One of the curious aspects of this whole effort by the Flood theorists is that in essence these theists have conceded that Secularism and Scientific Objectivism has won the field of discourse. These folks recognize that as long as they invoke deity and primo genitor as the source of their conclusions, they will have little to no credibility in comparison to the conclusions drawn through secular objectivism (aka science).

So this journal takes on as many of the trappings of secular objectivism that it can muster without having to surrender its theological foundations. In essence it attempts to be a wolf in sheep's clothing. As BenK has noted elsewhere, many of the practices adopted by this journal have parallels in the Scientific community:

• Self-recommendation of a reviewer pool
• Journal guidance for content on acceptable topics and approaches

But the key here is PARALLELS.

• In esoteric fields, the pool of qualified reviewers is often small and hard to find. A recommendation of a pool of reviewers then is the STARTING point for the review of a paper, not the be-all and end-all. Whereas it is pretty clear that this Answers Research Journal has no intention of actually vetting the paper from a null hypothesis perspective. Even the name of the journal is misleading.
• Guidance of acceptable topics makes sense if you are seeking to limit the scope of the paper - be it because the subject matter is otherwise too broad (genetics) or because you wish to target a particular audience (Human Genetics Counselors). But as others have pointed out, that is not the case here. Here the guidance is on the CONCLUSIONS that papers must reach, rather than actual subject matter or methodology.

These sort of parallel guises are very much akin to what we have seen with the advent of so called Intelligent Design "Theory". Like ID, this uses some of the trappings of science aka secular objectivism to create the illusion of proof that something exists beyond the secular. But trappings are not substance anymore than a hypothesis is equivilent to Scientific Theory

Hmm. I'm not sure that the ARJ people 'couldn't' put together a research paper that follows the laws of null hypotheses, etc, as long as they aren't testing the fundamental assumptions they have laid out for their journal. That is, they could test null hypotheses about how fast the flood waters flowed, with a null hypothesis that the flood waters were absolutely still... and all the while presume that there were flood waters, leaving that completely untested. This could be science. It could even be considered skillful science. It might also be meaningless science,... but that's a different problem, in its own way.

You see similar things in regular science, by the way, where people make assumptions and work within them, only later to realize that they misinterpreted everything. Arguments, for example, about how these two species compete, and measuring their relative competitiveness, only to find that they never interact in nature.

I think it should not be called science when it is based on basic assumptions that are known to be flawed from the beginning.

Hmm...

In the issue that's really important, each camp has the other camp's hypothesis as their null hypothesis (there are only two ways animals could have come to exist: they were created de novo, or they "grew" organically--i.e., evolved from much simpler forms). Which is why MOST (from both camps) see evolution as DISPROVING religious belief (rather than a fact that's disengaged from belief).

The null hypothesis of evolutionists is more interesting: that the trait did NOT derive from ancestors. The null hypothesis of creationists is VERY difficult to reject: that the trait evolved.

....which is why ID certainly has its work cut out for it! I think they'll have to find microscopic serial numbers etched on each structure (ala Blade Runner).

Creationists can have an easy time of it only when their data is OBVIOUS--as it used to be 500 years ago: each gives rise to its own kind. Their null hypothesis is, well, impossible to reject today.

By the way, a REALLY nice rejection of the human evolutionists null hypothesis regarding chromosome number is the relatively recent mapping of the region of internal telomere-like sequences and second centromere area of our chromosome 2.

Sure they COULD. But they won't. Sure they will incorporate that sort of secular objectivism within some of their papers, but each paper will reach beyond that sort of structured null hypothesis analysis. You and I well know this will happen.

Why? Because they "BELIEVE" and while belief is a good thing, belief absent a commitment to intellectual rigor (and they have no such commitment) is nothing more than a fairy tale.

Sure there are "scientists" throughout history who advanced knowledge by "believing" and persevering. But they are the few lucky ones (like plate tectonics) in the face of thousands if not millions of "believers" who's visitations to Lourdes etc. are just a way for some hierarchy members to make $$$

So on this specific issue you are beyond my current depth of understanding to adequately evaluate your assertion (I'm more of a physics geek). So I dunno if your point really is the proper null hypothesis or not..

So if I may digress into my area of better knowledge, this journal also requires a premise of "young universe" which essentially rejects carbon dating. Now the null hypothesis on Carbon Dating is that EITHER

1. The decay physics of 14C into 14 is wrong
2. The creation mechanism for 14C is wrong
3. The cosmic ray activity is not steady and has dramatically increased recently so that we assume lower levels of 14C as being older than they are.

Well #1 means that all the work at CERN and other sub-atomic labs that is predictive, would not work becuase the decay physics are consistent (well you could argue that decay physics for 14C are different than for anything else but the Law of Parsimony gets you there).

#3 would also require that the measurable side effects of increased cosmic ray activity be visible in other long-term historic core samples. And we don't see that.

So that leaves the idea that the understanding of atmospheric chemsitry and physics is wrong. Some criticisms have been leveled in this area, but not of the magnitude of impact that is required for the Flood hypothesis to have any support.

So this journal - to have any objective validity, has to first address the whole notion of a "young earth". And I doubt it ever will even try.

In simple, conversational terms, the "null" hypothesis is an hypothesis that asserts that the cause of the phenomenon posited by the "alternative" hypothesis is NOT the alternative hypothesis. REJECTING the null hypothesis is equivalent to proving a falsehood. In the "real" (or statistical) world it is much easier to prove something FALSE than to prove it true (in the statistical world it is IMPOSSIBLE to prove anything of interest as TRUE). If the null hypothesis and alternative hypothesis are exhaustive and mutually exclusive, then proving the null hypothesis FALSE is equivalent to proving the althernative hypothesis TRUE.

Specifically, if one wanted to hypothesize that some geologic feature was a result of a "young" earth, he would have to demonstrate evidence to REJECT the hypothesis that the feature could result from an "old" earth. The earth is either YOUNG or OLD, and cannot be both or neither. To prove it is NOT old is equivalent to proving that it IS young.

This is where what you mention about C14 dating comes in: there is SO MUCH evidence for the "old" earth hypothesis, that any hypothesis that would be testable as a "young" earth hypothesis would probably have to contain within it "some" aspect that could overthrow almost ALL geologic evidences of an old earth, from centuries of study--VERY unlikely.

One hypothesis that COULD do that would be: god made lots of geologic features APPEAR to result from an "old" earth in order to test the faith of his human creatures. Problem is, such an hypothesis would itself be almost IMPOSSIBLE to demonstrate, because ITS null hypothesis would be almost impossible to reject: geologic features result from natural processes.

So, the fundamental null hypothesis required to be rejected, of ANY and ALL ID science, would have to be: The feature/process/trait under description arose from a natural process. Such a null hypothesis is VERY difficult to reject; unless, as I said, we found micro-etched serial numbers on animal structures--which, interestingly, is SIMILAR to the example often given in popular discussions of ID about writing in the sand being of "obvious" intelligent origin. You really would need evidence approximately that blatant to reject the ID null hypothesis that features of the natural world arose naturally.

The null hypothesis is only part of the scientific method. One of the other key components is the principle of The Law of Parsimony also known as Occam's Razor. Essentially this says that the least complicated explanation that encompasses all observable (objectivist) phenomenon is the correct one.

For example, if an apple falls from a tree and hits the ground, the simplest explanation is that there is some attractive force between the two objects, not that there is an invisble, intangible and non-corporeal angel that is nevertheless capable of manifesting the physical influence of moving the apple from the tree to the ground.

ID tries to use Occam's Razor as a disproof of natural selection, arguing that the mathematical probality of the chemical reactions associated with dna driven life are improbable. But of course they fail to take into account things like emergent properties and things like protein folding and prions.

So this is where a 'journal' like this one causes such problems

That's a new one! I've never heard of a creationist claiming Occan's Razor supported his side, since he would be obliged to demonstrate WHERE the "I" in ID came from--a VERY complex challenge.

In fact, the really "high level" ID proponents (yes, it's an oxymoron) are not young-earth creationists or even anti-evolution (if you listen to them when they're pushed). They like to call themselves anti-Darwinists, and for a specific reason: They wish to reject Natural Selection as the "designing" force of evolution. It's really there and nowhere else that they would make their "final stand."

They would say that evolution has proceeded over hundreds of millions of years by gentle nudges of an intelligent designer--which is mistakenly seen as the action of natural selection by Darwinists. They don't particularly like to ADMIT that so directly--instead preferring to ATTACK natural selection as "insufficient" generally--because that would be a VERY difficult thing to demonstrate.

One big hurdle for them is, of course, Occam's Razor, which would automatically exclude supernatural causes for events--unless there was BLATANT evidence (which WOULD then make it the "simplest" explanation).

Yeah "irreducible complexity" is the way that IDers argue Occam's Razor. Of course that ignores the fairly straightforward path from Prion to RNA virus to Virus with a protein shell to a virus that gets some protoplasm between its shell and RNA core....

And the reason the IDers go the "gentle nudges" route is that it is the easiest to assert without any major disconnect from observable fact. But of course it still fails the Zombie Philosophy test.

But it can be persuasive to those who do not understand the processes of science - which is why I keep harping on the Null Hypothesis approach. Most people do not understand that this is the crucial difference as to what makes something a "scientific theory". That it is the inability to prove the OPPOSITE of the hypothesis, rather than the "interpretation of all the evidence" that makes something "a theory" and "proven".

When the founder of the Creationism mueseum was interviewed, that mistake/misdirection/lie was what he used to invoke the mantle of "academic research" over his effort.

DAmn degs...i'm impressed! I may not agree with you alot of the time but this time you have hit the nail on the head. BRAVO!

Unfortunately, people have gone round and round about which assumptions are flawed and which aren't.

I think you'd agree that Descartes was a brilliant scientist, but even he was ready to consider the assumption that the entire world was an illusion created by his own mind. And he could do experiments and such within that assumption; admittedly limited experiments, but it demonstrates my point.

I guess degsme would have had him fired... but since he didn't have a job and instead did science on the side for fun, perhaps degsme would want him beheaded? How very republican of degsme... =P

well, you and I both have little faith in them. But at least we both now acknowledge the possibility that they could do something 'scientific' in their sandbox.

Actually, if an apple falls from a tree and hits the ground, the simplest explanation is that the tree threw it... that the tree exerted a force on the apple somehow overcoming its state of inertia. And that's only true if we already have observed that bodies in motion remain in motion/at rest remain at rest absent outside forces.

Possibly the next best assumption would be that apples are somehow magnetic and are drawn to the magnetism of the earth. After all... how often do you see apples attracted to the tree trunk?

Positing the invisible force of gravity between all pairs of objects is a mindbogglingly difficult hypothesis only made necessary by vast numbers of other equally compelling observations, and eventually very fine measurements that show that all objects, not just the planets, produce these forces.

You chose poorly if you wanted to demonstrate occam's razor - which isn't as big a force in practical science as you appear to believe. Sure, it looms large, in the background - but most people work within such complex webs of interconnecting hypotheses and knowledge that null hypotheses, occam's razor... they only apply to the smallest of problems.