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From: bch@unc.UUCP (Byron Howes )
Newsgroups: net.misc
Subject: Re: creation, evolution, & falsification - (nf)
Message-ID: <6864@unc.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 1-Mar-84 10:26:05 EST
Article-I.D.: unc.6864
Posted: Thu Mar  1 10:26:05 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 3-Mar-84 23:06:28 EST
References: <5936@uiucdcs.UUCP>
Organization: University of North Carolina Comp. Center
Lines: 64

There is a certain amount of silliness to Miller's conditions under which
creationism can be falsified.  Obviously, given a slab of limestone, no
one can fake a footprint impression believably.  This only indicates that
the Paluxy "footprints" are not contemporary fakes.  It does not indicate
that they are necessarily impressions of human footprints.  There are
other aspects of the Paluxy impressions which indicates that they may
have been the product of something other than humans.

(1) One gets the impression from the creationist literature that the
Paluxy site is a flat and level limestone sheet with obvious footprints
in it.  This isn't quite the case.  The Paluxy river is, and has been,
an active river for a considerable fraction of the year.  The Paluxy
bed is considerably irregular and eroded.  It is possible, according to
some who have seen it, to identify "tracks" of virtually every mammalian
species in the bed, if some imagination is used.

(2) To differentiate the "human" footprints from other depressions in the
rock, they have been highlighted in oil or some foreign substance.  This
adds to the illusion of humanness.

(3) When viewed as a track, the footprints show a stride far in excess
of the normal human stride especially when one considers that the
people who supposedly made these tracks would have to have been slogging
through mud to have made them in the first place.  Further, the left-right-
left sequence is often obscured, with the "instep" of the "feet" falling
on the wrong side.

(4) With respect to many of the "footprints" there seems to be a claw
extending from the "heel."  This has lead informed observers to believe
that the Paluxy prints, such as they are, are erosion-modified prints
of three-toed-dinosaurs with the "heel" actually being the front of
the middle toe.  

(5) Skeletal fossiles in the area (Sorry, Ray, there *are* such in this
area.  Why did you tell us there were not?) indicate the normal range
of Cretaceous reptilian life such as it has been found elsewhere, no
human or significant mammalian presence.  There is no evidence of
human encampments or artifacts such as would be expected, and is generally
found, where there was sufficient technology for a species to leave
"moccasin prints."

Finally, the simple model of the falsifiability of theories that seems
to be proposed here is really inaccurate.  No single observation, or
finite set of observations, is really fatal to a theory.  It is only
when a theory consistantly fails to come up with compelling explanations
for a class of observed data that it can be called into question.  Even
then, unless there exists a theory in competition which (a) offers
compelling explanations for all data "explained" by the prior theory 
and (b) offers a "better" explanation of the data at hand and (most
important) (c) does not induce imcompatibilties with other accepted
scientific theories that cannot be resolved, the prior theory will be
retained.

In sum, Ray's argument is not convincing, either from its premises
with respect to falsifiability, the hypothesis he offers up to be
falsifiable or the data he cites to confirm the hypothesis.  I remain
unconvinced.
-- 

"Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!"

					   Byron Howes
					UNC - Chapel Hill
				  ({decvax,akgua}!mcnc!unc!bch)