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Undertoad · 07-06-2011, 09:41 AM

Geologists have no direct evidence for mountains, either, because the process of building a mountain is slow and we've never seen it directly. All we can do is examine what happens now, slowly, to try to understand how earth could move and shape over a period of hundreds of thousands of years.

We see earthquakes, we see erosion, we examine the types of rocks and how they are formed. Aha, says the geologist, these rocks could only be formed by volcanic activity; these rocks over here could only be formed by centuries of thousand pounds of pressure. This river erodes silt for centuries. And then there arises an explanation for the mountain and the valley.

And voila, the explanation is proven elsewhere. The scientist looks at western coast of Africa and the eastern coast of South America, and says, hey it sure looks like those two match up perfectly, like jigsaw puzzle pieces, and we notice this in other parts of the world too; what's up with that? Well the explanation for the mountains matches the explanation for the puzzle pieces, and matches everything we see today happening really, really slowly. The independent findings match and now the evidence becomes stronger.

Aha, says Darwin, these birds are almost exactly alike, but the slight differences they have are interesting. What's the explanation? Well, it turns out that all evidence, all explanations of all changes in every living being on the earth match Darwin's idea. The underlying explanation of why you have dark hair if your parents have it is genetics, and the process of genetics matches Darwin precisely. He didn't know a thing about it; but decades after he lived, it confirms everything.

So now the bar is set pretty damn high. In order to explain mountains without bringing in plate tectonics, you're going to have to explain why all the geologic processes we see today happen in some other way. In order to explain why evolution didn't create every single living being on the earth, you're going to have to explain why our DNA contains a blueprint for every living being, how combining our DNA creates near-duplicate beings, how chimp DNA differs from human DNA by a very small percentage (but one that would arise in about 5 million years if genes change at the same slow rate of changes we see in modern life.)

07-06-2011, 09:41 AM	#105
Undertoad Radical Centrist Join Date: Jan 2001 Location: Cottage of Prussia Posts: 31,423	Geologists have no direct evidence for mountains, either, because the process of building a mountain is slow and we've never seen it directly. All we can do is examine what happens now, slowly, to try to understand how earth could move and shape over a period of hundreds of thousands of years. We see earthquakes, we see erosion, we examine the types of rocks and how they are formed. Aha, says the geologist, these rocks could only be formed by volcanic activity; these rocks over here could only be formed by centuries of thousand pounds of pressure. This river erodes silt for centuries. And then there arises an explanation for the mountain and the valley. And voila, the explanation is proven elsewhere. The scientist looks at western coast of Africa and the eastern coast of South America, and says, hey it sure looks like those two match up perfectly, like jigsaw puzzle pieces, and we notice this in other parts of the world too; what's up with that? Well the explanation for the mountains matches the explanation for the puzzle pieces, and matches everything we see today happening really, really slowly. The independent findings match and now the evidence becomes stronger. Aha, says Darwin, these birds are almost exactly alike, but the slight differences they have are interesting. What's the explanation? Well, it turns out that all evidence, all explanations of all changes in every living being on the earth match Darwin's idea. The underlying explanation of why you have dark hair if your parents have it is genetics, and the process of genetics matches Darwin precisely. He didn't know a thing about it; but decades after he lived, it confirms everything. So now the bar is set pretty damn high. In order to explain mountains without bringing in plate tectonics, you're going to have to explain why all the geologic processes we see today happen in some other way. In order to explain why evolution didn't create every single living being on the earth, you're going to have to explain why our DNA contains a blueprint for every living being, how combining our DNA creates near-duplicate beings, how chimp DNA differs from human DNA by a very small percentage (but one that would arise in about 5 million years if genes change at the same slow rate of changes we see in modern life.)