What is the YEC answer to the lack of shorter lived isotopes?

Logical fallacies in your post - false dichotomy, strawman, inappropriate conflation of two separate ideas. Did I miss any?Only one of the parties you describe claims to extend truth beyond matters which it possesses the means to understand. Thus, they are not separated in the way you claim (false dichotomy). You try to dismiss those who believe in God (or whatever supernatural phenomena) and yet recognize the power of the scientific method by insulting them and calling them fence-riders. The fact remains that faith in God does not dictate that one reject a useful method for discovering the natural world, and vice versa. The mere existence of these people destroys your artificial separation.Let me explain further.Beyond the fact that "scientism" as a religion (or whatever you claim it is) exists only in the mind of desperate creationists, actual science operates via methodological naturalism, which is completely different from philosophical or ontological naturalism. It does not inherently reject or accept the existence of a god or gods, instead leaving its practitioners free to make that choice themselves. There is no vast majority that make any one particular decision in this area, which further illustrates how totally unrelated these two subjects are. Instead of a dichotomy, you have two subjects: 1) the question of a god or gods; and 2) the validity of a method which operates on observable phenomena driven by mechanisms which can be discovered.Science does not make any claims at all about phenomena that it cannot experience in a testable, repeatable way. It chooses to be honest about humanity's inability to prove or disprove things like deities. The argument you offer is a common strawman used against proponents of biological evolution (as overwhelmingly supported by research conducted via the scientific method) that conflates atheism with methodological naturalism.In other words, the way you choose to attach these separate ideas to each other places you in a small minority. Most people have no problem accepting both of the ideas that you place in conflict with one another. Why? Because believing in God makes people feel good, and evolution is undeniable to anyone who is familiar with the staggering quantity and quality of evidence that supports it. I have no problem with you believing in God. My whole family does, and I don't, and we get along just fine. I only have a problem with people misinforming each other about the facts of the natural world because it supports their particular unverifiable idea about God.(edited 1st paragraph for clarity)[This message has been edited by zephyr, 01-09-2004]

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so if it is not science what is it? According to this forum majority it is false, thus you are stating that if GOD is unobservable, science would say he does not exist and is false.

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How many times can this be explained to you, and how many times can you completely miss the point, before we all wring our hands in frustration and walk away from our keyboards? If a god is unobservable then science refuses to make any conclusions about him or her, beyond unobservability! The scientific method simply says "we cannot determine this for sure, so we will not say yea or nay!"

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I look at these boards and I wonder if we all agree on Absolute truth.
let us say absolute truth is the fundenmental truth of all the universe, it's laws, and its constants. I will call it A.
Either A = God or A= Science

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Science is a means of learning information and testing our attempts to explain it. Science is not an end in itself, a governing law, or an ideal toward which people strive. Nor is it something people put faith in. It is a tool which we use to discover and exploit the order of the natural world. Why people like you feel the need to conflate so many other concepts with this one is something I do not understand very well.

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If god exists and is the creator of all then God =A. To say anything less is to deny that God is the creator.

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Ohhhh, man. So the speed of light is God? Is everything in the universe God? What about our digestive systems - are they God? 'cause I'm getting really hungry right now....I know you're trying to make a nice big-picture point here, but you're simplifying way too much in the process and losing your coherency. I wouldn't mind seeing you take a stab at this from a different angle.

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If there is no God, then science is used to discover A. but to use science it is assumed that A is observable, testable ,and repeatable. There is a chance however that A is not one of the three, and so science ( as it has been described by you) could not discover A, but it would appear that it had discovered A. Therefore it is possible that Science's A < A.

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If I follow you correctly, you're saying that we could discover a subset of the natural order and be deceived by the illusion that we had discovered it all. As I understand science and methodological naturalism, nothing at all is wrong with this idea and a good scientist would not object. However, they would also ask: if some aspect of "reality" or "A" as you call it does not affect our lives in ways that can be understood via observation, and does not do so with regularity, what good can come of even concerning ourselves with it?Observation is our ONLY means for gathering information about the universe. The scientific method reduces the effect of errors in observation through repeated testing. If we tried to acknowledge unobservable, untestable, or unrepeatable phenomena and use our knowledge of them to direct our paths through life, we might spend our whole lives waiting for their effects and die disappointed.

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One cannot argue that currently science's current truth does not equal A. in fact every statement about truth in science is a theory created by man.

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The first part of this goes back to what I said earlier. Based on what we know today, no good scientist would try to argue that we know everything there is to know about the universe. As for the second statement, you are correct: theories are created by man. Show me an idea that is not.

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So I have absolute truth in two context. If you believe the first, than science is only one of many tools to get to A but not A itself. If you believe the second, many argue that that science is the only way to A, which in itself is a faith as we have no proof that A can be reached by scientific method. So you place your faith in either inScience or in God-

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Man, if you think everyone who does practical research using the scientific method subscribes to this rabid scientist faith you describe, maybe you need to actually meet some of them. It is well known that a large percentage of scientists are theists of one kind or another, and thus can hardly be claimed to hold the view you attempt to pin on them.

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thus no false dicotomy

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Huh? You almost got it right when you had science as one of multiple paths, but then you attempted once again to set up science in direct opposition to the viewpoint of which it was supposed to be a subset. I'm not sure which one of us is more confused, but you've still got a false dichotomy.

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I look at a piece of paper with designs on it. We will say that the paper is the universe.The designs are in such a way as to appear to have depth and to "move". i cannot see/observe the other side and so I will continue to say it has depth. I will argue that it is measurable and come up with theories base on the movement and the way the patterns fall. Then someone comes up and says it is just a peice of paper and there is another side to it. I will argue that they cannot know that prove it to me. I have faith in that all that is observable is all there is. This is Scientism.

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Okay. I understand that. You have explained this before, and this restatement is a good piece of writing, but the fact remains that "scientism" is not the same as science, and that very few scientists can be shown to hold that view. Thus, its weaknesses can hardly be used against things like evolutionary theory or the scientific method in general. So you've done a good job of pinpointing and undermining a principle that is (unfortunately) of almost no relevance to the questions regularly debated here.

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This view of creation, when dealt with scientifically, I call evolition, to contrast with evolution. Giving the two theories these similar names seems to defuse in my mind the idea that the theories are of different natures and cannot be studied using strong inference. In strong inference, one takes two competing explanations, and deduces opposing predictions from the two. Then, the predictions are tested, and the theory whose predictions are confirmed gains in plausibility compared to the theory whose predictions are not.

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For the sake of argument, I'll go along with this, but note that you have to support the predictions you make using two theories. Beware strawmen, as they will completely ruin the comparisons later made.

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In this case, we might (!) predict from the theory of creation, from evolition, that those who "forget God" as is done with most evolutionary thinking will be artificially selected against by the artificially selecting Creator, still busy at work shaping His creation. That is, evolutionists ought to have a lower fitness, less reproducing offspring, than those believing in a Creator.

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You realize there are many, many factors which affect the rate of reproduction, and that "fitness" cannot be said to imply anything apart from maximizing the production of viable, reproducing offspring. For example, the more educated and affluent members of society are often found to reproduce less than others. Why? Because they have things like birth control and competing priorities, and because they have the education to broaden their perspective, and to give them the concept that there is more to life than spawning offspring to support us in our old age.

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From the theory of evolution, we (might, again) get the opposite prediction. That is, if a Creator can be safely forgotten, not being relevant to fitness, etc, then those who waste time on the idea, or are deluded or deceived (i.e. creation believers), being less aware of the truth about forces that determine fitness, would have fewer reproducing offspring. This assumes of course that intelligence "evolved" through natural selection, being a trait that produced clearer, more accurate perceptions and expectations of "selection pressures."

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Don't assume that consciousness of selection pressure is implied by fitness. Viruses aren't exactly aware of the selection pressure created by our immune systems, but they sure as hell evolve end-runs around them.

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In this simple test, the human group with the largest known fitness, Mennonites and Amish, being creation believers, confirm the truth of the evolition theory. Except for Robert Trivers, a unique evolutionary biologist who explicitly took his theory to heart and went out to have a large biological fitness, evolutionists are probably lower than the general population in reproductive success.

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Which proves nothing about the correctness of their theories. Ignorant and poverty-stricken people in the third world reproduce far better than educated and affluent members of society. Does god like them better? No. They simply lack the information and resources to plan their reproductive acts for convenient times, and the perspective to restrain themselves from overpopulating and destroying their respective sections of the world. No offense, but reproductive fitness in today's world is a very bad thing for us all, if you use the textbook definition. That's why so many of us choose to be reproductively unfit. We realize that the blind reproductive obession of instinct, which has brought mankind to its place in the world, will cause our race serious harm if we do not transcend its directives.One might even say that religious restrictions on birth control, which forcefully increase the reproductive fitness of members of their faiths, run counter to the supposed divine charge that humanity be good stewards of the earth. We have been fruitful and multiplied and are now in the process of going beyond filling the earth to crowding it out and destroying countless other beings in the process. It is obvious that today's reproductive fitness is tomorrow's overpopulation. Thus, the creationist view (as virtually always associated with this point of view) is more likely part of the problem, and in the long run does not serve reproductive fitness but rather encourages population crash via mass die-off.

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Your cautions are appropriate, and accepted. But hear mine. You say things like "completely ruin" and "proves nothing." which suggests that you have an "all-or-nothing" (dogmatic) inclination driving you.

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That, or maybe I just have a tendency to over-dramatize

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I disagree with most of your ad hoc explanations of the predictions, which doesn't mean too much. What is interesting is that you decided to weaken the argument that way, instead of coming up with a contrasting set of predictions confirming evolution over evolition.

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What's even more interesting is your decision that psychoanalyzing me is more important than answering my concerns.The fact remains that in today's world, the people who breed the most are either ignorant, poor, held captive to religious restrictions on contraception (and thus highly fit against their will, or some combination of all of those. High present-day reproductive fitness is antithetical to responsibility, wisdom, foresight, and respect for the environment of which humanity is but a small part.

I am always interested in learning, and I prefer to do so on my own time at my own pace. You're barking up the wrong tree by calling me dogmatic. Most of the time, I just watch these arguments and hit all the links I have time for, and assimilate everything that seems valid.You're right about this being the wrong place for persuasion. I'm not sure how many people even learn anything here, let alone change their minds about anything, since so many just come to pick fights and leave as ignorant as they started.