Scientific Fact versus Interpretation

Hmmm, maybe if one of the geologists could pick one of these examples Faith has given and explain the rationale behind it? What could be the other explanations for these features, are they viable, or are the present interpretations inescapable?A question for Faith- if the sorts of sedimentary and other deposits seen in the fossil record have been observed forming elsewhere, in the modern day, in very specific environments would this constitute sufficient evidence for you to accept that the representations we see in the fossil record of the same deposit are in fact remains of such, or would this also be merely conjectural?For a purely hypothetical example, if geologists were to find remains of a meandering river system with a deltaic deposit at the end of it, consisting of rocks formed from the sorts of sediments found in a river, with fossils of critters and plant life known to live in rivers, would this be sufficient to take the identity of this structure out of the realm of speculation for you? Or does anything from prehistoric times necessarily exist in an impenetrable veil of unknowability?A simpler one- if geologists come across strata consisting of lava rock and ash, is it mere conjecture for them to state that they are looking at the results of a volcanic eruption, or is this also beyond the pale?

I'm not really trying to present you with any BS, I'm just trying to figure out what sort of evidence you are willing to accept.I'll start out with this- if we come across a deposit consisting of lava and ash, would you agree that this area was at one point in time once covered by a volanic eruption? Or is this conclusion conjectural in your view?

Thanks, I'm just trying to work from our points of commonality to our points of difference in a deliberate fashion.So it isn't conjectural that the ash and lava were the result of volcanic activity. Good.If we find buildings encased in the ash, and human skeletons in the buildings, can we conclude that the environment in which this volcanic activity took place was a city or other human settlement?

Okay, well, I guess not trying to be adversarial equates to being patronizing to you. Sorry I bothered. When does my posting suspension get lifted?This message has been edited by Ratel, 03-15-2006 04:31 PM

I don't know what you consider nonpatronizing, but you have a thread here called scientific fact versus interpretation, in which your thesis seems to be that reconstructions of ancient environments are entirely speculative in nature.But we both seem to agree that we can know something about past events based on present evidence. That's the point I was trying to get at. If we can look at the hypothetical situation I presented, the evidence is that we have ash deposits and an entombed city. So we have an event recorded in the strata, and a preserved environment. I'm using a simple example because I not a geologist, not because I'm trying to be rude! The point is that to us it is simple to see that a city buried by an ash flow is a city buried by an ash flow- to people trained in this stuff, being able to tell that an area was once a lagoon is similarly obvious. What I'd like to see is maybe if we have an objection to a postulated environmental situation we could query how it is that such-and-such a conclusion was arrived at.

Fine, see ya.

Hypothetically speaking, couldn't a flood theorist postulate swirling pockets of uprooted vegetation being deposited in chunks here and there, rather than an evenly distributed global layer of coal?

Well, thanks, Faith, I'm just trying to anticipate alternative scenarios.Regarding the issue of interpretation, I think I have an issue/question that appears, to my layman's thinking, problematic for both camps, so if any wish to take a stab at it...I have a dinosaur book that contains a photograph of a huge cliff in the Andes composed of vertical layers of stone- in other words, they were lain down horizontally and then set on end by mountains folding. You can see multiple tiers of rock exposed one over the other, and each of these tiers has ripples in it, different patterns and sizes of ripples going in one direction and the other. There are dinosaur footprints in the stone, one stone layer has a set of footprints, and another layer has footprints. The official explanation is that this was an ancient beach.So here's my question for the conventional geologists- how was each successive layer, with all the intricate footprint patterns and ripples, preserved when the next layer was lain over it? Wouldn't it have to harden before the next layer of sand was deposited or be wiped out? Is this sort of phenomenon observed anywhere in the world today?For the flood theorists, the same question- how were the delicate ripple patterns preserved intact during a violent flood, not once but many times? And the big one, how could dinosaur footprints be made on one layer of sand, then covered over and then another set made on the next layer, if the layers were made by the flood?

Okay, thanks for your explanation, I guess I was thinking of it more like concrete, drying out and hardening.So is the layer superimposed over the ripple layer always of a different material?Because the pic I'm looking at *appears* to berippled beach
rippled beach
rippled beachBut to get each beach preserved, this is how it works:rippled beach
blown in silt
rippled beach
blown in silt
rippled beachetc.Devil's advocate question:Since we're on the topic of interpretation, is it at all possible what the geologists are calling ancient beaches may have been something-else, considering that there are footprints and ripples and so forth? Is there any conceivable scenario where a deluge (global or local) could have washed in these layers from somewhere else?Thanks for your information, I'm getting a real education here.[EDIT: Sorry, I asked a Flood question here, don't answer if you feel it's off-topic]This message has been edited by Ratel, 03-15-2006 11:53 PM

Okay, I'll take it easy on the Flood side