it presupposes the validity of the scientific method
No, it demonstrates the validity of the scientific method over and over again.
In the last version of this thread you guys seemed to be getting close to some important stuff, but then it turned into a debate about how much stuff one can conceivably pile into a "different debating styles" excuse. Honestly, it is semantics that have gone wrong, yes, but not some crappy semantics where if I just chose the word you like you would agree with me of the sort favored by con artists. Actual real vocabulary needs to be reimagined.
Faith I am going to borrow your archaeology analogy to try to help with this boggle. Heinrich Schliemann had an Idea, the idea was that the fabulous prehistorical grandeur of Ancient Greece as recorded in Homer wasn't just the moonshine and superstition that modern science by his time had definitively "proven" it to be. But that wasn't his Theory, not yet. It wasn't even his Hypothesis, or he would have had to set out to disprove it.
His initial Hypothesis had to be something like, to test the idea that "there is little hope of finding treasure by digging in secondary local candidates for mythological cities." *wink wink* He can explain that he's a scientist, and all scientific theories eventually get disproven. And the fact that he was able to fund such ventures is a tentative, preliminary indication that will be a good theory to test throroughly. Finding all that freaking treasure though, that is really the great conclusive disproof.
Then the scientist modifies that theory. Perhaps it is that "these very primitive ruins of people who can't seem to work any metal but gold and use pictograms to communicate are all the foundation there is to Homer's work." A bit more digging disproves that one, as well. Slowly but surely the hypotheory is modified, always in the direction of the Idea, until progress seems to stop. Then find another place to dig.
So the Flood or the Fall can never be a theory for the fundamentalist, because they don't care to work to disprove it. They have to pick some piece of common knowledge that is actually shaky and test it empirically, that's what science can do. If they get results, it will move human knowledge in the direction they want to go. If they don't, no harm done, pick another suspicious postulate somewhere and see if it will push over.
But the problem with doing this is that you will sound like a real flake, you will sound like that Jonah guy who wanted to share how a man could fit into a whale just fine. The only difference between you and that guy, from the viewpoint of normal uninterested observers, is how professional you look and act.
Von Daniken is a great example. He looks just like Schliemann to the casual audience listening to the pitch. But if you come from any kind of decent academic background (never left school) then you can see the difference already right then! You have inside information, as it were, it's obvious to you. Schliemann digs, Von Daniken tours. Schliemman is an archaeology guy who knows some marketing, Von Daniken is a marketing guy who knows some archaeology.
Eventually though, the regular masses can tell the difference too. Von Daniken is lying, because he has never produced any actual alien treasure. He should shut up.
Now I realize nobody here is going to actually go dig. If you were, we wouldn't still be looking for Noah's ark. All we need is a large 3-story wooden structure suitable for stabling animals. Any 3 story stable will do, they make things like that in the ancient world out of wood, this isn't rocket science. But no, we are going to do Einsteinian "thought experiments" here on the net and then see how plausible they sound.
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