Oops. My wondering if Todd could bring it post must have crossed this one in the internet ether.

Well, does Todd bring it? Let's take a look, shall we?

Clearing away the ad hominem clutter, we finally get down to this paragraph:

So far so good, though, of course, Todd uses "past" in an undefined sense, a sense about which it is possible to quibble. Still and all, yes, we can reason from our present empirically observable and verifiable experiences of astronomical phenomena into the recent past and reliably and rationally state (excluding, of course any epistemological skeptical arguments) that the light reaching us from the sun left the sun about eight minutes ago. Well and good.

But right away, Todd, blinded by his closed scientistic (as opposed to scientific) mind, starts his rhetorical sleight of hand.

Alright, let's stop right there, for Todd has hidden a couple of logical leaps that don't defeat my criticism of his presuppositions about remote past interpretations of present astronomical observations.

The "relevant data" to which he refers is data that has been observed in the present, and in the recorded recent human past. We have no observations of the "relevant data" from, say, 168K years ago. The events we observe having happened in our past happened under cosmic circumstances that no one can empirically verify as being precisely (or even close enough for hand grenades) the same as our present circumstances. For all we know, light did travel a ginormous number of billion times faster then, giving us the illusion of 168K years. Please note, I am not making any serious assertion that significantly different cosmic conditions did actually obtain 168K years ago. But my point is, as it has always been, that the claim that the cosmic conditions were the same is a presuppositional one that has not and cannot be empirically/scientifically verified.

It is, in fact, a presupposition if it is claimed that the speed of light obtaining 168K years ago has not and cannot be empirically/scientifically verified. Unless of course, you want to provide empirical evidence demonstrating that the presupposition is true. But of course, you cannot use that presupposition in your argument, as that will be begging the question. It's simply logic that governs this. And science cannot violate the laws of logic. That's why us philosophers are wiser than scientists--unless, of course, scientists are also true philosophers.

Okay, Todd: Dig up the empirical observations from 168K years ago, observations that demonstrate that the cosmic conditions that obtained then also obtain today. Remember, you can't use present observations to ground your claim because in so doing you beg the question that the conditions that obtain today obtained then.

So, let's see it.

You also completely ignore the YEC claim that all of the reality (including the actual dead star, the light particles, and the astrophysical distance) was created simultaneously by God. There's no illusion, it's really real. And there's no need for light to travel any faster 6500 years ago (when the YECs generally claim it was created) than today.

You don't have to buy the YEC claim, but you do have to at least fairly and accurately represent it.

But Todd blathers on irrelevantly:

All of these findings are observations that happened in the present. Did any of these empirical observations occur 168K years ago? Then the presuppositions about the cosmic conditions of 168K years ago are just that: presuppositions and not empirically observed phenomena.

Todd's argument goes something like this:
1. The cosmic conditions that presently obtain in the universe obtained 168K years ago.
2. Observable phenomena from astophysical data, utilizing the known measurements from presently obtaining conditions in the universe demonstrate that the astronomical events we presently observe under currently obtaining conditions, occurred 168K years ago.
3. Therefore, cosmic conditions obtaining 168K years ago are the same cosmic conditions that obtain today and vice versa.

That is called begging the question, circularity, and a fallacy.

That Todd can't see that demonstrates that he doesn't know diddly about logical argumentation.

Please demonstrate that the fallacious logical chain I have ascribed to how you determine the age of the cosmos is, in fact, NOT the chain of reasoning that is used; AND demonstrate that the logical chain I've presented as the form of the argument used is NOT fallacious.

Man, and I thought you were going to bring it.

Guess not.

What a blowhard.

--------------
Clifton D. Healy

Just as I suspected, you give Clifton the observational data on a platter that shows that his claim that it's all just a matter of "presupposition" is totally wrong, and it's so many tens of thousands of light-years over his creationist head that he can't even comprehend it. How very sad.

— Todd Greene

Notice that Clifton carefully edits away where his factual error is referred to quite specifically, even directly quoting it and pointing it out to him. He just snips it away and then innocently asks (and wastes everyone's time), 'What are you guy's blathering about?' Wow. Must be more of Clifton's Christian ethics in action.

— Todd Greene

Clifton Healy stated the following obvious factual error, which has only been pointed out with a direct quote of him at least 3 times: "(O)ne point to remember, the 150K light-years is first a distance, that is predicated upon the presupposition that the speed of light has been constant for all of those 150K years."

Clearly, when it comes to astronomical science Clifton doesn't have a clue what he's talking about. Typical creationist.

— Todd Greene

Clifton Healy misrepresents the argument as being a logical leap that the data from SN1987A is from 168,000 years ago. That is not correct. The data is from 168,000 light-years, which is a distance. The other point is that the data comes from the past, but we don't know how far in the past it's from without studying the data itself. If the data showed that the speed of light was different in the past, then it would be correct to state that the distance of 168,000 light-years does not equate to 168,000 years in the past. The point that went totally over Clifton's head (or that he purposely ignored according to his Christian ethics) is that the observational data shows that the speed of light has not changed, and because the speed of light has not changed we know that the light from SN1987A which is 168,000 light-years away also came from 168,000 years ago. As usual, Clifton has obfuscated this point.

— Todd Greene

As far as Clifton Healy is concerned in the current discussion right here and now, upon seeing his recent post, I have very little doubt that his tactic will be to do the very same thing that he did in the thread about GRAS, and that is to misrepresent everything in sight, create straw men from this, and then tear up his straw men, which is what I just observed him do. This is obviously one of Clifton's SOPs.

— Todd Greene

Hi, Annie.

The progenitor star of SN1987A had 3 gas rings associated with it, and we're seeing them at an angle.

Here's is a page with a lot of detailed discussion about the supernova by astronomer Dr. Richard McCray (and he discusses the ring system as well):

Supernova 1987A
http://cosmos.colorado.edu/stem/courses/common/documents/chapter6/l6S6.htm

Regards,
Todd Greene

Now this statement by Clifton is extremely curious because he is contradicting himself. According to Clifton, how is it that we can know that the speed of light has not changed in the last few thousand years but at the same time cannot know that the speed of light has not changed in, say, 20,000 years? Or, to reel the fish in closer, according to Clifton, how is it that we can know that the speed of light in the year 3,999 BC was the same as it is now, but cannot know that the speed of light in the year 4,000 BC was the same? I'm sure this is another question Clifton will equivocate out of existence with several hundred words of obfuscation while never actually getting around to answering the question (if he doesn't just completely ignore the question altogether).

This is just Clifton (1) continuing his straw man representation that "we have no empirical observations from 168,000 years ago" even though I have explicitly corrected him on this, pointing out that in the case of SN1987A we have empirical observations from 168,000 light-years ago (which is a distance, not a timespan; also expressed as 51,500 parsecs) - we know that the observations from 168,000 light-years is also from 168,000 years ago because we see from the data that the speed of light was the same at that point in time in the past (whever that time was) as it is now; and (2) completely ignoring the empirical data that I have already pointed out to him that verifies that the speed of light was the same then as it is now. I'm fairly sure at this point that Clifton will continue with this tactic of ignoring the data that I have pointed out and then lying that it doesn't exist. This is one of the typical tactics I encounter with young earth creationists when I point this data out, is that they just bury their head deeply (and purposely) in the sand and purposely pretend that it doesn't exist.

The Distance to Supernova SN1987A and the Speed of Light
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/hovind/howgood-add.html#A6

"Inconstant Constants"
by John D. Barrow and John K. Webb
(Scientific American, June 2005 issue)

— Todd Greene

Clifton Healy stated the following obvious factual error, which we've only pointed out to him explicitly at least 4 times now, and which at this time we're still waiting for him to correct: "(O)ne point to remember, the 150K light-years is first a distance, that is predicated upon the presupposition that the speed of light has been constant for all of those 150K years." And notice that now he's even trying to obfuscate his erroneous statement here out of existence, pretending that we were referring to something else entirely! [chuckle] Typical Clifton tactics.

— Todd Greene

I had thought I was giving giving Clifton a chance to save face just to correct his erroneous statement that the distance to the Large Magellanic Cloud or to SN1987A is based on assuming that the speed of light is constant. Clifton wrote, "(O)ne point to remember, the 150K light-years is first a distance, that is predicated upon the presupposition that the speed of light has been constant for all of those 150K years." It is Clifton who has assumed this error, and as I see with his recent remarks the problem is that Clifton is actually so dismally ignorant of astronomy that he doesn't have a clue that the distance estimates and measurements are completely independent of the speed of light. What an amazing demonstration of sheer incompetence on the subject. We shall enjoy continuing to observe Clifton flounder around while he remains blind to his obvious factual error in his obstinate refusal to admit that he screwed up.

— Todd Greene

Cutting through Clifton's typical nonsense straw man rhetoric and ad hominem irrelevancies, we get right to the point:

Notice that, after earlier acknowledging the fact that astronomical observation is observation of events and processes that took place in the past, Clifton is now backpedaling as fast as his creationist feet can go and contradicting this fact. Of course, this is not too surprising coming from a guy who seriously argues that a man without a navel is empirically indistinguishable from a man with a navel.

Yep! Just as I predicted earlier when I wrote, "I'm fairly sure at this point that Clifton will continue with this tactic of ignoring the data that I have pointed out and then lying that it doesn't exist," Clifton is now deeply into head-in-the-sand mode, deceitfully pretending that the observational data that has already been presented has not been presented and doesn't even exist. Let's keep watching and see how long he keeps pretending that this doesn't exist.

The Distance to Supernova SN1987A and the Speed of Light
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/hovind/howgood-add.html#A6

"Inconstant Constants"
by John D. Barrow and John K. Webb
(Scientific American, June 2005 issue)

— Todd Greene

Yet again Clifton gives us a great example of his taste for red herring, and dedication to misrepresentation. Thank you, Clifton! [applause]

— Todd Greene

Here we observe Clifton pretend that it's irrational to point out the red herring (irrelevant) nature of many of his comments and the misrepresentative nature of his comments. In other words, Clifton the self-proclaimed logic expert implies that red herring arguments and misrepresentative comments are rational, and so it's irrational to criticize them. Just more typical Healyisms.

— Todd Greene

Typical of Clifton he thinks he can merely assert a young earth creationist claim about science, and then should anyone actually dare to question his assertion he then tries to pretend that it's them making the assertion instead of him, using it as a distraction tactic to shirk his responsibility to back up his claim. This time I'll forgive him though, since following this typical twisted rhetoric by him he actually attempted to address my call for him to substantiate his erroneous claim. He still failed, but unlike several of his previous posts where he totally ignored his responsibility, this time he has at least made an attempt.

Note that at this point we're actually discussing two separate issues, because of two separate false young earth creationist claims by Clifton: (1) Is there any observational data in astronomy that is evidence that the speed of light has been the same (or very, very close to the same) in the past, or is the idea that the speed of light has been the same merely an "assumption" or "presupposition" as young earth creationists claim? (2) Are determinations of astronomical distances based on the speed of light, or are such determinations independent of the speed of light? In this post I will deal solely with the first issue, and deal with Clifton's comments on the second issue in a later post.

Notice how Clifton falsely describes references to actual scientific research about the real world as nothing more than an "appeal to authority." Typical Healy misrepresentation.

As we shall see below, Clifton has read the article - and even quoted a relevant part of it - that disproves his young earth creationist claim, and yet he is so blinded by his love of the scientific ignorance of young earth creationist rhetoric that he didn't see it even though it was right before his eyes (and in his computer's copy-and-paste clipboard). But first let's look again at what I wrote to begin with:

Astronomers observe that the speed of light has been the same or very, very close to the same as it is now for billions of years. John Webb and his colleagues think that their data indicates that there was a very very tiny difference several billion years ago. Now keep in mind what Clifton is talking about in regard to the young earth creationist claim: The speed of light was millions of times faster just several thousand years ago. And yet we see in Clifton's response that even though he purports himself to be an expert in logic he somehow thinks that a man with no navel is empirically identical to a man with a navel and that a tiny change (a tiny fraction of one percent) in the speed of light several billion years ago is the same thing as a radical change (millions of times faster) just several thousand years ago. It's no wonder that Clifton is so badly confused on these issues when he is incapable of comprehending such obvious differences.

This is Clifton demonstrating his blindness again.

First Clifton's lie, "Todd has not actually dealt with my argument--not once," along with his attendant false rhetoric. Just another typical Healyism. Of course, since Clifton then actually goes on to try to deal with my arguments and the backup that he pretends I didn't give, I can forgive him this time.

So finally after getting throught the standard stream of bloviating Healyisms, Clifton finally tries to deal with the article that he pretended didn't exist for so many posts.

"Inconstant Constants"
by John D. Barrow and John K. Webb
(Scientific American, June 2005 issue)

Now, let's repeat what Barrow and Webb stated, and Clifton quoted, for emphasis, and because it flew billions of light-years over Clifton's head:

...we found an average increase in [alpha] of close to six parts in a million over the past six billion to 12 billion years.

What have I been saying all along? Astronomers have observed that the speed of light has been the same or very, very close to the same for several billion of years. What is Clifton talking about in regard to the young earth creationist claim? The speed of light was millions of times faster just several thousand years ago.

Here we have astronomers telling Clifton that the speed of light has been very, very close to what it is now for several billion years, and yet Clifton the logic expert cannot comprehend that there is a fundamental difference between the astronomical observation that "the speed of light has been very, very close to the same for several billion years" and the young earth creationist claim that "the speed of light was millions of times faster just several thousand years ago."

Actually, I wanted Clifton to do that, which is why earlier I persistently criticized Clifton for pretending that I had not given him the reference to the article and for pretending that the article did not exist. By compelling him to look at it and even quote from it I have now forced him to give up those earlier games of pretension he was playing.

As I mentioned above I will deal with the second issue (Are determinations of astronomical distances based on the speed of light, or are such determinations independent of the speed of light?) in a subsequent post.

Regards,
Todd Greene

In this post I'll be discussing Clifton's error in thinking that determinations of astronomical distances are based on the speed of light. This is not really a young earth creationist argument, because in fact young earth creationists do not use this claim at all. This particular claim by Clifton is solely due to his own mistaken notion, and has nothing to do with young earth creationism per se. (To be sure, I've had young earth creationists in the past out of their utter ignorance of astronomy dispute the fact that most stars in the Milky Way and all galaxies are farther than 6,000 light-years from the Earth, but not a single one has ever based their dispute on the erroneous idea that the distance determinations are based on the speed of light.)

By the way, here's the reference I gave previously, that Clifton is referring to:

The Distance to Supernova SN1987A and the Speed of Light
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/hovind/howgood-add.html#A6

Before we get to Clifton's comments, I also need to point out that Clifton never did address the point I made for which I gave this reference in the first place, which has to do with the other issue (it is false to claim that the idea that the speed of light has been the same, or very, very close to the same, in the past is merely an "assumption" or "presupposition" since in fact there is observational data that supports the idea; the idea is not just an assumption, so the young earth creationist statement that it is is a false statement). In my post where I originally provided this reference I pointed out the fact that "Process cycles (such as radioactive decay rates or pulsar orbits) are observed to be what we expect them to be for a constant speed of light (i.e., there is no slow-motion effect as would be the case if the young earth creationist claim was correct)." Then I gave the reference. So far Clifton has still totally ignored that fact.

Instead of addressing that point, Clifton decided to ignore it, but then try to use a statement made in the article to support his mistaken idea that astronomical distance determinations are based on the speed of light being a particular value (namely, the value it is now).

The problem with Clifton's argument here is that he has merely misinterpreted what Ron Ebert wrote, and then made an assumption based on his misinterpretation that Ebert stated something about the speed of light being constant.

Ebert wrote that "Its absolute diameter [the diameter of the primary gas ring around SN1987A] was determined based on the timing of ultraviolet spectral lines," but where does Ebert state anything about the speed of light at the time of the explosion being the same as when the light reached the Earth? He didn't. Clifton merely assumes that Ebert has made such an assumption, and then criticizes Ebert (and me) for allegedly making an assumption that Clifton assumes we've made.

The amusing thing about this is that literally, mathematically, the speed of light is almost, but not quite, totally irrelevant to the determination of the distance to SN1987A. Whether the speed of light at the time of the explosion was 327.1 million times faster than it is now, or 7,144 times slower than it is now, is completely irrelevant. All that is relevant is that the speed of light at the time that the light from the explosion was received at the Earth (and observed by astronomers) must have been the same as when the light from the primary gas ring was received at the Earth (and observed by astronomers), and we know for a fact that the speed of light was the same at both of those times.

This point will surely continue to fly many light-years over Clifton's head as so many other points have flown over his head, because our purported logic expert has demonstrated serious comprehension problems with simple "put 2 and 2 together" type of points, but this particular point is actually one of the more sophisticated points we've dealt with, so I have extremely little doubt Clifton will even know the point has been made, let alone comprehend it.

So sad.

The other point that needs to be made here is that there are many different kinds of distance determination methods used in astronomy (as in, I think it's correct to say, a few dozen), and as far as I'm aware of not a single one of them uses the idea of the speed of light at the time it left the source being the same as when it's received on Earth as a premise of the calculations. The reason I point this out here is to make sure you are aware of the fact that the method used to calculate the distance to SN1987A is not the only kind of method, but that there are many other methods, and with respect to SN1987A in particular (being in the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy) all distance determination methods used to estimate the distance to the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy show that the LMC is over 150,000 light-years from Earth (keep in mind that the LMC is a 3-dimensional form, having a leading "edge" and a trailing "edge" in line-of-sight from the Earth).

The bloviating Healyisms continue, but this time with some pepper of incompetence in astronomy sprinkled on.

Another typical Healyism. We're discussing astronomy, while he's off cooking up some red herring on metaphysics and atheism! [chuckle]

Regards,
Todd Greene

Just as I previously stated, now Clifton is going to try to beat us over the head with his failure to comprehend the difference between the astronomical observation that "the speed of light has been very, very close to the same for several billion years" and the young earth creationist claim that "the speed of light was millions of times faster just several thousand years ago." Of course, after all, what can we possibly expect from our Expert Equivocator?!?

— Todd Greene

Here we observe Expert Equivocator Clifton backpedaling again. In previous posts Clifton acknowledged the fact that astronomical observation is the observation of events and processes that took place in the past. But due to his young earth creationist sympathies, whenever he begins to realize that this fact implies that a young earth creationist claim is wrong, he then immediately contradicts himself and disavows what he previously acknowledged. Clifton does so love to weave his twisted webs.

— Todd Greene