Should intellectually honest fundamentalists live like the Amish?

You determine the presence of oil or diamonds or whatever by knowing the formations themselves, not how old they are. Annafan gets it, why don't you?

Your wording is a bit hard to follow but I believe the answer is yes. And the point is off topic in this thread.

Nobody is suggesting "digging holes." I'm talking ONLY about legitimate geologically sound stratigraphic methods. I'm saying that their usefulness (which is unquestioned, although at least one geological website I found said that other methods are more used these days), does not in any way depend upon a knowledge or theory of the age of the relevant formations. If you know what they are composed of and how they are arranged based on knowledge of the general consistency of the geo column, where certain fossils are normally located etc., you can predict from that knowledge alone just as accurately without reference to your theory about their age. You simply need to understand their physical ordering and arrangements. Their age is irrelevant, a circumstantial bit of baggage you can do without.{EDIT: Maybe this will make it clearer. The point is that thinking in terms of depth or location in space rather than in terms of time is all that is needed. So instead of thinking "pre-cambrian = oldest" you think "pre-cambrian = lowest" and you will have just as much accuracy. In fact I think that's how geologists really think anyway, the age bit is just tacked on.This message has been edited by Faith, 08-09-2005 12:57 PMThis message has been edited by Faith, 08-09-2005 12:59 PM

You do not need to know HOW it happened. You do not need to know HOW LONG it took to happen. You ONLY need to know the physical particulars. You are trying to locate a WHERE, not a WHEN, and to locate a WHERE you need to know about PHYSICAL ARRANGEMENTS. I know that the theory of how it all came about is cognitively glued to the facts in such a way as to be nearly inextricable, but it really is not necessary to the PRACTICALITIES of locating oil. This is about the location of things in SPACE, not in TIME.

Simply as a practical matter, oil prospectors do NOT even BOTHER to mention anything about the OE theory of the geo column. They describe the whole process of looking for oil in terms of PHYSICAL CLUES. Here are two sites I looked over yesterday on this subject. Neither one of them gives the slightest nod to OE theory. It's all a discussion of HOW YOU FIND OIL, and the theory is IRRELEVANT.

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http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/.../online/articles/OO/doo15.html

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Oil is formed when organic material is subjected to pressure and high temperatures, usually at a depth of several kilometres beneath the surface of the land or the ocean bed, Professor Martin Langer of the Bonn Institute of Palaeontology explains. From there the oil passes through the strata of rock above as if through blotting paper, until it is prevented from rising further, for example by a layer of clay, which acts as a kind of lid. Whether the deposit is likely to yield a lot of oil basically depends — apart from the shape of the lid — on the storage capacity of the rock strata involved.

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quote:

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Funktion neu entdeckter Zellorganellen aufgeklrt – Innovations Report

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A final method of exploration is the study of stratigraphy. Stratigraphic exploration consists of establishing correlations between wells, matching fossils, strata, rock hardness or softness, and electrical and radioactivity data to determine the origin, composition, distribution, and succession of rock strata. Sample logs, driller's logs, time logs, electrical logs, radioactivity logs, and acoustic logs help geologists predict where oil bearing strata occur. Sample logs, compiled from well cuttings and cores, are used to identify key beds and lithologic sequences. A core is a narrow column of rock that is taken from the top to the bottom of a well and shows rock in sequential order as it appears in the ground. Core samples also provide information on porosity, permeability, and saturation of rock in the well. Cuttings are not a continuous record like core samples, but provide a means for identifying sections within larger thick layers through fossil and mineral deposits.

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This message has been edited by Faith, 08-09-2005 01:19 PM

Annafan is on the evo side and doesn't know me from Eve, and actually agrees with the proposition of this thread that creos {edit: fundies} should be excluded from the use of modern technology, which is a little problem in her(?) thinking I am willing to overlook because of her(?) fine grasp of logic in the current dispute. See my Message 53This message has been edited by Faith, 08-09-2005 01:30 PM

You might have a point about how the theory led to the useful models, I'm not sure, but that's another subject from the usefulness of the models without reference to the theory. The theory could be wrong and still have produced a useful model, and in any case the model {Edit: theory} is not needed for the actual practical work of locating oil and as a matter of simple fact is not USED in that work. Also, stratigraphy is only one of the methods used for locating oil and the others have nothing to do with OE theory at all. See my Message 53This message has been edited by Faith, 08-09-2005 01:47 PM

I am not assuming anything and certainly if I did it wouldn't resemble anything you've suggested. I am explicitly eliminating ALL theory about origins and saying that finding oil is a practical matter that requires no reference to the theory of its origins whatever.I'm sure it IS assumed but not in any way that enters into the calculations.Newtonian theory is actually USED in designing bridges. OE theory is NOT used in finding oil.

Here's an example.Say you left an extremely crucially valuable item (ECVI) on a desk in an upstairs room in your house when you went out, and while you were gone an earthquake seriously rearranged the house almost down to bits and pieces. Despite the fact that you now have a lot more to worry about than the loss of this ECVI, you nevertheless absolutely MUST find that ECVI. How are you going to go about it? Are you going to sit down and theorize about why there was an earthquake and how the earthquake forces affected the structure of the house in order to cause it to collapse in the particular configuration that it did?Or are you going to try to figure out what happened to the part of the house where you left the ECVI by looking at the structural clues to find that particular room and its contents, furniture for instance, and where force and gravity threw those contents, so as to know where to look for your ECVI?You are not going to need to know HOW the earthquake caused anything, only WHAT it caused. You track the clues of where it threw recognizable items until you have a pretty good idea where to start moving things around in order to find your ECVI.In the case of oil, it is known to occur most frequently in certain kinds of underground arrangements and be related to certain kinds of fossil contents in the strata. You don't need to know *how* the rock got that way, you just need to be able to recognize the arrangements themselves to determine if there is the likelihood of an oil deposit there or not. You also don't need to know *why* oil is deposited in such configurations, just that it tends to be. Nobody knew these things when finding oil started out being a big deal early in the last century. They didn't know such things for years -- see my Message 53.And the theories about why and how the oil got where it is FOLLOWED from recognizing the coincidence between known oil deposits and certain features of the strata, NOT the other way around. This message has been edited by Faith, 08-09-2005 03:01 PM

Sigh. Give me a break sometimes huh? The point was to illustrate that it's about SPACE and not TIME, holmes, about physical arrangements as they are found, and not about how they got there. I KNOW the strata are not where the ideal geo column puts them. They are tilted and reversed and "missing" and otherwise messed up all over the earth, and in fact are not all that reliable a guide to finding oil or anything else, merely sometimes helpful if you know how to associate what with what.

Nonsense. All that is simple observable measurable naked phenomena that are meaningful as they point to the probability of finding oil. You can't just assert the necessity of the OE, that's like draping the emperor's new clothes over the simple naked facts. You haven't given one bit of actual evidence for your view.

Funny if you "get" my argument you haven't said a thing to show it. All you've done is criticize my objecting to jar's violations of the forum rules without even understanding what I was objecting to. You say you "disagree" without giving one reason why, while I've given a lot of argument in favor of my viewpoint and some relevant quotes.

Oh hardly. I'm not denying dishing it out when it got dished to me. I let jar have it and when you defended him I let you have it. I haven't denied that. I was half expecting to get suspended for it, as a matter of fact, instead of jar who should have been suspended well before it reached that point. Oh and gee, your objecting to my implying that evos don't think is some kind of plus for your side? Oh wow. Only one evo so far has shown that ability on this simple point. Actually what it is she showed was simple honesty. Everybody else is playing games to obscure the simple truth.

--never mind --This message has been edited by Faith, 08-09-2005 05:00 PM

Nothing but bald assertion there with an insult buried in it to boot. Funny how evos can get away with such crap.