Faith writes:
Percy writes:
Whether it's a paleontologist examining a footprint from millions of years ago or a detective examining a footprint from a crime committed the night before, they're both interpreting evidence.
The difference, an enormous one, is that the paleontologist has never seen the creature that made the footprint whereas the forensic criminologist has seen millions and has a huge database just in his own experience to work from in solving the crime, not to mention the collective experience of all other forensic criminologists, and in fact the whole human race, who are also direct witnesses to the footprints of other human beings.
You're claiming the detective has more data based upon more recent evidence and more colleagues than the paleontologist, but the only thing you've said that is true is that the detective's database was gathered from data that isn't as old. Whatever the specifics, they both have plenty of data for carrying out their jobs. The detective can look at the footprint and tell that it was a Nike Hyperdunk. The paleontologist can look at the footprint and tell that it was an iguanodon.
But even if neither of them had any database or colleagues, how is examining and analyzing any footprint not an interpretation of evidence?
Well, the light from the supernova is arriving in the present and can be measured in many ways and compared to other celestial sources of light, which is a very different matter from interpreting events on earth supposed millions of years ago. You guys seem not to get how you have no REFERENTS from events in the distant past, and no witnesses, and all your data is completely mute and inert.
What you say doesn't accord with reality. A paleontologist can interpret (assess, analyze, examine, whatever) the evidence provided by a footprint and tell it was made by an iguanodon. Evidence is evidence, and even when millions of years old it can speak volumes.
I wonder. If unwitnessed evidence from long ago were to prove you right, would you still ignore it?
You try to infer things from supposed similarities in the present, and I'm not going to say you get it all wrong but the point is you have no way to verify any conclusion...
What makes you think the conclusions of the paleontologist about the footprint can't be verified by other paleontologists, just as the detective's conclusions can be verified by other detectives?
You can know lots of things about the rocks and the fossils too, but you can't really know anything about the past in which they were formed just by studying them.
I think you don't really believe this and are only saying it out of habit. You've made many statements about what happened in the past. Just an example of something very simple, we can examine a metamorphic layer and know it has been heated, indicating it was once much closer to the mantle. We can often tell by how much it was heated, and we can tell the type of the original sediments, which tells us some things about the environment in which those sediments were deposited. The heating reset the radiometric clocks, and so we can find the time when it cooled, locking any radiometric materials into crystalline structures.
Obviously your claim that we tell nothing about events in the past from ancient evidence is false. I think what you're actually getting at when you talk about plausibilities is scientific tentativity. In science nothing is ever 100% certain. Any theory or conclusion can be falsified. Degree of certainty is a function of the amount of interconnected confirming evidence. There can be no blanket exclusion of evidence of a certain type or age. One doesn't ignore any evidence in science. All the evidence must be considered and followed where it leads.
So you can throw away your arbitrary rules of what evidence is and isn't permitted. You have to consider all evidence, and if you think our evidence doesn't lead to our conclusions then you must show how.
Really, this idea that rocks tilting underground is absurd is what's absurd. You should look at all the cross sections I've been looking at. Tectonic forces move the rocks in relation to each other UNDERGROUND in an amazing variety of ways, even very long distances, as attested by the blizzard of fault lines you find on some cross sections. They are tilted against each other in all sorts of directions, to such an extent in fact that the idea that an angular unconformity is something special really gets called into question.
You're just repeating your assertion. You've never explained how buried layers of rock could tilt while not affecting the layers above, nor where all the cubic miles of rock disappeared to for those portions of the tilted layers that are no longer there. This is very simple, and I can illustrate. We begin with layers A through H. Note that all the layers are equal in extent (length on the page):
A______________________________________________
B______________________________________________
C______________________________________________
D______________________________________________
E______________________________________________
F______________________________________________
G______________________________________________
H______________________________________________
...............................................
...............Basement Rock...................
...............................................
...............................................
Now here's the same diagram after layers E, F, G and H have been tilted. These layers were once just as great in extent as layers A, B, C and D, and that extent represented thousands of cubic miles of material. Where did it all go?
A______________________________________________
B______________________________________________
C______________________________________________
D______________________________________________
..................HGFE.........................
...................\\\\........................
....................\\\\.......................
...............................................
And this question about where all the erosion would have gone has to be asked about a lot of those faults where it looks like a great deal of rock had to have been abraded away to get into the positions they are found in. They may not be quite as sharply tilted as an angular unconformity is but they are certainly tilted with respect to one another and whole chunks of strata have to be missing due to the movement alone.
I don't know what it is you're looking at. If you can provide an image that would be helpful, and then we can answer your questions.
Percy writes:
Above I used the example of a detective interpreting a footprint at a crime scene. You're like the detective who, after finding that the footprint belongs to his best friend, starts seeking "other interpretations."
Very cute but I don't think so. I really don't think your interpretations suffice as the explanations you claim for them, they are open to other interpretations because they ARE interpretations. Unlike the testable claims of the hard sciences.
Scientists in all scientific fields are interpreting evidence and making testable claims, and that includes geology. If you think the claims don't stand up to scrutiny then you should test them, which is just what you're attempting to do in this thread, but you're doing it in fanciful and impossible ways. To continue the detective story, you're like the detective who once he discovers the footprint belongs to his best friend claims the footprint was carried to the crime scene from his friend's home by last night's rain. Hilarity ensues.
--Percy
Edited by Percy, : Typo.
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