lpetrich

I'll weigh in here.

#3 is Philip Gosse's Omphalos hypothesis of creation with the appearance of great age; this hypothesis has widely been viewed as divine fraudulence.

#2 has a problem: the speed of light in a vacuum is a result of the geometry of space-time; its changing significantly would be difficult without causing lots of side effects, such as changing spectral-line wavelengths and causing stars to be either brighter or dimmer and causing supernovae to behave differently as they explode. But such effects don't happen.

#1 is just plain wrong, as others here have pointed out.

RufusAtticus

Yeh. Even Helen ( <img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" /> ) at BaptistBoard acknoweldeges that he's full of obvious hogwash. (Too bad she doesn't realize this about her own BS.) Then again she also claims that Ken Miller (Finding Darwin's God) isn't a scientist either. (sigh).

-RvFvS

chekmate

<a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/dave_matson/young-earth/additional_topics/supernova.html" target="_blank">For Number 2</a>

Malaclypse the Younger

Not when that person attempts to assert the truth or falsity of propositions on the basis of his expertise or authority.

Asha'man

I thought I would add a little info on measuring astronomical distances.

Parallax (simple trigonometry using the earth’s orbit as one side of a triangle) is limited in range. 300 light years might be a reasonable limit, but that can be improved upon by using better equipment. But this is only the first method, there are several others.

A Cepheid variable star is a particular type of variable star. The period of a Cepheid variable is related to its absolute brightness. If you measure the speed that the brightness fluctuates, and the apparent brightness, you can make a good estimate as to the distance between you and the star. (You do have to compensate for brightness-altering interference, such as interstellar dust.) We can spot Cepheid variable stars in nearby galaxies, such as the LMG and Andromeda, so this method is good for several million light years. This method is less accurate than parallax, but so what? The Andromeda galaxy might be 2.9 million light years away, or it might be 2.8. In either case, this is much more than 6000 years.

The method that is getting some attention recently is the Type Ia supernova. This type of supernova occurs when there is a close binary system, and one star is sucking matter from the other. When the star gains enough mass to reach a precise size, it suddenly goes supernova. Type Ia supernovas are recognized mostly by the shape of their brightness curve, so they can be distinguished from other types of supernovas. Since the size is known fairly precisely, we also know the absolute brightness of that type of supernova. Again, using just absolute brightness and apparent brightness, we can estimate the distance. We are now finding Type Ia supernovas that are 10 Billion light years away, and using them to measure the expansion rate of the early universe. Again, there might be a question of accuracy. But even if the measurement is off by a whopping 25%, that means we are seeing something that is between 7.5 Billion years old and 12.5 Billion years old. This still doesn’t fit into a 6000-year-old universe!

Ragnarok

Maybe this is what you were after: <a href="http://www.aas.org/publications/baas/v32n4/aas197/939.htm" target="_blank">rotational parallax</a>

Coragyps

MoCk: Thanks. It's nearly the same technique, but the one I'm thinking of is a fait accompli, if that's the correct sesquipedalian way to say it. Maybe work won't interfere with me hunting it down tomorrow.

ex-robot

Does he actually do that, or is that your impression?

xr

tgamble

He's a self proclaimed expert on science on the bible, claims to speak 700 times a year. Claims to have had hundreds of debates and won everyone of em. He claims to have taught science for 15 years and have a 160 IQ.

Draw your own conclusions.

Jack the Bodiless

And yet he believes that light photons can be sped up in a particle accelerator.

The problem with Hovind is that he's too stupid to realize how stupid he is. It's impossible to educate him without giving him vastly more scientific knowldge than he can handle.