posted
Interesting Email: Q: What do bathtubs have to do with the age of the universe?
A: The bathtub is actually a wonderful way to show the difficulty in trying to age-date the universe using scientific methods.
Imagine one day that you come home and find the bathtub half full of hot water, say 120 degrees Fahrenheit. Then you want to learn how long the water has been in the tub. There are many theories that you can explore.
First, the water came out of the tap nearly boiling hot and has been cooling for a long time.
Or secondly, the water was run at 150 degrees and has been cooling for less than an hour.
Or maybe the water has been in the tub for only about 5 minutes, because someone knew you were coming home.
Mathematically there’s no way that you can prove any one theory to be more accurate than the other. The only way to really know is to ask someone who was there when the water was run in the tub.
The same holds true for the age of the universe. The only way to know is to ask someone who was there. Since God was the only One there when the universe was created, we find our answers in God’s Word—and the universe is only thousands, not billions, of years old. (To learn more about the various dating methods used by scientists, please see The dating game.)
Evolutionist Quote of the Week
“I am convinced that the battle for humankind’s future must be waged and won in the public school classroom by teachers who correctly perceive their role as the proselytizers of a new faith: a religion of humanity that recognizes and respects the spark of what theologians call divinity in every human being. These teachers must embody the same selfless dedication as the most rabid fundamentalist preachers, for they will be ministers of another sort, utilizing a classroom instead of a pulpit to convey humanist values in whatever subject they teach, regardless of the educational level—preschool day care or large state university. The classroom must and will become an arena of conflict between the old and the new—the rotting corpse of Christianity, together with all its adjacent evils and misery, and the new faith of humanism.”
– John Dunphy, A Religion for a New Age, The Humanist, January–February 1983, p. 26.Posts: 2845 | Registered: Oct 2003
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Here are the three possibilities, taken literally. I'll try to make a bathtub analogy later, for fun.
1) Light moved at a different speed until just recently. 2) When the universe was created, some light was created in transit rather than generated by the objects created. 3) Light was created by objects and moved at the same speed it does now.
This would be like visiting someone's home and finding a bathtub about half full of water. They have no plumbing, so the owner is running downstairs, filling a bucket from the well, heating it on the stove, and running upstairs to pour it into the tub.
By looking at the bathtub, you can reach three conclusions without asking the owner:
1) The owner has been filling the tub for about forty minutes, based on the observed time it takes him to run downstairs, heat a gallon of water, and come back. The temperature of the water would also support this conclusion.
2) The owner until recently had plumbing, which he removed. He is very, very good at spackling and has repaired the walls to remove any sign of the fixtures. This was his first bucket.
3) The water has always existed in the tub, but some gets dragged out every time the owner takes a bath. Since the creation of the water, he refills the bath from the well.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
Actually, that's a pretty good analogy. If we accept the possibility of an omnipotent god, then there is no way of knowing that the universe behaved pretty much like it does now 10,000 years ago.
The only thing I really disagree with it is the biblical interpretation that the universe is definitely just thousands of years old.
Posts: 1002 | Registered: Feb 2005
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posted
Tom, I'm not sure what you're getting at with the above post. 1 & 3 (in the first list) are both ideas being seriously considered by scientists. Variable Speed of Light is much the minority view, but there are published peer-reviewed articles on it and serious consideration is given it.
None of the VSL articles that I know of posit a 6,000 year old universe. I'm just wondering why you think this refutes what Jay says: that there are several possible explanations that match with the observed evidence.
Your analogy is closer to the speed of light issue than Jay's, but the underlying epistemological point is identical.
posted
"Tom, I'm not sure what you're getting at with the above post. 1 & 3 (in the first list) are both ideas being seriously considered by scientists."
Absolutely. My point, however, is that it's ridiculously silly to mock scientists for adhering to any one of the three. If we find evidence that leans in any given direction, we'll lean that way ourselves.
The big problem is that this -- "that there are several possible explanations that match with the observed evidence" -- can be used, quite correctly, to postulate any number of things. For example, I'm a butterfly dreaming I'm a man. I'm also a food source trapped in a matrix of virtual reality. And fifteen seconds ago, I was a teddy bear, until the Good Fairy made me a real boy complete with thirty years of memories.
"You fixed the earth on its foundations, unshakeable for ever and ever."- Psalm 104:5
to mean the Earth is immobile, as was done in the Middle Ages.
Bending over backwards to make scriptures that, at the very least can be interpreted in many ways that are both not literal and still in harmony with the context.
What about the single "day" at Genesis 2:4 where all the previous 6 "days" are grouped together as one? If they were 6 literal days (as opposed to simple periods of creation) then how can they be called "the day" the earth and heavens were created?
If you (not you, Jay. Just people making this argument.) want to get all literal.
In my opinion, it only serves to create conflict where there is none.
Posts: 1346 | Registered: Jun 1999
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posted
The question becomes, Who filled the bath tub.
You have a note, a bit faded from the water splashed on it that says, "I filled the tub, J". However, there is a note on the door that says "I filled the tub, A" and there is a message on the condensation on the window that says "I filled the tub, and will refill it again, B"
All of the notes are dated with the time they were written, but not when they filled the tub, and none of them match the time we can deduce from our knowledge of science.
So the question remains, do we use our math to determine when the tub was filled or do we guess which of the many notes is correct?
Knowing who filled the tub will not tell us when the tub was filled without some humanly flawable deductions, and knowing when the tub was filled will not tell us who filled it.
Posts: 11895 | Registered: Apr 2002
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posted
Jay, the way you are able to completely ignore bias, present both sides of the situation fairly and come to a well thought-out, logical conclusion (even if it challenges your previously held beliefs) is really amazing.
Posts: 3564 | Registered: Sep 2001
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Yes, I know. To think I was a devout atheist for so many years. I’ll be a big shocker if we ever have a high school reunion!
Posts: 2845 | Registered: Oct 2003
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quote: FORD: No, look look, look, why don't we say this wine glass is the temporal universe, so if I sort of... (He drops the wineglass onto the floor) ... yeah, well, forget that, I mean, uh, do you know how the universe began for a kick-off?
ARTHUR: (resigned) Probably not.
FORD: Alright, imagine this. You get this large round bathtub made of ebony.
ARTHUR: Where from? Macey's was destroyed by the Vogons.
FORD: Doesn't matter!
ARTHUR: (depressed) So you keep saying.
FORD: (Not to be drawn off track) No no, listen! Just imagine that you've got this ebony bathtub. And it's conical. (makes hand gestures to indicate a cone-shaped tub.)
ARTHUR: (unbelieveing) Conical?!
FORD: No, it's conical, okay? So what you do is you fill it with fine white sand, right?
ARTHUR: Why?
FORD: Or sugar, or anything like that, and when it's full, you pull the plug out, and it all just twirls down out of the plughole.
ARTHUR: Why?
FORD: But the thing is, no, the clever thing is, is that you film it happening! You get a movie camera from somewhere, and actually film it! And then you run the film through the projector backwards!
ARTHUR: Backwards?
FORD: Yeah, neat, you see, so what happens is you sit and you watch it, and everything appears to spiral upwards out of the plughole and fill the bathtub! Amazing!
ARTHUR: And that's how the universe began?
FORD: No! But it's a marvelous way to relax.
This is what I thought this thread was going to be about, oddly enough.
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My point, however, is that it's ridiculously silly to mock scientists for adhering to any one of the three. If we find evidence that leans in any given direction, we'll lean that way ourselves.
