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Try to follow the argument here. Are you going to send a man up for murder on nothing but your inferences from the physical evidence? Now, I'll agree that DNA is pretty definitive if you have it, depending on where it is found and whatever is known about a possible relationship between the deceased and the suspect, but the rest could have been planted. In any case you have MUCH evidence of many kinds that may eventually solve the crime for you. And witnesses would be a BIG help. The victim was seen in the company of the suspect at such and such a time etc. etc. Ideally you want a believable confession from your suspect.
There are people on death row who are there on the weight of physical evidence alone. Yes it could be planted, but eyewitnesses could be bought as well. I know it is fiction, but do you remember the book "To Kill a Mockingbird"? The weight of the prosecutions case was the eyewitness testimony of the victim and the father of the victim, both, as it turned out, were lying. Eyewitness accounts are actually less reliable than physical evidence. When the physical evidence makes the eyewintess acounts impossible the physical evidence wins.
As to Genesis, the creation account is not written in the first person. At best, it is a second hand account. At worst, it is wholly fiction. How do we tell which one of these it is? The physical evidence. None of the evidence supports a 6,000 year old earth, or a global flood for that matter. The physical evidence wins.
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You have layers of sediment that have turned to rock. You have to construct methods to guess their age and there is no way to verify your guesses as there is no KNOWN age of a particular rock to guide you back past actual observations -- all ages are assigned from inferences built on inferences, even if they are dated by radiometry, because that too is not verifiable before whatever is actually KNOWN in the past which isn't anything older than a few thousand years or less.
False. We can positively date historic lava flows using Ar/Ar dating. We can do exactly what you claim we can't. We can also corroborate carbon dating with lake varves, ice cores, and tree rings.
Age Correlations and an Old Earth: Part II
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You have fossils in the rocks. They've been studied so you know how they were formed, but you don't know their age either, and again you have methods for guessing at it but there is no way to verify the guesses as there is no KNOWN age of a fossil to work from.
We do know their ages beyond a reasonable doubt. Plus, we also know that certain fossils are never found in the same layers, which also lends credence to the theory of evolution. Just because you refuse to accept it doesn't make it untrue.
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You have fossils in the rocks. They've been studied so you know how they were formed, but you don't know their age either, and again you have methods for guessing at it but there is no way to verify the guesses as there is no KNOWN age of a fossil to work from.
We do know their ages beyond a reasonable doubt. Plus, we also know that certain fossils are never found in the same layers, which also lends credence to the theory of evolution. Just because you refuse to accept it doesn't make it untrue.
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You can't extrapolate from observable processes because they may only hold up for short periods and you can't find out if they hold up for longer because there's no way to set up an experiment in the past.
You use extrapolation all of the time. When you get on an airplane do you extrapolate the laws of fluid dynamics into the future? Or do you think that your airplane will suddenly fall out of the skies because the laws of physics are fickle?
The characteristics of atoms, including radioactive half lives, are as much a constant as the laws of fluid dynamics. Why is it wrong to extrapolate the laws of physics when you find no problem doing the same in your day to day life?
This message has been edited by Loudmouth, 04-05-2005 05:20 PM
This message has been edited by Loudmouth, 04-05-2005 05:21 PM
This message has been edited by Loudmouth, 04-05-2005 05:22 PM
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