posted
Okay I just from a friend that entropy is affecting the speed of light does anyone have anything to say on this? Cuz' they apparently came up with a new age of the earth of about 10,000 years, cuz' apparently light was 8x faster in king davids day so all this affects the half-life of carbon and so the earth is thus 10,000 years according to some scientists. I don't want to believe this but someone please explain this to me. Now this isn't proven but lets exhange thoughts on this.
Posts: 1567 | Registered: Oct 2004
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posted
There is a VSL (Variable Speed of Ligh) conjecture being seriously considered by at least a few reputable physicists, but the one I've read about has light being faster only in the very early stages of the universe, billions and billions of years ago.
posted
Like Dag, I'm aware of some vaguely related work in science, but as far as I can tell what you heard was pseudo-scientific hogwash.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
Based on your last two posts, Sid, it appears your friend is a very poor source of information. I would not believe anything they tell you.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
1) The speed of light has nothing to do with Carbon 14 Dating, or any other isotopic dating system.
2) Considering that we are seeing stars in the night sky that are approximately Millions of present-speed-light years away. When was the time of Solomon--5000 years ago? 3000? Lets say that every 1000 years the speed of light dropped 1/2. So 1000 years ago it was 2x present. 2000 years ago it was 4x present. 3000 years ago it was 8 times present--Solomon's time? That puts 10,000 years ago at 1,024 times the speed it is today.
Over the 1st 1000 years the light traveled from a distant star, it traveled 1,024,000 of what we call Light Years. Over the 2nd 1000 years it would have traveled 1,536,000 (not doubled the 1000 year mark because it would have slowed down because of this "Speed of light entropy effect"). Over the 3rd it would have traveld 1,792. By today it would be a total 2,047,000 light years.
The Andromeda Galaxy is 2.2 light years away, and is visible from earth. That is just outside the range of what these numbers add up to. That is the closest Galaxy we've been looking at. That means there must either be a flaw in how we measure distance, or God is playing jokes on us by putting light in the sky to make us think it came from farther away.
Posts: 11895 | Registered: Apr 2002
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quote:The Andromeda Galaxy (also known as Messier Object 31, M31, or NGC 224) is a giant spiral galaxy in the Local Group, together with the Milky Way galaxy. It is at a distance of approximately 2.9 million light years or 920 kpc, in the direction of the constellation Andromeda.
posted
The speed of light does, in fact, affect carbon-14 dating, in some fairly esoteric ways. If the speed of light changes, then alpha, the fine structure constant, also changes. Since the electromagnetic and weak interactions are unified, the Fermi constant G_F will also change. The rate of C-14 decay depends on G_F.
That said, c(King David's time) == 8c(now)? It is to laugh.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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posted
One of my teachers (private religous school) once told the class that the speed of light was slowing down, and that the speed of light was infinite in the year 4004 BC. Alas, I was young and stupid and did not have the understanding of science and statistics to know that the data weren't good and the interpretation of the data was worse. To be fair, it was an art teacher, not a science teacher.
I remember reading that there was some very slight variation in some physical constant, but it would never be enough to significantly alter the calculations of the age of the universe. Actually, does anyone know whether the age determined by WMAP would be off if c had been much larger in the past?
Posts: 3546 | Registered: Jul 2002
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posted
Alright, I finally found the thread again. However is it possible to get a... hmm... a paper or essay or something that fully disproves what my friend/accaintance is trying to say? I know I may be asking alot here, but the people I know are kinda little too smug about it. And also I don't think enough like a scientist to fully express the evidence in a convencing manner. Posts: 1567 | Registered: Oct 2004
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If someone's that credulous about utter claptrap (8x faster in the past indeed), I'd suggest avoiding them.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
When we walk into a dark room, flip a switch and the light is instantly on, it seems that light has no speed but is somehow infinite - instantly there - and that was the majority opinion of scientists and philosophers until September 1676, when Danish astronomer Olaf Roemer announced to the Paris Academie des Sciences that the anomalous behavior of the eclipse times of Jupiter's inner moon, Io, could be accounted for by a finite speed of light. 2 His work and his report split the scientific community in half, involving strong opinions and discussions for the next fifty years. It was Bradley's independent confirmation of the finite speed of light, published January 1, 1729, which finally ended the opposition.3 The speed of light was finite-incredibly fast, but finite.
The following question was: "Is the speed of light constant?" Interestingly enough, every time it was measured over the next few hundred years, it seemed to be a little slower than before. This could be explained away, as the first measurements were unbelievably rough compared to the technical accuracy later. It was not that simple, though. When the same person did the same test using the same equipment at a later period in time, the speed was slower. Not much, but slower.
These results kicked off a series of lively debates in the scientific community during the first half of the 20th century. Raymond Birge, highly respected chairman of the physics department at the University of California, Berkeley, had, from 1929 on, established himself as an arbiter of the values of atomic constants.4 The speed of light is considered an atomic constant. However Birge's recommended values for the speed of light decreased steadily until 1940, when an article written by him, entitled "The General Physical Constants, as of August 1940 with details on the velocity of light only," appeared in Reports on Progress in Physics (Vol. 8, pp.90-100, 1941). Birge began the article saying: "This paper is being written on request - and at this time on request ... a belief in any significant variability of the constants of nature is fatal to the spirit of science, as science is now understood [emphasis his]." These words, from this man, for whatever reason he wrote them, shut down the debate on the speed of light. Birge had previously recognized, as had others, that if the speed of light was changing, it was quite necessary that some of the other "constants" were also changing. This was evidently not to be allowed, whether it was true or not, and so the values for the various constants were declared and that was that. Almost. In the October 1975 issue of Scientific American (p. 120), C.L. Strong questioned whether the speed of light might change with time "as science has failed to get a consistently accurate value." It was just a ripple, but the issue had not quite disappeared.
Partly in order to quell any further doubts about the constancy of the speed of light, in October 1983 the speed of light was declared a universal constant of nature, defined as 299,792.458 kilometers per second, which is often rounded off to the measurement we are more familiar with in the West as 186,000 miles per second.
Birge's paper was published in 1941. Just a year later, Barry Setterfield was born in Australia. In 1979 he was 37 years old. That year he received a book from a friend, a book on astronomical anomalies. It was a large book, and near the end of it there was a section on the speed of light, questioning its constancy. Barry was stunned. Nothing he had read or learned in physics or astronomy had even hinted that there was a question regarding the speed of light. It was a constant, wasn't it? As he read, he learned about the measurements that had been taken years before, and the arguments that had gone on in the scientific literature, and he was fascinated. He figured he could read up on it and wrap up the question in about two weeks; it didn't quite work out that way.
Within a couple of years, one of the creationist organizations had started publishing some of Barry's findings. They were still preliminary, but there was so much more to this than he had thought. In the following years his exploration continued, and he read all the literature he could find. His work caught the attention of a senior research physicist at Stanford Research Institute International (SRI), who then asked him to submit a paper regarding his research. It was to be a white paper, or one that was for the purposes of discussion within the Institute.
Barry teamed up with Trevor Norman of Flinders University in Adelaide, and in 1987 Flinders itself published their paper, "Atomic Constants, Light, and Time." Their math department had checked it and approved it and it was published with the Stanford Research Institute logo as well. What happened next was like something out of a badly written novel. Gerald Aardsma, a man at another creationist organization, got wind of the paper and got a copy of it. Having his own ax to grind on the subject of physics, he called the heads of both Flinders and SRI and asked them if they knew that Setterfield and Norman were [gasp] creationists! SRI was undergoing a massive staff change at the time and since the paper had been published by Flinders, they disavowed it and requested their logo be taken off. Flinders University threatened Trevor Norman with his job and informed Barry Setterfield that he was no longer welcome to use any resources there but the library. Aardsma then published a paper criticizing the Norman-Setterfield statistical use of the data. His paper went out under the auspices of a respected creation institution.
Under attack by both evolutionists and creationists for their work, Norman and Setterfield found themselves writing long articles of defense, which appeared in a number of issues of creation journals. In the meantime, Lambert Dolphin, the physicist at Stanford who had originally requested the paper, teamed up with professional statistician Alan Montgomery to take the proverbial fine-tooth comb through the Norman-Setterfield paper to check the statistics used. Their defense of the paper and the statistical use of the data was then published in a scientific journal,5 and Montgomery went on to present a public defense at the 1994 International Creation Conference. Neither defense has ever been refuted in any journal or conference. Interestingly enough, later in 1987, after the Norman-Setterfield paper was published, another paper on light speed appeared, written by a Russian, V. S. Troitskii.6 Troitskii not only postulated that the speed of light had not been constant, but that light speed had originally been about 1010 times faster than now.
Since then, a multitude of papers on cosmology and the speed of light have shown up in journals and on the web. The theories abound as to what is changing, and in relation to what, and what the possible effects are. There is one person who is continuing to work with the data, however. As the storm around the 1987 report settled down, Barry Setterfield got back to work, investigating the data rather than playing around with pure theory.
Meanwhile, halfway around the world from Australia, in Arizona, a respected astronomer named William Tifft was finding something strange going on with the redshift measurements of light from distant galaxies. It had been presumed that the shift toward the red end of the spectrum of light from these distant galaxies was due to a currently expanding universe, and the measurements should be seen as gradually but smoothly increasing as one went through space. That wasn't what Tifft was finding. The measurements weren't smooth. They jumped from one plateau to another. They were quantized, or came in quantities with distinct breaks in between them.
When Tifft published his findings,7 astronomers were incredulous and dismissive. In the early 1990s in Scotland, two other astronomers decided to prove him wrong once and for all. Guthrie and Napier collected their own data and studied it. They ended up deciding Tifft was right.8 What was going on? Barry Setterfield read the material and studied the data. The universe could not be expanding if the red shift measurements were quantized. Expansion would not occur in fits and starts. So what did the red shift mean? While most others were simply denying the Tifft findings, Barry took a closer look. And it all started to make sense. The data was showing where the truth of the matter was. While many articles continued to be published regarding theoretical cosmologies, with little regard for much of the data available, Barry was more interested in the data.
Yet, his work is not referenced by any of the others. The Stanford paper is just about forgotten, if it was ever known, by the folks in mainstream physics and astronomy. However, not only are the measurements still there, but the red shift data has added much more information, making it possible to calculate the speed of light back to the first moment of creation. So Barry wrote another paper and submitted it to a standard physics journal in 1999. They did not send it to peer review but returned it immediately, saying it was not a timely subject, was of no current interest, and was not substantial enough. (It was over fifty pages long with about a hundred and fifty references to standard physics papers and texts.) So Barry resubmitted it to an astronomy journal. They sent it out to peer review and the report came back that the paper was really interesting but that it really belonged in a physics journal. So, in 2000, he sent it off to another physics journal. They refused it because they did not like one of the references Barry used: a university text on physics. They also disagreed with the model of the atom that Barry used - the standard Bohr model. In August 2001, the paper was updated and submitted to a European peer-reviewed science journal. The editor has expressed interest. We will see what will happen. In the meantime everything continues: Barry Setterfield is giving presentations in different countries, the mainstream physicists and theorists are continuing to publish all manner of theoretical ideas, and the subject of the speed of light has erupted full force back into the scientific literature.
There is a reason that Barry's work is not being referenced by mainstream scientists - or even looked at by most. If Barry is right about what the data are indicating, we are living in a very young universe. This inevitable conclusion will never be accepted by standard science. Evolution requires billions of years.
And there is a reason why the major creation organizations are holding his work at an arm's length as well: they are sinking great amounts of money into trying to prove that radiometric dating procedures are fatally flawed. According to what Barry is seeing, however, they are not basically flawed at all: there is a very good reason why such old dates keep appearing in the test results. The rate of decay of radioactive elements is directly related to the speed of light. When the speed of light was higher, decay rates were faster, and the long ages would be expected to show up. As the speed of light slowed down, so the radioactive decay rates slowed down.
By assuming today's rate of decay has been uniform, the earth and universe look extremely old. Thus, the evolutionists are happy with the time that gives for evolution and the creationists are looking for flaws in the methods used for testing for dates. But if the rates of decay for the different elements have not been the same through time, then that throws both groups off! Here was an "atomic clock" which ran according to atomic processes and, possibly, a different "dynamical" clock, the one we use everyday, which is governed by gravity - the rotation and revolution rates of the earth and moon. Could it be that these two "clocks" were not measuring time the same way? A data analysis suggested this was indeed happening. Tom Van Flandern, with a Ph.D. from Yale in astronomy, specializing in celestial mechanics, and for twenty years (1963-1983) Research Astronomer and Chief of the Celestial Mechanics Branch at the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington D.C., released the results of some tests showing that the rate of ticking of the atomic clock was measurably slowing down when compared with the "dynamical clock."9 (Tom Van Flandern was terminated from his work with that institution shortly thereafter, although his work carries a 1984 publication date.)
In recognizing this verified difference between the two different "clocks," it is important to realize that the entire dating system recognized by geology and science in general, saying that the earth is about 4.5 billion years old, and the universe somewhere around ten billion years older than that, might be thrown into total disarray. The standard science models cannot deal with that. The standard creation models cannot, at this point, deal with the fact that radiometric dating may be, for the most part, telling the truth on the atomic clock. And, meanwhile, the Hubble spacecraft keeps sending back data which keep slipping into Barry Setterfield's model as though they actually belonged there.
* * *
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Powerful Parental Controls let your child discover the best the Internet has to offer. MSN Premium: Join now and get the first two months FREE*. From: Nick Atamanchuk <cyber_dude22@hotmail.com> To: t_diddy_003@hotmail.com Subject: Speed of Light info Sent: February 2, 2005 7:43:22 PM Here is the speed of light apper i foudn for you. [Ed Note: We have been following Barry Setterfield's research on the speed of light since 1993.1 It is interesting that both evolutionists and creation scientists can be blinded by their own presuppositions...]
When we walk into a dark room, flip a switch and the light is instantly on, it seems that light has no speed but is somehow infinite - instantly there - and that was the majority opinion of scientists and philosophers until September 1676, when Danish astronomer Olaf Roemer announced to the Paris Academie des Sciences that the anomalous behavior of the eclipse times of Jupiter's inner moon, Io, could be accounted for by a finite speed of light. 2 His work and his report split the scientific community in half, involving strong opinions and discussions for the next fifty years. It was Bradley's independent confirmation of the finite speed of light, published January 1, 1729, which finally ended the opposition.3 The speed of light was finite-incredibly fast, but finite.
The following question was: "Is the speed of light constant?" Interestingly enough, every time it was measured over the next few hundred years, it seemed to be a little slower than before. This could be explained away, as the first measurements were unbelievably rough compared to the technical accuracy later. It was not that simple, though. When the same person did the same test using the same equipment at a later period in time, the speed was slower. Not much, but slower.
These results kicked off a series of lively debates in the scientific community during the first half of the 20th century. Raymond Birge, highly respected chairman of the physics department at the University of California, Berkeley, had, from 1929 on, established himself as an arbiter of the values of atomic constants.4 The speed of light is considered an atomic constant. However Birge's recommended values for the speed of light decreased steadily until 1940, when an article written by him, entitled "The General Physical Constants, as of August 1940 with details on the velocity of light only," appeared in Reports on Progress in Physics (Vol. 8, pp.90-100, 1941). Birge began the article saying: "This paper is being written on request - and at this time on request ... a belief in any significant variability of the constants of nature is fatal to the spirit of science, as science is now understood [emphasis his]." These words, from this man, for whatever reason he wrote them, shut down the debate on the speed of light. Birge had previously recognized, as had others, that if the speed of light was changing, it was quite necessary that some of the other "constants" were also changing. This was evidently not to be allowed, whether it was true or not, and so the values for the various constants were declared and that was that. Almost. In the October 1975 issue of Scientific American (p. 120), C.L. Strong questioned whether the speed of light might change with time "as science has failed to get a consistently accurate value." It was just a ripple, but the issue had not quite disappeared.
Partly in order to quell any further doubts about the constancy of the speed of light, in October 1983 the speed of light was declared a universal constant of nature, defined as 299,792.458 kilometers per second, which is often rounded off to the measurement we are more familiar with in the West as 186,000 miles per second.
Birge's paper was published in 1941. Just a year later, Barry Setterfield was born in Australia. In 1979 he was 37 years old. That year he received a book from a friend, a book on astronomical anomalies. It was a large book, and near the end of it there was a section on the speed of light, questioning its constancy. Barry was stunned. Nothing he had read or learned in physics or astronomy had even hinted that there was a question regarding the speed of light. It was a constant, wasn't it? As he read, he learned about the measurements that had been taken years before, and the arguments that had gone on in the scientific literature, and he was fascinated. He figured he could read up on it and wrap up the question in about two weeks; it didn't quite work out that way.
Within a couple of years, one of the creationist organizations had started publishing some of Barry's findings. They were still preliminary, but there was so much more to this than he had thought. In the following years his exploration continued, and he read all the literature he could find. His work caught the attention of a senior research physicist at Stanford Research Institute International (SRI), who then asked him to submit a paper regarding his research. It was to be a white paper, or one that was for the purposes of discussion within the Institute.
Barry teamed up with Trevor Norman of Flinders University in Adelaide, and in 1987 Flinders itself published their paper, "Atomic Constants, Light, and Time." Their math department had checked it and approved it and it was published with the Stanford Research Institute logo as well. What happened next was like something out of a badly written novel. Gerald Aardsma, a man at another creationist organization, got wind of the paper and got a copy of it. Having his own ax to grind on the subject of physics, he called the heads of both Flinders and SRI and asked them if they knew that Setterfield and Norman were [gasp] creationists! SRI was undergoing a massive staff change at the time and since the paper had been published by Flinders, they disavowed it and requested their logo be taken off. Flinders University threatened Trevor Norman with his job and informed Barry Setterfield that he was no longer welcome to use any resources there but the library. Aardsma then published a paper criticizing the Norman-Setterfield statistical use of the data. His paper went out under the auspices of a respected creation institution.
Under attack by both evolutionists and creationists for their work, Norman and Setterfield found themselves writing long articles of defense, which appeared in a number of issues of creation journals. In the meantime, Lambert Dolphin, the physicist at Stanford who had originally requested the paper, teamed up with professional statistician Alan Montgomery to take the proverbial fine-tooth comb through the Norman-Setterfield paper to check the statistics used. Their defense of the paper and the statistical use of the data was then published in a scientific journal,5 and Montgomery went on to present a public defense at the 1994 International Creation Conference. Neither defense has ever been refuted in any journal or conference. Interestingly enough, later in 1987, after the Norman-Setterfield paper was published, another paper on light speed appeared, written by a Russian, V. S. Troitskii.6 Troitskii not only postulated that the speed of light had not been constant, but that light speed had originally been about 1010 times faster than now.
Since then, a multitude of papers on cosmology and the speed of light have shown up in journals and on the web. The theories abound as to what is changing, and in relation to what, and what the possible effects are. There is one person who is continuing to work with the data, however. As the storm around the 1987 report settled down, Barry Setterfield got back to work, investigating the data rather than playing around with pure theory.
Meanwhile, halfway around the world from Australia, in Arizona, a respected astronomer named William Tifft was finding something strange going on with the redshift measurements of light from distant galaxies. It had been presumed that the shift toward the red end of the spectrum of light from these distant galaxies was due to a currently expanding universe, and the measurements should be seen as gradually but smoothly increasing as one went through space. That wasn't what Tifft was finding. The measurements weren't smooth. They jumped from one plateau to another. They were quantized, or came in quantities with distinct breaks in between them.
When Tifft published his findings,7 astronomers were incredulous and dismissive. In the early 1990s in Scotland, two other astronomers decided to prove him wrong once and for all. Guthrie and Napier collected their own data and studied it. They ended up deciding Tifft was right.8 What was going on? Barry Setterfield read the material and studied the data. The universe could not be expanding if the red shift measurements were quantized. Expansion would not occur in fits and starts. So what did the red shift mean? While most others were simply denying the Tifft findings, Barry took a closer look. And it all started to make sense. The data was showing where the truth of the matter was. While many articles continued to be published regarding theoretical cosmologies, with little regard for much of the data available, Barry was more interested in the data.
Yet, his work is not referenced by any of the others. The Stanford paper is just about forgotten, if it was ever known, by the folks in mainstream physics and astronomy. However, not only are the measurements still there, but the red shift data has added much more information, making it possible to calculate the speed of light back to the first moment of creation. So Barry wrote another paper and submitted it to a standard physics journal in 1999. They did not send it to peer review but returned it immediately, saying it was not a timely subject, was of no current interest, and was not substantial enough. (It was over fifty pages long with about a hundred and fifty references to standard physics papers and texts.) So Barry resubmitted it to an astronomy journal. They sent it out to peer review and the report came back that the paper was really interesting but that it really belonged in a physics journal. So, in 2000, he sent it off to another physics journal. They refused it because they did not like one of the references Barry used: a university text on physics. They also disagreed with the model of the atom that Barry used - the standard Bohr model. In August 2001, the paper was updated and submitted to a European peer-reviewed science journal. The editor has expressed interest. We will see what will happen. In the meantime everything continues: Barry Setterfield is giving presentations in different countries, the mainstream physicists and theorists are continuing to publish all manner of theoretical ideas, and the subject of the speed of light has erupted full force back into the scientific literature.
There is a reason that Barry's work is not being referenced by mainstream scientists - or even looked at by most. If Barry is right about what the data are indicating, we are living in a very young universe. This inevitable conclusion will never be accepted by standard science. Evolution requires billions of years.
And there is a reason why the major creation organizations are holding his work at an arm's length as well: they are sinking great amounts of money into trying to prove that radiometric dating procedures are fatally flawed. According to what Barry is seeing, however, they are not basically flawed at all: there is a very good reason why such old dates keep appearing in the test results. The rate of decay of radioactive elements is directly related to the speed of light. When the speed of light was higher, decay rates were faster, and the long ages would be expected to show up. As the speed of light slowed down, so the radioactive decay rates slowed down.
By assuming today's rate of decay has been uniform, the earth and universe look extremely old. Thus, the evolutionists are happy with the time that gives for evolution and the creationists are looking for flaws in the methods used for testing for dates. But if the rates of decay for the different elements have not been the same through time, then that throws both groups off! Here was an "atomic clock" which ran according to atomic processes and, possibly, a different "dynamical" clock, the one we use everyday, which is governed by gravity - the rotation and revolution rates of the earth and moon. Could it be that these two "clocks" were not measuring time the same way? A data analysis suggested this was indeed happening. Tom Van Flandern, with a Ph.D. from Yale in astronomy, specializing in celestial mechanics, and for twenty years (1963-1983) Research Astronomer and Chief of the Celestial Mechanics Branch at the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington D.C., released the results of some tests showing that the rate of ticking of the atomic clock was measurably slowing down when compared with the "dynamical clock."9 (Tom Van Flandern was terminated from his work with that institution shortly thereafter, although his work carries a 1984 publication date.)
In recognizing this verified difference between the two different "clocks," it is important to realize that the entire dating system recognized by geology and science in general, saying that the earth is about 4.5 billion years old, and the universe somewhere around ten billion years older than that, might be thrown into total disarray. The standard science models cannot deal with that. The standard creation models cannot, at this point, deal with the fact that radiometric dating may be, for the most part, telling the truth on the atomic clock. And, meanwhile, the Hubble spacecraft keeps sending back data which keep slipping into Barry Setterfield's model as though they actually belonged there.
Here we go. One of my other friends forwarded this to me. Frankly I haven't read enough of Isaac Asimov to understand some of this.
Posts: 1567 | Registered: Oct 2004
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posted
I am not a physics major and nor do I believe a word of this. However, I'm ignorant in physics and because of that I posted this inorder to become wise, by being corrected by others.
Posts: 1567 | Registered: Oct 2004
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As the fine structure constant is dependent on the speed of light, this could theoretically mean a decreasing speed of light. It could equally well not, with one of the other constants in the equation varying.
And even if they're correct beyond their wildest dreams (and this wasn't a thorough analysis, either, this was a communication suggesting an interesting area of research), the amount they think it varied might be as large as
edit: chopped off part of my post, dang it.
might be as large as (-.72 +/- .18) * 10^-5 over the last six to ten billion years. That wouldn't result in the speed of light being 8x slower in hundreds of billions of years, much less a few thousand. (source: full text article through my university, presumably NASA should have similar access, Jay).
You can do the math, Jay, and that article soundly opposes the idea of a young universe, not supporting it in any way, shape, or form.
posted
Oh, and if you look at those articles, I'd like to expand my response: they're not only claptrap, they're such obvious claptrap that anyone reading them and accepting them at face value needs their head examined.
edit to clarify: not that one should see what's wrong, immediately, but that it should be obvious the article authors are completely glossing over all the real information in favor of just citing whatever they think works. Note things like the lack of real numbers from any of the things actually resembling science.
posted
Wow, and most of those arguments for a young earth rely on such amusing conceits as "since this is the current rate it must always have been the rate!" and "lunar dust clearly lacks weight, and therefore will not collapse and increase in density like every other bit of dust in the known universe!"
I mean, seriously, if they're going to come up with "evidence" for a young universe, the least they could do is leave out the obviously-bad-to-anyone-who-paid-attention-in-high-school-science evidence.
Willful stupidity is not becoming.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
I do not think the nature of light has changed so much as the timebase by which we measure it.
Events occur faster or slower in relation to an arbitrary timebase selected by man. Unfortunately, that timebase is also part of the universe we are trying to measure. If the whole system speeds up or slows down, we will never perceive the difference.
Applying today's timebase to events that happened in the distant past is probably a mistake.
Posts: 2655 | Registered: Feb 2004
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posted
Hey Jay, the mission statement of answersingenesis.org, a site you just linked to, is as follows,
quote:Welcome to Answers in Creation, a creation science ministry believing in an inerrant Word of God and a literal interpretation of Genesis. We also believe the earth is billions of years old. We apply logic and common sense to creation science, and bring conservative Christianity and Old Earth Creationism together, without conflict.
quote:If we can't measure any difference, there is no scientific difference.
Sure, but you're talking about measuring current events with the current timebase. I'm talking about trying to measure past events with today's timebase.
We dig up an old black and white movie that was filmed 1 billion years ago, and we want to watch it. How "fast" do we play the movie?
Posts: 2655 | Registered: Feb 2004
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quote: History of AiG About 25 years ago, Dr. Carl Wieland, Ken Ham and others saw that the church in their own country, Australia, was struggling and often compromising its biblical integrity in the face of the ever-increasing attacks from those hostile to Christianity. They realized that most Christians were not equipped to provide answers to a "doubting" world in a so-called age of science.
In response to these observations, they began speaking on creation/evolution issues—equipping the church to answer the skeptics, and encouraging the body of Christ to trust in the authority of God's Word. Additionally, Dr. Wieland began publishing the magazine now called Creation (formerly Creation ex nihilo) as a way for believers to stay up-to-date on the latest issues in the creation/evolution arena (Creation magazine currently goes to subscribers in over 140 countries!). Listen as he explains further about the beginnings of AiG and the magazine in these two interviews:
The beginning of Creation magazine The beginning of Answers in Genesis Today, with offices in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, the UK and the USA, AiG ministers to the church around the world through speaking events, publications, and this website. We are also actively translating our materials and website into other languages (including Chinese, Danish, Italian, French, German, Hungarian, Japanese, Russian, Korean and Spanish).
Our message Answers in Genesis is an apologetics (i.e., Christianity-defending) ministry, dedicated to enabling Christians to defend their faith, and to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ effectively. We focus particularly on providing answers to questions surrounding the book of Genesis, as it is the most-attacked book of the Bible. We also desire to train others to develop a biblical worldview, and seek to expose the bankruptcy of evolutionary ideas, and its bedfellow, a "millions of years old" earth (and even older universe).
AiG teaches that "facts" don't speak for themselves, but must be interpreted. That is, there aren’t separate sets of "evidences" for evolution and creation—we all deal with the same evidence (we all live on the same earth, have the same fossils, observe the same animals, etc.). The difference lies in how we interpret what we study. The Bible—the "history book of the universe"—provides a reliable, eye-witness account of the beginning of all things, and can be trusted to tell the truth in all areas it touches on. Therefore, we are able to use it to help us make sense of this present world. When properly understood, the "evidence" confirms the biblical account.
quote: Answers in Genesis Mission Statement Goal: To support the Church in fulfilling its commission. And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the earth. (Matthew 28:18-20)
And he gave some apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ. (Ephesians 4:11-12)
Mission: To bring reformation by restoring the foundations of our faith which are contained in the book of Genesis.
If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do? (Psalm 11:3)
And they that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places: Thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations; and thou shalt be called, the repairer of the breach, the restorer of paths to dwell in. (Isaiah 58:12)
Strategic Plan: To provide answers from Genesis to make Jesus Christ, our Creator and Redeemer, relevant to the Church and world today.
Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created. (Revelation 4:11)
And they sung a new song, saying, Thou art worthy to take the book, and to open the seals thereof: for thou has redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation. (Revelation 5:9)
quote: Statement of Faith (A) PRIORITIES The scientific aspects of creation are important, but are secondary in importance to the proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ as Sovereign, Creator, Redeemer and Judge.
The doctrines of Creator and Creation cannot ultimately be divorced from the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
(B) BASICS The 66 books of the Bible are the written Word of God. The Bible is divinely inspired and inerrant throughout. Its assertions are factually true in all the original autographs. It is the supreme authority, not only in all matters of faith and conduct, but in everything it teaches. Its authority is not limited to spiritual, religious or redemptive themes but includes its assertions in such fields as history and science.
The final guide to the interpretation of Scripture is Scripture itself.
The account of origins presented in Genesis is a simple but factual presentation of actual events and therefore provides a reliable framework for scientific research into the question of the origin and history of life, mankind, the Earth and the universe.
The various original life forms (kinds), including mankind, were made by direct creative acts of God. The living descendants of any of the original kinds (apart from man) may represent more than one species today, reflecting the genetic potential within the original kind. Only limited biological changes (including mutational deterioration) have occurred naturally within each kind since Creation.
The great Flood of Genesis was an actual historic event, worldwide (global) in its extent and effect.
The special creation of Adam (the first man) and Eve (the first woman), and their subsequent fall into sin, is the basis for the necessity of salvation for mankind.
Death (both physical and spiritual) and bloodshed entered into this world subsequent to, and as a direct consequence of, man’s sin.
(C) THEOLOGY The Godhead is triune: one God, three Persons—God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.
All mankind are sinners, inherently from Adam and individually (by choice) and are therefore subject to God’s wrath and condemnation.
Freedom from the penalty and power of sin is available to man only through the sacrificial death and shed blood of Jesus Christ, and His complete and bodily Resurrection from the dead.
The Holy Spirit enables the sinner to repent and believe in Jesus Christ.
The Holy Spirit lives and works in each believer to produce the fruits of righteousness.
Salvation is a gift received by faith alone in Christ alone and expressed in the individual’s repentance, recognition of the death of Christ as full payment for sin, and acceptance of the risen Christ as Saviour, Lord and God.
All things necessary for our salvation are set down in Scripture.
Jesus Christ was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary.
Jesus Christ rose bodily from the dead, ascended to Heaven, is currently seated at the right hand of God the Father, and shall return in like manner to this Earth as Judge of the living and the dead.
Satan is the personal spiritual adversary of both God and man.
Those who do not believe in Christ are subject to everlasting conscious punishment, but believers enjoy eternal life with God.
(D) GENERAL The following are held by members of the Board of Answers in Genesis to be either consistent with Scripture or implied by Scripture: Scripture teaches a recent origin for man and the whole creation.
The days in Genesis do not correspond to geologic ages, but are six [6] consecutive twenty-four [24] hour days of Creation.
The Noachian Flood was a significant geological event and much (but not all) fossiliferous sediment originated at that time.
The ‘gap’ theory has no basis in Scripture.
The view, commonly used to evade the implications or the authority of Biblical teaching, that knowledge and/or truth may be divided into ‘secular’ and ‘religious’, is rejected.
By definition, no apparent, perceived or claimed evidence in any field, including history and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the Scriptural record. Of primary importance is the fact that evidence is always subject to interpretation by fallible people who do not possess all information.
posted
How fast did God play the Creation of the Earth movie when he showed it to Moses, who authored the book of Genesis?
If I were going to play back an old movie, I'd find a few frames with some familiar motion and adjust the speed of the film so that the familiar motion took place at what I perceive to be normal speed. Still, that's a big assumption on my part, and not at all scientific.
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quote:AiG teaches that "facts" don't speak for themselves, but must be interpreted. That is, there aren’t separate sets of "evidences" for evolution and creation—we all deal with the same evidence (we all live on the same earth, have the same fossils, observe the same animals, etc.). The difference lies in how we interpret what we study. The Bible—the "history book of the universe"—provides a reliable, eye-witness account of the beginning of all things, and can be trusted to tell the truth in all areas it touches on. Therefore, we are able to use it to help us make sense of this present world. When properly understood, the "evidence" confirms the biblical account.
Jay, as someone with a scientific mind, you do understand why this mission statement means that their work is not science, right? It's why they come out and say that they're apologetics instead of real scientists.
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posted
If c was 8 times larger ... doesn't that mean that permitivity constant and the permeability constant were BOTH 8 times smaller since c=1/√(εμ). And doesn't that meant the fundamental properties of electromagnetic waves were different? And doesn't that mean ?
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posted
Does anybody here think that Moses' vision of the creation of the earth was played in real time? That's a lot of popcorn!
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posted
Skillery: at exactly the same speed as we do now.
If everything changes, nothing changes.
Think of it this way: if football players moved ten times as slowly as they currently did (slo-mo!), but camera's also took images ten times as slowly, then when played back it'll look exactly like normal football players today -- just as when it happened it no doubt looked like normal footballers back then.
This is somewhat simplified, as we're talking about "more slowly", when if time changes, the definition of a speed changes.
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posted
Basically, the notion of a "timebase" is nonscientific. Time proceeds at the "speed" it does, and without observing from another frame of reference, there's no way to distinguish that. This is a fundamental part of relativity.
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posted
The fact that the words King David appears in an argument for the Earth being 10 000 years old shoudl be enough.
WHY CANT RELIGOUS WACKOS STOP TRYING TO 'PROVE' THEIR STUPID THEORIES TO US? YOU REALIZE THAT, BY TRYING TO GET SCIENCE TO PROVE THE BIBLE, YOU'RE CREDITING SCIENCE - SOMETHING YOUR STUPID FUNDEMENTAL BELIEFS SPIT ON?
Um, your friend is wrong. You should probably never talk to him again. Posts: 78 | Registered: Jan 2005
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quote:WHY CANT RELIGOUS WACKOS STOP TRYING TO 'PROVE' THEIR STUPID THEORIES TO US? YOU REALIZE THAT, BY TRYING TO GET SCIENCE TO PROVE THE BIBLE, YOU'RE CREDITING SCIENCE - SOMETHING YOUR STUPID FUNDEMENTAL BELIEFS SPIT ON?
The volume of your response has completely convinced me of the error of my ways.
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posted
Tom – Well, no, it’s just where you take your base for complete 100% truth. Sure it’s hard to bring a bible to a debate, but for your own statement of faith what’s the big deal?
Aaron – What? Why would you tell him not to be friends with him anymore? Would you really do that to a friend of your over something this petty? Does it really matter in the scheme of things? Yes I believe it, but I’m certainly not going to stop being friends with someone because they have a different believe in something. Especially in something that shouldn’t have anything to do with why you are friends. I really hope some of you others who disagree with me other everything else under the sun will back me up on this one. Come on Tom, let’s add another to the Top Ten list.
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posted
The only work I’m familiar with that says that the universe could be about 10,000 years olds because of a change in the speed of light is Barry Setterfield’s work. Setterfield believes that the speed of light has been decaying at an exponential rate, making it thousands of times higher at the beginning of creation and hardly changing at all in the last 100 years.
The main problem that I see is that the speed of light is connected to the electromagnetic force. One way of looking at light is as an electric current that produces a magnetic current, that produces an electric current, that produces a magnetic current, etc. etc. etc. This is why the speed of light is part of Maxwell’s electromagnetic equations, which unifies electricity and magnetism, and has been used successfully for over 100 years.
So if the speed of light increases, then either the electric force or the magnetic force must increase, too. But that has significant implications.
For one, surface tension in water is based on the electric force between atoms. If the electric force changes, then so does surface tension. And someone pointed out that if surface tension changes too much, life on earth could not exist.
Therefore if the speed of light was many times what it is today for the first few thousand years, nothing was living then, which makes Adam and Eve’s tale suspect.
Another problem is in the nucleus of the atom. The nucleus is composed of neutrons (which have no charge) and protons (which only have a positive charge). Normally, protons would fly apart because of electrical repulsion, but are kept together because of the strong nuclear force. So, if you increase the electrical force to increase the speed of light, you also need to increase the strong nuclear force to keep atoms together.
And when you change the strong nuclear force, that affects all other sorts of fundamental constants (including nuclear decay rates)…
IIRC, even Setterfield et al. are trying to account for how all these fundamental forces were changed, and all the implications of such changes. I haven’t heard lately how successful they were.
So the bottom line is, no, there is no credible evidence that the speed of light has changed enough to support a 10,000 year universe.
posted
"Well, no, it’s just where you take your base for complete 100% truth. Sure it’s hard to bring a bible to a debate, but for your own statement of faith what’s the big deal?"
That's the thing: is the issue of the age of the universe a scientific one or a faith-based one?
From an apologetic viewpoint, the Bible (if interpreted in a certain way) says the Earth is young -- and so therefore the only evidence which can be valid is evidence which supports that view. Even if overwhelming evidence suggests something else, the presumption that the Bible trumps all other evidence forces the apologetic to reach another conclusion, however strained.
This makes it difficult to have a conversation on scientific merits, or indeed with anyone who does not share your assumption about the accuracy of the Bible.
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posted
It's also important to note that the two biblical creation stories are logically exlcusive, at least in regards to the order of creation. In one, man is created before animals. The other has it the other way around. Strict literal biblical creationism is logically impossible even when your only source is the bible.
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