I have a question for any young earth believers out there.
Why do we see light from stars that are 15 billion light years away?
a) God created light in all of the intervening space between the star and us.
b) The speed of light is not a constant.
c) something else, please specify.
This is not a loaded question, I just want to see how most young earth believers deal with this problem.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
mertdawg wrote:
I have a question for any young earth believers out there.
Why do we see light from stars that are 15 billion light years away?
a) God created light in all of the intervening space between the star and us.
b) The speed of light is not a constant.
c) something else, please specify.
This is not a loaded question, I just want to see how most young earth believers deal with this problem.
Here’s one explanation. It’s somewhat lengthy but interesting.
Created light?
Perhaps the most commonly used explanation is that God created light ‘on its way,’ so that Adam could see the stars immediately without having to wait years for the light from even the closest ones to reach the earth. While we should not limit the power of God, this has some rather immense difficulties.
It would mean that whenever we look at the behavior of a very distant object, what we see happening never happened at all. For instance, say we see an object a million light-years away which appears to be rotating; that is, the light we receive in our telescopes carries this information recording this behavior. However, according to this explanation, the light we are now receiving did not come from the star, but was created en route, so to speak.
This would mean that for a 10,000-year-old universe, that anything we see happening beyond about 10,000 light-years away is actually part of a gigantic picture show of things that have not actually happened, showing us objects which may not even exist.
To explain this problem further, consider an exploding star (supernova) at, say, an accurately measured 100,000 light-years away. Remember we are using this explanation in a 10,000-year-old universe. As the astronomer on earth watches this exploding star, he is not just receiving a beam of light. If that were all, then it would be no problem at all to say that God could have created a whole chain of photons (light particles/waves) already on their way.
However, what the astronomer receives is also a particular, very specific pattern of variation within the light, showing him/her the changes that one would expect to accompany such an explosion?a predictable sequence of events involving neutrinos, visible light, X-rays and gamma-rays. The light carries information recording an apparently real event. The astronomer is perfectly justified in interpreting this ?message? as representing an actual reality?that there really was such an object, which exploded according to the laws of physics, brightened, emitted X-rays, dimmed, and so on, all in accord with those same physical laws.
Everything he sees is consistent with this, including the spectral patterns in the light from the star giving us a chemical signature of the elements contained in it. Yet the light created en route explanation means that this recorded message of events, transmitted through space, had to be contained within the light beam from the moment of its creation, or planted into the light beam at a later date, without ever having originated from that distant point. (If it had started from the star?assuming that there really was such a star?it would still be 90,000 light years away from earth.)
To create such a detailed series of signals in light beams reaching earth, signals which seem to have come from a series of real events but in fact did not, has no conceivable purpose. Worse, it is like saying that God created fossils in rocks to fool us, or even test our faith, and that they don?t represent anything real (a real animal or plant that lived and died in the past). This would be a strange deception.
Did light always travel at the same speed?
An obvious solution would be a higher speed of light in the past, allowing the light to cover the same distance more quickly. This seemed at first glance a too-convenient ad hoc explanation. Then some years ago, Australian Barry Setterfield raised the possibility to a high profile by showing that there seemed to be a decreasing trend in the historical observations of the speed of light (c) over the past 300 years or so. Setterfield (and his later co-author Trevor Norman) produced much evidence in favor of this theory.1 They believed that it would have affected radiometric dating results, and even have caused the red-shifting of light from distant galaxies, although this idea was later overturned, and other modifications were also made.
Much debate has raged to and fro among equally capable people within creationist circles about whether the statistical evidence really supports c decay (?cdk?) or not.
The biggest difficulty, however, is with certain physical consequences of the theory. If c has declined the way Setterfield proposed, these consequences should still be discernible in the light from distant galaxies but they are apparently not. In short, none of the theory?s defenders have been able to answer all the questions raised.
A new creationist cosmology
Nevertheless, the c-decay theory stimulated much thinking about the issues. Creationist physicist Dr Russell Humphreys says that he spent a year on and off trying to get the declining c theory to work, but without success. However, in the process, he was inspired to develop a new creationist cosmology which appears to solve the problem of the apparent conflict with the Bible?s clear, authoritative teaching of a recent creation.
This new cosmology is proposed as a creationist alternative to the big bang theory. It passed peer review, by qualifying reviewers, for the 1994 Pittsburgh International Conference on Creationism.2 Young-earth creationists have been cautious about the model,3 which is not surprising with such an apparently radical departure from orthodoxy, but Humphreys has addressed the problems raised.4 Believers in an old universe and the big bang have vigorously opposed the new cosmology and claim to have found flaws in it.5 However, Humphreys has been able to defend his model, as well as develop it further.6 The debate will no doubt continue.
This sort of development, in which one creationist theory, c-decay, is overtaken by another, is a healthy aspect of science. The basic biblical framework is non-negotiable, as opposed to the changing views and models of fallible people seeking to understand the data within that framework (evolutionists also often change their ideas on exactly how things have made themselves, but never whether they did).
A clue
Let us briefly give a hint as to how the new cosmology seems to solve the starlight problem before explaining some preliminary items in a little more detail. Consider that the time taken for something to travel a given distance is the distance divided by the speed it is traveling. That is:
Time = Distance / Speed
When this is applied to light from distant stars, the time calculates out to be millions of years. Some have sought to challenge the distances, but this is a very unlikely answer.7
Astronomers use many different methods to measure the distances, and no informed creationist astronomer would claim that any errors would be so vast that billions of light-years could be reduced to thousands, for example. There is good evidence that our own Milky Way galaxy is 100,000 light years across!
If the speed of light (c) has not changed, the only thing left untouched in the equation is time itself. In fact, Einstein?s relativity theories have been telling the world for decades that time is not a constant.
Two things are believed (with experimental support) to distort time in relativity theory?one is speed and the other is gravity. Einstein?s general theory of relativity, the best theory of gravity we have at present, indicates that gravity distorts time.
This effect has been measured experimentally, many times. Clocks at the top of tall buildings, where gravity is slightly less, run faster than those at the bottom, just as predicted by the equations of general relativity (GR).8
When the concentration of matter is very large or dense enough, the gravitational distortion can be so immense that even light cannot escape.9 The equations of GR show that at the invisible boundary surrounding such a concentration of matter (called the event horizon, the point at which light rays trying to escape the enormous pull of gravity bend back on themselves), time literally stands still.
Using different assumptions ?
Dr Humphreys? new creationist cosmology literally ?falls out? of the equations of GR, so long as one assumes that the universe has a boundary. In other words, that it has a center and an edge?that if you were to travel off into space, you would eventually come to a place beyond which there was no more matter. In this cosmology, the earth is near the center, as it appears to be as we look out into space.
This might sound like common sense, as indeed it is, but all modern secular (big bang) cosmologies deny this. That is, they make arbitrary assumption (without any scientific necessity) that the universe has no boundaries?no edge and no center. In this assumed universe, every galaxy would be surrounded by galaxies spread evenly in all directions (on a large enough scale), and so, therefore, all the net gravitational forces cancel out.
However, if the universe has boundaries, then there is a net gravitational effect toward the center. Clocks at the edge would be running at different rates to clocks on the earth. In other words, it is no longer enough to say God made the universe in six days. He certainly did, but six days by which clock? (If we say ?God?s time? we miss the point that He is outside of time, seeing the end from the beginning.)10
There appears to be observational evidence that the universe has expanded in the past, supported by the many phrases God uses in the Bible to tell us that at creation he ?stretched out?11 (other verses say ?spread out?) the heavens.
If the universe is not much bigger than we can observe, and if it was only 50 times smaller in the past than it is now, then scientific deduction based on GR means it has to have expanded out of a previous state in which it was surrounded by an event horizon (a condition known technically as a ?white hole??a black hole running in reverse, something permitted by the equations of GR).
As matter passed out of this event horizon, the horizon itself had to shrink?eventually to nothing. Therefore, at one point this earth (relative to a point far away from it) would have been virtually frozen. An observer on earth would not in any way ?feel different.? ?Billions of years? would be available (in the frame of reference within which it is traveling in deep space) for light to reach the earth, for stars to age, etc.?while less than one ordinary day is passing on earth. This massive gravitational time dilation would seem to be a scientific inevitability if a bounded universe expanded significantly.
In one sense, if observers on earth at that particular time could have looked out and ?seen? the speed with which light was moving toward them out in space, it would have appeared as if it were traveling many times faster than c. (Galaxies would also appear to be rotating faster.) However, if an observer in deep space was out there measuring the speed of light, to him it would still only be traveling at c.
There is more detail of this new cosmology, at layman?s level, in the book by Dr Humphreys, Starlight and Time, which also includes reprints of his technical papers showing the equations.12
It is fortunate that creationists did not invent such concepts such as gravitational time dilation, black and white holes, event horizons and so on, or we would likely be accused of manipulating the data to solve the problem. The interesting thing about this cosmology is that it is based upon mathematics and physics totally accepted by all cosmologists (general relativity), and it accepts (along with virtually all physicists) that there has been expansion in the past (though not from some imaginary tiny point). It requires no ?massaging??the results ?fall out? so long as one abandons the arbitrary starting point which the big bangers use (the unbounded cosmos idea, which could be called ?what the experts don?t tell you about the ?big bang??).
Caution
While this is exciting news, all theories of fallible men, no matter how well they seem to fit the data, are subject to revision or abandonment in the light of future discoveries. What we can say is that at this point a plausible mechanism has been demonstrated, with considerable observational and theoretical support.
What if no one had ever thought of the possibility of gravitational time dilation? Many might have felt forced to agree with those scientists (including some Christians) that there was no possible solution ?the vast ages are fact, and the Bible must be ?reinterpreted? (massaged) or increasingly rejected. Many have in fact been urging Christians to abandon the Bible?s clear teaching of a recent creation [see Q&A: Genesis] because of these ?undeniable facts.? This reinterpretation also means having to accept that there were billions of years of death, disease, and bloodshed before Adam, thus eroding the creation/Fall/restoration framework within which the gospel is presented in the Bible.
However, even without this new idea, such an approach would still have been wrong-headed. The authority of the Bible should never be compromised as mankind?s ?scientific? proposals. One little previously unknown fact, or one change in a starting assumption, can drastically alter the whole picture so that what was ?fact? is no longer so.
This is worth remembering when dealing with those other areas of difficulty which, despite the substantial evidence for Genesis creation, still remain. Only God possesses infinite knowledge. By basing our scientific research on the assumption that His Word is true (instead of the assumption that it is wrong or irrelevant) our scientific theories are much more likely, in the long run, to come to accurately represent reality.
http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/405.asp[/quote]
I read it all. I have thought all of this stuff before. It could even be mathematically viable. The problem is that the “day” created in this picture is much more ambiguous and un-daylike than using the word day to mean eon, epoc, age. Doesn’t relativity prove that a day means different things to different observers. Is the earth really 10,000 years old relative to every theoretical observer in the universe? (No I think you would have to say unless you believe in absolute space which is also irrational.)
Is creation a mystery beyond comprehension-yes.
And you freely admit that reason should be dismissed when in contradiction to the bible.
Here’s the real kicker. If reason is not trustworthy, than how do you know that evolution might not somehow be consistent with the bible in a way that you have not yet (or could not have) imagined?
Maybe the past today is not the same past that existed at the time of the first people? Maybe the universe of Genesis fused with another universe which had a long evolutionary past.
The early church fathers talked (and there exists a written record of this) about whether parts of Genesis were meant to be literal or not. Sometimes some of them said yes and sometimes some of them said no, but they never spoke as if there were no figurative parts, or that it was an issue of MORALITY. 95% of the people on earth who call themselves Christian do not belong to a denomonation that holds strictly to a literal interpretation of Genesis. If Satan can get Christians to argue about an issue that itself is not a moral question (but a technical one) then he’s winning big time.
The biggest problem here is polarising the issue between two extremes - it’s either “evolution but no God” or “God thence no evolution”.
This problem has been created in a particular culture and moment in history - in the Western society at the edge between scientific materialism and a certain flavor of christianity (of Protestant origin).
Remove any one of these components and this clash disappears.
There’s a narrowness of views and a rigidity of thought of both “contenders” that makes this ideological fight possible.
Remember, outside of this peculiar cultural environment, a spiritual view of the world (heck, even a religious view) can coexist peacefully with the latest scientific results in the field of evolution.
Science proper (if you forget the rigid ideological stances) does not prove, nor does disprove God. It’s just that the “God hypothesis” is not a necessary ingredient to the scientific view.
From the perspective of various religions:
Catholic christianity is fine with the idea of evolution. So is Orthodox christianity - and these are the two oldest branches of christianism, the ones that shaped the very idea of christian religion and produced so far the biggest part of the dogma and corpus of ideas. The Vatican has made it explicit that Catholic christianism accepts the scientific theory of evolution; various Orthodox theologians also said that there is no explicit contradiction between their dogma and evolution.
The various flavors of hinduism accept evolution as an intrinsic part of their dogma. In their case, it’s mostly a spiritual evolution through a succession of incarnations and they’re not really preocupied with the evolution of the substrate of the spirit (the evolution of the physical bodies, the evolution of species as understood by science), but sometimes there are theologians who speculate, within the hinduist frame, about such (e.g. Paramahansa Yogananda).
Buddhism has much the same attitude - they postulate spiritual evolution at the core of their dogma, they’re not really preocupied with material evolution, however some recent developments show that they are open to such considerations (the Dalai Lama is known for his open attitude towards science, including the scientific theory of evolution).
I will have to stop here since these are the fields I am familiar with.
Bottom line: there is an ideological war because of a narrowness and, possibly, a misinterpretation of the basic tenets of at least one of the warring parties. The contradiction does not exist per se, it was created, even engineered (according to some conspiracy theories I’ve seen, although I don’t give them much credit) either by mistake or, respectively, by design.
[quote]elemental79 wrote:
I would have to say there is no reason not to accept evolution.[/quote]
What if accepting evolution meant that you would have to discard religious superstitions in favor of common sense? Some religions don’t take kindly to that. That is why the Scopes trial happened, that’s why there are arguments about ID, that is why, in this issue and area of science, we seem to be butting heads with religions who do not possess the ability to adapt.
Several threads ago about this, I started a thread about how the Catholic church “embraced” the idea of evolution, and I pointed out how this was a survival/clever tactic for the new pope to take. Catholicism will not be written off in the way that more “unrefined” (what nicer way is there to put it?) religious beliefs are being phased out by reason, research, and observation.
What we see is a growing trend of the Fundamentalists rejecting science or trying to redefine it a la the “young earth” idea or ID. When these ideas are debunked, then it becomes not common sense and observation, but an “attack” on religion itself.
Well, no shit. You guys are wrong. Sorry. The earth is not to be dated by adding up all the names in the bible… that’s retarded. We do not explain the origin of species by a magical “poof there it is”. Unless we see that throughout the history of this planet, every species started out as co-existing, then obviously species arises from each other, and there was not some cardinal event which brought all species into being at once.
What I’d like to ask the fundies on this thread is why they are unable to reconcile the idea that real science and faith can go hand in hand? By definition, science cannot disprove God. Is it because your beliefs lie on the supposition of the infallibility of the bible? Hmmm…
“A little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion.” – Francis Bacon
Don’t forget that some of the greatest scientists in the history of human civilization were religous. Even Darwin himself was religous. Why can’t anyone believe in both instead of trying to discredit one another. I believe that God utilized evolution as a process of creation. But that’s just my 2 cents.
[quote]DPH wrote:
then read the links I sent you and shut the fuck up…[/quote]
You sir are no gentleman. I have it from good sources that you “sit on a throne of lies and smell like meat and cheese”.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
I don’t necessarily disagree with the current idea of macroevolution so much just because it disagrees with the Bible but because I don’t think it’s good science, period.
It has become a religion of its own and its defenders, like several of the posters above, remind me of what the Catholic hierarchy during the Middle Ages must have been like. [/quote]
Not attempting to deride you here, but in your first paragraph you basically accuse evolutionists of being biased ie bad science (OK, I’ve seen that bias for sure in some) then in the second paragraph you show that you are motivated by emotional bias (their ideas should not be believed because they have become “a religion” unto themselves rather than “the merits of their arguments should be considered independent of how I personally feel about them”.
[quote]ConanSpeaks wrote:
I stand by my statement that I am merely looking for information and have no desire to engage in an endless debate on a subject which I am admittedly not an authority.
[/quote]
you say you don’t want to debate but you put forth two very bad arguments against the theory of evolution…
merely looking for information? you are so full of shit, your mind on the matter is already made up (like just about everyone over the age of ten)…
so? is that supposed to bother me? hahahaha
wow, that was very poetic…you are a true word smith…again, so what…
[quote]pushharder wrote:
Conan,
This is what I alluded to earlier. You either believe what they say and embrace it wholeheartedly or they want you to “shut the fuck up.” Join their church or be shunned. Accept their gospel or be ridiculed. Convert or leave the public arena.[/quote]
I’m a Christian that thinks evolution is a plausible theory…I also don’t think evolution contradicts the Bible at all (I’m not a fundamentalist)…
conan claims to be opened minded on the subject (but he’s not or he wouldn’t be putting forth weak arguments against evolution) and simply looking for information (if he was really interested in the information he would have investigated it himself instead of pretending to look for answers on a bodybuilding website)…
your anti-evolution argument is weak also (comparing religious belief with a scientific theory)…in science, if another theory came along tomorrow that better fit the data gathered so far, it would eventually supplant (after numerous peer reviewed studies I’m sure) the current theory…religious belief doesn’t have peer reviewed scientific studies…
anyways, believe whatever you want (everyone does, hell I even think there are even some weirdos that like watching other guys fuck their wives, man those guys are nutcases), just don’t pretend to be non-biased…
[quote]pushharder wrote:
I think it’s bad science for many of the reasons stated in earlier posts
[/quote]
you think it’s ‘bad’ science because it doesn’t conform to your prior convictions…
the theory is observed and tested through the fossil records (among other things)…
by the way, not all science is done in a lab…how do you think we know that the sun is comprised of mostly hydrogen? do you think we go get pieces of the sun and test it in a lab?
[quote]pushharder wrote:
This is what I alluded to earlier. You either believe what they say and embrace it wholeheartedly or they want you to “shut the fuck up.” Join their church or be shunned. Accept their gospel or be ridiculed. Convert or leave the public arena.[/quote]
What up, push? 
We aren’t asking you fundies to “convert”, because science isn’t about faith. Science is real, and doesn’t require any leap of faith. For example, there will never be an experiment that we can run which will give us information about anything supernatural, like the possible existence of an immortal soul, or if there are angels which watch over us or whatever.
Science concerns itself with the natural world only. We have been doing a pretty good job of describing the processes of nature so far. What pisses us off is when a bunch of dudes come in and try to push their beliefs in supernatural stuff to explain natural stuff:
“Ummmm… no. The invisible palm of Buddha doesn’t make you fall if you jump off of a cliff. You see, there’s a natural force called gravity which works on all masses in the universe and pulls them together.”
The above passage sounds silly, and I made it up, but it proves a point. Throughout history, we naturalists have had to put up with inquisitions, prison, and even execution whenever we dared to advance the human race past the primitive superstitions that were created so long ago out of ignorance and fear. Now that we have finally found some purchase in society where we are free to work and discover more, it is… unhelpful… to encounter folks who want to take us back to the Middle Ages with some kind of creationist bullshit. Sorry.
So go ahead and believe in angels, demons, the devil… knock yourself out. That’s supernatural stuff. Might as well believe in magical multicolored bunny rabbits watching over you from outer space while you sleep. Whatever. You will never be disproven. Never. Just don’t try to use your supernatural mental playthings to describe the natural world… because at some point you will encounter one of us who will call bullshit on you, that’s all.
I think that you guys are afraid that real knowledge and a deep understanding of real processes and science will somehow “outdate” faith… and this is true to some degree. So what? Your purview has always ever been the supernatural anyway. Y’all lose nothing by yielding the real world to the naturalists. You guys should be using this chance to reaffirm your dominion over the human spirit instead of trying to claim some kind of untenable purchase here in the real world. That’s what the pope did. Clever guy. Now Catholicism gets to remain somewhat relevant to the modern world.
Do you want to go the way of the dinosaur?
[quote]pushharder wrote:
DPH wrote:
I’m a Christian that thinks evolution is a plausible theory…I also don’t think evolution contradicts the Bible at all (I’m not a fundamentalist)…
Fair enough. Your next step would be to explain why you think that contradiction is non-existent. (Not being a fundamentalist is not a valid reason in and of itself)
[/quote]
Sorry to jump in here, but its because human forms of communication always underdetermine the truth which they attempt to describe. The poetic language in Genesis is meant to show a higher moral truth and to do so best, with human language requires that it not also need to be a historical or scientific point by point account of FACT.
Woman came from man’s rib. What does that mean? That woman was to stand side by side with man as an equal, not as a slave or dumb beast. Much more truth is passed on and more eloquently by this poetic account than would be by a scientific one.
[quote]DPH wrote:
ConanSpeaks wrote:
I stand by my statement that I am merely looking for information and have no desire to engage in an endless debate on a subject which I am admittedly not an authority.
you say you don’t want to debate but you put forth two very bad arguments against the theory of evolution…
merely looking for information? you are so full of shit, your mind on the matter is already made up (like just about everyone over the age of ten)…
You sir are no gentleman.
so? is that supposed to bother me? hahahaha
I have it from good sources that you “sit on a throne of lies and smell like meat and cheese”.
wow, that was very poetic…you are a true word smith…again, so what…[/quote]
You certainly know how to post an answer the problem is you’re not very bright when it comes to actually reading the posts you reply to. My original post was in the form of a question not a statement. If I had wanted to state an opinion I would have like I did in my last post where I stated “you smell like meat and cheese”.
I am so glad that there are people like you in the world. Otherwise there would be no one to do the menial labors of the world like pick up garbage or wash my car. It’s obvious with your listening skills you probably couldn’t even get a counter job at McDonalds.
Why do I continue to reply to these posts? Quite frankly I am fascinated by the belligerence and arrogance displayed by people such as yourself. Yes talking to someone like you is like going to the freak show at the carnival, I’m disgusted by what I see, but for some odd reason I can’t seem to look away.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
Fair enough. Your next step would be to explain why you think that contradiction is non-existent. (Not being a fundamentalist is not a valid reason in and of itself)
[/quote]
fundamentalist believe that the creation story in the Bible is literally true…non-fundamentalists don’t…
you under-estimate science…
yes, I’m sure Jesus will be patting you on the back for your wife-swaping fun…
[quote]ConanSpeaks wrote:
You certainly know how to post an answer the problem is you’re not very bright when it comes to actually reading the posts you reply to. My original post was in the form of a question not a statement. If I had wanted to state an opinion I would have like I did in my last post where I stated “you smell like meat and cheese”.
[/quote]
you’re so full of shit…you are not looking for answers…you’re looking to discredit the theory of evolution with weak arguments…
it’s reading skills…you read posts on the internet, not listen to them…
and besides, I make nearly eighty grand a year picking up your garbage…lol!
you read and reply to posts here because you’re a nutjob just like the rest of the loonies here (me included)…you just haven’t admitted it to yourself yet…