George wrote:
> 1) The "nobody was around to see what happened" argument is
valueless.
> We receive signals from the past - light, radio &c for astronomers,
fossils for
> paleontologists, &c. Some theorizing is needed in order to get
information from
> these signals about their sources - as is the case with _all_
> observations. Of course we have fewer signals from events 10^9 years ago
than
> for comparable events today & the required inferences are more complex,
but
> that's a matter of degree.
It could equally be said, rather than "inferences are more complex", that
the degree of speculation and extrapolation required is more extreme. In my
(admittedly highly specialised) area of data fitting and neural networks,
the less data you have, the less complex model you can get away with, and
hence the weaker the predictions you can make with any certainty.
... and before anyone is quick to point it out, I also think that at least
some of the arguments advanced by YEC's also involve a ludicrous amount of
extrapolation; for example the highly debatable experimental 1% drop in the
measured speed of light over the last 300 years leading to the theory that
it could have been much faster in the past, compressing the timescale from
billions to 6000 years. I think the problem of distant starlight is clearly
the most difficult challenge for the YEC position; I know of work that is
going on into trying to get a cosmology that accomodates this, but the
problem is far from solved.
All the best,
Iain.
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