@PDPrice has a brand new article up at CMI and, since he’s already referenced it repeatedly, I thought I’d take a look.
It starts off well:
The question of historical vs operational science is raised often in the evolution-creation debate. But evolutionists often cry foul, saying there is no distinction between these two supposed forms of science—that this is something the creationists made up. Nothing could be further from the truth!
That’s a strong claim. If true, it should be readily supportable by citations of non-creationists employing this distinction. The article continues:
Historical science is fundamentally less reliable than operational science, primarily because unlike operational science, historical science is unfalsifiable in the strict sense. This is directly contrary to the views of Dr Carol Cleland, a secular philosopher of science who has attempted to blunt this argument by claiming that the two are on the same level.1
Hmmm. That citation is the only reference given in support of the claim, and it apparently says creationists invented the distinction. The citation isn’t even to Cleland’s work, but to another of @PDPrice’s articles. Tracing back through the links (with help from this thread) leads to this at AiG:
Two men seem to have started using the terms and then began to contrast them with experimental or operational science: Dr. Norman Geisler and Dr. Charles Thaxton.
So the contrast did begin with creationists after all. AiG also cite this article from the 1930s, but the distinction therein is not between historical vs operational science, but between laboratory science (physics) and fieldwork (cultural anthropology) as conducted by Boas, both of which would fit into ‘operational’ science. In fact, the article explicitly says Boas’s work didn’t use historical material:
And, more significant still, Boas has practically never made use of archaeological findings in his own work!
So based on @PDPrice’s own references, the conclusion is that the distinction between historical and operational science was made up by creationists. He probably should have remembered this when penning his latest article, not least because he was involved in the earlier thread, but maybe he hasn’t actually read his cited sources.
Later on in the newly published article is this gem:
First, rock arches are highly interesting and enigmatic formations that present major problems for old-earthers. They look more like a relic from the fast erosion of the Flood.4 They are also disappearing quite quickly. In Utah’s Arches National Park, they are collapsing at a rate of about one per year, giving a maximum of 2,000 years before the entire supply is depleted.5 Of course, one cannot extrapolate out that far with any degree of certainty. The arches most likely to collapse have probably already done so, yet one large earthquake in the region could topple many arches simultaneously. On an old earth, they would undoubtedly all be gone by now (ignoring the problem that no mechanism on an old earth could account for their original formation anyhow).
I’ll skip lightly over @PDPrice’s assumption of uniformitarianism, and go straight to the astonishing final claim, which I’ve highlighted.
No mechanism? It’s trivial to find descriptions of the mechanisms which form them. For example:
According to a team of researchers from the Czech Republic, erosion gradually removes grains of sand, placing the weight of the rock on the rest of the grains and causing them to more tightly interlock. As grains get pulled off rock, the weight shifts unevenly, and the grains in areas that bear more weight or gravitational stress are harder to erode—leaving behind the arches, alcoves, and pillars for human tourists to admire.
Or this:
Today, water shapes this environment more than any other force. Rain erodes the rock and carries sediment down washes and canyons to the Colorado River. Desert varnish appears where water cascades off cliffs. In winter, snowmelt pools in fractures and other cavities, then freezes and expands, breaking off chunks of sandstone. Small recesses develop and grow bigger with each storm. Little by little, this process turns fractured rock layers into fins, and fins into arches. Arches also emerge when potholes near cliff edges grow deeper and deeper until they wear through the cliff wall below them.
How about this:
Joint systems can also form independent of regional fold or fault zones. In many parts of Utah, arches form along joints that develop parallel to the walls of deep canyons. As streams carve canyons into the bedrock, lateral pressure is removed, allowing the bedrock to fracture as it relaxes and expands into the newly created space. The expansion of frozen water which makes its way into these joint systems also serves to greatly accelerate this process. In many of Utah’s sandstone alcoves, “sheeting” of the rock is evidence of this slow release of rock once under great pressure.
Or this:
The faults and joints caused by the uplift and collapse opened the way for erosion to carve hundreds of freestanding fins. Alternate freezing and thawing action and exfoliation (flaking caused by expansion when water or frost penetrates the rock) continued to peel away more rock until holes formed in some of the fins. Rockfalls within the holes helped enlarge the arches. Nearly all arches in the park eroded out of Entrada sandstone. … Water seeping through the sandstone from above has created a second type of arch—the pothole arch. You may also come across a few natural bridges cut from the rock by perennial water runoff.
Those last two are about the very same geological formation that @PDPrice refers to. So is this one:
There are more than 2,000 arches in the park; to be classified as an arch, the opening must measure at least three feet across. The largest arch in the park, Landscape Arch, spans 306 feet (longer than a football field) base to base. New arches are constantly forming, while old ones occasionally collapse—most recently Wall Arch, which fell in 2008.
New arches are constantly forming, but @PDPrice thinks there’s no mechanism that can do that.
Here’s a series of pictures of an Australian outcrop that gradually changed from three caves to a series of arches and then a single arch as the outer two collapsed:
In ~1990:
In 1950:
In 1979:
In 2012:
Finally here’s another picture from Utah’s Arches National Park - the exact same location that @PDPrice referenced - that shows all the stages of arch formation, from a small hole in a rock wall [1] to deeper and wider caves [2] to a window formed when the hole breaches the far side of the rock wall [3] to a wide arch [4].
It illustrates the falseness of @PDPrice’s claim perfectly.
