buckshot23

:huh: Don't think I did.

No I do not believe this. I don't think that in 1000 years that every observation of the physical world will be invalidated. However I do think we will have a whole host of theories that are on the junk heap by that time. The whole point in me bringing this up is that someone asked why the bible doesn't have "modern ideas and concepts" when those concepts may not be rock solid accurate and may fall by the wayside in the next 1000 years. This just demonstrates era-arrogance, if you will. That we have things figured out and things will not change.

Sven

Well, since common descent and a 4.55 billion years old Earth are not theories, but observations, I don't see the problem.
The best you'll get in 1000 years is that the theory of Evolution will be replaces by some version of "Intelligent Design" - although I highly doubt this.

Sven

OK, here we go.

You cite some articles there, I'll put the links here and comment on them below.

You start with:

Please note that there are various theories as to whether, when, and how much,
the
velocity of the speed of light has decayed.
================================================== ========
RECENT SERIES OF ARTICLES IN MAINSTREAM SCIENCE AND PRESS(after many years of mocking of the theories of creationist scientists,
who discussed this, btw, by many of the evolutionists)

But as soon as we read on, we quickly see that the observations and the evidence which is provided by real scientists there does not help creationists in the slightest - rather, it's the other way round. So pulling out some sort of Galileo complex is entirely unwarranted - what so-called creation scientists presented is still crap. They were ridiculed because the evidence they gave did not warrant the conclusion, not because the idea of a constant speed of light itself is in any way "sacred".

"Black holes constrain varying constants" Nature 418(6898), Aug.8, 2002
authored by P.C.W. Davies, T.M. Davis, and C.H. Lineweaver.

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/20...157961167.html

Everyone please take notice how praxeus managed to miss the word "constrain" in the title of the article. What's also interesting is that he linked to a newspaper article on this - no real physicist would go there, he would read the original article. Still, we get some interesting cites:

"Theorists always play with all kinds of crazy things," Lineweaver says. "The important thing here is we have experimental evidence . . . that's what's new here."

Hello? Creation scientists? Evidence? Notice the difference?

"The light that comes to you from a quasar has been travelling for most of the age of the universe - several billion years - and it carries with it information about what happened to it along the way," Murphy says.

Yup. Several billion years. Their observations and hypotheses in no way give credence to the idea that the universe is only some thousands of years old.

Unfortunately, the article in the news does not address the constraints mentioned in the title at all. So on to the new reference:

Einstein's relativity theory hits a speed bump -

August 8 2002
Australian scientists have discovered that light isn't quite as fast as it used
to be. But it doesn't mean E=mc2 will be consigned to the dustbin, writes David
Wroe.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/...in517850.shtml
Has Speed Of Light Slowed Down? - Reuters 8/7/2002- Michael Christie

This one is about the same research group as above (Davies et al.).

We immediately start with this [emphasis mine]:

The team, led by theoretical physicist Paul Davies of Sydney's Macquarie University, say it is possible that the speed of light has slowed over billions of years.[...]
"But of course it doesn't mean we just throw the books in the bin, because it's in the nature of scientific revolution that the old theories become incorporated in the new ones."

The latter is an important things which creationists are either not able or not willing to understand.

They also applied another dogma of physics, the second law of of thermodynamics, which Davies summarises as "you can't get something for nothing."

This is flat out wrong. Rather sounds like a simplistic version of the first law. Apparently the writer of the article had no clue what he was writing about. Appart from this, calling this a "dogma" is ridiculous.

After considering that a change in the electron charge over time would violate the sacrosanct second law of thermodynamics, they concluded that the only option was to challenge the constancy of the speed of light.

:huh: I don't think that this represents their reasoning at all - because a change in c would also have consequences for the first law of thermodynamics. And again: "sacrosanct" is ridiculous.

More study of quasar light is needed in order to validate Webb's observations, and to back up the proposal that light speed may vary, a theory Davies stresses represents only the first chink in the armour of the theory of relativity.

"the first chink" We have known for several decades that relativity isn't complete. This reporter really has no clue (I don't think it's Davies).

It may only matter when scientists are studying effects over billions of years or billions of light years.

Again: So much for YEC.

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992650
Black hole theory suggests light is slowing 13:27 08 August 02

This is the same research - for the third time. Did praxeus just wanted to impress people by the number of cites? This is laughable - citing research one time is entirely sufficient.

But let's see if this article in the news helps YEC in any way...

Observations of the light from distant, superbright galaxies suggest that this "constant" was actually slightly smaller 10 billion years ago [...]

Obviously it does not help.

Now Davies and his colleagues say the most likely answer is that c has decreased. They argue that if instead the charge of the electron could go up, then this would mean the event horizon of a black hole - the region from which light and matter cannot escape - would shrink over time. And that would violate one of the golden rules of physics, the second law of thermodynamics.

Although I have some problems to follow their reasoning, this explanation sounds much more reasonable than the one in "CBS news".

It is a very speculative suggestion, however, because the detailed physics of black holes are very poorly understood and totally untested. Davies himself admits the arguments are "only suggestive".

Surprise, surprise. Typical for YEC: They jump on everything which sounds remotely like their crackpot science and try to twist it into supporting their views - even if it's "only suggestive".

So much for Davies. We now get to "Mr. Magueijo", who apparently not even managed to get his work published in reputable journals. Before someone starts to cry "conspiracy" or "dogma" etc. here, I may just refer to Davies above, who even published in "Nature", one of the most famous science journals.

Mr. Magueijo, a 35-year-old professor at the Imperial College of Science, Technology, and Medicine, in London, calls the notion "heretical," relishing the thought of challenging authority. "It's been called anarchist physics. We are the Sex Pistols of physics," he says.

I see. Given that at this time, Davies had already published, this looks a little bit exaggerated. *rolleyes*

In Faster Than the Speed of Light: The Story of a Scientific Speculation (Perseus Books), Mr. Magueijo describes how he developed the variable-light theory with a succession of collaborators and how he battled the scientific community to take it seriously. Along the way, he ridicules much of modern physics and snipes at many establishment scientists, including administrators at his own university.

We note several things: This is about "speculations", not about giving evidence of any kind. And someone who belittles his peers is not someone who should be taken seriously normally. And again, Davies apparently did not need such battles - maybe this is because he presented evidence, but Mr. Magueijo only presented ridicule? Just a thought...

At one point, he calls an editor of Nature magazine a "first-class moron" and a "failed scientist" with penis envy[...]

If YECists want to align with people like this, they're free to do so. They also had no problem to agree with Coulter. *shrug*

[snip a lot]But according to the VSL theory, light must have moved faster, by at least a factor of 1032, in the earliest sliver of the first second, when the universe was an inferno. Then, as the infant cosmos cooled and expanded within that first second, the speed of light would have dropped close to the value observed today.

:rolling: This really helps YEC! A much faster speed in the first second, and then "business as usual" for the following billions of years!

The two wrote an extended abstract and e-mailed it to the cosmology editor of Nature, Leslie Sage, to see whether he would find a paper on the topic appealing. They received a reply saying that Nature would not publish the paper unless the authors could make a case that their new theory was the best one, not just another way of solving a problem. The reasoning outraged Mr. Magueijo and prompted him to insult the Nature editor (without naming him) in the new book.

Is it possible that the man is just a little bit oversensitive?

Scientists stand a chance of detecting light's inconstancy because more recent versions of VSL postulate that the speed of light changes extremely slowly over time. So experiments might seek signs of the variation by peering at distant stars that emitted their light billions of years ago. Some theories also suggest that light moves more slowly in the vicinity of black holes, another sign that astronomers might be able to glimpse, says Mr. Magueijo.

So we see: It's speculation without any evidence at this time.

"I don't think it's very well formulated yet," says Mr. Turner of the VSL idea. "There is no such thing as the variable-speed-of-light theory. It's a loose collection of ideas."

Is it possible that Mr. Magueijo has no idea what "theory" means in science?

In fact, few physicists find the VSL notion as blasphemous as Mr. Magueijo or his publisher like to suggest.Taking on conventional wisdom is part of a theoretical physicist's job description. "Many physicists, the bulk of string theorists in fact, every single day are challenging Einstein," says Brian Greene, a professor of mathematics and physics at Columbia. "That's really not heretical. That's bread-and-butter physics.[...]

Surprise, surprise. So much for "dogma" etc.

I just ignored the next two links, because they were about Magueijo - again. See above: This is laughable.

Then we get Setterfield - a creationists, someone with an axe to grind. I won't even start to address his crackpottery here. There are more than enough websites which deal with it (some of which you even cite yourself below):
http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/c..._of_light.html
http://homepage.mac.com/cygnusx1/cde..._quickref.html

A statistical defense by Lambert Dolphin, the physicist at Stanford, and professional statistician Alan Montgomery were published in a peer-reviewed journal.
Is the velocity of light constant in time?
- Galilean Electrodynamics , Vol. 4 No. 5, pp. 93ff., Sept/Oct 1993;

They published in Galilean Electrodynamics? :rolling:
Their peer-review (if it really exists) is simply shit. I've read some articles on quantum physics (my field of work) there which were simply crap from the start to the end. I won't take anything seriously which "manages" to be published in this journal.

In 1987, after the Norman-Setterfield paper was published, another paper on
light speed appeared, written by a Russian, V. S. Troitskii. Troitskii not
only postulated that the speed of light had not been constant, but that light
speed had originally been about 10 to the 10th times faster than now.
"Physical Constants and the evolution of the Universe",
Radiophysical Research Institute, Gorky, USSR
Astrophysics and Space Science Vol. 139, 1987, pp 389-411.
Paper is at http://www.ldolphin.org/troitskii/

Some snippets from there:

Appreciable effects associated with variation of the speed of light may be noted only in scales of the universe lifetime.[snip]
The variation of the ae may be observed for a comparatively small interval of time of the order of 10 years.

The latter bit is important, as we will see below (*).

Then we have a link to the lying bastards of trueorigins. No, thanks.

Also significant is "Einstein Corrected," (1995). (Revised 1 June 1997) by Dr. Robert A. Herrmann
http://www.serve.com/herrmann/books.htm

I'm not qualified to judge this, so my impression of crackpottery may be wrong. Nevertheless, I don't see how any of this helps YEC.

I may note that he published this:

A Nonstandard Derivation for the Special Theory of Relativity

<http://www.arxiv.org./abs/physics/>http://www.arXiv.org./abs/physics/0005031

in a Journal called "Speculations in Science and Technology". :rolling:

What followed were "RELATED PAPERS" and "MORE INFORMATION TO PERUSE" - again with emphasis on Setterfield. I don't think that there's anything which repairs the damage done there, if someone disagrees, please cite a specific reference.

[I believe this is from praxeus again, although it's difficult to determine]The change in the speed of light that most of these authors are talking
about is of the order of 10^60 times the current speed of light at the
inception of the cosmos. The maximum value for c on the Vc (cDK) model is
around 10^11 times the current speed, or from the end of creation week,
about 14 million times the speed of light now. This is a far more
conservative estimate, which also lines up with biblical chronology,
although that is not where I started with it.

The dishonesty is - once more with YEC - unbelievable. Every single article from mainstream physicists you cited said that the speed was only much larger at the very first second after the Big Bang, and that afterwards there were billions of years. To twist this into "creation week" is far worse than bad reading comprehension - it's simply lying.

At least you were honest enough to cite the "OPPOSITION VIEW" on Setterfield.

After we cleared the issues with your post up, let's now look at the "there's more", shall we?

Let's start here: http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/physics/0212112 and http://www.obspm.fr/actual/nouvelle/...alpha.en.shtml for some openly accesible details:

By comparing the fundamental frequencies (hyperfine structure) of the cesium 133Cs and rubidium 87Rb, during 5 years, the team of Paris Observatory was able to place an upper limit on the relative variation of alpha of 7 10-16 per year.

See above (*). The experiments were done - and the results do not help YEC at all, they rather show that if there was really a variation, it was negligible small. Which puts to death all claims of "varying decay rates" at the same stroke.

Or try this:

R. Srianand, H. Chand, P. Petitjean, and B. Aracil
Phys. Rev. Lett. 92, 121302 (2004)

We present the results of a detailed many-multiplet analysis performed on a new sample of Mg ii systems observed in high quality quasar spectra obtained using the Very Large Telescope. The weighted mean value of the variation in [alpha] derived from our analysis over the redshift range 0.4 <= z <= 2.3 is [delta alpha]/[alpha] = (–0.06±0.06)×10–5. The median redshift of our sample (z ~ 1.55) corresponds to a look-back time of 9.7 Gyr in the most favored cosmological model today. This gives a 3[sigma] limit, –2.5×10^–16 <=([delta alpha]/[alpha]/[delta t]) <= +1.2×10^–16 yr^–1, for the time variation of [alpha], that forms the strongest constraint obtained based on high redshift quasar absorption line systems.

As everyone can see, a variation of alpha (and thus of c) by about 10^-16 per year certainly means that YECists are right and the universe is not billions of years old.

Angrillori

Exactly! (You probably could have figured that out, since that's exactly what I said.) You took Lunawalk's "Modern concepts and ideas" and rephrased it as "Modern theories". That's called creating a strawman. Perhaps the wizard has you on his guest-list? Hmm?

And you're doing it again. Lunawalk did not talk about Modern "theories" but modern concepts and ideas. YOU started the "theory" talk. You created the strawman.

Sheesh.

And, don't think I noticed that you completely avoided the point while throwing up your "strawman" smokescreen. Makes me think you're hiding something. But I could be wrong. I'm just telling you what it looks like to me.

Point is, the bible points not to heliocentrism, but to geocentrism. Any way you cut it. If one limited their knowledge of the world to the bible, they'd be a geocentrist. At least as much as they'd be a creationist. But of course, that'd demand consistency.

JLK

To tweak buckshot, I 'll point out he's made the following claim multiple times and no one has corrected him.
Completely false. It says "there is no rock like God". Not only literally true but, more seriously, "like" and "as" are simile's terms, so even "God is like a rock" would not mean God is a rock, in every sense. A clear and obvious simile does not help you.
Fixed foundations is a metaphor of what exactly?
"The seas lift up their voice" is a metaphor for the crashing waves on the beach etc., the intent to demonstrate G's worthiness of praise. The point/purpose a term's intended to evoke is different than what it's a metaphor of. How is immobility a metaphor of another state of affairs? But evokatively, alternative lines like " as fleet as the deer, the world races at millions of cubits each day thru the expanse" would be just as evokative of “God's power and uniqueness.”

In fact buckshot appears instead to be claiming that, rather than a metaphor, it's "language of mere appearance", like "the sun [relative to us appears to be] rising/setting/moving backwards 10 degrees". “The world's foundations are immobile [as they appear relative to us].” These aren't metaphors, they're just shorthand for an (allegedly) understood literally true context. A metaphorical phrase is one which cannot be made literally true by merely adding to it (unless in adding the original is just negated). “Seas have voices [- but not real voices, ....]” But again, why is language of appearance an illustration of G's power & uniqueness in a way a more accurate description is not?

It's in fact is an expression of what everyone believed at the time and for a millenia after, neither metaphor nor mere appearance. It's unquestioned truth is and was taken for granted and it directly illustrates God's power, no metaphor or language-of-appearance necessary.
Do you hold with the Chicago statement that Bible has "verbal", plenary inerrancy, infallibility and inspiration? Going down this road of argument is going to lead you to no end of arbitrary distinctions. Is David in I Chron 16 “general teaching” (30The world is firmly established; it cannot be moved.)? Guess not. Is Paul in the NT? Must be. As others have pointed out, Pick and choose.

buckshot23

Why "tweak" me? Because you don't like my beliefs? Intolerant?
I love it when the first sentence is just a denial. Well let's see what you have to say.
"There is no car like a buick." Does that mean that a Buick is a car? Or is that metaphoric also? Read literally this is saying that a Buick is a car. Just like "no rock like God" is literally saying that God is a rock.
Wrong passage. Stick with the psalm. If you want to establish context you need to use the passage as a whole and not pick and choose from all ends of the bible. Now the earth not moving is more of a spatial relationship between people on earth and the earth itself. Just as your "keyboard does not move" is no more incorrect than the earth. Every time you use your right pinky to hit that "p" button it is there every time when in reality it is moving.
I agree.
Just that God has established an "unmoving" dwelling place for humans.
Appearances are revealing.
The psalmist was writing in the context of humans. God established an "unmoving" home for us. We can walk and put our foot where we are aiming because God set it up that way. God established it. Now you say this isn't accurate while I say it is perfectly accurate in the greater context of the passage. Which is NOT to teach about cosmology but to gorify God as creator. How "accurate" do you want it to be? Do you require a 5000 page text book on the subject of physics in the psalm? Would that be enough? This is as accurate as the term sunrise is which in context is not to teach about the naturre of the solar system but to tell us when the sun appears to be rising in the sky. That usage is good enough for today but not for 3000 years ago. Double standard.

Huon

Intolerance does not begin when somebody (A) says that s/he does not like the beliefs of person B. Intolerance begins when A tries to force B to silence, through compulsion. Discussion, even sharp discussion, is the contrary of intolerance, since each person accepts to speak to the other one.

Sven

Hmm, praxeus has been online (and posting!) at least twice since I demolished his fantasies - apparently he does not want to comment further.

buckshot23

Agreed, but why "tweak"? To me this is personal and not addressing arguments. I don't respond to people to "tweak" them but to address their statements.

JLK

Amazing. Literally, it's saying God is not like a rock.
"There is no car like a Buick" is meant to be literally true - not metaphor, poetry, symbolism, etc.
As I said, if "there is no rock like God" is meant literally, it is true. Full stop. No controversy.
If it's not meant literally, as buckshot keeps claiming as the point of his entire argument, one then determines if it's either a metaphor, as buckshot claims, or a simile as I claim (it's clearly not "language of relative position/perspective"). Big Flashing Conventions of Language say simile. A metaphor might be "there's no rock that is God." Give the names of any biblical or literature scholars you respect and I will email them for their understanding of "like God" in this passage, whether metaphor or simile.

This appears to be confirming buckshot thinks immobility as a "language of perspective/position/appearance", i.e. relative to us. Therefore it is not a metaphor. Buckshot has presented no state of affairs immobility could be a metaphor of. All buckshot's talk of metaphorical nature of the passage has been utterly irrelevant, because all along he has thought earth's immobility was mere "language of relative appearance/position", accurate like "the sun moving relative to us", not genuine metaphor.

What is the point of saying the earth appears immobile relative to us? Rabbits have two ears. Oil floats. The sky is blue and green is green. How are these banalities great demonstrations of "God's power and uniqueness" any more than any factoid about anything? However the abilty to somehow Establish the Entire Earth immobily in a cosmicly fixed place is far more evokative of enormous power, buckshot's own criterion of the point of the passage.
And everone understood that for ~two millenia.

Desperation. Obviously not, as I said. A simple "made the earth to race with the sun about x million cubits per day relative to the "light of creation", while also going around it" - 25 little English words, prolly less in Hebrew - would have been a) far more accurate, b) incredibily impressive prediction and a powerful tool of evangelism, and c) equally as evokative of "God's power and uniqueness" - buckshot's own criterion of the point of the passage.

One can make any passage say many things by appealing to some "greater context". That is why the signers of the famous Chicago statement on verbal (word by word) inspiration, inerrancy, etc wanted to pin things down somewhat. Buckshot did not respond to my question "Do you hold with the Chicago statement?". The signers had strong reasons for holding to it since the alternative is the dreaded "slide to liberalism".

If buckshot mean to say flatly that the writers attributed to Hannah, David, etc didn't know better, and the bible is not and is not meant to be accurate in scientific details, just in salvation and ethics (like the Catholic position), I have no idea why he is a YEC.

tweak, verb

-to change slightly, improve by making fine adjustments, esp. in order to make something more effective or correct
-tease
-pinch lightly or playfully
-criticize, especially in a sly manner

Horrors. What a colossal insult. Skin gets any thinner and EAC won't find it fit for lampshades.

What brought on this dreading tweaking? Did buckshot not
-describe himself as behaving like "a jerk", because
-a quote of buckshot making a universal statement about what "one could not know with any certainly" merely dared to appear after instead of before documentation of multiple creationists stating unequivocally that Morris is in heaven, and
-buckshot acknowledged without prompting that the absence of a quote from Ham was completely "irrelevant. I'm sure Ham believes it" also and would have said it unequivocally?
No one forced buckshot to say any of that.
Readers can decide whether all that pales compared to the donning the robes of a pitable persecuted martyr under the enormous oppression of "tweaking". Be funny if it weren't so sad.

Immediately justifying a claim of truth or falsity is grounds for mockery. Everyone must first justify and then only afterward announce their position. Or maybe in one compound sentence say "True/false, because..."
Sadly, no one forces buckshot to appear so juvenile.