Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site unc.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!floyd!harpo!decvax!mcnc!unc!bch 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)