The Flood, fossils, & the geologic evidence

I do not feel that my methods were misdirected, although they were always sincere and passionate, if not obsessive. In fact, my participation in this forum, and the latter content of my 'creationist' investigations (around 2003-2005) was rather calculated. Although I was not fully conscious of it, my participation quickly became a sort of pedagogical tool which supplemented for the fact that I did not yet know how to improve our knowledge of the universe by "doing" novel science. And although I was not aware of this apparent incapacity, I did what I felt was best: to improve my knowledge of a mind in the face of the universe. Although I began as a genuine boring creationist, I was captivated by the values and the hopes of science, and so always tried my best to proceed in that accord.Despite the absurdity of my objects of former affection, I feel that it could not have been better. My mode of thought was largely a game of conjecture and refutation, and no hypothesis could provide a greater wealth of the latter than the posits of young earth creationism. However, this posture inevitably resulted in a rather continuous string of tragedy. This familiarity prepared me for the billows of contemporary scientific force, although I feel that the high seas of ‘mainstream’ science are far softer on honest spirits than the defeating blows on that vessel of absurdity, abuse, and sinister coercion. For me, most of the real problems of scientific participation now are merely bureaucratic.In any case, I feel that much of the apparent obfuscation and muddled thinking exhibited in my discussions before I left were due to my obsessions with rhetorical precision and the experimental nature of my approach. A regrettable aspect of this approach is that I would present arguments with very little interest in colloquial interpretationI would even leave rhetorical traps for those who lacked a certain level of interest in my arguments. This is probably most obvious when I argued on the nature of ‘belief’, ‘evidence’ or of my presentation of a problem of ‘underdevelopment’, resulting in a lot of talking across purposes, much frustration, and ultimately the ‘what is good science’ thread. I would have apologized if I fully understood why I proceeded in argument as I did.A student of nature should not fear philosophy so much. We are not automata.Edited by TrueCreation, : No reason given.

I have nothing to add to CPT which would make it feasible, although I could doubtless be far more annoying with my current knowledge than I was. Although obviously not my invention, my CPT investigations constitutes a thought experiment which has served its purpose. Having said that, and having seen some of your messages in this thread I wouldn't abandon it yourself simply because you feel you are over your head here. The important thing is that you have recognized that it is not uniquely implicated by the data (ie, 'it has no evidence'). Just because it is probably wrong doesn't mean it it isn't useful. As long as you do not demand that it must also be useful to others you are fine.You've said that you want to become a geologist and do research some day. I think that an important early realization is that we do science because we want to explain two things: the structure of things, and the phenomena responsible for this structure. In disciplines like geology you will find that arguably the most important part of explaining what is observed is the role of time. Processes in geology operate over very long time scales, although the Earth has such a complicated surface seeing the role of time is not always straightforward, requiring an understanding of numerous processes which have compounding effects.A few tips: I would read as much literature as you can. Definitely get some basic texts, but do not be afraid of more advanced material, or even the technical literature. What I did for years was read something I was interested in that was way over my head, but I would read it carefully and provide much ad revenue to dictionary.com and google when I came across words or concepts I did not understand. Become student members of GSA ( Geological Society of America ) and AGU (Welcome to AGU | Advancing Earth and space science), it's cheap and easy (I joined AGU when I was 16). Improve your understanding of mathematics, and perhaps learn how to use Excel and MatLab.For me, my principal fascination was explaining the structure (mostly thermal structure) of oceanic lithosphere (the cold boundary layer laying above warm ambient mantle extending from the seafloor). Joe Meert has a page explaining the problem here:THE DEPTHS OF THE OCEANSI am now doing novel research on the structure, properties, and behavior of oceanic lithosphere and should have my own stuff in the literature very soon. I can tell you there is probably few other things on Earth which should be more fascinating to someone entertaining the idea that the Earth is young. Radiometric dating will be interesting for similar reasons, although note that pretty much all of geochronology is geochemistry. In your studies, find challenges like these and think about the data and the models/theory used to explain the data.More regarding CPT: If the earth is young, there really is no other possible explanation but CPT. You barely even need science to demonstrate subduction and seafloor spreading as they are clearly observed. I suppose the principal hurdle of CPT is simply the explanation of oceanic lithosphere as mentioned earlier. I talked with John Baumgardner a few times and the best I could do was envision rapid cooling driven by a sort of runaway thermoelastic fracturing driven by hydrothermal circulation, but I couldn't explain the time dependence of this process. Even if this explanation were sound (for which there is no evidence), the biggest problem is that there is no mechanism to transport heat from this cooling, and there are many other sources of heat to account for as well such as surface volcanism and radioactivity (which Baumgardner and the RATE group agree must be accounted for). In the end, Baumgardner admitted that the cooling process must itself be magical. I believe this is around the time that I started to fully realize the absurdity of it all.

"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." -Aristotle

I am no longer a YEC. I have been well, and it is good to see that others and 'old friends' are still enjoying these conversations. I have certainly missed mine.