Stunning victory of Creation

Do you have a reason to think that it doesn't?

BTW, yes I do. First, conditions on earth vary by locale. If someone was totally alien to cold weather, they might have never developed instrumentation to measure cold.

I work in printing. One instrument used to quantify quality is a densitometer. It measures the amount of cyan, magenta, yellow, and black on a sheet of paper. Even so, there can be a visible difference between sheets printed with identical plates, press, and ink volume. There are other factors that can be measured to get you close to a uniform standard... but someone had to first realize the importance of those factors and then develop a means of measuring them.

We don't know whether unknown factors exist out in space or not. You operate on the assumption that the rules governing space, time, energy, and matter are universal but they may not be. If they those facts do exist then they will certainly effect any and all measures of light and distance made from earth or even within our solar system.

You have swallowed a huge assumption to remain inside the box.

Accepting the Creator as a possible frees one from these paradigm constraints. If the rules are normative- fine, God created it that way. If the rules are not normative- fine, God created it that way. Either way, evolutionists cannot legitimately declare that they have proven an age for the universe... since they have not proven naturalism.

Not necessarily... so long as one recognizes that it is just an assumption and don't try to declare that we "know" things that are based on such an assumption.

That is simply an indication of close minded bias. You do not "know" the things you think disprove YEC yet you are willing to contrast it with "reality".

You have not pointed to physical measurements of the stars. You have pointed to measurements extrapolated from perceptions of light based on the unproven assumption that we know everything that could potentially effect those perceptions.

And the basis? Just what little we know about our tiny corner of the universe.

Why is it so hard for you to admit that there are some things that science doesn't know that could potentially overturn evolution's assumptions? It would seem that you are operating on a faith that doesn't like to be questioned.

 

"Do you have a reason to think that it doesn't?"

Yes the homogeny of the universe in all directions is a good reason to think that all of the universe obeys the same set of physics.

"BTW, yes I do. First, conditions on earth vary by locale. If someone was totally alien to cold weather, they might have never developed instrumentation to measure cold.

I work in printing. One instrument used to quantify quality is a densitometer. It measures..."

Apples and oranges.

I am sure that if pressed you could give me good, logical reasons why your results could sho variance.

Those sheets are not different because different laws of physics in play when each was printed.

"We don't know whether unknown factors exist out in space or not. You operate on the assumption that the rules governing space, time, energy, and matter are universal but they may not be."

These are tweo different statements. It is very likely, almost certain, that things go on that we do not yet know about and may never know about. That has nothing to do with whether the rules are universal.

"If they those facts do exist then they will certainly effect any and all measures of light and distance made from earth or even within our solar system."

Direct question. Is your goal here to show that the entire known universe could be within 6000 light years of earth? If so, please try an explain a start to how you think we might could be off by over six orders of magnitude in our distance measurements. Without any modification of the light received being perceived. If not, why are we spending so many electrons worrying about the distances to the stars?

"Not necessarily... so long as one recognizes that it is just an assumption and don't try to declare that we "know" things that are based on such an assumption."

Everything starts with some assumptions. The queston is how valid are those asumptions. Assuming that the universe operates under one set of laws not only seems to be a good assumption, it is also necessary for us to know anything about our world.

"That is simply an indication of close minded bias. You do not "know" the things you think disprove YEC yet you are willing to contrast it with "reality". "

YE is not in agreement with the things that we can see around us. If God wishes to make the rules of physics and biology and chemistry and geology vary wildly with one's position in space and in time, then He may do whatever He wishes. He is God after all. But there does not seem to be any indication the He does so. If He does, then none of us can know anything for certain. If He does not, then most of your speculations go out the window. Astronomy, biology and geology included.

"You have not pointed to physical measurements of the stars. You have pointed to measurements extrapolated from perceptions of light based on the unproven assumption that we know everything that could potentially effect those perceptions."

We can measure the distance, we can measure the brightness and we can measure the spectrum. At varying distances, there is a very predicatble pattern in how these three things are related. This pattern fits with theories about how stars operate. Could it all be wrong? Sure! But there does not seem to be any reason to suspect it is wrong. For it to be wrong, you would indeed require that stars in our little neighborhood operate under wildly varying sets of physics. Well maybe not so wildly as there would have to be enough tunig about it to make all the data look consistent.

"Why is it so hard for you to admit that there are some things that science doesn't know that could potentially overturn evolution's assumptions? "

I believe I have not only admitted such but I have given you observations that would falsify evolution. Remember the talks on atavisms and vestiges, for example? Finding mammary glands and nipples on a bird or finding a tail fluke on a camel, these are the types of atavisms that could not be explained by science as we know it. Or a vestigal chloroplast in a reptile or mammal. This would not fit theory.

Science is falsifiable. Science makes predictions. Science explains the data that we see. YE is content to speculate, even to make stuff up on the spot if need be. There are no predictions. There are no mechanisms. There are no ways to falsify it.

If your faith tells you that YE is true, then I will not argue against you about that. But if you take it further and say that the data supports YE or does not support OE, then I will challenge you because I believe it to be a false statement.

Could God have made everything just the way it is? Sure! Does He owe us an explanation for anything He does? Nope.

But, from my perspective, God gave us His creation, He gave us intellect, He gave us curiosity, He gave us drive. I think He wants us to learn from HIs creation, to see how marvelous it really is. I do not think that He would create one way and then meticulously make it look like He created a different way. If I am wrong, well I am wrong. If evidence surfaces that overturns current theories, I'll happily go along.

But so far YE seems content to speculate without evidence or logic. Just doubt everything, I guess, is the rule.

 

I'll start at the bottom.

"Let me ask you specifically UTEOTW, do you believe the gospels are literal and that Christ WAS God and He died on the cross and rose again on the third day as the NT says?"

Yes.

"Do you also believe that the gospels tell an accurate story of God on Earth as a man and are to be taken literally with the exceptions of the parables that Jesus was very clearly about?"

Yes.

It may surprise you, but I do not find it to be a trivial thing to take parts of the Bible as non-literal. I would be quite happy if the data supported a young earth and I could return to that. They don't.

"I would assume that if certain laws change, they would do so gradually, but then again, I just don't know and neither do you. We can sit here all day and say it makes perfectly good sense for the laws of physics to remain constant everywhere in the universe, but without being there, we can assume all we want."

The uniformity of observations in all directions and all distances is direct evidence that the laws are uniform and stable.

"About your satellite. You only gave the accuracy that the satellite supposedly provides, you did not give other variables that can cause an effect on the measurement. Who knows, Scott may have hit an interesting point. It is assumed that dark matter does exist and if so, what is the speed of light passing through this dark matter (assuming the dark matter may be spread and not clumped). If so, then you will have errors appearing in your simple trigonometry based on observation."

We have observed how dark matter affects light. It does so gravitationally which alters the wavelength of the light and alters the path of the light. This has been observed and measured. Physicists seem to be zeroing in on supersymettric particles, most likely the photino, as the particle of dark matter. The Large Hadron Collider under construction should be able to answer these types of questions.

On a more general note, however, you seem content to rely upon the possibility of unknown forces having unknown effects without leavinga trace and having identical looking systems behave in distincly and grossly different ways.

"Maybe we ought to be asking the odds of each mutation from strictly simple compounds at their lowest form up to a human being. Taking one step at a time such as forming the backbone of DNA as a polyphosphate ester of a 1,3-glycol. Or forming suger residue bonded to the groups of 2-deoxyribofuranose. Then linking these together with a phosphate."

Accually this is an experiment we know how to run.

Ricardo, A., Carrigan, M. A., Olcott, A. N., Benner, S. A.. 2004 “Borate Minerals Stabilize Ribose” Science January 9; 303: 196

Now the paper tells us that borate will both catalyze the formation of the correct right handed ribose sugars and will stabilize the sugars, protecting them from degredation. The same chemicals that react to form the ribose will also react to form adenine, cytosine, guanine and uracil, the four nucleobases.

If you add a little phosphate to the mix, the ribose sugars and the nucleobases will combine to form nucleotides. Now, as it turns out, in the presence of clay (specifically montmorillonite) these nucleotides will begin to polymerize and make RNA.

Some experiments have let this experiment run, making random chains of RNA, and then using the RNA to perform some task. This selects chains that can peform the task. Then many copies are made of that chain. In the variants that are produced, some do the job even better. After several cycles, you can have a randomly produced chain that has been tailored to do a specific job through nothing but mutations and selection.

 

Not being a smart aleck but... try taking God's claims and attributes as part of the "data".

 

It really is not a smart alleck response. I really do understand where you are coming from and can symapthize with your position. I wish everything did fit comfortably into a YE paradigm. But, in my humble opinion, it does not. To me, too many things require being set in an arbitrary manner, too many things only make sense if either they really were produced over a long time or if God chose a starting point that just made it look that way. I have a hard time accepting that the convincing story from an extremely wide variety of lines all fit together so well if they are not true. God could have easily set things up that way. I, personally, just don't think that He did. I think that we can accept what we see. Maybe you are right and we cannot accept things as they are. We won't know for sure in this life.

 

In general, no. The things of faith are things that science cannot adress anyhow. Science can tell us nothing about the virgin birth, the feeding of the five thousand, the sacrifice on the cross or the resurrection. Science can tell us nothing of the faith of Paul or David. Science can tell us nothing about heaven or hell.

Obviously there are some areas in which I take a different view. But I maintain that this is something that we all do to some extent. Most of the examples come from the way the OT was written. Almost no one today proclaims a flat earth and few advocate geocentrism. Yet many in the past have taken parts of the Bible to mean that these are true. Today most of us realize that this is not the case and reinterpret those verses accordingly.

No one today takes Job's references to the storehouse of snow and the treasury of the hail to be literal. There are still a few people who take the description of the dome over the earth in Genesis that separates the waters above from the waters below literally, but not many. It was a non-literal statement. Today we understand the water cycle and we know that rain does not come from God opening literal windows in the heavens. But either way, God is still in control. Either way, what happens is part of His will.

To me, the creation account as given to us serves its purpose either literally or not. The beauty of it is that it was written in such a way as to give insight throughout the ages. It survives whatever it enemies throw against it. God is the only god. He is the creator. Man is sinful. God has given man a soul and the ability to know right from wrong and the ability to chose to serve God or not. God has a special relationship with man. This is true whether Adam was the created on day six, the first human to be given a soul, or whatever other way you choose to view it.

In the end, this is a matter of interpretation. It is not a salvation issue. I still find it an important matter to settle. But it is secondary to the really important stuff.

 

That is perhaps where we disagree on our understanding of God. I don't think our lack of understanding of why He did one thing or another is an indication that He acted arbitrarily.

In fact, the argument of "arbitrary" action would just as certainly destroy theistic evolution since it attributes natural development largely to arbitrary/random events.

The problem with that is that you can weave a philosophy around the facts fairly easily. Right or wrong, creationists are weaving their assumptions about Genesis around the facts as they are presented. When refuted, the sincere ones go back and rework their explanations... just like evolutionists do.

You reject their foundational assumptions... or rather you accept a different foundational assumption that they reject. Those are purely subjective choices... not scientific.

I don't reject what we see. I am contending that the interpretations of what we see by evolutionists may not, and in fact are not, taking all of the relevant factors into account. Those factors include supernatural/extra-natural influence and unknown natural phenomena (sp?).

The assumption that we "know" enough about the whole universe to make distance estimates and dogmatically assert them as truth is unreasonable in my opinion. My statistical argument still holds. We don't have significant enough sample on which to base assertions about the whole. The problem for us is that we probably never will... at least not in our life times.

 

I believe God gave us the ability to "read" the signs in the earth, and the ability to roughly measure the distances to the nearby stars for the purpose of realizing a little about His power and to see a little of how He formed the universe.

No matter how far we break down the basics of matter and energy, it all comes down to the fact that God created it from nothing and far as we can see, He has given a universal set of laws to all of it. For example, six protons in a bound-together group is an atom of carbon, regardless of any other factors. And every subatomic particle is made of quarks, and these quarks come in six "flavors" with individuals of each flavor having one of three possible "colors". Thus, there are 18 different kinds of quarks known. When these quarks are combined in certain configurations, they form the subatomic particles with which we've been long familiar, with a special combination of quarks for each type of particle. Since this isn't a physics class, let me refer you to

http://www2.slac.stanford.edu/vvc/theory/quarks.html

and

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/particles/quark.html

if anyone wishes to have a quick course in quarkology.

Point is, I believe God has made ONE universal rule for all the physical universe. A more familiar such law is the law of gravity, the most common force in our lives. That law, in simplicity, is that a body of matter of X mass exerts Y amount of gravity at Z distance from its center of gravity. There's nothing to suggest there's any other law of gravity besides the one in force here.

These laws are actually the laws of GOD. We obey them precisely, whether we realize it or not. We cannot disobey them if we tried. For example, we can OVERCOME the gravity of earth, but we cannot CANCEL it. And earth would have the SAME gravity were it a frozen ball or a molten ball...temp does NOT affect gravity, nor does the state of matter, be it solid, liquid, or gas. Nor does the physical size of the mass matter. If earth were condenset to a mile in diameter, it would exert the same level of gravity 10k miles from the center as it does now. Again, there's NOTHING to suggest this isn't a universal law, a law we cannot disobey if we tried.

Only GOD can, and has, created something from nothing. And only HE is not subject to the physical laws of the universe, I.E. Jesus walking on the water and enabling Peter to do so, His creating something from nothing to feed at least 5K people from one picnic basket, His ascending to heaven by His own power, w/o the aid of wind or any machine. I believe we're stretching things when we interpret the signs He's left us in any other way except the literal, common-sense meaning.

 

I would add to that list creating the world in 6 literal days just as He required it to be in order to accomplish His purpose.

I believe that we are stretching it when we interpret the Word He's left us in any other way except the literal, normative way. "Literal" by the way does not preclude figures of speech, parables, nor word pictures... or even allegory when the context so indicates.

 

Did He? Did He endow us with perfect perception? Did He guarantee that we would be able to gather, perceive, or understand all of the factual data in the universe?

These are serious questions if your contention was serious. History is riddled with examples of how the wisest, most educated, most scientific minds were wrong because they made false assumptions.

We don't know what is outside of our solar system... and don't know much that is inside our solar system.

"far as we can see" being the critical part of this statement... since so far, "as far as we can see" is just beyond the edge of our solar system. And that by no means comprehensive.

What limits those constructions? Are there possible environments that apply different limits or less limits?

And as we both point out to KJVO's, a belief doesn't qualify as proof.

I don't claim a belief on the matter only that "we don't KNOW" everything necessary to state it dogmatically as fact.

 

So just how far away are the clouds of Magellen, naked eye objects that they are? Why doesn't seeing them at 200,000 light years distance qualify as seeing things outside our solar system?

 

Because you have no means of validating your measuring system by direct observation.

You can assume things constant so long as you acknowledge that they may not be and that the results could vary radically if they are not.

All I am really asking for is basic honesty and integrity.

 

Ah, the LMC.

But we do have alternate ways to measure distance.

I gave you a pretty indepth method before. PLot all the stars of the LMC on an H-R diagram. By the difference in relative brightness, the distance can be determined. You have voiced your objections to this.

In 1987 we received light from a star that went supernova in the LMC. As the light moved out, it intersected rings of material that had been previously thrown off. We can observe how long it takes after the initial explosion for these rings to be lit up. This tells us how far from the star they were. We can then measure the size of the rings as observed from here. A little simple geometry and you have the distance.

These are independent methods.

 

Amazing, isn't it?

There is none so blind as he who WILL NOT see!

 

This abstract gives some data about the size of light echos seen with SN1987A as well as how long it took then to become visible.

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-bib_query?bibcode=1993AAS...183.3908X&db_key=AST

This abstract describes the process and gives the values calculated.

"The circumstellar envelope of SN 1987A. 1: The shape of the double-lobed nebula and its rings and the distance to the large magellanic cloud"

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-bib_query?bibcode=1995ApJ...438..724C&db_key=AST

It is described as item G on this page (previously presented) on ways to measure distance. It is written a little more simply and includes the needed formulas.

http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/distance.htm