Scientific Fact versus Interpretation

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?

If all geology had was what was written there, then that would clearly be conjecture. I'd agree with you completely.However, isn't it simply conjecture on your part that there is no science behind the assignations, that that is all geologists have... blank statements?Why don't you ask/investigate how specific assignments were made for different rock formations, instead of assuming all citations will include all details?

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holmes
"What you need is sustained outrage...there's far too much unthinking respect given to authority." (M.Ivins)

I think it is perfectly fair to point out that they are treating conjecture as fact without offering support no matter where it is found.And as a matter of fact, it appears that scientists talking among themselves are more likely to raise such questions, than when they are presenting this stuff to the hapless layman, who is simply expected to swallow the whole imaginative scenario as Established Fact. Happens all the time, particularly with the fanciful illustrations of supposed life in the distant past, usually of dinosaurs but also of supposed pre-humans. THAT's what the layman has to swallow.

You probably don't mean to be patronizing but that's what you are doing. Please just back off and read a while. Thanks.

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

Sorry to be so touchy, but your questions ARE patronizing, and I would just ignore them except that then people get on my case for ignoring posts. Just put in some time at EvC for a while. You are new and I know nothing about your posting style.This message has been edited by Faith, 03-15-2006 04:39 PM

Hi, Ratel.I know how you feel. A number of members here seem to have a chip on their shoulders. Faith isn't the only one, and there is at least one on the non-Christian side as well.My suggestion is that if you decide to continue to respond to the posts of these people, then just ignore the indignation and insults and just address the actual issues of the debate.Of course, just ignoring those posters work also.

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.

in the Grand Canyon from the Bottom Up thread that can be found here. The only restrictions over there is that I ask you to walk through the layers slowly with us, sticking to one layer until all questions about it have been answered.So far we have covered the Vishnu Schist and the Zoroaster Granite. What has been established is that so far four events happened.At some time in the past rock was formed which was later eroded into sand. The sand later was compressed into sandstone. Later magma intruded into the sand stone and formed granite while the sandstone was metomorphised into schist.We're still at the bottom of the Grand Canyon but getting ready to move into the Grand Canyon Supergroup which I hope will be an interesting discussion.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

All the geologists appear to have is rocks with certain characteristics that remind them of this or that kind of environment where these characteristics have been encountered before. The rock under consideration is sandwiched tightly in a stack of layers of different rocks that reaches enormous heights in some locations. This is not like digging up an ash-covered city. This requires prodigious imaginative speculation that starts out with all kinds of preconceptions that don't apply to the scenario you are describing. They assume the rock got there in sedimentary form for starters (which is obvious enough I agree), and was laid down over a period of millions of years (not at all obvious), and therefore represents a time period rather than just rock that happens to have some features normally associated with desert origin or marine origin or some other kind of origin. Since they assume those millions of years, that leads them to think the whole region in which that rock formed had to be a "desert environment" or a "marine environment." Sometimes one will encounter a geo-inspired illustration of an "environment" that is assumed to have prevailed over the entire earth based on such hints.There is even an illustration of a blackened earth somewhere online that I found months ago, black trees even, to represent the "environment" supposedly represented by the "Carboniferous" period, as if any life at all could live in such an "environment."There is nothing DIRECT about the interpretations I'm trying to bring up, as there is in the case of an ash-covered city.I don't need a lesson in how to make interpretations from obvious evidence.Again, I'm sorry to be so touchy but for pete's sake, I'm not an idiot. My original post MEANS something. How nice it would be if some time people would just GET THE POINT instead of quibbling over every little detail. Sheesh.This message has been edited by Faith, 03-15-2006 05:15 PM

That's because I have no idea WHY you feel those interpretations are wild or fanciful speculations. Additionally, you seem to be quite content in not bothering to tell anything beyond the fact that we should see them as such.I see the difference between the interpretations and the bald facts but I don't understand what makes them more than conclusions drawn from the evidence. How wild or reasonable they are can be debated but what is there to debate? You need to provide some clue/counterevidence or just something that helps substantiate your claim. Otherwise that's all it is...an unsubstantiated claim.

It is more that just 'reminds' them of such and such. There is the chemical analsysis. There is the radiometic dating of those rocks. There is the fact that the rocks that are LOWER in the strata are older, which is just as you would think would happen if things got formed layer by layer.It is just not 'some similarity'.. but a much deeper analysis than that.

It is true, this distinction is so obvious to me I can't imagine how to explain it beyond presenting the examples of it, which I expect others to recognize as I do, but they don't.

What do you think of the idea that the Carboniferous Period was a "landscape" all covered with black carbon, in which trees grew and animals roamed?This message has been edited by Faith, 03-15-2006 05:49 PM