Hello everyone

Evidence-based justice: Corrupted memory:

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Now, the 68-year-old scientist's research is starting to bring about lasting changes in the legal system. In July last year, the New Jersey Supreme Court issued a ruling based largely on her findings that jurors should be alerted to the imperfect nature of memory and the fallibility of eyewitness testimony as standard procedure. Loftus is working with judges in other states to make such changes more widespread.

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I'm Not Making This Up: Why I'm Skeptical of Eyewitnesses:

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One of the main characteristics of good skepticism about claims is awareness of how easily we fool ourselves. Memory is something that is so often wrong that we have to face up to the reality that stories and witness accounts are the worst kinds of evidence upon which to base your conclusion.

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Memory is not like a tape recorder -- not mine, not yours, not anyone's. This is well-established. Stories are unreliable. You need to have better evidence than eyewitness testimony to back up your claim.

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That reasoning happens to apply just as well to any kind of mental slippage, such as to scientists who think they can discover the truth about the past when all they have is their own imagination and speculations, plus peer pressure from others who share their theories, and no way of correcting them from the past itself. They can't get away that easily with stuff they speculate about concerning any part of history where there are written records to correct them. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Uh, scientists use empirical evidence. It comes from the past.

That is why I specifically required thinking about the parts that ARE "stacked neatly with level, horizontal boundaries." At least you DID observe that much.Those are the parts that show clearly the way the strata were originally laid down. The slanted and warped strata were subjected to forces that slanted and warped them after they were laid down in that same originally neat level horizontality. Tectonic and volcanic disturbance is the usual cause of the warping and tilting -- AFTER they were in place, which is obvious enough wherever you can identify the layering even in its warped condition.The disappearance or thickening of the individual layers is also part of the original deposition though. The main thing is the lack of disturbance so that they clearly remain as layers in the stack as originally laid down. This is MOST clear where the layers don't thin or thicken appreciably of course.After that much has been observed and duly noted you might consider as Question 2 (or Proposition 2 or Assertion 2 since I see the folly of asking questions) the fact that the canyon itself did not cut through those neatly level horizontal layers until they had accumulated to the depth of a mile without any other disturbance occurring to them. This is the order of things although individual layers or short stacks thereof are commonly understood to represent millions of years.Instead of changing the subject, instead of looking elsewhere in the canyon for other kinds of formations, instead of evading the point, can you just accept as something that could actually have happened in Reality the fact that no disturbance occurred to those layers until the canyon cut through them after a billion or so years? Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

The INTERPRETATION of empirical evidence needs CORROBORATION from SOMEWHERE or you're just castlebuilding. Lab science can replicate its studies to corroborate interpretations. One time events in the past have nothing whatever to corroborate whatever interpretation you decide to lay on them UNLESS you have witnesses from that past. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Er ... apart from the episodes of erosion.

Yeah, we're in the present. Stuff is happening.We can gather evidence from the past, and test it against what is happening in the present to figure all kinds of stuff out.Companies don't just blindly poke around for coal to burn, they ask scientists who have studied how coal forms. Those scientists used evidence from the past, and applied how things are happening in the present, to determine where coal can be found.Now, if you were correct, then the scientists would have a poor track record and nobody would think they know what they are talking about. But, in actuality, the scientists can determine where coal can be found. And that proves that you're wrong. Science works. Even on things that happened in the past. False. Heck, you don't even have to be on the same planet: NASA Curiosity rover discovers evidence of freshwater Mars lakeThe mars rover found some interesting rocks: Those rocks formed in the past. Scientists compared them to processes that happen today that form rocks like that. They concluded that water was included in the process.So therefore, in the past, there must have been water on mars. It isn't there today.So there you have it, using physical evidence from the past to make conclusions about things that must have happened even though there were no witnesses to it.

But that is not a fact, since we can see clear evidence of subaerial erosion and of the deposition of terrestrial sediments. So we know that sometimes there was exposure at the surface, or those things couldn't have happened. Oh, I don't know about that. Geologists have a highly satisfying theory. Moreover, one that doesn't involve, y'know ... magic. The erosion, not so much. Or, of course, the strata below the Great Unconformity.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Which clearly did not occur to any of those neatly level layers that are under discussion, except on the minuscule scale of runoff between the layers, because of it HAD occurred as real erosion occurs on the real surface of the real earth it would have disturbed that neat level horizontality sufficient to be visible a few miles across the canyon. Your erosion is a figment of your imagination.

What geologists actually see is valleys and karst landscape formation, neither of which is on a minuscule scale. I showed you an actual photograph, remember?

Yup. Thank goodness few if any scientists operate that way. You forgot to mention hard evidence, observations, and measurements. Plus the peer pressure to get at the truth.

BS. Witnesses are unreliable. Period. Repeatable measurements and observations of the traces left by past events are reliable.

Sigh. During the Flood there would have been SHORT periods of exposure at the surface BETWEEN WAVES AND TIDES, during which ripples and minor erosion and footprints could have occurred to the wet sediments, but NOT the kind of erosion that occurs to land that is aerially exposed for years on end, which would be visible in the strata from across the whole canyon. You would not have those neat level horizontal strata ANYWHERE AT ALL had that ever occurred to ANY of the layers. See above. I do tend to forget that there were very brief periods of exposure of the sediments as they were being laid down in the Flood. That's why I specified that the stack above the basement rocks was to be the focus. We CAN confine the discussion to that particular billion years or whatever it's supposed to be, as many Creationists are willing to do.However, I believe the Great Unconformity, as I have argued here before, was also created after ALL the strata were laid down, created by the forced tilting and sliding of a segment of the lowest strata by the volcanic activity beneath the Canyon, which had sufficient force to tilt that segment but not enough to disrupt the horizontality of the stack above it, although the entire region was lifted upward, stack and all. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

They do not see it in the sections of the Canyon I specifically required to be considered in my experiment, which are now under discussion because at least Tanypteryx acknowledged their existence.

I didn't evade the point. I just told you that your point is wrong. It is a fantasy you made up in your mind and if you were honest you would admit that. I don't what you are saying or asking here. It is laughable that anyone would look at any of the sedimentary layers anywhere in the Grand Canyon and think they were laid down in a short period of time, in one big flood.And no one but you thinks we are saying that the flat horizontal parts of the layers just sat there exposed for a billion or even a million years without erosion happening. That is not what happened or what we are saying happened. It is just your silly fantasy that we think that is what happened.You should just publish your geology textbook and be done with it.CheersEdited by Tanypteryx, : spelling