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Author Topic:   Cosmos with Neil DeGrass Tyson
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 141 of 206 (725347)
04-26-2014 3:21 AM
Reply to: Message 140 by RAZD
04-25-2014 7:40 PM


Re: NCSE comments
Science denial is not healthy or rational. It is very dangerous.
Neither the ToE nor OE geology is science, it's all mental conjurings, so that ought to take care of that problem.
Sure I don't mind watching the GC segment. I'm sure it will be illuminating.

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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 144 of 206 (725357)
04-26-2014 8:28 AM
Reply to: Message 142 by Larni
04-26-2014 7:07 AM


Re: NCSE comments
If this is the case what is your explanation for them being considered sciences in accademic circles?
Delusion.

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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 147 of 206 (725390)
04-26-2014 7:30 PM
Reply to: Message 146 by Larni
04-26-2014 6:34 PM


science versus mental conjuring
But it is only delusional in biology and geology? Why is it biology and and geology where people are delusional?
I'm not trying to play a game of 'gotcha', here: I just want to understand your position for concluding biologists and geologists are delusional but other scientist are not.
It's basically the historical science versus experimental science argument that's been argued here many times already, and that Ken Ham argued on the debate with Bill Nye. It's NOT "biologists and geologists" it's only OLD EARTH or "historical" geology, and evolution or "historical" biology, and it's also not just the practitioners of those belief systems but everybody who has been persuaded by them. Geology and biology are otherwise legitimate sciences that do legitimate scientific work.
I watched the Grand Canyon segment of Cosmos that RAZD recommended and found it the usual bald assertion of what is nothing but a belief about what happened in the past. He pointed to a Precambrian rock and told us that it represents a period of time a billion years ago when the only living things on the planet were a form of bacteria. Evidence? He didn't happen to mention the evidence but we know that it's the presence of fossils of those bacteria found in that rock. Period.
It may suffice as a theory but even as a theory I find it ludicrous that Science identifies a slab of rock laid down in water as a Time Period. Everybody screeches for evidence, but there is no evidence for that theory either. It's all a matter of what makes logical sense and that theory is ludicrous. It's a belief system.
Science can prove its theories, science can repeat its studies, science leads to productive results, science harnesses natural phenomena like electricity and puts it to use, science finds medicines and vaccines, Science discovered that germs cause illness and therefore how to avoid it. But all this theorizing about the ancient past leads to nothing of any use whatever, and it cannot be tested or proved.
So I suppose everybody's now going to chase the red herrings of the definitions of "theory" and "proof" and give us the usual tiresome pedantic renditions instead of recognizing that I'm using them correctly and usefully in this context. The context is interpretive or historical science versus testable experimental science, and the ludicrousness of the current interpretation of the strata and the fossils, as well as the complete unprovability of the ToE. It's all assertion and bullying, not fact.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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Replies to this message:
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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 154 of 206 (725421)
04-27-2014 2:51 AM
Reply to: Message 151 by Tempe 12ft Chicken
04-26-2014 9:56 PM


Re: science versus mental conjuring
The one thing I was hoping you would notice about that segment was how the layers looked when he expanded them. Unlike a majority of the diagrams that have been used to show the different layers here, the CGI could use the seismic information and expand the layers showing how they are not flat all the way across, but that some pushed into layers above or below and were wider in some areas than others.
That was a very bizarre thing they did, just weird, made no sense and they didn't explain it. How do you even know what it meant? I've seen close-ups of many of the layers and they are quite flat and horizontal, even with those knife-edge straight contact lines. Yep right there up close. Slightly varying width doesn't make a difference to my argument. That section he was looking at was messier than many, obviously suffering from trauma of some sort after the whole stack had been laid down.
I thought it was one of the best diagrams I have seen for showing this fact, especially with one of your consistent arguments about the Grand Canyon being how the layers are perfectly flat and show no signs of erosion.
"Perfect" is a very weird word. Who cares about "perfect?" I'm interested in the general fact that they are all continuous with one another, PARALLEL, visibly parallel, ORIGINALLY horizontal, which is still apparent, and visibly parallel, even over the contour of the mounded rise into which the Grand Canyon was cut. You guys keep making straw men of that argument. Whoever drew the diagram knew how to draw erosion which is very apparent from the Kaibab on up and in the Great Unconformity. But not between the Tapeats and the Kaibab. No tectonic disturbance occurred to the entire stack until they were all in place, that's obvious, go back and look. They wouldn't have been laid down horizontally which they obviously were, or kept their parallel relation to each other, which they did, if that had been the case. The tectonic disturbance came after they were all in place all the way up to the top of the Grand Staircase.
Try following my argument about all that, I've made the case.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 155 of 206 (725423)
04-27-2014 2:57 AM
Reply to: Message 152 by Coyote
04-26-2014 11:23 PM


Re: science versus mental conjuring
I can always say it again. Historical science is a different animal from experimental science. All you have is your theories. If you say the fossil bacteria in a particular rock represent all that was on the earth during the time period that rock was being deposited, that's your theory, you can't prove it, that's simply how you interpret the rock and the fossils and you don't have anything but more theory to add to it, no way of testing it. That is not how experimental science works. And again, there isn't the slightest usefulness to any of that theorizing you all do. And again, the theory itself is bonkers, the idea that a time period is represented by a huge horizontal rock is crazy. And a whole bunch of other time periods represented by a whole bunch of other huge flat rocks is REALLY crazy. And that the fossils in them represent the only creatures living during that time period. REALLY REALLY crazy.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 156 of 206 (725424)
04-27-2014 3:01 AM
Reply to: Message 148 by RAZD
04-26-2014 8:09 PM


Re: NCSE comments
Sure, a lot of sciences have been corrupted by the ToE here or there, but that doesn't change what is valid in their work. But I don't think radiometric dating is hogwash, I certainly understand the concept. I simply believe that there are interferences and contaminations that you guys fail to take into account.

This message is a reply to:
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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 157 of 206 (725426)
04-27-2014 3:15 AM
Reply to: Message 148 by RAZD
04-26-2014 8:09 PM


Re: NCSE comments
Then there is astronomy with their fantasy about light years and development of stars with the original stars blowing up to make new stars like the sun and the planets like the earth ...
It all seems to work and I don't question it, but it's the Earth God described in detail, that's what I think about. I'm sure there will be plenty of surprises about all the rest of it eventually but I'm leaving all that for then.
Anthropology of course is fantasy with the preposterous claim of true human being descending from apes like chimpanzees ...
Totally fantasy, yes, but anthropology doesn't spend a whole lot of time on that fantasy as I recall.
Paleontology is even worse with pretend relationships of earlier life forms to a common ancestor pool by made up "similarities" in order to force them into an imaginary tree of life ...
Yes it is imaginary, totally made up. One thing you absolutely cannot know anything about is genetic relationships that you have no way of observing. Yes you are inflating similarities into genetic relationships without warrant. Paleontology should be more like entomology, just collecting and categorizing their finds.
Genetics is okay as long as they stick to the modern day, but as soon as they go off to talk about nested hierarchies with gibbons and gorilllas it's la la land ...
Something like that. As with all the rest of historical science they can't know anything about any of that, it's all ideas that they cannot prove, but fortunately they spend most of their time looking at things that are right in front of them.
Chemistry is fine as long as they stick to modern day reactions. Talking about reactions in the past is ridiculous because nobody was there to observe it.
Not sure what accusation you are intending to make here. In general where there was nobody to observe there isn't any way of having real knowledge about claims involving that period, it all remains theory, guesswork, fantasy. SOME things are knowable, however, such as that huge creatures used to walk the earth. We have bones to show for that. Don't know if the chemical reactions you have in mind are of that sort or not.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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Replies to this message:
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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


(1)
Message 159 of 206 (725428)
04-27-2014 3:41 AM
Reply to: Message 158 by dwise1
04-27-2014 3:28 AM


Re: NCSE comments
Of course he was mocking me, so I answered straight, best thing to do under the circumstances I figure. I've pretty much said all that straight before anyway.
What's sad is that you guys take your stuff so seriously. You SHOULD be embarrassed for yourselves. I wonder if any of you are going to wake up.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


(1)
Message 168 of 206 (725588)
04-28-2014 10:58 PM
Reply to: Message 162 by Percy
04-27-2014 9:58 AM


Re: science versus mental conjuring
Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah, you've "explained" and that's supposed to just bowl me over. All it does is make me roll my eyes. I've explained and explained too and see that onifre and omni down the thread a few posts are repeating the same stuff about forensics I've answered a million times. So, in your immortal words, we're even.
You CANNOT do any experiment or analysis of experiment that would prove that the fossils represent the only living things in a particular time period, and if your radiometric methods ARE contaminated or otherwise untrustworthy you'd have no way of knowing that all the strata were laid down in a relatively short period of time, which is patently the case. Your exams are going to be corrupted by the fact that all you have is your own present reference points so that if things AREN'T the way in the past that they are in the present you will never figure that out.
Yes, we're fully aware that your only weapon against the repeated detailed explanations of how these layers accumulated in the past in the same way they're accumulating today (see, for example, my Message 18 that I posted yesterday) is to call them names and remain ignorant.
Some things are just something you have to SEE. The idea that the strata represent time periods during which nothing lived but the peculiar fossil forms present in the rock IS just plain bonkers, but you have to open your eyes and SEE it. You have to be WILLING to see it. It's a matter of judgment about the size and shape of the strata themselves, so nicely horizontally deposited by water, so many different kinds of sediments too as if particular time periods produced one and just one kind of sediment; and the fact that the fossils are a bunch of dead things in the bazillions, which is exactly what we'd expect of a worldwide Flood It's not a matter of some OTHER evidence. Your "detailed explanations" are RIDICULOUS, truly like a fairy tale.
You see a fossil flower in the rock and it moves you to rapturous fantasies about how it came to be there, how it met the fossil fern or fossil trilobite or whatever, and they go off in search of adventures, and they find rivers and lakes and all KINDS of wonderful things buried in this Rock which is Really A Time Period.
And now on another thread we have a model of deposition by rising sea level, which is somehow supposed to accord with this ridiculous fantasy of time periods? YES, this is something you have to SEE, it's ABSURD!
Obviously you'd rather call ME names than be honest about the terms of the argument.
ABE: What you see on the sea floor today is NOT the Geologic Column, has nothing whatever to do with your fantasy of a Geologic Timetable. All that was over and done with in the Flood, and of COURSE you don't see it, you're looking in the wrong place, you have the wrong assumptions, you have the wrong THEORY.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 162 by Percy, posted 04-27-2014 9:58 AM Percy has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 169 by Dr Adequate, posted 04-28-2014 11:45 PM Faith has replied
 Message 172 by PaulK, posted 04-29-2014 1:20 AM Faith has replied
 Message 173 by edge, posted 04-29-2014 9:57 AM Faith has replied
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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


(1)
Message 170 of 206 (725592)
04-29-2014 12:08 AM
Reply to: Message 169 by Dr Adequate
04-28-2014 11:45 PM


Yeah and if the 98% of your posts that are nothing but clever putdowns were treated by Admin as they should be according to the Rules, we'd see very very little of you at EvC, but unfortunately we have to learn to skip over your trash.

This message is a reply to:
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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 175 of 206 (725613)
04-29-2014 2:11 PM
Reply to: Message 173 by edge
04-29-2014 9:57 AM


Re: science versus mental conjuring
ABE: What you see on the sea floor today is NOT the Geologic Column, ...
Actually, it is the geological column for that location.
Yes of course that fits your theory, but how odd that the whole idea was formed from strata either clearly seen on land to be stacked very deep, such as in the GC-GS area, or easily enough cobbled together from various different locations on land, all the way from the Precambrian to the Quaternary. But now assumed to be continuing on the sea bottom. Well, I'm not going to be able to talk you out of it but it hits me as absurd. But I understand, it HAS to be that way because that's what the theory requires.
... has nothing whatever to do with your fantasy of a Geologic Timetable.
Actually, it does represent the geological time scale at that location. It is just a very short period compared to some others.
Again apparently it doesn't strike you as odd as it does me that this very short period at the bottom of the sea is considered to be continuing the timetable from Precambrian to Quaternary that was bult completely on land, covering I believe a couple billion years. But again what the general presuppositions of geology require is that anywhere time is continuing and strata are forming suffices for the Geo Time scale AND the Geo Column, therefore that is what must be happening.
All that was over and done with in the Flood, ...
Except that sediments are being deposited today, continuing the billions of years' record.
On nowhere near the scale (on land anyway), either breadth or depth or even sequence of sediments (?). If it's forming underwater I would suppose it won't be forming according to Walther's Law (?).
... and of COURSE you don't see it, you're looking in the wrong place, you have the wrong assumptions, you have the wrong THEORY.
I'm not sure where else there is to look other than at the geology for a geological column.
I'd of course look to the continents where it has formed in the past, but it doesn't seem to be forming there in any sense that could be said to be continuing the pattern.
You complaints aside, the theory works. The concept of a single catastrophic transgression is at odds with the coordinated, general geological column.
That's for sure.

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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 179 of 206 (725643)
04-30-2014 12:18 AM
Reply to: Message 172 by PaulK
04-29-2014 1:20 AM


Re: science versus mental conjuring
If this thread is being hijacked it's not by me. If someone wants to move this discussion then move it.
You CANNOT do any experiment or analysis of experiment that would prove that the fossils represent the only living things in a particular time period,
We can't do experiments or controlled experiments to find extra-solar planets. Instead we rely on observation. Observational science has been around for a long time. More, nobody claims that the fossils that we do find are the only things that were living at the time. The actual claims about which life forms were present at any time are, moreover, testable by collecting more observations (in this case, by looking for more fossils), just as we would expect of valid observational science.
Experimental science and observational science are basiclaly the same thing. Astronomy IS an observational science, but historical geology is not. The planets and stars move in relation to each other and in relation to Earth, observations over time can tell you all kinds of things about them. In the case of historical geology you have a stack of inert sediments that just lie there, and their fossil contents are dead and motionless. Everything you come up with in this case is just a lot of wild guesswork that can't be validated by independent tests or independent observations. You can all built on each other's notions but if they happen to be illusions all you will be doing is expanding the illusion. It's not like watching the stars where the stars themselves are doing things that can change your mind.
My statement remains true: You CANNOT do any experiment or analysis of experiment that would prove that the fossils represent the only living things in a particular time period. But let me add: there is nothing observable about these fossils that could prove this either.
and if your radiometric methods ARE contaminated or otherwise untrustworthy you'd have no way of knowing that all the strata were laid down in a relatively short period of time, which is patently the case
Apart from the structure of the rocks themselves. Which, in fact, is the major reason for concluding the time taken for deposition. Geologists DO study how sediment is deposited in the present day, and extrapolate that backward.
Yes they do and if the way it is deposited today in fact is really not the same as the way it was deposited in the geologic column they're going to get the whole thing wrong, which of course they do.
And the idea that the "structure of the rocks" tells you about the time taken for their deposition is some kind of fantasy. Layer after layer of sediment tells you NOTHING about how long it took. It could have taken anything from a few days to a few billion years for all you really know.
Even worse for you, radiometric dating methods have been extensively tested, by checking both the assumptions under which they operate and cross-correlating with other dating methods (mainly including other radiometric methods, admittedly, but the physics of decay makes an undetectable systematic error extremely unlikely).
The physics of decay is not in dispute. It's the circumstances of the rocks that are being tested, and the many assumptions and unknowns about their condition at the time of their deposition. If that deposition occurred 4300 years ago you'd be off by millions of years. Which you are.
Even worse, the errors that are detected tend to indicate dates that are YOUNGER than the real date, or rely on the presence of older material. Both of these problems count against your position.
The problem at root is that you have no way of testing your test. All you can do is make assumptions about it in relation to a horde of unknowns. That is how this is NOT an observational OR an experimental science. You can ONLY impose your assumptions on the natural phenomena, you cannot test them in relation to that phenomena.
Some things are just something you have to SEE. The idea that the strata represent time periods during which nothing lived but the peculiar fossil forms present in the rock IS just plain bonkers, but you have to open your eyes and SEE it.
And the idea that you could get away with such an obvious strawman is equally bonkers. But still you try it. Nobody says that the fossil record is exhaustive, everyone with any sense says that the fossil record is a limited sampling of the lifeforms living at any one time. But sampling - including the sampling produced by the processes of fossilisation - is quite well understood. We can make justified conclusions on the classes of lifeforms present from what we find - and do not find. Not at the level of species, certainly, but the higher up the taxonomic tree we go, the more certain we can be.
Unfortunately for you your sampling is done WITHIN the boundaries of your assumptions that these ARE time periods. And you DO make assumptions about how a particular time period introduced such and such a creature, which simply happens to be present in this rock but not the rocks below, and about how a particular creature went extinct because it isn't in this rock though it was in the rocks below. Your samplings are meaningless because they are part of your whole wrongheaded theory.
Again, all you need to do is LOOK at the form of the strata and the weirdly limited collection of fossils from layer to layer to see that the whole thing is bonkers. This is the TRUE observational science.
Sometimes it seems like nature gave you a chest of drawers and you find socks in one and say Oh, this is the Era of the Socks, and another is the Era of the Underwear and another the Era of the shirts or the sweat pants, as if the contents of the whole chest of drawers all existed in separate different eras.
But they are SLABS OF FLAT ROCK THAT EXTEND FOR MILES IN ALL DIRECTIONS. Really, it's like you haven't noticed the obvious.
It's a matter of judgment about the size and shape of the strata themselves, so nicely horizontally deposited by water, so many different kinds of sediments too as if particular time periods produced one and just one kind of sediment; and the fact that the fossils are a bunch of dead things in the bazillions, which is exactly what we'd expect of a worldwide Flood It's not a matter of some OTHER evidence. Your "detailed explanations" are RIDICULOUS, truly like a fairy tale.
Except for the strata that weren't deposited by water, the strata that include rock eroded from earlier formations, the strata formed by evaporation.
This all looks very different once you realize they were all the product of the Flood and that all you have done is impose your wrong theory on them so you are getting wrong ideas about how they were deposited. You're missing the forest for the trees at the very least.
Except for the order in the fossil record, except for the many transitional fossils.
The order is at least partly also an artifact of the theory. Fossils of the same Species found at different levels are interpreted in terms of those in the higher levels having evolved from those in the lower levels, but all it really shows is the normal sorting of normal microevolution and that the different races of the same Species simply got buried at different levels. Trilobites for instance occur in a great variety of races and are found in many levels. You ASSUME the higher evolved from the lower, but in actual reality it may be the parent species that happened to get buried in the highest layer. The idea that there is a progression from one Species to another is also assumed, it's a matter of judgment, not a matter of knowledge. You focus on particular features of a Species that look like they might be genetically related to another Species and ignore features that are unique because well, those "evolved." It's all a mental game, you have no evidence, it's all theory, all invention, all hot air.
And there are NO transitional fossils in the abundance Darwin knew they would have to be found to prove his theory. They do not exist. And what you CALL transitional fossils are simply Species unto themselves, or naturally occurring races of a given Species.
I could go on. Misrepresenting or even suppressing evidence that contradicts your views or strongly supports opposing views isn't "real science".
Eh? You must be talking about how the "science" of evolution works, and it's certainly true of that; otherwise I have no idea what you are talking about.
And now on another thread we have a model of deposition by rising sea level, which is somehow supposed to accord with this ridiculous fantasy of time periods? YES, this is something you have to SEE, it's ABSURD!
In fact it is entirely reasonable, and good science too. And i can SEE that.
Oh I like that model too, I think it's truer than many other things that have been said about the deposition of the strata. It shows how the strata formed mechanically by water. Associating time periods with those strata is something you impose on that simple model.
Obviously you'd rather call ME names than be honest about the terms of the argument
Sure let's REALLY be honest about the terms of the argument, On our side we have evidence and reason,
Here we go again, the Recitation of the Creed, though the actual facts, the real evidence, and Reason itself totally belie this comforting pledge of allegiance you all recite from time to time.
while you have misrepresentation, extreme prejudice and a hatred for any truth which contradicts your sacred commentaries. That's the reality of the situation. And of course you hate that truth, too.
Only because it's in reality a Pernicious Lie that applies better to you than to me.

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Replies to this message:
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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 187 of 206 (725911)
05-03-2014 11:15 PM
Reply to: Message 181 by NoNukes
04-30-2014 1:29 AM


Re: science versus mental conjuring
Experimental science and observational science are basiclaly the same thing. Astronomy IS an observational science, but historical geology is not. The planets and stars move in relation to each other and in relation to Earth, observations over time can tell you all kinds of things about them. In the case of historical geology you have a stack of inert sediments that just lie there, and their fossil contents are dead and motionless.
You are going to have to do a bit better than that to come up with a false dichotomy that cannot be seen through in about two seconds (if that)
They are basically the same thing as far as being true science goes, their methods not being available to the historical sciences, neither experiment NOR observation. And I've just as often contrasted historical science with observational science as with experimental science, but of course nobody ever remembers any of that, just myopically criticizes whatever can be found in my current post (except when there's nothing to criticize in it and then they'll drag in all sorts of enormities to accuse me of from wherever they can find them or trump them up.) Although in saying this I may be responding more to other posts here than to NN's, sorry if so.
The earth is active tectonically and geologically.
Golly gee, I would have thought so, but then there are all those EvC worthies who insisted in the Grand Canyon arguments that of COURSE the whole stack of strata could have been unaffected by tectonic activity for a billion years. No big deal.
It is not dead like the moon. And just as we can observe the planets in motion, we can observe geological processes in action here on earth, right now. And that knowledge informs our understanding of the motion of the tectonic plates, of how sedimentary layers form, how erosion works, what water does and does not do.
Yeah, in the present, NN, which of course is all that can actually be observed, but the past remains inert and silent, that was my point of course. The planets move, the fossils don't. You know what water usually does, you have no idea what the oceans would do if they covered all the land mass in the world, how the tides and the currents would behave among other things.
And I take tectonic activity a lot more seriously than some here too.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 181 by NoNukes, posted 04-30-2014 1:29 AM NoNukes has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 188 by PaulK, posted 05-04-2014 4:06 AM Faith has not replied
 Message 189 by Percy, posted 05-04-2014 9:16 AM Faith has not replied
 Message 190 by edge, posted 05-04-2014 10:26 AM Faith has not replied
 Message 191 by NoNukes, posted 05-04-2014 10:40 AM Faith has not replied

  
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