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scott_jorgenson
Registered Member
Date Joined Dec 2002
Total Posts : 271
| Posted 2/3/2003 7:50 AM (GMT -6) |   | Sean,
Regarding:
quote:
Keep in mind that some of the trees still match closely and are far apart from each other in the layers, this being said, dendrochronology is a questionable field that is still being looked into. This is the consensus of many. So on this issue I acquiesce. And, until further study remove it from my arsenal. Mind you, the argument put forth for the rapid laying down of the layers is still intact, considering my lengthy post, but Arct’s work should not be cited as “proof.”
Well, in fact, as far as I could discover, the trees were not far apart stratigraphically from one another at all. As I earlier related, those in the 1979 study were within 3 consecutive layers, while those in the 1991 study were within 23 vertical feet (unfortunately I don't recall reading anywhere how many feet in 1979, or layers in 1991, each measure corresponds to).
Since the mainstream model for Specimen Ridge concludes that the formation consists of both in-situ forests and transported debris, preserved by successive local ashfall, mudflow and flood events; and since known flood events can easily produce layering several meters thick and recur repeatedly over a short time; it is thus entirely consistent with the mainstream model that whatever genuine matches Arct has found are due to such local events. (Bear in mind: it is a misunderstanding of mainstream geology to believe that it only ever makes use of purely uniformitarian explanations; local catastrophic events spiking uniformitarian processes have been a part of mainstream geology since its beginning in the late 1700's and early 1800's. The mainstream's view of Specimen Ridge is no exception - though the emphasis on local flooding and transport of trees at the ridge seems to have been a more-recent development than the recognition of in-situ burial.)
Now, I am not saying that Arct's findings themselves validate this mainstream view (of repeated combinations of in-situ burial and transport). As you know, there is very much more other data, instead of these tree rings, that leads mainstream geology to that conclusion, and which is contended by young-earth creationists with their alternate interpretations. You've posted much of that. But I am saying that if the mainstream view is reasonable in its evaluation of that other data - something I've not taken up in this thread, maintaining my focus on the tree rings issue - it is in no way threatened by any genuine matches of Arct's, because it can explain them too.
So although I would agree it is a strong argument that the alleged matches are shaky, I think it also needs to be recognized that they really wouldn't be an effective argument against the mainstream view anyway. That argument would rise-or-fall on other grounds.
In any case, I thank you for your gracious statement here. I can't take any credit for the "quality" of my posts though; I may have put together a good argument, but all I really did is report on what facts are already out there for us all to discover, by drilling down in detail on various creationist claims. I think at the beginning of this tree-ring discussion, I said I was picking at random one of the claims you posted, in order to use it as an illustration of how, in general, I've found creationist claims to shrink or even crumble under the limelight. And I did pick the tree-ring claim at random as far as its merits go - the reason it leapt out at me was simply because I hadn't heard it before and was intrigued - and besides it was in Yellowstone (as a nature photographer I'm a great national park fan, so that caught my attention).
Now, I know you think I'm generalizing too much here. But isn't it strange - isn't it coincidental - that the one thing I'd happen to pick out of your posts, just by chance, happens to be the one weak arrow in the creationist quiver? Isn't it more likely that a whole lot of those claims would similarly get taken-apart in detail if diligently examined? In fact, that's been my experience - which is why I now say to myself, "well what did you expect - did you really expect the vast majority of experts to have not fairly and diligently checked things out?" And that brings me back to where I started in this thread, on the consensus of science, and so that's where I'll leave it.
Best regards,
Scott
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scott_jorgenson
Registered Member
Date Joined Dec 2002
Total Posts : 271
| Posted 2/3/2003 8:05 AM (GMT -6) | | Sean,
Oops - in my above post, I forgot to respond to this :-)
quote:
P.S. Would you like me to sum up the Technical Journal (TJ) articles when I get them? The TJ is a journal where creationists and intelligent design scientists can publish for the purpose of peer-reviewing. Most of the scientists I listed (a large list), if publishing a technical paper on these types of matters would do so here. The articles on dendrochronology that would bolster your case are in the ones coming to me.
Well, I think I can guess what those papers will say. They will deconstruct dendrochronological cross-dating (the techniques used to find tree ring matches), thereby inadvertently casting doubt on Arct's findings too. And why will they deconstruct in that way? Because cross-dating, if generally valid as a technique, can also be used to establish a bristlecone pine history in the White Mountains of California going back without interruption or catastrophe for almost 10,000 years. Since Noah's Flood was supposedly only about half that long ago - and in fact the creation itself was supposedly barely that long ago - young earthers must, a-priori, play triage and dispute cross-dating, even at the expense of Arct. So I can guess at what's coming in those papers :-)
But if the papers have anything specifically to say about cross-dating at Specimen Ridge - ie what we've been talking about most recently here - or if I'm wrong in my guess above - then sure, I'd be interested. You can shoot your summary to me in email.
Best regards,
Scott
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SeanG
Registered Member
Date Joined Dec 2002
Total Posts : 278
| Posted 2/5/2003 5:34 PM (GMT -6) | | It isn’t that the creationist “quiver” is any less full or empty that the evolutionist. However, Specimen Ridge is a prime example that many, many evidences combine together to show that the trees were deposited there (refer to link in above posts). Out of the fourteen trees studied, Arct pointed to ten matching… my point on the subjectivity on the matter stands as this, and this is not deconstruction in any sense of the word. The trees matched in the slowing down in growth and speeding up in growth. So one year shows that the percentage of growth sped up, but sped up in different percentages. As I got to thinking, even if trees from the same forest would show this, depending on the topography – quick rises or dips in the surrounding area – water could be funneled to one area [or tree] of the forest more so than the other area [or tree]. Don’t misunderstand me; I still see a correlation between the tree growth percentages (and I feel the link you gave with the actual numbers bolsters my case) – i.e., a slowing and speeding up of the rate of growth. What I am saying is, that without knowing the original position of the trees on the forest floor, I would have no way of knowing whether one tree had access to more water than the other due to a change in the forest floor allowing more water to be corralled to it. Alternatively, I do not know if a clearing in the forest allowed more sunlight, or less sunlight to reach a particular tree or not. These factors – which I finally came to realize in meditating on it – play a big part in actually being able to connect the trees ultimately. And it is these precise facts that one would have to know in order to make any “for-sure” statements about the tree rings.
As far as the quiver goes... all I have to point to are the many examples of human remains and artifacts in layers where they aren’t supposed to be. This being said, all the evidence I gave together for specimen ridge stands as proof for the quick depositing of the forest there.
Quickly, I was talking to a pro-death (pro-choice) mother of a friend, and she pointed me to an on-line newsletter from NOW (National Organization of Women). I made mention that she might want to read the wonderful book by a pro-choice lesbian entitled, The New Thought Police: Inside the Left’s Assault on Free Speech and Free Minds. the author, Tammy Bruce, was the former president of the Los Angeles chapter of NOW, and a was a member of NOW’s board of directors. She speaks of NOW in her book as being hurtful to the feminist movement, and likened the modern left to fascists.
The interesting thing she said though, and this is what I want you to focus in on, is that pro-choice groups don’t participate in, nor do they allow discussion or debate of the matter. They simply say that it is law, or that it is constitutional, and leave it at that. This, she says, has stifled the pro-choice movement, because the pro-life supporters have gathered logical and convincing arguments for their position, while the pro-choicers haven’t responded to, nor can they. This is almost the case with evolution. Without good, healthy, and logical discussion of the many aspects of this debate, the side who simply writes off creation as “not attested to by the masses,” or, “religion, and not science,” are putting themselves in a position of losing valuable ground in an important debate.
So I would invite you to stay inclined to join in, as I thoroughly enjoyed the conversation with you… somewhat. 
Much Thought
SeanG!"Evolution is the substance of fossils hoped for, the evidence of links not seen."
“The problem with creation is not that it has been tried and found wanting, but that it has been found difficult, and left untried.”
Edited by - SeanG on 02/05/2003 10:40:08 PM | | Back to Top | | |
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scott_jorgenson
Registered Member
Date Joined Dec 2002
Total Posts : 271
| Posted 2/6/2003 11:51 AM (GMT -6) | | Sean,
To briefly respond to your main points:
quote:
...Specimen Ridge is a prime example that many, many evidences combine together to show that the trees were deposited there (refer to link in above posts).
The more-reasonable interpretation, currently endorsed by mainstream science, is that some of the trees were transported, and some were in-situ. The Coffin links you posted provide accepted evidence of the former (though over-generalizing across the whole formation on that insufficient basis), and neglect or misinterpret evidence of the latter. I've mentioned this before; see Keith Littleton's numerous talk.origins posts for more information (I gave a sample URL in a previous post here).
This is the last I'll say on Coffin's stuff in this thread, since it is off the detailed topic of Specimen Ridge dendrochronology. That is the topic I chose at random to stick to, so as to not over-extend my involvement here. (I know you'd like to see me continue to keep involved; see below on that.)
quote:
The trees matched in the slowing down in growth and speeding up in growth. So one year shows that the percentage of growth sped up, but sped up in different percentages.
No they don't - at least not across all the 8 specimens for which Morton provided numbers (at the URL I gave - here it is again: http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=angnba%24j90%241%40knossos.btinternet.com). In an earlier post I gave some examples; here are others, focusing just on the 6 of those 8 specimens for which Morton provided measurements for all 5 rings (for the other 2 he only provided measurements for 4 rings - which, and why, I don't know, so I'll ignore them). Those 6 specimens were YSC001, YSC002, YSC006, YSC007, YSC009, and YSC010.
Relative to Y1 (year 1, ie ring 1):
- In Y2:
- all 6 show ~ better growth
- In Y3:
- YSC001,6,7,10 show ~ better growth
- YSC002,9 show ~ no better or worse growth
- In Y4:
- YSC001 shows ~ better growth
- YSC007 shows ~ no better or worse growth
- YSC002,6,9,10 show ~ worse growth
- In Y5:
- YSC001,7 show ~ better growth
- YSC002,6,9,10 show ~ worse growth
So only in 2 of the rings (Y1 and Y2) is there good correlation across all 6 specimens. The remaining rings show scatter and thus poor correlation across all 6, especially in Y4 and Y5. Across all 5 years, though, there are indeed some pairings that are consistently correlated:
A. YSC002 and YSC009
B. YSC006 and YSC010
However A. and B. are not consistently correlated with one another, nor are the "stragglers" YSC001 and YSC007 consistently correlated with anything (although they come close to correlating with one another: only Y4 is not correlated between YSC001 and YSC007). So at best there are 2 correlating pairs A. and B., and maybe even a 3rd (C. YSC001 and YSC007 which in any case doesn't correlate with A. or B.) if we're feeling really generous. This is certainly not corelation across all 6 of the specimens for all 5 years.
And with all of the trees coming from just a few consecutive strata, the correlated pairs could come from the same or nearby strata and thus be explained by the mainstream view anyway. The young-earth flood creationist view can only be supported by good consistent correlation across many years in many specimens from widely-separated strata - something Arct himself does not claim.
And in any case, 5 years is simply too short a sample to determine good correlation anyway. Sequences of 50 or 100 years or more are what are required - precisely because of the kinds of periodic stochastic randomness for which you give an example below:
quote:
What I am saying is, that without knowing the original position of the trees on the forest floor, I would have no way of knowing whether one tree had access to more water than the other due to a change in the forest floor allowing more water to be corralled to it. Alternatively, I do not know if a clearing in the forest allowed more sunlight, or less sunlight to reach a particular tree or not. These factors – which I finally came to realize in meditating on it – play a big part in actually being able to connect the trees ultimately. And it is these precise facts that one would have to know in order to make any “for-sure” statements about the tree rings.
That is certainly correct for such a short signature (5 rings), and is precisely why mainstream dendrochronology looks for, and successfully finds, much longer matches in other contexts (eg the White Mountains).
In comparison to Arct's meager 5 rings, for example, see here for a 20-odd ring sample of an even longer, consistent year-by-year correlation between 2 trunks (found being used as logs in an Anasazi structure): http://www.bemidjistate.edu/Science/metro/betataki.gif (see http://www.bemidjistate.edu/Science/metro/basic_treering.htm for accompanying text). That's the kind of match that really merits credence, relative to Arct's stuff. Its the kind of match that Ammons and Fritz found between 2 specimens in the same layer of Specimen Ridge (perfectly consistent with the mainstream view).
And so I think the case is pretty much closed on this Specimen Ridge tree-ring topic. I'll say no more.
quote:
As far as the quiver goes... all I have to point to are the many examples of human remains and artifacts in layers where they aren’t supposed to be.
Generalizing again, in my experience all such claims crumble similarly. But I've said that before too, so enough.
Finally:
quote:
This is almost the case with evolution. Without good, healthy, and logical discussion of the many aspects of this debate, the side who simply writes off creation as “not attested to by the masses,” or, “religion, and not science,” are putting themselves in a position of losing valuable ground in an important debate.
So I would invite you to stay inclined to join in, as I thoroughly enjoyed the conversation with you… somewhat.
Well, thanks, but I just don't know that its the right thing for me at this time in my life. I've been through this for years and settled my own mind; there are many other things I could and should be doing with my time (just this Specimen Ridge tree-ring debate cost me some 6-8 hours of free time to investigate); and there are many other qualified people out there who do still have the inclination. I'll continue lurking and keeping an eye out, but I can make no commitments.
Best regards to you, in Christ,
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