Is Starlight real?

Status
Not open for further replies.
^^Invasion of the body snatchers^^

This is beginning to adversely affect my eschatology. My optimism is fading...
 
I may as well copy and paste thus whole thing. My respect for Malcolm Bowden ( author of several creationist books) is so high that I'll take his word for it.

THE DECREASE IN THE SPEED OF LIGHT - AN UPDATE ON DEVELOPMENTS

THE DECREASE IN THE SPEED OF LIGHT
- AN UPDATE ON DEVELOPMENTS

by Malcolm Bowden

There have been many articles on the work of Barry Setterfield of Australia who has contended that the speed of light was faster in the past. This article is to try and put the record straight for there are many unaware of the confirmations that have arisen but which have had little publicity. It is to try and correct this situation that the following facts are presented.


1. The first point is that there is criticism of Setterfield's early work in which he -

a) shows that the speed of light has decreased by listing numerous measurements of "c" made over many years, and

b) attempts to determine the mathematical shape of the curve by which the decrease has fallen. Critics have sometimes slammed his attempts to find the right curve (b) and thereby tried to ignore the clear evidence of a definite fall (a).
Since those early days Setterfield and Trevor Norman have produced an invited report for the prestigious Stanford Research Institute International in 1987 [1].

This gives much of the background material upon which Setterfield bases his claim of "c" decay (= CDK). This is 90 pages long and contains 377 references.

The invitation to give this report came from Lambert T. Dolphin, (who was skeptical at first), a member of SRI, where it was given peer revue and also vetted by outside laboratories - all of them approving its publication. Dolphin also gave a lecture on the subject in 1988 to the Batelle Institute where it was well received. The SRI hierarchy tried to rescind the report on an administrative technicality when they realized its implications. Dolphin and his manager were made redundant.

Setterfield is still being criticized for "not publishing his results in a reputable journal". What critics do not realize is that no journal is prepared to publish such a revolutionary concept, no matter how well researched it is. We then have the "catch 22" situation:- i) No 'scientist' will examine the paper unless it has been published. ii) Publishers reject it because their referees do not like the implications and fail it for trivial reasons such as no other journal has published it; iii) Therefore no scientist reads of it in a 'reputable journal', etc. etc. The acceptance by SRI was a major breakthrough that the hierarchy tried to rescind. See also 6. below.
2. There has been much discussion of the paper by Goldstein et al. in which they claim that after analyzing Roemer's 1675 records of "c", it has not changed by any significant amount. What these critics seem to be unaware of is that these papers contains two huge errors that, when corrected, result in SUPPORT for Setterfield's claim. I give the following details.


In 1973 [2] Goldstein published in the results of his calculations on the possible variation of the speed of light based upon the measurements of Roemer. His conclusion was that the speed of light had not varied by more than 0.5% from the present value. This paper has often been quoted as contradicting the decrease in the speed of light by a number of both evolutionists and creationists in various articles.

The errors the paper contained were pointed out my Lew Mammel in 1983 [3], [4]. He circulated his criticisms by means of the computer network linking the major astronomical centers of the world. What Mammel found first was that in making their calculations for the phases of Io (the moon of Jupiter used by Roemer), Goldstein and his co-workers incorrectly adjusted the average TIME of the observations, when they should have corrected the PHASES of Io. The result was that they obtained a value for "c" that was falsely close to the present day value, i.e. their value of not more than +/- 0.5%. After the figures had been corrected by Mammel, the result was that "c" was 8% SLOWER with an error of +/- 9%.

His second discovery a few days later was that there was a major blunder in a simple series of subtractions. Instead of subtracting the calculated from the observed time, Goldstein had subtracted the observed from the calculated. When Mammel amended this error, he obtained a value of 6% HIGHER than today with an error of +/-8.6%. There is yet another error Goldstein seems to have made in dealing with his results. He wrote a letter in February 1986 to Vivian Bounds and Setterfield quoted from this in his S.R.I. report. The original letter said "..a light travel time 2.6% lower than the presently accepted value. The formal uncertainty is +/-1.8%". Now, with a travel time LOWER, i.e. shorter, the speed of light would be HIGHER of course.

Humphreys contacted Goldstein, who admitted that he had (and I quote Humphreys) "...stated his results ambiguously, apparently misleading both Bounds and Setterfield. What Goldstein had meant to say was the speed of light according to Roemer's data was 2.6% SLOWER in 1668 to 1678 by 2.6% than it is now. Professor Goldstein has given me permission to quote the following from his 2 November 1987 letter to me: 'The new result is that the velocity of light was SLOWER in 1668 to 1678 by 2.6% than it is today. I do not think the difference is significant however.'"

I would suggest that his first statement is not simply "ambiguous" but is in fact very clear in its meaning - the transit time was less than today and therefore "c" was HIGHER. The wording cannot be interpreted in more than one way, and is simply a muddled expression on Goldstein's part. In addition, to dismiss a variation of 2.6% as "..not significant" when the whole subject hinges on a matter of a fraction of 1% is to try to gloss over the fact that his calculations DID show a variation from the present value, albeit lower (at that time at least). He still seems to be unaware that the second error discovered by Mammel makes the final result HIGHER than today.

This does call into question Goldstein's assessment of the whole subject, and whether his scientific objectivity is as impartial as it should be. The two major errors set out above require no further comment, except to wonder, as Mammel does, how his papers passed the scrutiny of the peer reviewers of the prestigious periodical in which they appeared. Questions remain, however, such as - why did Goldstein made so many errors in his calculations and then make misleading statements - all of them in a direction that opposed CDK. Did he know that, correctly calculated, the results actually supported a decrease in the speed of light? Was the article accepted in order to cast doubt on a decrease in "c"?
4. Critics also refer to Aardsma's article [5] criticizing CDK as though it was a full refutation of Setterfield's poor maths. Here again, they are unaware that there is a major error in Aardsma's method of analyzing the results. I have pointed this out in a very simple way [6] as it was obvious even to me (and I am no mathematician) that Aardsma's method was unsuitable for a curve.


Trevor Norman, Setterfield's mathematical expert, also slammed his badly flawed analysis [7]. Briefly, Aardsma used one half of a statistical method which if used properly would have crashed the program. He therefore used the second half of another method to get the answers he desired. Norman wrote to him pointing out this gross mistake but Aardsma claimed that he never received it. The erroneous method was duly published by Aardsma as proving Setterfield's maths were wrong! Norman criticized Aardsma in very strong terms in his article.
5. One of the most impressive confirmations of CDK is Setterfield's list of 17 physical 'constants' [8]. He obtained a number of past measurements of such values as the Gyromagnetic Ratio, Rydberg Constant etc. and found that 11 remained constant, 4 increased slightly and 2 decreased. He then showed that every single one had varied exactly as could be predicted from an examination of their basic formulas with a decrease in the speed of light.

6. Quite independently of Setterfield, a Russian scientist, Troitskii, has proposed [9] that "c" was very much higher than it is today by an amount of 10^10 faster. This is within the order of the original change of speed that Setterfield had proposed which was between 10^7 to 10^11. Troitskii had based this entirely upon his examination of astronomical data, red shifts, superluminal jets etc., and not upon any direct measurements of "c" with laboratory instruments. The publication of this result in a professional journal is excellent confirmation of Setterfield's thesis.


The measurements of "c" have been made with very great accuracy; more than enough to determine whether it has decreased or not. The fact that virtually all the past measurements were above the present value should surely indicate that it could not have been due to "errors of measurement with inaccurate instruments" - which is the usual ploy used to dismiss them. Michelson was a Nobel prizewinner in the subject and surely the fact that he believed that "c" had decreased is worthy of some recognition.

There has been much ridicule and false mathematics directed at Setterfield's work, but those with qualifications in statistics agree that the evidence is FOR a decrease in the speed of light. Many readers of such diatribes will consider the case closed. Those that do are committing the crime of failing to listen to the case for the other side DIRECT; i.e. not a critics version of it which is then demolished as a 'straw man'. The information set out above is only part of the massive evidence that exists on the subject and I leave the reader to draw his own conclusions.
 
There is a real scientific debate over whether the speed of light is variable. There have been several challenges to the majority view that it is constant. These challenges have been published in peer-reviewed journals. They have been discussed by scientists. They have not persuaded many, but it is a minority view that is hanging around because of some perceived value and at least somewhat convincing argumentation.

That being said, the reason people like Setterfield can't get published in real journals is because they don't do real science. My thought upon reading Setterfield years ago was that his work was so loaded with arbitrary assumptions and data that it's just useless. He throws in a few "gimme" days for the Fall, but how does he know when the Fall occurred relative to the creation? This becomes a huge problem b/c his model needs him to be accurate to the day, unlike old cosmos models that can easily give or take a few thousand years.

Another problem I have with this whole crew of "scientists" is their utterly disingenuous use of other science. For example, appealing to Troitskii for c-decay is entirely unwarranted, as his set of assumptions and parameters requires a very old cosmos and certain conditions to be true, which, if they were true, would rule out Setterfield's cosmology. One cannot simply speed up Troitskii's paper to fit a young-earth cosmology without destroying the mechanics. The same is true with other papers. Thus, it is wildly inappropriate for Setterfield to claim some of these papers as confirmation of his work when they owe nothing to and would contradict parts of his work, and moreover, are not even accepted by more than a handful of scientists.

There is a remarkably well-made Wikipedia page devoted to this issue in modern physics:
Variable speed of light - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Here are some links to abstracts:

Troitskii, V. S. "Physical constants and evolution of the universe" Astrophysics and Space Science 139 (2), 389-411 (Dec. 1987) 1987Ap&SS.139..389T Page 389

Youm. D. "Variable-speed-of-light cosmology and second law of thermodynamics" Phys. Rev. D 66, 043506 (2002) [hep-th/0203145] Variable-Speed-of-Light Cosmology and Second Law of Thermodynamics

Moffat, J.W. "Variable Speed of Light Cosmology: An Alternative to Inflation" [hep-th/0208122] Variable Speed of Light Cosmology: An Alternative to Inflation

Moffat, J. W. "Variable Speed of Light Cosmology and Bimetric Gravity: An Alternative to Standard Inflation" Int. J. Mod. Phys. A20 1155-1162 (2005) [gr-qc/0404066] Variable Speed of Light Cosmology and Bimetric Gravity: An Alternative to Standard Inflation

Ellis, G.F.R. "Note on Varying Speed of Light Cosmologies" [astro-ph/0703751] Note on Varying Speed of Light Cosmologies
 
Why would the LORD not be able to manipulate the speed of light in the same way he made an ax float on water, made the sun and the moon stand still, made water gush from a rock, and birthed Jesus from a virgin?

This could definitely be what happened, since creation was a miracle. In light of this possibility, I don't think any other hypothesis (i.e., a scientific cause) can be demonstrated for certain to be the cause. I also like Heidi's point about the existing light being gathered to the light-bearers, but I would think information like supernovae would still need to have come from after the stars were made, and thus would still require the light to have been advanced in some way, whether by an "ordinary" physical cause as ordered by the Lord, or else miraculously.
 
As if there aren't enough posts answering this already, and because I don't presume to be able to answer it all in one post, here is a link that is extraordinarily helpful in the old earth/young earth debate, the old earth fellow being a Reformed, "Progressive Creationist". (Yes, I know that the young earth side is not well represented.)

Hugh Ross vs Kent Hovind - How Old Is The Earth? - YouTube

PS. The Old Earth/Progressive creationist, Hugh Ross, is also an Astrophysicist and his answer/argument is almost completely based on that we can see the stars and test the age of the light and photons emitted. Super interesting stuff, also a good incentive to worship the God whose glory is declared by these heavens, which we study.
 
Thanks for the replies. My only concern in saying, "Well, science rests on many theories that aren't yet proven and many scientific theories are proved false," while technically true, that is simply not how we usually live our day to day lives. We use a lot of scientific stuff and presuppose not only that it works, but that the theory behind it is sound, whether or not is has fully mature epistemic status.
 
Thanks for the replies. My only concern in saying, "Well, science rests on many theories that aren't yet proven and many scientific theories are proved false," while technically true, that is simply not how we usually live our day to day lives. We use a lot of scientific stuff and presuppose not only that it works, but that the theory behind it is sound, whether or not is has fully mature epistemic status.

Here we are concerned not merely with ordinary physical phenomena which can be repeated in a lab, but with immeasurable history, including a history of miracles. You can be confident that the speed of light in a vacuum in 3x10^8 m/s and that wine forms via a chemical process that takes time, all the while believing that Jesus turned water into wine and creation was miraculous. Even if our ability to see distant stars is not the result of a miracle at their creation, but rather has a scientific explanation, we would still be dealing with historical science, which is much trickier than observable, repeatable science.

Sent from my XT557 using Tapatalk 2
 
I'm just a school teacher, not a scientist. But, I always wondered if we know for sure that the speed of light is consistent in space. Do we know for sure that the speed of light is consistent and not something that exponentially increases in velocity? This isn't something we can scientifically test, since we can only really test light from the sun or on earth.
 
I'm just a school teacher, not a scientist. But, I always wondered if we know for sure that the speed of light is consistent in space. Do we know for sure that the speed of light is consistent and not something that exponentially increases in velocity? This isn't something we can scientifically test, since we can only really test light from the sun or on earth.

It's just that there's no known physical cause that would account for such a difference.

Sent from my XT557 using Tapatalk 2
 
As if there aren't enough posts answering this already, and because I don't presume to be able to answer it all in one post, here is a link that is extraordinarily helpful in the old earth/young earth debate, the old earth fellow being a Reformed, "Progressive Creationist". (Yes, I know that the young earth side is not well represented.)

Hugh Ross vs Kent Hovind - How Old Is The Earth? - YouTube
I just watched this and read the CMI line by line response lol, it was soooo long. P.S. all of the debates I've seen on creationism on the Ankerberg show so far have been very unfairly moderated.
I'm just a school teacher, not a scientist. But, I always wondered if we know for sure that the speed of light is consistent in space. Do we know for sure that the speed of light is consistent and not something that exponentially increases in velocity? This isn't something we can scientifically test, since we can only really test light from the sun or on earth.
Hugh ross in that debate (or another one) spoke about how light waves change when traveling a far distance, I think he said they turn redder the further they go and the ways spread out? Can anyone speak to this? is that true? and he said that this is what we do infact observe from distant stars, in making his argument for OEC, can anyone speak to this if it is true from a YEC perspective? Thanks.
 
Hugh ross in that debate (or another one) spoke about how light waves change when traveling a far distance, I think he said they turn redder the further they go and the ways spread out? Can anyone speak to this? is that true? and he said that this is what we do infact observe from distant stars, in making his argument for OEC, can anyone speak to this if it is true from a YEC perspective? Thanks.

Yes, that is true, there is a shift toward red in the spectrum the further the light appears to have traveled. I've usually seen this in support of the observation that the universe is expanding: a traveling light wave gets expanded a teeny bit at a time but over long distances become stretched enough to notice and gets a what we call a red shift (red is of a longer wavelength than the other visible colors).
 
But does red shift change to a point that it is measurable in a way that the red shift increases as the distance increases? As far as I know our measurements of stars is fairly accurate and we know the universe is expanding, I'm still curious about the YEC perspective on the increase of "stretchedness" of waves as distance increases (red shift) in a young universe.
 
I'm not very good at science, so I might phrase this poorly, but the light from stars contains information of a sorts. Yet the light from stars takes a really long time to get here (light years or something). yet the world was only created 6,000 to 10,000 years ago. So, was the starlight at the original moment stars were created "real" information or "apparent" information?

I feel I am missing something from your question since others seem to not be missing the "information" of which you speak. What "information" are you referring?
 
I'm not very good at science, so I might phrase this poorly, but the light from stars contains information of a sorts. Yet the light from stars takes a really long time to get here (light years or something). yet the world was only created 6,000 to 10,000 years ago. So, was the starlight at the original moment stars were created "real" information or "apparent" information?

I feel I am missing something from your question since others seem to not be missing the "information" of which you speak. What "information" are you referring?
Sarah (good to hear from you, BTW), one form of information Jacob is likely to be referring to are astronomical events such as supernovas & etc. that come to us from distances ascertained through current models to be more light-years away when they occurred than scripture describes as the age of creation. If we rely on current models of the speed of light, those events would tend to stand as a refutation of the biblical account.
 
It used to be that I read physics books for fun. Nowadays I don't, and it's possible my brain has lost much of its scientific capabilities. In reading this thread I've been thinking something similar to what Aaron said, that maybe we know a lot less about what space is like than we think.
 
I'm not very good at science, so I might phrase this poorly, but the light from stars contains information of a sorts. Yet the light from stars takes a really long time to get here (light years or something). yet the world was only created 6,000 to 10,000 years ago. So, was the starlight at the original moment stars were created "real" information or "apparent" information?

I feel I am missing something from your question since others seem to not be missing the "information" of which you speak. What "information" are you referring?
Sarah (good to hear from you, BTW), one form of information Jacob is likely to be referring to are astronomical events such as supernovas & etc. that come to us from distances ascertained through current models to be more light-years away when they occurred than scripture describes as the age of creation. If we rely on current models of the speed of light, those events would tend to stand as a refutation of the biblical account.

Good to see you all too, Brad!

I'm a poor scientist, but I like to speculate with examples. One that comes to mind is the throwing of a ball. When at first it is thrown the speed of it is greater than the speed of it when gravity finally has its way.

Keeping that in mind, I turn to a question of my own to which i have little answer. If the light from a street light is bright as you stand under it but begins to dim the further you move away from it, is that a culmination of the human eye's inability for long distant vision plus outward obstacles which blocks the light from our sight? And/or does light fade into nothingness within the element of darkness? If all three of these disadvantages hinder us from perpetually seeing the light from a street lamp no matter how far away you stand from the street light, could it be that the three obstacles I mentioned above are within the universe to some degree (perhaps something along the lines of gravity, meteors, planets, etc) which could disadvantage starlight's approach to us? Whereas starlight might start out at a speed unknown to mankind than the "speed of light" (a measurement we use with the knowledge we presently have which does not make it perfect for who knows what knowledge is to be had on this subject that mankind has not learned?), but because of unknown forces within the universe along with physical object, could it not be possible that starlight "slows" down in speed to the speed of light (a speed that we can then measure within the confines of our galaxy because the light has been brought close to our reach whether it be within the reaches of our instruments or within our "grasp" as it were), we measure such light, then say to ourselves, "Ha! This is the speed of light!"? Does anyone question the accuracy of "speed of light"? I think it's imperfect for there might be atmospheric variances or other types of variances within the whole of the universe to turn our measurement of light on it's head.

But this is all fanciful thinking on my part! I only know the Bible is correct and somewhere in mankind's understand he has landed upon failure.
 
A quick clarification: the scientific measurement "c" refers to the speed of light in a vacuum absent inertial forces. THAT is what is constant and what is tied to several other variables in physics. Changing that constant would drastically affect other things in the universe. The constant could not fluctuate more than an infinitesimal bit without us knowing it. Actual traveling photons do in fact change speed depending on various situational factors. Speed of Light in Gravity

As a parallel case, take gravity. Gravity is felt much more strongly on earth than on the moon. However, the formula that determines the effect is the same for both cases, therefore, constant. If one were to tweak the gravitational constant, then mass and distance would also interact differently. The universe would not be anything like we know it. Gravitational constant - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sarah, you see light sources more dimly as you increase distance because fewer photons are reaching your eye. If you take a piece of paper and put a dot in the middle, then draw lines equally spaced radiating out from that dot, the lines get farther apart as they stretch toward the edge of the page.
 
If the light from a street light is bright as you stand under it but begins to dim the further you move away from it, is that a culmination of the human eye's inability for long distant vision plus outward obstacles which blocks the light from our sight? And/or does light fade into nothingness within the element of darkness? If all three of these disadvantages hinder us from perpetually seeing the light from a street lamp no matter how far away you stand from the street light, could it be that the three obstacles I mentioned above are within the universe to some degree (perhaps something along the lines of gravity, meteors, planets, etc) which could disadvantage starlight's approach to us?

As Charlie said, this is due to energy dropping off as the reciprocal of the distance squared (inverse square law). Imagine a small box with a candle in it. The candle lights it up fairly well because there is less area for the light to spread on, or the light hitting the walls is "denser". Now put the same candle in a huge room and it won't even noticeably light up the corners at all. The candle has not grown dimmer, it's just that the light it gives off is spread much more thinly every where because of the distance and size. If you cut a hole in the box and put your eye there, your eye is "soaking up" perhaps 1/100 of the total light, so it looks very bright. If you cut a hole in the huge room and look in, your eye is perhaps soaking up 1 billionth part of the light in the room, so it will be dimmer.

This is indeed observed with starlight too. Starlight radiates in every direction and the further we are from it, the smaller the portion of it which will hit our eye. We use telescopes with very giant mirrors to essentially create an eye with a bigger area to try to capture more light and make distant stars visible.

But does red shift change to a point that it is measurable in a way that the red shift increases as the distance increases? As far as I know our measurements of stars is fairly accurate and we know the universe is expanding, I'm still curious about the YEC perspective on the increase of "stretchedness" of waves as distance increases (red shift) in a young universe.

Yes, the longer the light has to travel through a stretching medium, the more of a red shift it has, and this has indeed correlated with our calculations of distant stars and the father it travels, the more red it becomes. This does not mean that all light becomes red necessarily but that blue light shifts down toward green and yellow, and red would perhaps shift down into infrared. The most natural explanation of this is that the universe is expanding (if it was contracting there would be a "blue shift").

Now one thing I don't think is certain is the rate at which it is expanding. One could assume a constant rate, or perhaps it could have been extremely accelerated at first and now has slowed down. Just going off the cuff and speculating but there could very well have been an exponential decay of expansion rate, which would account for a red shift from distant stars without requiring a very, very long time to get here.
 
Just going off the cuff and speculating but there could very well have been an exponential decay of expansion rate, which would account for a red shift from distant stars without requiring a very, very long time to get here.
That's actually exactly what I was thinking thanks! I would like to read some technical papers on this if anyone has come across any links would be great!
could it be that the three obstacles I mentioned above are within the universe to some degree (perhaps something along the lines of gravity, meteors, planets, etc) which could disadvantage starlight's approach to us?
My first thought is space dust, I think there is 1000 particles per square mile (don't quote me on it), They have done studies already on how this effects light travel and how this fits into the young earth timescale.
 
This is a fascinating discussion, and below is my only real contribution. Cold weather and clear nights make for awesome skies. I appreciate the concern with starlight containing fictitious data; but is that really different than the data contained in rocks or Adam's bones and teeth. The appearance of age/maturity implies a history which never occurred. Did Adam have a belly button, or was his stomach flat? Did Jesus have paternal DNA? What about the grapes used to make the wine at the feast in Cana?

I understand that God is not a creator of fictions, but maybe we are putting too narrow a definition on it. just my thoughts. BTW it is an excellent point that first God made light with no astronomical source.

11176154115_9c89a6c095_c.jpg

11580580105_c2e3a3030e_c.jpg
 
Brandon, you are our resident Mississippi Hippie. Even with the new do.

Great pics, brother.
 
I appreciate the concern with starlight containing fictitious data; but is that really different than the data contained in rocks or Adam's bones and teeth.
I think the problem comes if you were to carbon date Adam's teeth you'd find they are only a day old (when he was created) and though he appeared to be about 30 yrs old he still appeared brand new, i.e. his cholesterol was perfect, no chipped teeth, no wrinkles, etc. And rocks when dated are young. Maybe tree rings might make a better case but the bible doesn't say whether the trees God created ex nihlio already had rings in them or not, plus they were all wiped out at the flood.

I used to think the starlight was exactly the same as Adam's "appearance of age" but it turns out they are similar, but not the exact same case. Distant start light has the problem of factoring in how it could have traveled to us (assuming a constant rate, which is the problem for YEC to figure out, and the problem for OEC because they arbitrarily assume this) and still be young, but only appear old. Well if the rates are constant it would have taken billions of years to get here, or it wouldn't be visible to us, since it is visible it must have taken billions of years since our measurements are accurate. Now this could be taken into account rather easily by saying God created the light in transit but the anomaly then is, what about supernovas and other historical data/information which we have discussed already. How this information then sets distant starlight apart from Adam with the "appearance of age" argument is that starlight has this "information" in it where as Adam doesn't. If you look at Adam's cells they would be brand new. Whereas lightwaves are redshifted. Jason Lisle when people say to him: "well how do you explain that the universe looks old" he says something like: "I don't, because I think it looks young." With Adam I can see that because he would have been brandnew (though fully formed) with starlight its a bit trickier since this is the magic bullet OEC are currently using against YEC, but this is why there is a lot of good research happening now on this subject and ultimately the scriptures are king and they portray a YE, once our scientific models catch up in sophistication to the scriptures we will see how they completely agree, just like tons of other science that have previously taken us a while to observe and test and model out to finally see how it all works together, even past magic bullets that OEC have used against YEC and research now stands firmly on the YEC side now that "all the facts are in" as it were.
 
Tree rings are a good example of why YEC is troubling to so many, including myself. We have learned how to read tree rings for specific climate data, allowing us to reconstruct conditions in many places regions of the world. These reconstructions are extremely accurate in every place where we can cross-check them with recorded data.

Now, there are some very old plants out there. Several have tree rings going back 5,000+ years, right through when usual estimates of the flood would have occurred. But trees rarely live more than 5,000 years. However, one can actually establish sequences of tree rings to extend back farther than any one tree. That is, if you have 3 or 4 trees that each partially overlapped in their lifespans, you can find the points of intersection between them and then add them together to create a continuous sequence. These sequences have been extended back over 10,000 years.

So, the YEC position requires a magic wall. All the years back to the creation year, the tree rings give us real data about climate and its effect on the the tree. But then suddenly and without any indication of change, the tree rings stop referring to real events and simply evidence whatever fake history God inscribed in them. And since we don't know the exact year of creation, we can never tell where the line between real history and random creation-data is.

Tree rings are just one example. Others include ice cores, coral reefs, geographical strata, etc. What's so spectacular about these methods is that when one cross-checks one dating mechanism (say tree rings) against others (carbon dating, strata), they almost always yield consistent information. It's almost as if they contained data about real historical events...
 
Tree rings are a good example of why YEC is troubling to so many, including myself. We have learned how to read tree rings for specific climate data, allowing us to reconstruct conditions in many places regions of the world. These reconstructions are extremely accurate in every place where we can cross-check them with recorded data.

Now, there are some very old plants out there. Several have tree rings going back 5,000+ years, right through when usual estimates of the flood would have occurred. But trees rarely live more than 5,000 years. However, one can actually establish sequences of tree rings to extend back farther than any one tree. That is, if you have 3 or 4 trees that each partially overlapped in their lifespans, you can find the points of intersection between them and then add them together to create a continuous sequence. These sequences have been extended back over 10,000 years.

So, the YEC position requires a magic wall. All the years back to the creation year, the tree rings give us real data about climate and its effect on the the tree. But then suddenly and without any indication of change, the tree rings stop referring to real events and simply evidence whatever fake history God inscribed in them. And since we don't know the exact year of creation, we can never tell where the line between real history and random creation-data is.

Tree rings are just one example. Others include ice cores, coral reefs, geographical strata, etc. What's so spectacular about these methods is that when one cross-checks one dating mechanism (say tree rings) against others (carbon dating, strata), they almost always yield consistent information. It's almost as if they contained data about real historical events...

So that I understand your frame of reference, are you willing to accept 800-900 year life spans for men such Methuselah?
 
I am not tied to the position that the biblical chronologies are literal reckonings, but I am not opposed to it either. Is it relevant?
 
Tree rings are a good example of why YEC is troubling to so many, including myself. We have learned how to read tree rings for specific climate data, allowing us to reconstruct conditions in many places regions of the world. These reconstructions are extremely accurate in every place where we can cross-check them with recorded data.

Now, there are some very old plants out there. Several have tree rings going back 5,000+ years, right through when usual estimates of the flood would have occurred. But trees rarely live more than 5,000 years. However, one can actually establish sequences of tree rings to extend back farther than any one tree. That is, if you have 3 or 4 trees that each partially overlapped in their lifespans, you can find the points of intersection between them and then add them together to create a continuous sequence. These sequences have been extended back over 10,000 years.

So, the YEC position requires a magic wall. All the years back to the creation year, the tree rings give us real data about climate and its effect on the the tree. But then suddenly and without any indication of change, the tree rings stop referring to real events and simply evidence whatever fake history God inscribed in them. And since we don't know the exact year of creation, we can never tell where the line between real history and random creation-data is.

Tree rings are just one example. Others include ice cores, coral reefs, geographical strata, etc. What's so spectacular about these methods is that when one cross-checks one dating mechanism (say tree rings) against others (carbon dating, strata), they almost always yield consistent information. It's almost as if they contained data about real historical events...

You've got to to remember, of course, that some (many?) YECs i.e. creationists who believe the Days of Creation were approximately 24 hour periods, don't necessarily believe that the world was created in 4,004 B.C.

Sent from my HTC Wildfire using Tapatalk 2
 
I know that, Richard. As far as I can tell, though, once YECs give up the strict biblical chronology, any date they set is completely arbitrary. When old universe cosmologists estimate the age of the universe based on cosmic microwave background radiation, they may or may not be right, but they're offering a scientific explanation, an inference based on observed data derived according to an accepted paradigm. YECs that don't calculate the age of the earth through biblical chronology can't offer an alternative scientific explanation, because the "young looks old" thesis vitiates all inferences.

But all that aside, adding a few thousand years doesn't change the magic wall problem. Ice core data goes back over 100,000 years. http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/bas_research/science_briefings/icecorebriefing.php
 
Thanks for your scientific input, Charlie.

I know there are problems with YEC, as there are major problems with the current long-age evolutionary hypothesis and theistic evolution, and with OEC also.

People have to choose what problems they want to live with in the light of what Scripture says.

Increased knowledge and understanding will hopefully resolve the problems at some point in history.

Sent from my HTC Wildfire using Tapatalk 2
 
So, the YEC position requires a magic wall. All the years back to the creation year, the tree rings give us real data about climate and its effect on the the tree. But then suddenly and without any indication of change, the tree rings stop referring to real events
But this assumes uniformitarianism, that these life cycles were all uniform, that isn't observable data, it is historic science.
What's so spectacular about these methods is that when one cross-checks one dating mechanism (say tree rings) against others (carbon dating, strata), they almost always yield consistent information. It's almost as if they contained data about real historical events...
Which they most certainly would be because they all experienced the same catastrophic event (like the flood) or other event, that changed the Constants, for instance the flood changing the atmosphere etc and its connection to the fossil record being created (mostly) and life span of humans changing.


Others include ice cores, coral reefs, geographical strata,
How Long Does a Coral Reef Take to Grow? - Answers in Genesis
Search
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top