are clues that have been witnessed in many ways. The question is where do we find your purported boundary between what we can reasonably count and measure and where we cannot do so.
(2) We don't need to go back in time to replicate the tree rings that we see in the Methuselah tree -- that has already been done with the Prometheus tree, the Schulman Tree and the Ancient Sentinels. All we need to do is observe whether the replications result in the same information, a comparison that occurs in real time today.
Yes, it's good evidence based on uniformitarian assumptions, but if things were appreciably different in the past that includes the time covered by the rings, and I don't mean laws, I mean conditions, climate, etc., then the evidence needs to be subjected to other tests and considerations than the uniformitarian assumptions.
Climate and temperatures do affect tree ring growth, and these are actually documented in the rings -- wider rings correlate with better growing conditions, narrow rings correlate with worse growing conditions.
What other tests would you use?
Message 85: If you don't have a witness in the past you don't have a way to confirm your interpretation of the evidence. You can interpret but you can't confirm. Laboratory sciences and forensic science in historical time have ways of confirming, testing, doublechecking things that you do not have for the ancient past. ...
If you have two documents you can check to see if one confirms the other. The more documents you have that say the same thing the more confident you can be in the information, yes?
So one way to confirm the tree rings is to use the same method on different trees and see if you get the same results:
Message 79: (2) We don't need to go back in time to replicate the tree rings that we see in the Methuselah tree -- that has already been done with the Prometheus tree, the Schulman Tree and the Ancient Sentinels. All we need to do is observe whether the replications result in the same information, a comparison that occurs in real time today.
If you have two sets of tree rings you can check to see if one confirms the other. The more documents you have that say the same thing the more confident you can be in the information, yes? So if you have four or five sets of tree rings that all have the same growth patterns of thickness correlated to growing conditions, you can have high confidence in their result, yes?
With the Ancient Sentinels there are a couple with more than 7,000 tree rings, and we can compare the ring thicknesses for the same numerical counts to see how well they agree.
Do you agree with this and if not, why?
Would you agree that the year of the flood would have been a very poor year for tree growth? So you could look for a narrow growth ring in all trees at that time, yes?
The favorite cop-out of the interprettive historical sciences.
The hard sciences do have proof, and they must have proof of hypotheses that affect human life, which is often the situation. Evolution doesn't really affect anything of a scientific nature, it just destroys culture and truth and all the good things of human life on that level. But you don't need proof because it's all imaginative speculative made up crap.
Nope.
ALL science theories are never proven.
But you can prove me wrong by posting evidence of a scientific theory that has been proven.
The TOE does this and predictions have been validated. In spades.
One of the predictions of the TOE is nested hierarchies. Not just occasionally, but for ALL organisms -- thus every organism and fossil is a test of the theory and not one has invalidated this prediction.
That makes it valid science, no matter what YOU think.
quote:If you have two sets of tree rings you can check to see if one confirms the other. The more documents you have that say the same thing the more confident you can be in the information, yes? So if you have four or five sets of tree rings that all have the same growth patterns of thickness correlated to growing conditions, you can have high confidence in their result, yes?
With the Ancient Sentinels there are a couple with more than 7,000 tree rings, and we can compare the ring thicknesses for the same numerical counts to see how well they agree.
Do you agree with this and if not, why?
Would you agree that the year of the flood would have been a very poor year for tree growth? So you could look for a narrow growth ring in all trees at that time, yes?
What other tests would you use?
I just do not see any clear demarcation of any kind among those tree rings for determining where the flood would divide pre-flood from post-flood growth or any significant difference between early and late rings.
How would you determine this other than by guessing Faith?
Just trying to understand, Faith -- where is the line between observational science and historical science in the tree rings?
Re: Example: Prediction - Test - Confirm or Refute
Verification through prediction leading to discovery.
Indeed. AND they went back to continue the excavations and found the rear sections showing the rear hips and legs, pretty much as predicted from the initial find:
quote:However, only specimen blocks containing the front portion of Tiktaalik have been described thus far. As the researchers investigated additional blocks recovered from their original and subsequent expeditions to the dig site in northern Canada, they discovered the rear portion of Tiktaalik, which contained the pelves as well as partial pelvic fin material. The fossils included the complete pelvis of the original 'type' specimen, making a direct comparison of the front and rear appendages of a single animal possible.
The scientists were immediately struck by the pelvis, which was comparable to those of some early tetrapods. The Tiktaalik pelvic girdle was nearly identical in size to its shoulder girdle, a tetrapod-like characteristic. It possessed a prominent ball and socket hip joint, which connected to a highly mobile femur that could extend beneath the body. Crests on the hip for muscle attachment indicated strength and advanced fin function. And although no femur bone was found, pelvic fin material, including long fin rays, indicated the hind fin was at least as long and as complex as its forefin.
Those hip and fin bones show the same ability to walk as the front legs.
quote:Ham often stresses a line of argument made within the broader creationist community, which resonates, at least somewhat, with the public at large. There’s experimental or observational science, as we call it. That’s using the scientific method, observation, measurement, experiment, testing, he said during the debate. When we’re talking about origins, we’re talking about the past. We’re talking about our origins. You weren’t there, you can’t observe that.
In the first place, science doesn’t involve merely telling stories about history. If it did, scientific explanations might not have any claim to a higher level of veracity than religious stories. The stories that science does tell have empirical consequences, and make physical predictions that can be tested.
In this sense, all science is historical science. We make observations about past events, based on everything from data gathered in the laboratory yesterday to remnants of phenomena, like meteor impacts or stellar explosions, which may have happened billions of years ago. We then use them to make predictions about the future, about experiments or observations that have not yet taken place. To quibble about how long ago the original data was generated is to miss the point. Predictions about the future, rather than a focus on the past, is what gives science its ultimate explanatory and technological power.
Predictions about future events, or future observations of what happened, such as future fossil finds. These predictions are testable and refutable, and thus they ARE science.
quote:Or, take my favorite example: the prediction of a genetic relationship between the great apes and humans via a common ancestor, as taught in many (I wish it were all) introductory biology courses. Humans have twenty-three pairs of chromosomes, where all the great apes have twenty-four pairs. If they have a common ancestor, this difference must be explained. One possibility is that two of the chromosomes in the great apes fused together at some point in the human lineage. But this makes two testable predictions. Each chromosome has a characteristic end, called a telomere, and a distinctive central part, called a centromere. If fusion had occurred, then one of the human chromosomes should, in its central region, include the remnants of the two fused telomeres, lined up end to end. It also should have, at between roughly a quarter and three-quarters of the way along the chromosome, a structure identical to that of the centromeres of the great-ape chromosomes. This prediction, tested in the laboratory today, and not in the distant past, has been beautifully verified.
A tested prediction that proved to be true. Science done.
If the upper strata were just a few layers as they are now then you'd expect them to be disturbed. But if the strata were laid down originally to a great depth there would have been extreme pressure from the weight of the strata above and enough rigidity to resist the disturbance. That falsifies his conclusion.
No it doesn't. Extreme pressure would not remove the debris caused by this turning motion, it would just grind and crush the particles smaller so you would have sand instead of gravel in the interface. This material is ABSENT and that is the critical problem to this hypothesis -- that is what makes the actual evidence invalidate the concept.
Increased pressure also does not account for the generally leveled surface of the turned material: there is no rational reason for such an end result of arbitrary turning a lower layer.
What shears off the top AND where did the sheared material go?
What causes the lower layer to turn but leaves the upper layers level? Magic?
Erosion explains it very simply: erosion of an exposed surface not only levels the top but transports the material away.
It also provides time separation between the turning of the lower layer to the deposition of the upper layer so no magic is needed to keep it from turning.
Not if the evidence has to be interpreted, which Siccar Point does.
You don't need to interpret whether there is debris or not -- it is observed that the debris is missing.
Re: Siccar Point ... as the rock turns -- science vs denial
As long as all you have is "what WOULD have happened" you do not have a testable science.
Why not? You can test to see if "what WOULD have happened" actually happened -- this is the foundation of the scientific method Faith:
1. Observation/evidence 2. Hypothesis to explain (1) 3. Test A: what would have happened if (2) is true 4. if "what would have happened in A" is observed (2) is affirmed 5. Test B: what would have happened if (2) is false 6. if "what would have happened in B" is observed (2) is invalidated
As long as all you have is "what WOULD have happened" you do not have a testable science.
As long as all you have are one line denial of other posts you don't have refutation of the points made --- because you have failed to address the points made.
If the upper strata were just a few layers as they are now then you'd expect them to be disturbed. But if the strata were laid down originally to a great depth there would have been extreme pressure from the weight of the strata above and enough rigidity to resist the disturbance. That falsifies his conclusion.
No it doesn't. Extreme pressure would not remove the debris caused by this turning motion, it would just grind and crush the particles smaller so you would have sand instead of gravel in the interface. This material is ABSENT and that is the critical problem to this hypothesis -- that is what makes the actual evidence invalidate the concept.
Increased pressure also does not account for the generally leveled surface of the turned material: there is no rational reason for such an end result of arbitrary turning a lower layer.
What shears off the top AND where did the sheared material go?
What causes the lower layer to turn but leaves the upper layers level? Magic?
Erosion explains it very simply: erosion of an exposed surface not only levels the top but transports the material away.
It also provides time separation between the turning of the lower layer to the deposition of the upper layer so no magic is needed to keep it from turning.
Not if the evidence has to be interpreted, which Siccar Point does.
You don't need to interpret whether there is debris or not -- it is observed that the debris is missing.
The BEST explanation covers ALL the evidence.
And seeing as you have NO mechanism to cause this internal turning nor ANY explanation for the missing debris ... you don't even have AN explanation, so ANY explanation is better than you fantasy.
Especially ones that have been tested by observation per the scientific method.
You can also do a thought experiment: if you took your conceptual process and ran it in reverse what would you expect to see as a pre-condition to the turning event:
If you took the near vertical layers at Siccar point and turned them flat what would you expect to see?
Multiple sedimentary layers that all abruptly ended all at precisely the same location? Is that observed anywhere? Would that make any sense?
Re: Siccar Point ... as the rock turns -- science vs denial
You really honestly don't see that your post is nothing but speculations? Interpretations, guesses, suppositions? Not a shred of actual fact, actual test? I guess you don't.
oh ... and the observed empirical evidence of sheared of tilted layers with not sign of where that sheared off material went ... evidence that this shearing DID not COULD not occur under an overlying layer after that layer formed ...
No I do not see that evidence is missing that supports your concept is speculation or interpretation but observed reality.
By the way the lower level doesn't "turn," that's a really misleading word. It is pushed laterally (that means "from the side") into vertical folds. Calling that "turning" -- or "rotating" in Dr. A's wording -- completely misrepresents what happens.
A lateral force that affects a buried layer but not the layer that buries it ... fascinating. One wonders where the material comes from to replace the edges of the compressed layers ... or are those layers growing?
However, now that we have this new Faith concept we can investigate what IT would look like if IT had occurred:
Compressing layers laterally into lateral folds means that there would be continuous layers under the overlying strata ... they would peak and valley in an accordion pattern.
This too is not observed in the world of reality at Siccar Point: the tops of the folds would not be sheared off as we easily observe when looking at the objective empirical evidence and this falsifies this concept.
This too would cause rubble from the interface of the accordion layer and the overlying layer, rubble that is still absent ...
As for where the eroded material went, MY speculation is -- yes at this point all there is is speculation on my side too; too bad you can't see it on your side -- anyway MY speculation is that the eroded material was simply not preserved in this very small slice of the formation, it got pushed somewhere else along the line.
There is more to the formation than this single location, where the tilted layers are still observed and where rubble is still NOT observed. Science is not done by making up evidence and then saying it isn't there it is done by observing what evidence is there.
Does observation match the erosion hypothesis? Yes, in every detail.
Does observation match the Faith conjecture? No, not in any instance.
I have to assume some sort of systematic error, that's all, that really isn't about time at all. If I ever figure it out I'll let you know.
And how would you test for such a systematic error, Faith?
Science tests for it with correlations to other systems, preferably ones that have known values ...
For instance tree rings ...
There are three Bristlecone pines, two living and one with a known date when it was cut down for the purpose of counting the tree rings.
Tree rings have varying thickness for different years due to the variations in climate, Thus we can compare these three trees to see if they have the same patterns year\ring after year\ring ... and they do.
Tree rings are observational evidence, the cores and sections are preserved so that others can count them and verify the results.
This confirms that the three trees precisely match each other, but we don't know (at this point) how accurate they are: could there be a systematic error that produces extra rings in each tree at the same time? Could there be a systematic error that produces no ring in each tree at the same time? How do we test those errors? There are several ways.
There is more, a lot more, should you wish to actually pursue this. If you want I can start a new thread on it.
It's a real distinction that you all keep glossing over.
There are white chessmen and black chessmen, it's a real distinction between them, but both are used to play chess ... in fact it is hard to play chess without both, because they interact.
I have to assume some sort of systematic error, that's all, that really isn't about time at all. If I ever figure it out I'll let you know.
Please do. Meanwhile please consider this post:
RAZD Message 403, systematic errors and tree rings.
And how would you test for such a systematic error, Faith?
Science tests for it with correlations to other systems, preferably ones that have known values ...
For instance tree rings ...
There are three Bristlecone pines, two living and one with a known date when it was cut down for the purpose of counting the tree rings.
Tree rings have varying thickness for different years due to the variations in climate, Thus we can compare these three trees to see if they have the same patterns year\ring after year\ring ... and they do.
Tree rings are observational evidence, the cores and sections are preserved so that others can count them and verify the results.
This confirms that the three trees precisely match each other, but we don't know (at this point) how accurate they are: could there be a systematic error that produces extra rings in each tree at the same time? Could there be a systematic error that produces no ring in each tree at the same time? How do we test those errors? There are several ways.
There is more, a lot more, should you wish to actually pursue this. If you want I can start a new thread on it.
Note that tree rings are used to calibrate 14C dating in order to remove systematic errors, so this is very much in line with what you are concerned with.
Now consider these terms and their meanings in this context:
At this point we can say that tree rings are precise (we get the same results from three different trees), but we aren't sure of the accuracy. The next step would be to test the accuracy against known dates, yes?
... There was nothing inevitable about the age of the earth, it has just been gradually pushed further and further back as new observations came to light.
As further observations refined the approximation of the age as invalidated concepts were corrected or discarded.
it is done by observing what evidence is there.
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