Just a short note to point out an important aspect of Jonahathan's
statement:
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jonathan Clarke" <jdac@alphalink.com.au>
Cc: <asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, December 13, 2000 2:43 PM
Subject: Re: origin of granites
> Hi Joel
Snip...
> Although a bit dramatized, the article is not a bad summary of some of the
innovations in understanding the genesis of granite that has occurred over
the last 20 years.
Snip....
>Selective quotation of this article might be used to give some veneer of
academic credibility to a claim like "Of > course granites can form quickly,
even the godless geologists admit it!".
The significance of Jonathan's statement is that it illustrates the problem
of argueing a position without first agreeing on a common vocabulary and by
using relative or qualitative rather than quantitative terms. We in America
just went through 36 days of legal hageling and no one (at least that I
saw) bothered to point out the difference between the terms "ballot" and
"vote". In fact one speaker on TV lost his argument on this very point and
either never realized it or realized it and chose to lose the argument
rather than point out the distinction. He said there were X "votes" that
had not yet been counted. His opponent countered with: all the "votes" have
been counted. They went back and forth a couple of times and then the
opponent said (this is what my wife told me so it may not be verbatem but it
is probably closer than if I had heard the exchange myself - she is better
at details than I am) "If the votes haven't been counted how do you know how
many there are?" and the first guy folded. Apparently he had repeated the
statement so many times he didn't realize that it was the ballots that were
counted, not the votes. The number of "votes" i.e., indications of the
voters preferenece, on the ballots to which he referred had not been
determined because the machine was unable to make this determination and no
one had yet looked at these ballots. He could have made this argument as a
come back and perhaps continued the argument and perhaps even carried on to
win it or perhaps been forced to admit he had no objective way of
determining a "vote" vs some other randomly or even intentionally created
mark (but one not intended by the voter to be a vote) on the ballot. But he
didn't. And of course no one on the Republican side ever bothered to point
out that it was the "ballots" that had been counted and not the "votes" they
may or may not have contained. I think the leaders of both parties
maintained this bit of confusion for their own purposes and only a few
people realized the two sides were not talking about the same thing.
I bring this bit of politics into this discussion because I have found the
practice of argueing by changing the meaning of a key term to be common in
the young earth/old earth debates. Two examples are particularly prevalent
I believe:
1) The implication (or outright statement) that thick deposits composed of
composed of silt and clay containing planer laminations can not be used to
indicate slow deposition because "horizontal bedding" is also found in
deposits of coarse sand. The confusion here is caused by the implication
(or outright statement) that high flow regime and low flow regime structures
can be formed in hydrodynamically similar situations.
2) Statements to the effect that radiometric dating techniques are
unreliable because either the decay constants have been shown to be affected
by their phyical environment or that we have changed the value for these
numbers which we use to calculate the age of a particular specimen. If I
understand the situtation correctly:
A) the only decay contants which have been shown to be affected by their
physical environment are those for some isotopes and modes of decay which we
never use in radiometric dating and consequently the argument is invalide on
two counts, wrong isotopes and wrong method of decay;
B) the changes in the value we use for the decay constants were made as the
result of continueing measurements of these isotope decays and the
difference in the calculated age of a rock or mineral grain which result
from using the two extremes for the value are insignificant for the purposes
of a young earth (<50,000 years) vs. old earth( X.billion years)
determinations; thus this argument is also invalide.
If others have good examples of such misuse of terms I would enjoy seeing
them.
Darryl
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Dec 14 2000 - 09:08:10 EST