Historical evidence trumps extrapolation of observational evidence

YECs are allowed in science. They are just required to use the scientific method and observe the same intellectual rigor and peer-reviewed vetting all other scientists are required to follow. Sadly there are few YECs willing to do this, and the ones who do don’t do any sort of work which would support their YEC claims.

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Do you know what honest and accurate weights and measures actually look like?

They certainly do not look like tiny samples with huge error bars being presented as “overwhelming” evidence for fantasy physics such as billion-fold accelerated nuclear decay that would have vaporised the earth if it had any basis in reality.

Rubbish. This is nothing to do with “refusing to admit it in certain contexts.” Extrapolation and interpolation both have to follow strict rules that apply in every context. And there’s nothing whatsoever about those rules that says that one is “inherently less authoritative” than the other. Both produce error bars, and it is those error bars—and those error bars alone—that tell us how authoritative they are. Not some clueless hand-waving notion of one as “extrapolation” and the other as “interpolation.”

Do you know what an error bar is? Do you understand how it is calculated and what it signifies?

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If Newton had extrapolated from his theory the behavior of the very small and the very fast, he would have been wrong. Totally, utterly wrong. Why do we know that? Because we have observed the very small and the very fast and saw that the extrapolation of Newtonian mechanics didn’t work. There is no possible way we could have known that prior to observing it. So in science we don’t put high authority on extrapolation due to the fact that there might be factors involved that we never would have guessed because we haven’t seen it. Period.

Unless you are claiming that extrapolation and interpolation are equally uncertain, than your whole claim here is irrelevant.

Your analogy is invalid, because we have observed the very small, the very fast, and the very far away. That’s what cosmology is all about. We know with a very high degree of certainty that the speed of light and radioactive decay rates are exactly the same millions or even billions of light years away as they are in our own galactic neighbourhood. A constant speed of light over distances of billions of light years means billions of years, period. Unless you are disputing the validity of basic arithmetic that you learned in primary school.

I’m not just claiming it, I am stating it as fact. As I said, both produce error bars, and it is error bars—and error bars alone—that tell us how uncertain something is.

Seriously, this is measurement 101. It’s beginner stuff. It’s what you learn in the first half hour of the first practical class in an A level physics course.

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Anything but JustNowIsm is unparsimonious.

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Please defend this. What reason do you have to believe in 100 years time YEC will be the dominant position?

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Creationists who quote employ a technique similar to restriction enzymes - they cleave text at sites matching specific patterns.

The most common cleavage sites are behind the period in the strings “. But”, “. However,”, “. Yet”, ". Nevertheless, " and “. On the other hand,”.

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Moreover, radioactive decay constants are not free variables, but depend on more fundamental physical constants, and if these had been different the whole of physics and chemistry would have been different, which we know it wasn’t because if it had been we wouldn’t have had those rocks anyway

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Everyone denies B.

The actual sequence is

A) Radioactive decay is observed to occur along an exponential curve relating to time.

B) If radiactive decay has always occurred thus, we would observe x, y and z, but not observe p, q and r. Examples of x/y/z/p/q/r are the outcome of checking historical eruption accounts vs lava-flow dates; tree-ring counts vs C14 dating; ice-core layer counts vs radiodating of the ash layers therein; timing of changes in supernovae spectral lines; radiodating the same rocks using different decay sequences.

C) We observe x/y/z. We do not observe p/q/r.

D) We conclude that radioactive decay has always occurred along this same exponential curve in relation to time.

E) Therefore some rocks showing advanced stages of exponential decay must be millions or billions of years old.

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The problem is that YEC’s accept or reject observations based on whether they support their conclusion. For example, YEC’s have no problem extrapolating many physical attributes of physics and chemistry into the past. For example, they assume that the density of water was the same in the past as part of flood geology. I could produce a massive list of modern rates and modern physical characteristics that YEC’s use. The only reason I can find for YEC’s rejecting decay rates for unstable isotopes is that it leads to dates they don’t like. Changing decay rates would be equivalent to changing the density of water at sea level. Decay rates are a direct result of fundamental nuclear forces that are necessary for how all matter behaves, so if you want decay rate to be different you would have to change the most basic forces in the universe. That isn’t a viable strategy, IMHO.

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The most glaring ones include own their projection of (often incorrect) rates of moon recession, dust accretion, continent erosion, magnetic field strength, ocean sediment accumulation, waterfall erosion and population expansion not only far beyond contemporary observations but also far beyond any sensible use.

If @BenKissling wants to deny that “extrapolations of contemporary observations can always be extrapolated into the deep past”, he should be aiming his sights at his fellow YECs, not at actual scientists.

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I would like to see it haha. Could be handy. So if you have the time later…

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@Roy has some good examples in the post above. Here are some other interesting ones I ran across at RationalWiki.

YEC’s seem to be just fine with using measurements of modern rates to (incorrectly) extrapolate into the past.

I would also be interested in finding this 3 billion year old sea floor it talks about.

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Extrapolation: Suspect’s DNA on the murder weapon (pistol), gun shot residue on the suspect’s hands, victim’s blood on the suspect’s clothes … etc etc

Vs

Historical evidence: Suspect saying “It wasn’t me”.

QED

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The oldest sea floor that is still sea floor is about 300 million years old and is found in the eastern Mediterranean. The exact age is still being debated.

However, that is not the whole story. There are numerous remnants of old oceanic crust and sea floor that have ended up on the continents during plate tectonic collisions. Although the oceanic crust is normally subducted and returned to the mantle because it is denser than continental crust, at times the deformation in the collision zones is so intense and complicated that bits of the heavier crust are pushed up and onto the adjacent continental crust where they can be preserved. Such rocks are now found in ancient orogens and are called ophiolites.

To the best of my knowledge the oldest ophiolite found today is in Greenland and has been dated to around 3.8 Ga.

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Here’s a good example:

It is known that there is essentially a constant rate of cosmic dust particles entering the earth’s atmosphere from space and then gradually settling to the earth’s surface. The best measurements of this influx have been made by Hans Pettersson, who obtained the figure of 14 million tons per year.26 This amounts to 14 x 10^19 pounds in 5 billion years. If we asume the density of compacted dust is, say, 140 pounds per cubic foot, this corresponds to a volume of 10^18 cubic feet. Since the earth has a surface area of approximately 5.5 x 10^15 square feet, this seems to mean that there should have accumulated during the 5-billion-year age of the earth a layer of meteoric dust approximately 182 feet thick all over the world!

While there have been later YEC articles that revise this downwards (e.g. here) they don’t say anything about unwarranted extrapolation, only that the older measurement techniques had flaws.

Brilliant! Yes, indeed, historical evidence trumps extrapolation of observational evidence! He didn’t do it!

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There it is — the YEC belief that a literal Biblical including a 6000 year old universe is essential for salvation.

When YECs say that “Historical“ evidence is primary, they ought to use the legal asterisk, as in.

Historical evidence*

*Does not include written or oral histories of ancient China, Egypt, Mesopotamia, or any other peoples or cultures that contradict YEC understanding of history.