The is the writings and behavior of Jesus’ followers constitute the evidence for the miracle of the Resurrection. Human history is the domain in which God intervened, and therefore is the domain where we expect to find evidence.
By contrast, YEC contends that natural history is the domain in which God intervened. Therefore we should expect to find evidence for YEC in rocks and isotope compositions and spectrograms of far-flung galaxies.
Since YEC and (much of) CASE believe in a historical Adam and Eve and a historical Fall, we cannot distinguish between the two systems on that account.
I’d just like to make another important point about your use of the word “extrapolation” here.
The word “extrapolation” is not some kind of magic shibboleth that you can throw around to portray a particular technique as “unreliable.” Extrapolation is a rigorous and systematic mathematical technique that works according to strict rules. One rule in particular is that as well as an end result, it also yields an uncertainty (i.e. an error bar) in that result. Thus, when scientists tell you that the earth is 4.54 ± 0.05 billion years old, the second half of that result (± 0.05 billion) is a constraint on precisely how unreliable the measurement techniques are, taking into account the fact that extrapolation is used.
In other words, the fact that things are being extrapolated might get the age of the earth down from 4.54 billion years to 4.49 billion years, but that is all. That falls far, far, far, far, far, far short of getting it down to six thousand.
As soon as I saw the book quote about the ‘tentativeness’ of science near the top of this thread, I thought “Pretty sure that’s going to turn out to be a quotemine”.
I would be very surprised if there isn’t a sentence beginning with something like “Despite this…” immediately after the quote.
The article ‘The Relativity of Wrong’, linked in a post above, shows that using the quote on its own as a way of trying to undermine what we learn from science is misleading to say the least.
Can anyone with the book confirm whether there is a qualifying statement immediately after? Thank you
By the way, i see the claim in a post above that YECs are being “ruthlessly excluded” from science. Oh the persecution…
And does anyone want a bet on how long it will be before Sal posts that quote somewhere, or uses it in his church ‘teaching’? I‘m thinking days, single figures…
The actual reason why YECs are not allowed in science is because we don’t accept some scientific conclusions as TRUE. You and many others view science as the highest form of TRUTH, and anybody who doesn’t agree with that has to go and is labeled “anti-science” in much the same way a Christian might call someone “anti-Christ”.
We are not banned for not “using accurate weights and measures”. That is utterly laughable. But it doesn’t matter. In a hundred years everybody who agrees with you will be dead and YEC will be alive and well as it has been for thousands of years.
Whatever. The fact is that if you were a reviewer and got a paper with a data plot and a linear regression, and all the paper’s conclusions depended on the extrapolated portion of the graph rather than the interpolated part, the very first question you would ask is, “Why didn’t they gather data around the place where their conclusions come from instead of extrapolating it?”
You know that extrapolation is inherently less authoritative than interpolation. You just refuse to admit it in certain contexts.
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.
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?
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.
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
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.
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.
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.