That was an artifact of my copy-pasting the reference here. This was a quote made by Cleland, and she put the specific page numbers of the quote in the text rather than in the endnotes.
The multi-page ellipsis was Cleland’s, not mine. In fact I don’t recall having access to Gee’s book at the time.
From my reading of Gee’s statements on page 5, it would seem that his comments would be equally applicable to all historical science.
Did you not read Cleland’s quote after you pasted it? Try again:
“in his words, ‘‘they can never be tested by experiment, and so they are unscientific. . . No science can ever be historical.’’”
Was it? Follow the grammar of Cleland’s sentence. To what does “they” refer in her in-sentence continuous quotation?
That’s the exact opposite of reality. Cleland was harsh on experimental sciences, attempting to knock them down to the same level as historical science by denying falsification altogether.
Your question is predicated on the false premise that I have called historical science “unscientific” in the first place, which I haven’t. I have pointed out it is a different methodology of science compared to operational science, and as a result it carries a greater degree of uncertainty, with that degree of uncertainty generally increasing the further back in time you attempt to extend yourself.
I cannot take you seriously as an honest interlocuter when I read this.
Many Christians have high regard for the ninth commandment, and are therefor unwilling to participate in the false witness of Young Earth Creationist misquoting, misrepresentation, and slander.
There are parts of historical science that are most certainly testable, as I have explained earlier. Yes you are correct that the uncertainties about events in the deep past get more significant the further back we go (and of course I go back a much longer way than you do!). Uncertain is not the same as unknowable though - I presume you are aware of the concept of error bars aroud our estimates? That is what we do when we reconstruct events and processes that happened a very long time ago. We are all aware that these reconstructions are interpretations that can be right or wrong. As someone who has been involved in the planning and execution of hundreds of oil and gas wells I am acutely aware of this.
It remains a fact though that there are many ways we can test our interpretations, and these tests can be as conclusive as any experiment we care to do today in our labs. We design our wells on the basis of our intepretations, and the wells come in according to the predictions or they do not. Now, can you explain to me how the success rate of exploration wells based on our interpretations can be so much higher than random chance if our interpretations are based on utterly incorrect assumptions (according to you)? If the sediments were deposited by a global flood in a matter of months, a few thousand years ago, and then rapidly deformed in ways utterly beyond our comprehension; if hydrocarbons were formed and migrated in hundreds of years rather than millions of years; if radioactive processes have been sped up by many ordes of magnitude thereby releasing enormous amounts of heat - if all that happened, how come that our models that are so different and therefore so very wrong still lead us to finding oil and gas as often as we do? Do you think we are just lucky? Really?
I don’t really have time to wade into a debate about whether old-earth interpretations have anything to do with our ability to find oil. I’ve heard this dubious claim before, but it really has nothing at all to do with GE or with anything I’ve posted here. It’s a worthy debate to have–maybe you should ask Dr. Tim Clarey who was previously involved in the industry as I understand.
I’m not sure you are reading my posts very well? Why do I need to ask Dr. Tim Clary, who wrote a very poor book as discussed on the other thread , when I am a retired industry professional myself who has spend 35 years applying our old-earth interpretations in finding oil, and has worked with hundreds of colleagues all over the industry who all do the same?
I have already illustrated what the relation is between finding oil and mainstream deep time geology in my first post in this thread. Please read it again, with an open mind this time, and don’t dismiss it with platitudes like ‘we can’t ever be certain about historical events’. Even though often we cannot, we can be sure that theories where critical parameters are off by 5 or even 6 orders of magnitude will not lead to successful outcomes.
This is not like using incorrect Newtonian physics to landing men on the moon. This is like flying to the moon only to discover that it is made of cheese rather than rock. That is the magnitude of how YEC geology is wrong and how it will never work for oil exploration. Witness the total absence of YEC based oil companies, and the documented disillusion of YEC’s who have gone into the industry only to find that their Young Earth model utterly violates most of the data.
You are trying to argue against success, which is never a productive strategy. Come back when you guys have some exploration successes yourself, then we will talk again.
It’s not called “old-earth interpretations”, it is called geology.
We are already well familiar with Tim Clarey, and his mangling of sequence stratigraphy, which has to do with the response of shoreline and basin profile to long term sea level change, and nothing to do with tsunami’s.
The YEC enterprise promotes a colossal fiction incorporating little to nothing of the historic faith or scripture. There are no dinosaurs in the Bible, as sauropods did not hide in the reeds like behemoth, and marine reptiles did not have multiple heads like leviathan. There was no created heterozygosity as Adam named all the animals and those were familiar as they faithfully multiplied. Incest was never blessed in scripture. The flood did not resurface the earth as the Euphrates and Tigris lay in their channels before and after. Which of the church fathers spoke of hyperspeeding plate tectonics? Which of the reformers wrote of accelerated radioactive decay? The YEC that is promoted is an invented contrivance which is unrecognizable to the historic faith and science.
I am quite content to let others draw their own conclusions as to who is representing the honest position here.
@Paul: I haven’t forgotten my challenge, I just keep getting too busy to follow up.
@Giltil has not responded to my request to adjudicate, which I take as a “no”. I’ll see who else I can stir up. Maybe Sal Cordova? [ETA: messaged]
I will not debate your choice of who’s argument should be followed to make this determination. It would be helpful if you could quote the text you think is most relevant to the adjudicator when they are ready. Likewise, I will quote the parts of “The Lesson of Tiktaalik” I think are most relevant. (This is meant to make the adjudicator’s task a bit simpler.)
“[Fisher’s work is] hindered by its assumptions and incomplete due to its failure… undermining not merely Fisher’s theorem, but the concept of universal common descent itself.”
It is to the great shame of those Christians who abandoned the historic faith and the clear teaching of scripture rather than defending it.
As a Christian who wholeheartedly affirms the historic faith and the inerrancy of Scripture, I urge you to retract such statements. Long before any scientific debates about creation, Augustine denied that the 6 days of creation were literal 24-hour days based on the text of Genesis alone. Other church fathers affirmed animal death before the fall of man. The church fathers and the reformers never put the age of the earth or the extent of the flood into the creeds or confessions. And many, many faithful Christians, like Charles Spurgeon, C.S. Lewis, and most of the signers of the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy both affirmed the truth of Scripture and accepted the idea of an ancient universe.
I once heard a prominent pastor say that if you read Revelation, the Dispensational Premillennialist view is obvious - “you’d have to go to school to get this wrong.” Except that DP never existed prior to the 1830s. I think DP is quite wrong and would argue that from Scripture, but at the very least DPs must allow that there are other faithful options.
YECs often take a similar stance. But like it or not, YEC is a novel view. Note - YEC is not the same as mere belief in a young earth. Old Testament believers probably thought that the earth was flat - after all, it is said in Scripture to rest on pillars and to have four corners. But they didn’t have access to evidence to the contrary, which they might have accepted if they did. A person who today maintains that the earth is flat in spite of all evidence, who goes to great lengths to invent ways of denying that evidence, who insists that the four corners and the pillars of the earth must be literally true, really holds quite a different position from that OT believer. The OT believer was not a “Flat Earther” in that sense. YEC is similar; it’s a position and a dogma developed in reaction to modern science which nobody could have held without modern science to react to. And which many modern believers simply have not held.
I will never abandon the historic faith or the clear teaching of Scripture. YEC is neither. All doctrine is of some importance. But some doctrines are clear, pervasive in Scripture, and necessary for salvation, while others are murkier, more sparsely addressed in Scripture, and open for in-house debate. Confusing the two categories is always dangerous. Please don’t do that.