The fossil record is the claim not the evidence

[Angrboda]

Granted, I don't put any stock in it, but interpreting the fossil evidence alone as the result of a catastrophic flood is on much more equal footing with the evolutionary hypothesis, if, one doesn't take into account other evidences which corroborate the evolutionary hypothesis, and demote the global flood hypothesis.

A good scientific hypothesis shouldn't allow information to be "interpretted".* It should include a way of testing the hypothesis.

False.

Even if all we had was the fossil record, if a global flood 4000-6000 years ago was a scientific hypothesis you would expect to see a mass extinction (amongst land animals) event 4-6000 years ago in the fossil record. You then go and look at the fossils to see if this is the case.


Thests almost never make good hypotheses when talking about their religion. They say "God exists". "How do I test this claim of yours" you reply. "Don't test God!" or "You can't" or "You have to believe he exists first" are the sorts of untestable claims you get back.

What is the Creationism hypothesis? How do you test it? The answer isn't reading the bible.

I don't see how any of this relates to the point I was making.

[Lemonvariable72]

You are being too charitable. There is another feature played out in the fossil record that was predicted by evolution before it was truly discovered. The simpler organisms procede the more complex ones. Obviously there are reversion's and simple organism that survive very well, such as horseshoe crabs, but this is the order in the sediments (you do not need to even under stand the geologic colomn or its age to understand that bottom sediments are older.)
Invertabates
Fish
Amphibians
Reptiles
Mammals.

When a theory predicts the behavior of a natural phenomenon, that phenomenon is evidence for that theory. Much like the law of attraction is phenomenon that is predicted by the theory of gravity by newton.

I didn't say it wasn't evidence in support of the hypothesis of evolution, only that it doesn't rule out other interpretations by itself. And note that you brought in additional lines of evidence in order to count "a hit," but didn't subtract a hit for the paucity of the fossil record, and its less than stellar testimony to transitional forms. Being skeptical means you count both the hits and the misses, and weigh all hypotheses on the same scale. Arguably, on the fossil record alone, ignoring shared assumptions, evolution still wins, but it's no longer a slam dunk and therefore becomes a claim in need of additional evidence.

Actually we have a good deal of transitional forms
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/List_of_tra...Vertebrate

[FreeTony]

A good scientific hypothesis shouldn't allow information to be "interpretted".* It should include a way of testing the hypothesis.

False.

Don't just say "False". Explain why you think this is false.

Unless I got it wrong, I thought you were saying that the fossil record equally supported a global flood hypothesis and an evolution hypothesis.

[Angrboda]

A good scientific hypothesis shouldn't allow information to be "interpretted".* It should include a way of testing the hypothesis.

False.

Don't just say "False". Explain why you think this is false.

"Whenever you see a sweeping statement that a tremendous amount can come from a very small number of assumptions, you always find that it is false. There are usually a large number of implied assumptions that are far from obvious if you think about them sufficiently carefully."
~ Richard Feynman

[FreeTony]

A good scientific hypothesis should explain beforehand what you expect the data to be if the hypothesis is correct. A good scientific hypothesis: "If I link 2 force meters together and pull on both, both should show the same force"

If the 2 reading are the same (within errors and repeated lots of times) then this supports the hypothesis. If I find a number of readings that are sufficiently different, they disprove the hypothesis.

[Mothonis]

Posts like this are why your on my Sig

I went to rep you because.. your sig. Esquilax is also my hero
Oh and Stephen Colbert. And Ryantology. And your avatar. But alas I was your first rep ever. Guess you'll just have to put up with a high five in the face, bunny style

Bunny!! Your always so nice to me! all of you ahould check out david pakman

[MindForgedManacle]

I'm sorry, but part of the whole point of scientific hypotheses is to provide an interpretation by which to understand and explain the data. Ex: Physicists interpret the empirical discovery of time dilation and length contraction as evidence as to the relativity of space and time, and they use that to interpret and explain further empirical data they gather. Rasetsu seems right on the money here.

[FreeTony]

I think the original claim was that the fossil record as observed could support a global flood hypothesis. I objected to this as there is nothing in the fossil record to suggest a global flood. It could support the hypothesis if there was some evidence, e.g. a mass extinction event 5000 years ago. If almost every land animal died, you'd see it in the fossil record.

It was only this line I objected to: "but interpreting the fossil evidence alone as the result of a catastrophic flood is on much more equal footing with the evolutionary hypothesis, if, one doesn't take into account other evidences which corroborate the evolutionary hypothesis, and demote the global flood hypothesis. "

There must be crossed wires somewhere as I'm not trying to express anything controversial! Maybe it's down to the definition of "interpret". What I'm trying to get around is the fact that some people will, for example, "interpret" a noise at night in their bedroom to be a ghost.

[Lemonvariable72]

I'm sorry, but part of the whole point of scientific hypotheses is to provide an interpretation by which to understand and explain the data. Ex: Physicists interpret the empirical discovery of time dilation and length contraction as evidence as to the relativity of space and time, and they use that to interpret and explain further empirical data they gather. Rasetsu seems right on the money here.

You are right except that evolution has predicted the behavior of the fossil record very well as I outlined before. Orinthosaurs are a great example of this. We foubd them first almost a 100 years ago and they were instantly recognized for their birdlike features. However at that time they were not found with feather impressions and only a few people thought that Dinosaurs likely had feathers ( namely Huxley and Darwin.) However more recently many feathered dinosaurs had been found and some were far more distantly related to birds, while all that were close to bird had evidence of feathers. Therefore evolution predicted that orinthosaurs also had feathers. And then a few years ago three species were found with feather impressions. Evolutions predictive power is what makes the fossil record powerful direct evidence

[MindForgedManacle]

And what makes it powerful direct evidence is the inerpretation of the evidence.