“A significant body of knowledge holds that the Michigan basin is a simple
( although “poorly understood” -USGS) geological depression in the earth’s crust, which dragged down the overlying Cambrian, Ordovician and Silurian sedimentary strata (originally laid down horizontally), satisfactorily falsifying our conjecture.”
Pretty nasty logic, depending on a “poorly understood” yet blithely “simple” gradualist process and then making a quantum leap to an unwarranted certainty labeled as a falsification. That is as weak as circumstantial gets, using elliptical reasoning – “gradualism argues such and such, therefore catastrophism is falsified.”
My goodness, we ARE intimidated. Gradualists finding fault with something that would falsify the very existence of their world view. How convenient.
Next they will be denying that Shoemaker-Levy 9 impacted several times upon Jupiter. Oh, forgive me! Did I say “denying”? I meant to say “falsifying.”
I will give credit where credit is due, though…
This does happen to be the first group who I noticed asserted that the Earth rotated under the in-flight ejecta, thus seeing the need for a surrogate initial impact location to the west. Very well done there.
Of course, all the Carolina Bays were formed by some contrived mysterious and conjectural aeolian process that just happened to align their swirled-up rims in a sub-continental pattern that didn’t align to any wind patterns currently existing, which violates the uniformitarian credo. Perhaps it was a stalled massive weather front over the Great Lakes instead, one which – like hurricanes do – spun off mini-elliptical tornadoes de-circularized somewhat by the stationary meteorological low acting like Jupiter’s Red Spot. I can see that. Not.
This had the nastiness of coming on like it was in support of the Y-D-Breat-Lake hypothesis, then turning on its beginning to stab the Y-D in the heart – except by leaning on the gradualism school as if – even in the light of SL-9 and the planetary evidence shown herein – that gradualism is the only process allowed on our Exceptionalist Earth. Yes, things happen on other planets, but WE are Earth.
As Frank Zappa sang, “It Can’t Happen Here.” The authors might as well have just saved all the big words and pretty pictures and quoted Zappa right off the bat.
In the past century, and a half, the unquestioned uniformitarian assumptive paradigm has become an extremely powerful meme that’s strong enough that it tends to supersede, or at least ignore, empirical fact. I call the process mutual, inter-assumptive, reasoning, and confabulation.
Steve said:
Pretty nasty logic, depending on a “poorly understood” yet blithely “simple” gradualist process and then making a quantum leap to an unwarranted certainty labeled as a falsification. That is as weak as circumstantial gets, using elliptical reasoning – “gradualism argues such and such, therefore catastrophism is falsified.”
I’ve found that a good rule of thumb is that whenever a geophysical question is answered with a sentence that begins with the words, “Most geologists agree that_____”, the immediate follow up question should always be simply, ‘why?’
“A significant body of knowledge holds that the Michigan basin is a simple
( although “poorly understood” -USGS) geological depression in the earth’s crust, which dragged down the overlying Cambrian, Ordovician and Silurian sedimentary strata (originally laid down horizontally), satisfactorily falsifying our conjecture.”
Pretty nasty logic, depending on a “poorly understood” yet blithely “simple” gradualist process and then making a quantum leap to an unwarranted certainty labeled as a falsification. That is as weak as circumstantial gets, using elliptical reasoning – “gradualism argues such and such, therefore catastrophism is falsified.”
My goodness, we ARE intimidated. Gradualists finding fault with something that would falsify the very existence of their world view. How convenient.
Next they will be denying that Shoemaker-Levy 9 impacted several times upon Jupiter. Oh, forgive me! Did I say “denying”? I meant to say “falsifying.”
I will give credit where credit is due, though…
This does happen to be the first group who I noticed asserted that the Earth rotated under the in-flight ejecta, thus seeing the need for a surrogate initial impact location to the west. Very well done there.
Of course, all the Carolina Bays were formed by some contrived mysterious and conjectural aeolian process that just happened to align their swirled-up rims in a sub-continental pattern that didn’t align to any wind patterns currently existing, which violates the uniformitarian credo. Perhaps it was a stalled massive weather front over the Great Lakes instead, one which – like hurricanes do – spun off mini-elliptical tornadoes de-circularized somewhat by the stationary meteorological low acting like Jupiter’s Red Spot. I can see that. Not.
This had the nastiness of coming on like it was in support of the Y-D-Breat-Lake hypothesis, then turning on its beginning to stab the Y-D in the heart – except by leaning on the gradualism school as if – even in the light of SL-9 and the planetary evidence shown herein – that gradualism is the only process allowed on our Exceptionalist Earth. Yes, things happen on other planets, but WE are Earth.
As Frank Zappa sang, “It Can’t Happen Here.” The authors might as well have just saved all the big words and pretty pictures and quoted Zappa right off the bat.
In the past century, and a half, the unquestioned uniformitarian assumptive paradigm has become an extremely powerful meme that’s strong enough that it tends to supersede, or at least ignore, empirical fact. I call the process mutual, inter-assumptive, reasoning, and confabulation.
Steve said:
I’ve found that a good rule of thumb is that whenever a geophysical question is answered with a sentence that begins with the words, “Most geologists agree that_____”, the immediate follow up question should always be simply, ‘why?’