Is all TRUTH scientifically knowable?

DISCOVERY CHANNEL

I doubt very much if those using the law of uniformitarianism have, in the past, taken into account such changes in the earth that result even in the change of time, when calculating their measurements.
DHK

 

Time IS relative; how do YOU propose we measure time?

 

double post, sorry

 

I wonder just how much changes in the Earth would be caused by a global flood that nobody seems to believe? Plate techtonics would be shifted enormously due to the weight and pressure. Earthquakes and other global effects would occur. What if all of these were plugged into the equations? Could it even be modeled within plus or minus 500 percent? I doubt it.

Now, what are we looking at when we view radio-metric dating?

As I said before, C14 is caused by cosmic rays hitting molecules in the atmosphere. If the global covering of water (at whatever distance it was from Earth) -- you know, the one the evolutionists laugh at us about? Then what do you do when there is a period of time with life that does not absorb radiometric elements that can be measured--guess what? They look VERY OLD!

Of course, it will be said this doesn't fit with tree circles, or does it?

Does a global flood explain the large volumes of oil and coal? Obviously coal and oil are not made in any sort of volume tody since organic material seems to rot pretty quickly. How about the fossil record? Do we see fossils forming today from all of the dead animals? A few?

What happens in a world wide flood when sediment and living material is immediately covered with water and allowed a year to settle and compact? Would we find a fossil record that is stratified based on the cataclismic event that would completely mystify a naturalist?

Obviously, the catastraphy was MUCH greater than just a little rain. Think about water stored within the earth and sprayed from the fountains of the deep. What techtonic events would this cause? Assuming half of the water came from the inside of the Earth and half from above (just as an assumption). The loss of water from below, the pressure from above. A catastrophie that rearranges everything on the Earth. A naturalist looking at the Earth ignoring THIS level of catastrophie would be awfully confused at what he/she sees. Is this occuring today?

Oh, I know what the answer will be. No we can measure things better than this and there is no sign of a global disaster of this size, etc. etc.

Anything to keep events on a "NATURAL" level.

 

If you give someone enough time they can prove anything using science.

I just don't have that kind of time so i'll have faith

 

My co-worker, a non-Christian, twists DavidsAngel's post a bit when he says; “If you give someone enough time they can prove anything using the Bible. I just don't have that kind of time so I'll believe what I can see.”
*****

Going back to the OP...

Science was designed to "explain the phenomena".
The basic "scientific method" is used to construct an accurate, consistent, reliable and non-arbitrary representation of the world around us using ‘natural’ explanations.

In doing so scientists observe phenomena or physical happenings. They lay aside the supernatural. The supernatural by definition is beyond scientific observation. The super-natural is not natural. The scientific method cannot be used to study it. The supernatural lies beyond it’s criteria for physical observation.
This is not to say that there is not some crossover. The supernatural may leave tracks in the sand, so to say.

Rob

[ January 19, 2005, 05:49 AM: Message edited by: Deacon ]

 

So, you are not going to back up your asertion that some unknown catastrophe could alter the ratios of, say, uranium and lead on the inside of solid, non-porous rock without leaving a trace? I guess we both know that is not true.

"I doubt very much if those using the law of uniformitarianism have, in the past, taken into account such changes in the earth that result even in the change of time, when calculating their measurements."

OK, more direct this time. You are laboring under a false definition of uniformitarianism. If we were nearly 200 years in the past, you might be close. The last century, you are incorrect. The first time you said this you were wrong. After being twice shown how modern geology uses this principle and continuing to post false information, you are bearing false witness.

"I doubt very much if those using the law of uniformitarianism have, in the past, taken into account such changes in the earth that result even in the change of time, when calculating their measurements."

It would only be recently that we would have obtained the precision to measure such time changes accurately enough. Of course your own quote undermines your assertion that modern geology has no way to account for such changes when you quote that scientists "routinely calculate earthquakes' effects on polar motion."

But let's turn this around on you. While geologists cannot measure the rotation of the earth to subsecond accuracy in the past, they can measure the rotation to the accuracy of hours and even minutes in the past.

Have you ever heard of tidal rhythmites? These deposits along shorelines are laid down in such a way that you can measure how long a day was in the past. And there is a consistent change in the rotation of the earth as you go back in time. The changes in rotation match up with the angular momentum lost by the earth to the moon over the eons. So you have this congruence of information where the dating of the deposits and the change in rotation can be compared with the observed change in distance to the moon. If the radiometric dating does not work and the rythmites don't work, then how do they happen to concur at various points?

Anyway, my problem for you. The rythmites tell us that 900 million years ago the earth rotated in 18.2 hours. Now I know you will ignore the dating without being able to tell us why we should ignore it, but that will just be a red herring. What I want from you is an explanation of how the earth lost enough angular momentum in the last 6000 years to have its rate of ration slowed from 18.2 hours per day to 24 hours per day. Maybe you can come up with a way to make the moon recede at 150,000 times its current recesional rate.

 

"Time IS relative; how do YOU propose we measure time? "

Red herring. Time is relative for observers traveling at different speed relative to one another. The earth is one big object moving through spacetime and is therefore not subject. The difference in velocity due to differing rotational rates from the equator to the poles is insignificant and it much less than the rate of motion of the earth about the sun or the sun about the center of the galaxy.

"If the global covering of water (at whatever distance it was from Earth) -- you know, the one the evolutionists laugh at us about? Then what do you do when there is a period of time with life that does not absorb radiometric elements that can be measured--guess what? They look VERY OLD!

Of course, it will be said this doesn't fit with tree circles, or does it?"

Thanks for refuting your own post for me. Of course it would also not agree with lake varves or corals or ice cores. Nor would it match up with where items can be dated by both C14 and a uranium series. So observation shows us that your idea cannot be true.

"Does a global flood explain the large volumes of oil and coal?"

In a word, no.

We could talk about how if every landmass on the earth were covered densely in plants, there still would not be enough matter to make the proven reserves of fossil fuels. But we won'.

We could talk about how it cannot explain places were we see multiple coal seams on top of one another formed from multiple forest buried insitu. But we won't. (Or, ignoring coal for a moment, we could go down the road of the 27 forests completely buried in volcanic ash on top of one another in Yellowstone.)

Instead we will talk about the time required to make these fossil fuels. I know, this is where you trot out the experiments where somebody takes some cellulose and some water and heats it to some high temperature and pressure for a few weeks and comes up with some dark colored mass that at a glance vaguely resembles coal.

But that is not the real world. The problem is that coals formed at different temperatures have different chemical make ups. There is a better explanation than I could give at this coal bed methane site.

http://www.blackdiamondenergy.com/coalbed.html

Now there is an important chart on that site for our discussion. It shows how the maximum temperature at which coal is heated affects both its grade and the chemistry.



You will see that lignites and sub-bituminous coals are barely heated at all. Less than about 120 F for lignite and less than about 160 F for subbituminous. We would be able to tell if they were heated to a higher temperature because the rank of the coal would be different and the chemistry (OK, so those two are closely related) would be different.

"What happens in a world wide flood when sediment and living material is immediately covered with water and allowed a year to settle and compact? Would we find a fossil record that is stratified based on the cataclismic event that would completely mystify a naturalist?"

It would because you would find things so much different than what we see. You flood deposits have layers of sandstone interspersed! How do you get windblown dand between layers of the same flood?!? You have limestone layers. You have layers of volcanic ash. You have layes of material rich with iridium from meteor impacts. You have many layers (most layers?) that do not look as if they were produced by a flood. Baumgardner in working out his flood model says that the velocity of the flood waters would have been in the hundreds of feet per second. This is your own boy. That would not fossilize delicate animals, it would shred them. For that matter, it would do quite number on tougher animals too! That would not be able to deposit fine layers, they would stay in suspension. That would mix everything up so much that you would not even have layers of different material.

As far as the fossil record goes... First off a flood of such magnitude would be hard pressed to leave fossils to begin with because of the power. The fossil would also not be left in the manner that we see them. You can tell the conditions under which most fossils form. Some are covered in very fine silt and formed in still water. Some where buried in landslides. Some are covered in volcanic ash. These things just do not agree with your assertion.

Many fossils show signs of scavenging. Scavenging would be hard with everything being drowned at once. (Tooth marks can help identify the scavenger so you cannot just say fish.)

Yu will also remeber that I recent provided you a reference that shows how well which layers the fossil are found in (stratiography) matched the order of the fossil series (cladistics). Now, just how could this be?

"Think about water stored within the earth and sprayed from the fountains of the deep. What techtonic events would this cause? Assuming half of the water came from the inside of the Earth and half from above (just as an assumption)."

Ignoring physics here? Water under enough pressure to spray up in the type of fountains Helen (that is where that came from, right) advocates would be so hot that they would mostly flash by the time they got to the surface. What did not would boil the oceans while the latent heat released when this water condensed would be sufficient to heat the earth to incredible temperatures. The water from above would have a similar problem due to its potential energy being released. You should just supernaturally make the waterappear and disappear to avoid such pitfalls. When you start trying to come up with where the water could have come from it invariably fails.

[ January 19, 2005, 08:44 AM: Message edited by: UTEOTW ]

 

My point exactly.

 

We are all on this earth travelling along at a given speed. A speed which is not even close to relativistic velocities which would start to actually make a difference in how time progressed as compared to somewhere else. And I am not sure where you think might be travelling at a different enough speed to make a difference.

So what was the point?

 

Busy day, I will provide rebuttels as I have time. NO it did NOT come from Helen. I don't have any idea what Helen would come up with, but if she thinks about it, we just might come up with the same answer.

It came from my own theories based on the pressures and and factors involved in a massive release of water.

 

By the way UTEOTW, since you know quite about about certain things, then what specifically is your background and what areas are you educated in and what areas do you work in?

We have been open with ours (or will answer any questions about ourselves), I think it only fair for us to know your background.

 

All these evolutionary assumptions are not taking into account that things were different before the flood.You can call this science if you want.It seems the word science= theory=assumptions=foolishness=facts.You can pick a fossil up off the ground.fact, You can say wow,I'd say this was alive at one time.fact I'd say it's about 20 million years old by the type of fossil it is,and where it shows up on the geologic column.Is this a fact?Evolution is a theory?They have no starting point,theory called fact or mixed with fact does not equal fact.It's a shame more people don't dig deeper into the orgins of evolution, the men there motives and there fruit.

 

I have a BS in chemical engineering and I have done clean coal research developing a novel coal gasifier for the last ten years. (I gave a link above to a caol bed methane company in Wyoming. I got to go through one of the mines in that area a few years ago. Very impresive.) I have lived in Alabama all my life. I got married last year. We do not have kids yet.

As far as the rest goes, I just read widely and seem to soak up certain things. I am currently reading Dreadnought, for example. I am not far into it but it is a history of England and Germany leading up until WWI. Queen Victoria, William I, William II, Bismark, etc. My reading runs from history to classics to scifi to science to whatever else. The last science book I read was Greene's (the string theory guy) The Fabric of the Cosmos. The last religious book I read was CS Lewis The Screwtape Letters.

"It came from my own theories based on the pressures and and factors involved in a massive release of water."

Just make sure that you consider that water is incompressible. To have high pressure that can do something you need an expanding gas. As I see it your choices are to expnad something like CO2 dissolved n the water or in contanct wit hthe water or to heat your water and let some of it flash as the pressure is released drive the rest.

 

"Is all TRUTH scientifically knowable?"

How come whenever there's a topic that discusses science, evolution, politics, what color Jesus' robe was, etc, those threads go on for page after page after page after page, often with 100 or more replied posts.

Yet, when someone posts a topic "I need help witnessing to my dying gradmother", that person may get, at best, 20 responses. Shouldn't it be the other way around??

 

"No it isn't... for exactly the same reason in reverse. There is no reason to believe that physical laws or their impact on various things were not different in the past."

But there is. In every direction we look and as far back as we look, things seem to behave the same. We can even measure the values of physical constants back in time.

This study, for instance,

http://www.eso.org/outreach/press-rel/pr-2004/pr-05-04.html

showed that the fine structure constant has been constant to 0.6 parts in one million over the last 10 billion years.

And this one

http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/astro-ph/pdf/0301/0301184.pdf

Shows the speed of light to have been constant to 1 part in 10^32.

"Think of the natural order of the earth or even the universe as an incredibly complex mathematical equation with many variables. Not only is it unreasonable to assume that there is only one valid solution, it is unreasonable to assume that there aren't many valid possibilities."

There likely are many solutions but our universe has a particular solution.

"BTW, you objected to such critical balance in the universe once when I asserted that just a slight change in the wrong direction anywhere could destroy the possibility of life on earth. I am reading a book and I believe the source for this info was a guy named Meyer. He is supposed to have a big name in cosmology if I am not mistaken. If you are interested, I can post the exact quote."

Can you remember where? I think some changes would and some would not.

"You seem all to willing to "assume" things that are convenient to your position and doggedly demand proof for anything that doesn't."

I am just looking for the most parsimonious solution to what we observe. In my opinion, old earth theories tend to do that best. The objections seem to be very speculative.

 

Well, yes, ideally it should.

But we have different strengths, different weaknesses, different interests, different pet subjects.

There are a lot of areas here I read that I don't post. The topics interest me but I don't really have much to contribute. To use your example of witnessing to someone, I would not be the one to ask. I'm an introvert. I don't have good social skills. It is unlikely that I could provide useful help for such a situation because it is not something that I am very good at. Maybe I should just give some encouragement. I don't know.