where is evidence for flood, "Well god hid it all." "Well what evidence or reason to believe this do you have?" "Well because the bible said there was a flood."
They tend to be unfallsifiable, no evidence for them,but the excuse is still made.
Time once again to delve a bit into the philosophy of science.
1. There is evidence
for any theory, as long as that is what you are looking for. So yes, there is "evidence for" a global flood. You need to go back to the scientific literature in the late 1700s and early 1800s. Scientists were writing about evidence for a flood
2. Since you can always find "evidence for" any theory, what
really counts is evidence
against. That's what happened to the theory of a global flood: there was just too much evidence
against it. What we call "falsification". Since a global flood was falsified by 1831, it's not possible for modern day creationists to present evidence "for" it that is not explained by other hypotheses (such as local floods). They also have to deal with, literally, the mountains of evidence falsifying a flood (or a young earth, or Special Creation, etc.).
This is where the "unfalsifiable" comes in.
Now, you can always try to avoid falsification of a favorite theory by proposing ad hoc hypotheses that take care of the falsifying evidence. This is what creationists are doing with the "God hid the evidence". That's an ad hoc hypothesis to avoid falsification of a global flood.
What science has done is create rule to evaluate whether an ad hoc hypothesis can be used: the ad hoc hypothesis must be testable
independent of the theory it is trying to save. I'll give you 2 examples from the history of science (yes, the use of ad hoc hypotheses is not limited to creationists).
1. The ad hoc hypothesis of the existence of a planet beyond Uranus that would save Newtonian gravity from falsification. The orbit of Uranus, by itself, falsified Newtonian gravity. Newton's theory of gravity, however, had lots of supporting evidence. So it was proposed that there was a as-yet-unseen planet orbiting the sun beyond Uranus and its gravity was influencing Uranus' orbit. Newtonian gravity predicted where the planet should be found, but testing for the planet was done using telescopes. Telescopes use theories in optics, not Newtonian gravity. So the ad hoc hypothesis was tested independently of Newtonian gravity. As it turned out, Neptune was found.
2. The Lorentz contraction to save the aether. In the late 1800s it was known that light was a wave. Waves, it was thought, needed a medium to propagate in, like waves in water need water. So the aether was proposed. However, the theory of the aether meant that light coming from behind as the earth moved in its orbit should be slightly slower (speed of light - speed of earth) than light coming towards the earth as it moved in its orbit (speed of light + speed of earth). The Michelson-Morely experiments showed that light had the same speed no matter in which direction it was measured. Aether falsified. Lorentz tried to save the aether by the ad hoc hypothesis that the earth shrunk just a tiny bit in the direction of travel in its orbit, just enough that the light had to go that little bit of extra distance to get to the surface, thus showing the same speed as light catching up to the earth from behind. But the contraction of the earth had
no other effect than to make light speed measurements come out as they did. It could not be tested independently of the aether. So the aether remained falsified and was not saved by the ad hoc hypothesis.
They create random scenario's that have no evidence or reason to accept them with evolution and old age earth and such, except that what they are trying to refute contradicts their opinions on the bible.
My question is....does anyone think people are fooled by all this? ... but the creationist says god embeded the earth to look older, well I'm convinced of creationsim."
This particular ad hoc hypothesis has no other effect than saving young earth creationism. Ironically, the rebuttal to this argument does not come from science. From the pov of science, yes, God could have done this.
The rebuttal comes from
religion. A god that did this would be deceiving us. There is no reason that the earth, if it was really young, could not look young. So by making the earth
look old when it is really young, God is lying to us. God as a liar is unacceptable to Christianity. In trying to save young earth, creationists disprove God.
At this point, you can then ask: what are creationists really trying to save with this argument, since it isn't God. Well, creationists are really trying to save their literal interpretation of the Bible. And here we have another religious problem: creationists rank their interpretation of the Bible above God. From the point of view of Christianity, creationists have made a false idol that they worship. They are trying to save this false idol.
The Christian response is, of course,
get rid of the false idol.
