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

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Sure, because all these things are worldwide and the tectonic forces occurred in the same time frame, somewhere around the end of the Flood. I think volcanoes also and other things also occurred in the same time period. Proving it of course is something else I suppose.

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I asked for evidence that the force was applied to the lower but not the upper strata. You give me irrelevant speculations.

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Shouldn't. Point of equilibrium, above which weight keeps strata stationary, below which strata buckle. Makes good sense.

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No, it doesn't. Aside for the problem that you need any upward-pressing force to increase with depth more quickly than the pressure (and how when that force is transmitted through the rock ?) for there to even be a balance point there's also the issue that compaction increases resistance to deformation. If material near the assumed balance point is being pressed up and compacted (because the material at the assumed balance point can't move) then why shouldn't it be compacted to the point where it can resist the force ? The force has to be very weak there by definition.

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I've given some support in the past. But the fact is that I'm just too intuitive for you. Seems obvious to me.

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It seems to me that you're just very good at fooling yourself into believing obvious nonsense. Assume two identical surfaces. Will roughening one actually reduce friction between them ? Can you provide real examples where that is true ?

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Yes there are correct and incorrect interpretations, but the point is that when you are dealing with past one-time events ALL YOU HAVE is interpretation, you DO NOT HAVE a method for testing if your interpretation is correct.

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There are two big problems here. First, what you call "historical science" is NOT restricted to reconstructing one-time events. Dating methods is an obvious example because the method may be applied to many events. There is not just one angular unconformity, but many which can be studied to derive the common features. And of course, the assertion that canyon formation never occurred before all the present-day strata were lain down is not a claim about a one-time event. And it is one that has been tested and shown to be false.Secondly it is obviously false to say that there is never a method for testing one time events. That is only true if you have all the relevant data (including that from similar sites). If you do not then you may test further by gathering more data and seeing if it fits - or not.The only question here is how, after all the discussion here you can possible not KNOW all this ?

I must congratulate you on getting Faith to cave immediately and so completely.

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What an odd thing to say. Petrophysics isn't doing historical interpretive Geology, he's doing valid physical study, which I've said many times is the valid work of Geology

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He's interpreting evidence to reconstruct what happened in the unwitnessed prehistoric past. You keep trying to tell us that that's not valid science.

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The case has been made over and over and over. Just stubbornness not to accept it,.

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Making an assertion is not making a case for that assertion.Making a false assertion and ignoring obvious counter-examples is just plain dishonest. And that's what you;ve been doing.It doesn't take stubbornness to resist such an "argument".

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I figure since I was able to dream up a test then sometimes these things are testable, that's all. But most of what has been called a test here isn't a real test.

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Odd how you never answer the examples given, then. But let's face it, that's just another of the obvious falsehoods you keep presenting.

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What you are saying makes absolutely no sense to me.

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But it is a simple and obvious truth. There is nothing in the methods as described that relies on history. It will obviously work just as well when applied to events in the prehistoric past as the historic past.

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He was doing observational science and not historical science, which is what I always supposed working geologists had to be doing in the field.

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Please explain why reconstructing past events is not an example of historical science. Isn't that the defining feature of what you call historical science?

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Good grief, have you really not understood that this is what is meant by Historical Geology and the difference between historical and observational science?

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Since the difference you see between historical and observational science seems to be unique to you, perhaps you would like to explain it.

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Interpretation is involved in all science, and any actual work done in the field by a geologist would also involve interpretation. The point I'm trying to keep in mind is that in that sort of science it's testable and verifiable by others, but interpretations of some events in the prehistoric past cannot be tested or verified. I'm trying to find the best way of defining just what category of events this applies to.

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Here's a starting point for you Faith. The fact that the Earth is very, very much older than 10,000 years has been thoroughly tested and verified.Multiple independant lines of evidence confirm this, and the idea that they are all badly wrong - and yet agree to a great extent - is hopelessly implausible.

If we find a channel in the top of a bed, and if it has a lot of rounded pebbles in the bottom, the reasonable conclusion is that something like a river flowed through it.And if sediment from the next layer up fills the channel, on top of the pebbles it follows that this stratum was laid down after the channel had formed.This seems simple and objective enough. Any objections ?

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I'm sure that's a reasonable prediction under the circumstances, but it wouldn't be an easy thing to figure out. Somebody may, however. Even if it takes a hundred years.

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To call it desperately clutching at straws would be an understatement. We have multiple independant methods and you need a massive and consistent error in all of them useful to geology, and large and consistent errors even in those useful to archaeology, and not geology.

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Not being able to recognize that you cannot test or prove the scenarios about the prehistoric past shows a real mental problem

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Because Faith, we often CAN test scenarios. Knowing facts that you refuse to accept is not a "mental problem" on our side. To use a simple example we could look at your flood scenario and see if it offers an explanation of the order of the fossil record. When we see it doesn't, we as honest people, admit that your scenario has failed a major test. You, on the other hand, try to cover it up.This is the strength of consilence.

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think the distinction in the end comes down to whether there are witnesses or not. And you'll get that all wrong too. You know why? Because you won't let yourselves THINK about what I mean, you''ll just fix on the stupidest possible idea about what the word means and impute that to me and give your stupid answer to it. You'll trot out forensics though I've answered that a million times already.

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The whole point of this creationist argument is to assert that the absence of intelligent observers in the scenarios of science disqualifies them, while their assertion that Genesis is an eye-witness account (something the book itself does not claim at all) means that Genesis should be accepted as true. That's the whole point of using the word "witnesses".And of course the big problem for you is that as soon as you include other evidence then you have to take each scenario separately and show that it does not have adequate evidence. Which would mean actually knowing and understanding that evidence. Since you are trying to make a general purpose argument and have a habit of not bothering to properly investigate the evidence taking this wider view not only departs from the obvious - and originally intended - meaning of the argument - it makes it useless to you.

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All real science is testable because multiple people can see the result and do the tests themselves. With the scenarios of the past all those multiple people can see the stuff in the rocks that is interpreted that way, they can see the theory in other words, but all they can do is agree or disagree with the interpretation, so it remains a theory forever. Since they've all been brainwashed into the Old Earth assumption they will of course agree, so that's how you get your consensus.

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And this is why you don't get respect here. This is just abusive, nasty lying. An a demonstration of hypocrisy on your part, too.

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There are no witnesses to such a past, certainly no witnesses from such a past, there is nothing but the idiotic interpretation of what's in a rock as the WHOLE basis for a WHOLE idea about a WHOLE other world that can never be proved.

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I'll just point out that you think that you can determine what happened in the past - on a world-wide scale - from a superficial examination of one , or at most a few, sites. Geologists don't do anything like that.For example, your insistence that all (major) tectonic events happened after all the rocks were laid down, based only on your examination of the Grand Canyon. Do you call that "idiotic" ?

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Second stupid knee-jerk unthinking straw man post.

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Oh, Faith you've written a lot more than two such posts here,

Be fair,, HBD, those posts are obviously self-descriptive. And on that interpretation they are absolutely true.

Of course, the hard sciences are full of inductive reasoning. EVERY "natural law" is identified by inductive reasoning because there is no other way to do it. Even the hardest science cannot proceed by deduction alone. That was settled a long time ago.As usual, Faith doesn't understand what she is talking about,