Hi, everyone.
My responses follow.
Regards,
Todd S. Greene
He who speaks the truth gives honest evidence....
— Proverbs 12:17
The heart of the discerning acquires knowledge;
the ears of the wise seek it out.
— Proverbs 18.15
"As those whose lives and teachings revolve around the importance of truth, we, of all people, should do all we can to avoid the dissemination of erroneous material, regardless of how 'good' it may sound, or the 'evidential value' it may appear to have. Yes, we should defend God's Word. But no, we should not use error to do it. 'Faithfully teaching the Faith' is not merely an awesome privilege, but an awesome responsibility as well."
— Bert Thompson (Reason & Revelation, 2/99)
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•••• Steve Rudd, 10/27/00 6:02 PM ••••
I don't know how you can make such wild statements about YECs, but the informed ones will never use the "apparent age" theory. It is wrong.
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I agree with you that it is wrong. However, I take sincere offense at your characterization of my statements about YECs as "wild statements." This concept has been advocated by Bert Thompson, Marion Fox, and Henry Morris, among other YECs. Do not attempt to pretend that I have misrepresented YECs, because I have not. And any time that you or anyone else attempts to make such pretensions, I will point it out.
I was a young earth creationist myself, Steve. I am quite familiar with young earth creationism. I realize that there is somewhat of a "spectrum" of beliefs within YEC, just as there is in so many other areas. For example, I know there are some YECs who are geocentrists (as we have - surprisingly to me - met right here in this forum!). However, I know that there are a great many other YECs who would completely disavow any advocacy of geocentrism. There are many YECs who are Pharisees about the YEC doctrine, teaching that the faith of anyone who rejects YEC is at best very questionable, that disfellowship should be considered, and that he certainly should be allowed to teach. Indeed, in speaking against YEC, he is a "false teacher." However, I know that there are also a great many other YEC who disavow this kind of exclusivist attitude, acknowledging that belief in YEC is "not a salvation issue."
I'm no dummy on young earth creationism and its advocates, Steve. Certainly their are many details I don't happen to be aware of. But please do not try to insinuate that I am or that I have misrepresented the position. I have not, and I will not.
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•••• Steve Rudd, 10/27/00 6:02 PM ••••
Have you measured the speed of light at a close distance of 1 light year away? Do you know if the speed of light is constant? Do you know the distance to the stars? Obviously you do not know any of these things.
•••• David Willis, 10/27/00 5:40 PM ••••
[snip]
Even if there were not some indications of a faster speed of light in the past than today...and there are some...that would not inform us at all about what its speed may have been before it had decelerated to its present speed...if it has. [...]The data of our measurement of [lightspeed] in the past 300 years is insufficient to inform us about past [lightspeed].
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Actually, I'm glad you brought this up. (If you hadn't, of course, I would have discussed this at some point anyway as a relevant aspect of the topic. Also, for anyone else reading this who has not yet read my "SN1987A and The Antiquity of the Universe" discussion, understand that my comments are based on details and diagrams presented there.) Obviously, Steve, astronomers do know the distance to the stars. Please take a college-level astronomy class, if you don't understand distance calculations based on parallax or magnitude measurements, and study about the Hipparcos satellite mission. In particular, the distance to SN1987A is by a fortuitous "reverse parallax" situation determined to be approximately 51,500 parsecs, or 168,000 light-years. I step you carefully through the calculation on my web page on it. By the way, due to the geometry, and how the angular size of SN1987A's primary ring is calculated, the calculated distance is the same, even if lightspeed was faster in the past.
Of course, if lightspeed was faster in the past, then it would not take as long to travel the 51,500 parsecs from SN1987A to earth, so that naturally lead to talking about the discredited YEC lightspeed decay concept. (By the way, last time I checked, there were no scriptural texts teaching about the speed of light.) If light was radically faster in the past (it would have to have been at least a million times faster in order to get to earth from the most distant galaxies in merely 10,000 years), then Adam and Eve would have been crispy critters due to light's own radically increased energy!
But, in fact, there is (much) more to the problems of the YEC lightspeed decay idea. Imagine, under the YEC lightspeed decay scenario, some astronomically observable cycle occurring 10,000 years ago that we are just now observing from the earth (i.e., the light is just now reaching us). The light has slowed down 1 million times. So our observation would actually be "slow motion" observation of the cycle. 10,000 years ago, the cycle had to have been cycling 1,000,000 times faster, if the speed of light did indeed decay in the time it took for that light to reach the earth.
Do astronomers observe this radical "slow motion" effect? No. Whether it's supernovae radiation decay curves, Cepheid magnitude cycles, or galactic rotation periods, no slow motion effect, as required by the YEC lightspeed decay idea, is observed. Nothing. Nada. Zip.
Thus, though you may not have been aware of it, the YEC lightspeed decay idea has been disproved by direct astronomical observation.
Obviously we do know some of these things. Of course, I will grant you that YECs by and large typically don't dig into the details enough on these things to be aware of them. Remember my real-life example of the YEC who was claiming that astronomers have no explanation for short-term comets, and all of those YECs in that discussion forum who absolutely refused to acknowledge any error when I pointed out the truth? That's the kind of thing I'm talking about.
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•••• Steve Rudd, 10/27/00 6:39 PM ••••
Todd Greene said, "The 'height' [radius] of the primary gas ring around SN1987A is based on the observed time it took for the energy from the explosion to hit the ring [travelling at the speed of light], which was 0.658 years [i.e., almost two-thirds of a year]."
[snip]
I was genuinely humored by your error margin of ± 3.5% on the distance: 168,000 light-years ± 3.5%.
Error #1: gas is matter, matter doesn't travel at the speed of light. When stuff explodes it travels at maybe 5 miles/second not 386,000 miles/second.
Error #2: you have no idea of how fast the matter is traveling
Error #3: your distance calculation is off a factor of 77,200 times larger
CONCLUSION:
Therefore the object (SN1987A) is 77,200 times closer than your calculation making the distance 2 light years ± 3.5 %
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Wow! Steve, are you serious? 5 miles per second? Do you understand that even the space shuttle orbits the earth at about 5 mps? And you are claiming that no matter travels faster than that? ROTFL! This is truly a height in ridiculousness! Do you understand we are talking about the explosion of a star? Do you have any understanding whatsoever regarding the ejection of matter by a stellar explosion?
But besides that, I was not talking about the matter that SN1987A ejected. That is, in fact, another topic. (Indeed, the first of the ejected matter just began to hit SN1987A's primary gas ring in 1998. See http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/pr/1998/08/ and http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/PR/2000/11/index.html.) No, Steve, I was talking about the light energy, so, frankly, your "errors" are irrelevant.
Oh, and since astronomers recently did observe the ejected matter hit the primary ring, then, of course, they do also have a real good idea of how fast the matter is traveling.
With regard to your "error #3," I'm still waiting for your data.
And, incidentally, people who don't understand precision estimates and error bars have no business discussing science.
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•••• Steve Rudd, 10/27/00 6:02 PM ••••
When you make statements like this:
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Thus, when you hear it said that it is a fact that the universe is ancient, this is genuinely just as factual as saying that the earth revolves around the sun.
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In kindness, it is obvious that you have absolutely no understanding of the science of geology.
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In kindness, Steve, I hope you realize that my sentence is related to astronomy, not geology. What part of "the universe is ancient" and "the earth revolves around the sun" is related to geology rather than astronomy? I would be more than happy to dig into geology with you, but one issue at a time, please. And, by the way, who's making "wild statements" about geology? I know you know that, in fact, it was through geological science over 150 years by which it was first realized that YEC was wrong.
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•••• Hal Hammons, 10/27/00 5:56 PM ••••
A century ago science had all the answers, too. Science could with confidence explain how atoms worked, how the universe worked, how light worked. Virtually every aspect of scientific inquiry was satisfied or had every expectation of being satisfied in the immediate future. Serious suggestions were posted that the United States should close the patent office because there were no more serious discoveries to be made. That was before Thomas Edison patented more than 1,000 of them himself.
Scientists have always been confident of their grasp on reality, and have always been mocked and scorned by the generation of scientists who followed. It is the height of human arrogance to assume that our admittedly limited grasp of concepts like the speed of light and the composition of the universe necessarily rule out the Biblical record of events, which has been proven reliable time and time again, through one onslaught after another from the scientific community.
Or to put it more bluntly, get over yourself.
Todd S. Greene said:
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Note to everyone else, besides Jack: I wish to thank Jack for demonstrating for us that there is no "scientific creationism," at least certainly not with respect to YEC. If he wishes to disagree with all of science for the last 350 years - astronomy, geology, physics, chemistry, biology - and go with, say, the completely subjective "apparent age" concept, that's fine with me. I just want to make sure that the distinctions are clearly understood.
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Aspersions are fun, aren't they, Hal? Scientists are stupid and we learn nothing about the real world through science. Your microwave oven doesn't exist, your refrigerator is a dream, disease is afflicted on us by evil spirits, the sun and all of the planets revolve about the earth, Pluto doesn't really exist, and the stars are heavenly light shining through the celestial sphere.
Perhaps you would care to either deal with the specific information, or remain silent. To put it more bluntly, get over yourself.
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