The evolution of planets and solar systems...etc..

My current bedtime reading is a book called Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, it was written by a Christian in 1844. The copy I have is an 1887 reprint with a forward by another Christian. It describes an early version of the theory that the solar system formed by the accretion of matter from a disk formed from nebulae.This raises two questions that I put to you:1. Why do think that a Christian in the middle of the 19th century (writing 15 years before Darwin published his Origin) would be putting forward these ideas if they're such an exercise in mental gymnastics for modern evolutionists?2. That 19th century science had already figured out that planets formed from such discs, and that such a theory has held (with modification) for over 167 years suggests to me that the evidence that the solar system passed through such a stage is (a) readily accessible and (b) pretty overwhelming. How do you explain the long survival of this theory? Why do you think that modern difficulties with the details should take precedence over the body of observation that suggests the bigger picture.Edited by Mr Jack, : Corrected a sentence

Your problem is that while there is evidence against particular parts of the detail of how planetary formation progresses none of this addresses the central evidence that leads to the conclusion that it accreted from a nebulous disc of matter.If you will permit me an analogy. Imagine you have arrived at the scene of a wrecked car. You observe the skid marks on the road, the damage to the car, the pieces scattered along the side of the road and the corresponding damage to the wall along one side of the road. From this data you conclude that the car crashed into the wall.Continuing your investigation you discover that the driver had arrived at the scene after leaving a pub. From this you put forth the hypothesis that the driver was drunk and this led to the accident. To test this hypothesis you take a breath alcohol sample from the driver and discover that, in fact, they have not been drinking.According to your argument we should, from this falsification, discard the hypothesis that there was a car crash. This is, of course, nonsense. That we're wrong about the driver having been drunk doesn't mean there wasn't a crash, it means we're wrong about the detail of the crash.

Analogies don't really work like that. You can't deduce how one situation will behave by matching it up with an analogy you can only use them to illustrate a point and I'm afraid you've missed mine.There is plentiful evidence that the solar system formed from a nebulous disc. There are problems with the details of how that happened but these problems don't touch on the original evidence. That's still there, still compelling and still lacking a decent alternative explanation.You can't disprove a big picture (that would be the car crash in my analogy) by arguing that details of the little picture (that would be idea that the driver was drunk) are wrong. If you want to show that the solar system didn't form from a nebulous disc you need to address the evidence that led to that conclusion not points about the detail of how it happened. All that shows is that a particular idea about how it happened is wrong; it doesn't mean that there isn't another solution that we've missed so far.

No. We have an awful lot more than just "planets". The hypothesis is based on the arrangement of the planets, their patterns of positioning and rotation. The pattern and positioning of the rotation of their satellites, and other bodies in the solar system. Of the substances of which they are constructed and of the many extrasolar observations that appear to show stages in the formation of a solar system.When Watson and Crick were figuring out the structure of DNA, and they incorrectly deduced a triple stranded structure they didn't conclude that DNA didn't have a structure, or that DNA wasn't, after all, the chemical of inheritance; they deduced that they had got their structure wrong and looked again at working it out.The same applies here: being wrong about the details has no impact on the observations that led to the conclusion regarding the bigger picture. No, I'm not. I'm saying that if you want to address whether something happened you need to address the evidence for it; not the details of a theory as to how exactly it happened. That's a completely different situation. There your green ball is direct evidence against the hypothesis that all the balls are red.