rlQuote: A '49er came down from the hills with a small pouch tucked tightly into his pocket. As he entered the assayer's office he glanced around and when he saw that no one else was present, he whispered to the assayer "I think I found gold in yonder hills!" And with that he pulled out the pouch and poured it's contents on the table.
The rocks and dust glinted yellow in the sunlight and the '49er could hardly contain his excitement. After a long pause, the old prospector spoke up a little louder, "Didn't ya hear me? I found gold! Go ahead --test it! I wanna know for sure"
But Xingu the wise assayer shook his head and patted the old man on the shoulder. "Don't you know you can't use as evidence the thing you are testing? These rocks aren't evidence. If you can't present me with something other than these rocks to test, then you have nothing."
This makes absolutely no sense at all, Im used to you coming up with "variants" of evidence, but this is a stretch, even for you.
You are still attempting to emit credibility rays by beleving that "evidence" is open to interpretation. The problem with Creation "science", like John Mackay, they break all rules of science in making their analyses. For example, John has had a bunch of Oz Creationists wander all over the Appalachians to show "Flood deposites" Their evidence? They found some carbonized plant remains in the Chatanooga shales, an anoxic deep sea sediment. They found some plant fragments and then, armed with these few bits n pieces , claimed that "Finding plant bits ( of land p[lants supposedly) mixed in withg "deep sea sediments" , this PROVES that this was a flood. Were science that simple minded. We find , in deep sea sediment cores, evidence of plant stems and terrigenous crap even today. We find these in shelf deposits and can not argue with the fact that we found these fossils in the bottom of an ocean of some size. Macklay has neglected all the other evidence that clearly shows that the
1Chatanooga was a deep sea basin
2 Ocean currents carry detritus and this detritus pools in eddies and sinks to the bottom and gets incorporated into the bottom seds
3
Lingula and other sessile benthic organisms make up the exclusive fossil animal component of the bottom seds in the Chatanooga. Mackay could never deny that this area (which covers abut 4 states) had been an ocean bottom just quietly sitting there with its own life "pool" Its more an example that detritus flated into, and got incorporated into the ocean shelf deposits.
4 Stratigraphy is able to measdure how long the deposits were being accumulated. (The Chatanooga formation , is , and Mackay failed to tell his "flock" that it had been depositing layer upon layer , of oily benthic organic shales until its about 20000 feet thick.
5The Chatanooga has hardly any\ evidence of "turbidity deposits". The only turbidites are from undersea cliff slumps (like undersea avalanches)
6 The environment of deposition (using conodont color scales) of the Chatanooga , fits really well with an anoxic source rock , that contains "tar deposits"
When the Creationists "use" evidence, they ALWAYS omit the entire story and are ALWAYS guilty of "gilding the rose" . After all, imagine having your "flock" donate the bucks to fund a "Creationist expedition" to the New World and then not find anything
It isnt so much that the Creationists vary on interpretation of evidence, they actually omi any references to conflicting data or evidence that actually refutes their pre drawn 'conclusions". They are frauds, clear and simple, and you believers keep funding their efforts.
PS , MAcakay doesnt ever publish because hed be laffed off the page.
