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The biggest evidence of the Flood? The world ocean.

Idolater

"Matthew 16:18-19" Dispensationalist (Catholic) χρ
Sedimentary rock was made during the Flood, no? Is that not a H.P.T. claim?
In fact it's also a claim of Catastrophic Plate Tectonics, which is a competing Flood theory to H.P.T. As far as I understand, both these Christian, Biblically based Flood theories suffer from the same "Heat problem", which means that in order for all the sedimentary rock that we see today (for example all the layers in the Grand Canyon are all sedimentary rock) to have all formed during the Flood, the heat released during sedimentary rock formation would be too much and released too quickly for life to persist on the Earth while all that rock formed.

So that's either a plausible defeater (which doesn't mean a theory is defeated, if there exists a defeater for it; a defeater is something that defeats a theory if and only if it itself is not defeated, through some other explanation¹), or it's not, and I'm fine with whichever, I just wanted to know whether it was a plausible defeater, hopefully from a Ph.D. geologist, just so I can get a second opinion on the matter, whether the quote-unquote "Heat problem" is plausible, or not. It appears to have high initial plausibility, which is why I'd like a second opinion, from a doctor of geology, or maybe a doctor of materials science, or something like that.

Just a second opinion, that's all I'm looking for. Is it plausible that the formation of all the Earth's sedimentary rock all at once, would be too hot to sustain life? I just want to know that, and it doesn't have anything to do with a butane torch, not as far as I can tell.


¹ - iow it can still be a defeater, even if in the end it doesn't obtain. Like there is no defeater for Descartes' claim to exist for example, but there is for solipsism, because no retort defeats Descartes' Cogito, but at least one defeats solipsism (viz. Descartes' Cogito ergo sum), if it obtains, again for example.
For another example the problem of evil is a defeater for theism, and if the problem of evil obtains (iow if there is no solution), then it does defeat theism, but since there is a solution to the problem of evil, or at least, there do exist defeaters for the problem of evil, therefore the problem of evil, a defeater for theism, does not obtain, so therefore it does not refute or disprove theism; but it is a defeater of theism.​

I want to read this but I'm getting this message:

Secure Connection Failed

An error occurred during a connection to kgov.com. PR_END_OF_FILE_ERROR

Error code: PR_END_OF_FILE_ERROR

The page you are trying to view cannot be shown because the authenticity of the received data could not be verified.
Please contact the website owners to inform them of this problem.


Looks like I'm getting the same problem with this link too.
So if the answer to my question is contained in the provided links, I'm sorry but I can't access that content for whatever reason. I was able to click through to one of them but I haven't seen the other one, and the one I did see once, does not apparently answer my question here, though I have been known to miss things right in front of my face before, ngl.
 
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Idolater

"Matthew 16:18-19" Dispensationalist (Catholic) χρ
Did Mr. Brown (no deliberate disrespect intended just that "Dr. Brown" doesn't really mean anything ...
It doesn't mean anything in the same way that calling the late Jack Welch "Dr. Welch" doesn't mean anything, when Welch is writing about business and management and leadership. He's not a social theorist, and there's no such thing as a Ph.D. in leadership, so referring to him as "Dr." just because he's a Ph.D. in chemical engineering, doesn't make any sense. And nobody does that. Jack Welch was always called Jack Welch or Welch or Jack, but never Dr. Welch, even though he was a Ph.D. engineer. He wasn't writing about dropwise condensation, he was writing about business and leadership.

So I am giving Dr. Walt Brown the same respect that the whole World gave Dr. Jack Welch when he's not talking about engineering. He's just Jack Welch. The Dr. part doesn't mean anything in this context, and can only serve to distract or mislead, and to what end and for what purpose?
 

Derf

Well-known member
It doesn't mean anything in the same way that calling the late Jack Welch "Dr. Welch" doesn't mean anything, when Welch is writing about business and management and leadership. He's not a social theorist, and there's no such thing as a Ph.D. in leadership, so referring to him as "Dr." just because he's a Ph.D. in chemical engineering, doesn't make any sense. And nobody does that. Jack Welch was always called Jack Welch or Welch or Jack, but never Dr. Welch, even though he was a Ph.D. engineer. He wasn't writing about dropwise condensation, he was writing about business and leadership.

So I am giving Dr. Walt Brown the same respect that the whole World gave Dr. Jack Welch when he's not talking about engineering. He's just Jack Welch. The Dr. part doesn't mean anything in this context, and can only serve to distract or mislead, and to what end and for what purpose?
Seems your "Mr." Post was distracting.
 

Derf

Well-known member
Sorry you disagree.
So, you are making a particular point about the term doctor, in an attempt to express your feeling that Brown's expertise is in some other field than the one he is writing in, and you don't think that's "disparaging?" One of us needs to go look up the word again, apparently.
 

Idolater

"Matthew 16:18-19" Dispensationalist (Catholic) χρ
So, you are making a particular point about the term doctor, in an attempt to express your feeling that Brown's expertise is in some other field than the one he is writing in, and you don't think that's "disparaging?" One of us needs to go look up the word again, apparently.
I set out plainly the case of "Dr." Jack Welch. If you disagree that it's a decent parallel, again; sorry you disagree.
 

Derf

Well-known member
I set out plainly the case of "Dr." Jack Welch. If you disagree that it's a decent parallel, again; sorry you disagree.
I don't see how it is a parallel. Mechanical engineering is intimately related to pressures of water in tightly closed containers, don't you think?
 

Idolater

"Matthew 16:18-19" Dispensationalist (Catholic) χρ
I don't see how it is a parallel. Mechanical engineering is intimately related to pressures of water in tightly closed containers, don't you think?
It would be nice for a mechanical (or chemical) engineer to work together with a geologist to determine what might happen if super critical mineral water, contained by a miles thick layer of rock, is suddenly released through a rupture, yes. And it also would be nice to get a second opinion on such a thing too. No?
 

Derf

Well-known member
It would be nice for a mechanical (or chemical) engineer to work together with a geologist to determine what might happen if super critical mineral water, contained by a miles thick layer of rock, is suddenly released through a rupture, yes. And it also would be nice to get a second opinion on such a thing too. No?
Sure, that would be nice. But doctors who don't require you to get a second opinion are still called "doctor", aren't they?
 

Idolater

"Matthew 16:18-19" Dispensationalist (Catholic) χρ
Sure, that would be nice. But doctors who don't require you to get a second opinion are still called "doctor", aren't they?
Few sought a second opinion if (Dr.) Jack Welch shared his opinion on business and management with them. Although certainly some did. But they wouldn't seek a second opinion, from someone who wasn't a business and leadership expert, from someone whose opinion carried far less weight than Jack Welch's opinion did, even though Jack Welch wasn't called "doctor". You would seek a second opinion from someone who was an expert in business and management, like (Dr.) Jack Welch. I still say that's at least a good geologist-engineer team, if not just a geologist, and not merely another engineer, in our case. We are talking about rock, and geology is the science of rock (maybe materials science; but certainly you wouldn't say that the science of rock is mechanical engineering). I mean, I'm not going to ask a doctor of English literature for a second opinion on the H.P.T. So you can argue that another Ph.D. mechanical engineer counts as a good second opinion, but I'm still wanting to get a Ph.D. geologist to weigh in, especially if the Ph.D. geologist holds an opinion that is fairly uniformly held by all other Ph.D. geologists. This way, we would have a second opinion from a certainly relavent authority.
 

Idolater

"Matthew 16:18-19" Dispensationalist (Catholic) χρ
rn we're arguing about the discipline of the author's area of expertise. What we need to know is, what is the discipline of the doctors we're going to go get a second opinion from?

Not literature doctors (iow, philosophers), but science and perhaps engineering (I'm not sold engineers have any business in the discussion at all frankly, but as the author of the H.P.T., because engineer Walt Brown is an innovator and pioneer, his argument does have business in the discussion, and certainly). But mechanical engineering is not the science of the Earth itself as an object and as a physical mechanical system. The Earth is particularly studied by geologists, where GEO- literally means the Earth. The H.P.T., authored by a non-geologist, concerns the science of the Earth. Being a rocky planet, this is also the science of rock. So therefore, even though the engineer Walt Brown's legitimate area of legitimate expertise is on the periphery of the area of expertise which his theory applies to, the second opinions we most covet are those in that area of expertise, and not necessarily in the same area of expertise as Walt Brown.

Mechanical engineering concerns forces and matter, just like geology, but geology specializes the principles of mechanical engineering and science into the focus of the Earth in particular. Just because you're an engineer, doesn't mean you're going to be able to edit genes perfectly using Crisper, or even program a computer necessarily, but you've got an engineer's intuition or sense, the most distinctive feature of all engineers, that's common to all engineers, no matter the discipline. There's nothing wrong with any engineer tackling a physical mystery to try to understand it better, even if the area of expertise is on the periphery of the engineer's focus of study and knowledge. But the second opinions on that engineer's work, ought to be from a geologist, who is a mechanical engineer focused on the mechanical engineering of the Earth, but especially it would be nice if all the doctors largely agreed on the matter as well, that way it's easy to know how serious the second opinion is.

¹It doesn't mean that they're all right, if they're all in agreement; the doctors. That's an appeal to populism, which is a fallacy. They could all be wrong. It does mean that if all the geologists agree, and they are all wrong, that the second opinion is serious. (If they all agree and they are all right, this is what we expect from second opinions of other doctors. They all should agree with the first doctor, and they all should be right. That's the ideal, perfect situation, in terms of epistemology, the science of knowledge and certainty. I am not a doctor and I'm never going to be one, but that doesn't mean I just have no view in matters of medicine. My view is whatever my doctor tells me, especially if all the second opinions I get all confirm and corroborate my doctor. I don't have a more reliable heuristic for determining the truth of a medical matter, since I am not a doctor, and shall never become a doctor either. I still need to know medical things, and I can, since any doctor's opinion which is corroborated and confirmed by literally all the other doctors when you seek a second opinion, has high initial plausibility, meaning that if there are no defeaters for it, it becomes "foundational", which means self-evident, requiring no further argument to establish. The highest form of certainty, in terms of epistemology, in the top echelon along with tautologies and math. Foundational. H.P.T. has the potential to be foundational. Don't all you all want to know if it is? High initial plausibility and no defeaters. Foundational.

But even if it's not foundational, if all the doctors all agree on a theory, then there is high initial plausibility that some of the theories they all agree on are actually true, so it would be unsurprising if such a theory is actually true. It's not a strong argument until you try to identify legitimate defeaters.

The initial plausibility of any theory rises, the more questions are answered by the theory. If the defeaters for the theory are hard to understand for non-doctors, then there could be considerable confusion among them as to why not all doctors support a measure or therapy or treatment, which has high initial plausibility among non-doctors (but not among doctors). They might start getting conspiratorial (such as that they're working for Big Pharma for example). The fact is they don't understand the defeaters, they either think defeaters means a theory is defeated (it doesn't), or they think the defeaters are part of a conspiracy, or class warfare. But defeaters simply must be answered. (The ideal is that all defeaters are swallowed up and subsumed by the theory itself, which is when there are no defeaters anymore, which means the theory is obviously true, foundational, and self-evident. Think, "We hold these truths to be self-evident".)

How do I personally know whether the H.P.T. is self-evident? It's not possible, since I'm not a geologist, or a mechanical engineer. I have to rely on my doctor, and on all the second opinions of other doctors, because I myself am not a doctor, and I'm never going to become a doctor either, so therefore I require a heuristic to help me navigate these epistemological waters. I just think I need a doctor of geology when it comes to the H.P.T. second opinion. But see above!¹ All geology Ph.D.s might all agree the H.P.T. is wrong, but that wouldn't mean the H.P.T. is wrong. It would mean the initial plausibility of the H.P.T. is low, which means the theory has to be supported with evidence, more than defend itself against defeaters. A tougher row to hoe for sure, iow, compared with Relativity and Quantum and Evolution, all of which have high initial plausibility currently, among scientists generally. If you can't prove your defeater is real, then science itself isn't going to ever change its collective mind on the Standard Model of particle physics and Evolution. If all geology Ph.D.s think the H.P.T. is wrong, then positive evidence must be documented in its support. If they don't all think it's wrong, then you can just work on answering any proposed defeaters.
 
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