Uniformitarianism and Geology

Hey everyone!I was having a rather heated debate with a local YEC today and the topic of dating came up. He kept reiterating the point that we (the scientist) do not know the original condition of the earth when it formed and so forth. So how do we know that radioactive decay, speed of light and all other physical laws and natural laws have always been as they are now?As much as I tried to explain scientific methods used and so on he kept harking on about how we just don't know what conditions were like.He then went on to talk about the Mt St Helens eruptions and the forming of strata and canyons quickly, arguments I had heard before of course, but still I let him finish. He then argued that because it has been shown that canyons can form quickly, whats to say that they haven't formed quickly in the past.To quote a section from Ken Hams 'The New Answers Book 3' he states: Now my question is two fold,

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1) If uniformitarianism and naturalism are anti-biblical assumptions as ways to explain things in the past, how can he use the fact that a canyon formed 30 years ago as an argument for his position?

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2) Or is it that a YEC can pick and choose what to include as being fit for their arguments?Edited by Adminnemooseus, : Increased text size of some of the text.

Well I thank you for an extremely concise and well thought out response to my original post Coyote.Truly I just couldn't quite grasp how a YEC can seem to take these two concepts and equate them and then use that as evidence to strengthen their position! You summed everything up perfectly

I was wondering if someone could enlighten me.While at work today I had this constant nagging in the back of my mind about these two important concepts to geology and science in general. Namely uniformitarianism and naturlism.So, if, as Ken Ham put it, that uniformitarianism and naturalism are anti-biblical assumptions, how can a YEC use ANY model, ANY method, ANY data, ANY evidence being collected now, or in the past to accurately model anything that has previously occured?For example.One quote from AiG about chalk formation: And then they go on to say: They then go on to say: So the thing that has been nagging at me all day is this, how can the fludologist use volcanic eruptions, decaying organic matter, sea turbulence or anything for that matter as evidence for their position if they themselves don't atest to naturlism and uniformitarianism? Whose to say volcanos in the past didn't puke up marshmallows which released clouds of sugar-dust or that sea turbulence was in actuality caused by gigantic sea-turtles and their relative mating habits?

Thanks for responding to that frako, when I woke up and saw polystrate fossils I wanted to cry, it has been rebuted so many times seeing a creationist bring it up makes my eyes bleed

So you say that a 'Global Flood' could have buried these trees and caused them to be polystrate.How then if you don't agree with uniformitarianism can you even use flood deposition processes that occur today as evidence for a flood that happened in the past. How do you know the processes are the same? In essence, you can't. Polystrate fossils are no problem for geology and if you did any reading you would see why. Frakos post explains it perfectly well.

Wait wait wait wait wait...
So they're doing experiments, in labs, to find out what could have happened in the past? So...using the present as the key to the past?But don't creos refute uniformitarianism? So how can they use ANY experiment done in the lab to deduce what could have happened in the past? Let alone use thise one experiment to explain almost every stratigraphic layer we see today.But aside from that, Guy Berthault's work has been criticised here and here.Interestingly enough, I typed Guy Berthaults name into Google and got this site. A biblical science site, where even they refute his works.Enjoy viewing those sites alschwin

Yeah reject sorry, had a long day.