Debate - Ongoing controversy, the EvC question

I don't mean this disrespectfully, but the principle of falsifiability is quite different from what you seem to think.Falsifiability means you can say exactly what material evidence would contradict your hypothesis or theory. If such evidence appears, you then abandon or modify it. When one says that creation is unfalsifiable, the implication is that no particular piece of concrete, factual evidence would ever be accepted by its adherents as disproving it. Why? Because it is based on faith and not scientific evidence.

Maybe I should have re-read the thread... I hope I'm not just muddying the waters. I only object because you used the term in a manner that suggested a serious misunderstanding of its connotations. Falsification is a fairly specialized term in this context and does not simply mean "the offering of counterarguments." Thus, I only attempted to explain that falsifiability is a vital component of a scientific concept, and when someone says your idea is unfalsifiable, the only reasonable defense is to explain in concrete and specific terms what evidence would cause you to honestly change your mind about your belief. If you cannot point to anything, then falsifiability is seriously in question. This does not mean your view is necessarily wrong. It means your view will not hold water if tested by the scientific method.

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However, YEC's bring up the theory of a "mature earth". That is, God created the earth 6,000 years ago in such a way to make it look billions of years old. This would have to include planting fossils, organizing fossils, changing isotope ratios in rocks to reflect old age, and so forth. This position supports the YEC position, but can not be falsified and therefore explains nothing. Also, ad hoc hypotheses are also used. These are inherently non-falsifiable (such as Walt Brown's Hydroplate Theory). Instead of a water canopy, you could just as easily argue that millions of large UFO's partially blocked out the sun and then used teleportation to dump billions of gallons of water onto the earth.

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I would say that the Genesis account has been falsified by observations in the natural world. It is only through unfalsifiable ad hoc hypotheses that YEC creationists are able to argue for their position. It is not a matter of interpretation of the data, but of ignoring the importance of falsification that makes creationism a pseudoscience.

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THANK YOU.That's what I was trying to figure out how to say earlier. Great explanation.