Creation vs. Evolution

[sandjeep]

And the link you provided as well. Which is why I went to a source outside of a web site.

 

[lamont]

I am with soggy on the hogwash about the speed of light diminishing.

I clearly missed something.

The speed of light is intrinsically tied to the force of electromagnetism which governs spectra of atoms. The fact that we see spectra in distant stars which is indestigushable from the spectra we get from hydrogen and helium on this planet is a good measurement that the speed of light is very nearly constant, and can be considered constantly for measuring distances and times between the Milky Way and the local group of galaxies.

I'll have to dig up the argument, but I really dislike people who don't understand the first thing about physics arguing that "maybe the speed of light is totally different" without realizing how much adjusting the speed of light would mess up physics completely... Andromeda (or the magellanic clouds) would look really phunky if the speed of light varied significantly enough to make a difference....

 

[shakeybrainsurgeon]

"I became suspicious of the Dead Sea scrolls when I encountered the ancient Hebrew word for Oldsmobile..." Woody Allen

 

[lamont]

So...are we teaching science in schools or are we teaching a biased interpretation of a select subset of the data? From what I recall from highschool level courses that mentioned evolution it was a simple regirgitation of ONE SINGLE theory. They presented very little or no support for that theory and no competing theories were presented. That's not science it's propoganda.

Better yank all the physics, chemistry and mathematics courses out of high school as well. None of them gave a sufficient background in order to understand the different competing theories. We did get atomic spectra and structure of the hydrogen atom, but I don't think we ever measured it in the lab, so we just took that on Faith. We also swallowed wholesale everything else about the Schroedinger equation and quantum jumps without even being introduced to the measurement problem or EPR experiment -- not a single mention. When it came to s, p and d orbitals in chemistry those were handed down like they were from moses and none of us had any idea where those really came from. They did make sense, but without having the background of knowing spherical harmonics and partial differential equations enough to understand the solutions of the radially symmetric wave equation we took a huge amount of basic p-chem entirely on Faith... Best to trash all of it since kids in high school don't have the background to think about any of it critically and we can't possibly introduce them to something they have no way of judging the truth of themselves...

 

[lamont]

12 - 18 billion? Sounds like a heck of a spread to me. How certain are you?

Very certain that its between those two numbers. It is looking like based on the measures of the accelleration of the expansion of the universe that it is closer to 12 billion than 18 billion...

(Never understood this stupid argument that just becuase you don't know something to a hundred decimal points that might be entirely wrong... Do they have the mass on the top quark down to more than 2 digits now? Maybe it just doesn't exist at all if they're so uncertain...)

 

[lamont]

If I pointed out studies about the diminishing speed of light over time (I have the journal, yes it's a creationist article, at home, and will attempt to locate it if anyone cares) , Lamont or Thall would have their studies about the errors in my report ...

There's no debate about this. If the speed of light varies then the coupling constant for electromagnetism varies and quantum electrodynamics starts to unravel. You can tweak it by very small amounts without causing a lot of damage, but to get a significant change onto the speed of light such that it would pull Andromeda from 2.5 million light years away to 6000 light years away it would completely upset the spectra of light. If you tweaked it enough then it would probably produce effects sufficient to affect the nuclear binding of exited states of carbon-12 (domainted by the strong force, but there's going to be an E+M correction in there) and that would shut down the triple-alpha process and red giant stars would go out. We don't observe things like that. We don't observe the spectra of hydrogen in gas clouds varying in any way as the speed of light varies. While there are theories that the speed of light isn't quite as constant as is currently believed, none of them predict radical changes within the local cluster of galaxies in how much the speed of light varies.

The person who wrote the article about the speed of light chaning is wrong and does not understand the science. You just can't believe whatever you want to believe about ways the universe could be different and claim that it could be true. If you start to mess with physics that will have effects on other observables which will rule your theory out.

 

[Soggy]

12 - 18 billion? Sounds like a heck of a spread to me. How certain are you?

Read up on the Hubble Constant if you want to learn why. For a number of reasons, the exact rate of expansion of the universe has not been precisely determined, though they are narrowing in on it.

 

[H2Andy]

What are you suggesting?

well, it's the logical conclusion to the wonderful life awaiting the elect after death.

why wait?

oh yes, the problem is the teaching that suicide is a sin.

God wants you to REALLY suffer down here, for as long as possible, before you get to heaven.

so if you are, for example, in a concentration camp, being slowly starved, beaten, perhaps raped, worked or neglected to death, it is a sin to kill yourself and go to heaven.

makes sense to me

 

[shakeybrainsurgeon]

The problem with the Luddites who question modern science is their selectivity. They have no problem using the Internet or TV to spread claptrap like creationism, or having cardiac bypass surgery, or driving hybrid cars, or listening to CD players, or any of a million other things based on the physics, chemsitry and biology they view as propaganda. If you reject evidence-based science, reject it all. Live in tents and eat manna from heaven, like Moses. You can't have it both ways... hey, great microprocessor guys, and that jet really got me to my daughter's wedding on time, and, oh yeah, thanks for saving my son from leukemia, but you got that whole "earth is six billion years old" thing wrong by about six orders of magnitude.

There are two aspects to evolution, species modification and speciation. The idea that species can be modified by selective breeding was known for centuries before Darwin...Darwin only suggested that nature could do the selective breeding as well as farmers. Speciation, the modification of a species so severely that it becomes another species, is another matter. There is ample evidence that evolution drives the changes in the finch's beak in response to harder seeds, but we still do not understand how a tyrannosaurus eventually became a finch. Thus, the creationists are right in that evolution as a source of species divergence is by no means proven... but if that theory fails, another evidence-based theory will replace it. We don't need magic.

 

[sandjeep]

well, it's the logical conclusion to the wonderful life awaiting the elect after death.
why wait?
oh yes, the problem is the teaching that suicide is a sin.
God wants you to REALLY suffer down here, for as long as possible, before you get to heaven.
so if you are, for example, in a concentration camp, being slowly starved, beaten, perhaps raped, worked or neglected to death, it is a sin to kill yourself and go to heaven.
makes sense to me

Short answer--God doesn't like it when you show up early for appointments.

sandjeep's answer---God has given me life, I will not spit it back at Him and say no thanks.