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Author Topic:   Physical Laws ....What if they were different before?
kbertsche
Member (Idle past 2131 days)
Posts: 1427
From: San Jose, CA, USA
Joined: 05-10-2007


Message 16 of 309 (662166)
05-13-2012 1:31 AM
Reply to: Message 1 by foreveryoung
05-11-2012 10:44 PM


All of nature abides by the physical laws of the universe. Much of creationism is "proven" wrong because its claims violate known physical laws. What if there were a different set of values for all the constants and the equations for forces and fields and energies were slightly different at the beginning than they are today? Isn't it possible to have a functioning universe with a different set of constants and forms of the laws we have today? Are the constants and equations we have today the only possible ones that can produce a universe of matter, energy, space and force? If it is indeed possible for such a reality to exist, wouldn't a change of all the constants and equations to the ones we see today produce a catastrophe of epic proportions? Wouldn't such a scenario make perfectly stable stars turn into supernovas or put them on the path to becoming supernovas? Wouldn't such a scenario make the structure of the original universe undetectable to modern scientific instruments?
Jar has given a good answer: change leaves evidence. Where is the evidence? Evidence (empiricism) is an essential element of modern science.
A second essential element of modern science is mechanism. We need mechanistic explanations for why things happen. Perhaps fundamental constants could have changed, but what would have caused this? Would it have happened instantaneously throughout the whole universe, or would it have started at one point and propagated outward at the speed of light?
I doubt that the parameters could have changed more than an infinitesimal amount and still left a functioning universe, unless perhaps the parameters were all changed together in a very specific, precise way. (This is an application of the fine-tuning and anthropic principle arguments.)
This is food for thought for the anti-creationists. It is true that if all the physical laws and constants have been the same as they are today then the claims of creationism are impossible without invoking "poof" type magic. Of course, changing all the laws and constants would be "magic" because there is no physical mechanism that could make such a thing happen. But, what if there is more to reality than the physical world. What is there is another reality that cannot be detected by physical means? If so, such a change in laws and constants would not be magic; it would merely be the result of actions of beings in the non-physical world.
If you are going to allow abrupt physical changes with no physical mechanisms and leaving no physical evidence of change, you might as well adopt last-Thursdayism.
Edited by kbertsche, : No reason given.

"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind." — Albert Einstein
I am very astonished that the scientific picture of the real world around me is very deficient. It gives us a lot of factual information, puts all of our experience in a magnificently consistent order, but it is ghastly silent about all and sundry that is really near to our heart, that really matters to us. It cannot tell us a word about red and blue, bitter and sweet, physical pain and physical delight; it knows nothing of beautiful and ugly, good or bad, God and eternity. Science sometimes pretends to answer questions in these domains, but the answers are very often so silly that we are not inclined to take them seriously. — Erwin Schroedinger

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ringo
Member (Idle past 412 days)
Posts: 20940
From: frozen wasteland
Joined: 03-23-2005


(1)
Message 17 of 309 (662220)
05-13-2012 5:30 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by foreveryoung
05-11-2012 10:44 PM


foreveryoung writes:
But, what if there is more to reality than the physical world. What is there is another reality that cannot be detected by physical means?
If there was an alternate reality that couldn't be detected, then creationists wouldn't be able to detect it either. The charlatan says, "There are some things that can't be explained... so here's the explanation...."
You can't have it both ways. If it can't be detected, it can't be detected and you can't claim it happened. If there is no explanation, don't try to explain it.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by foreveryoung, posted 05-11-2012 10:44 PM foreveryoung has not replied

  
ringo
Member (Idle past 412 days)
Posts: 20940
From: frozen wasteland
Joined: 03-23-2005


Message 18 of 309 (662221)
05-13-2012 5:30 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by foreveryoung
05-11-2012 10:44 PM


Deleted double post.
Edited by ringo, : @#$%ing wonky wifi.

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dwise1
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Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


(12)
Message 19 of 309 (662309)
05-14-2012 3:33 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by foreveryoung
05-11-2012 10:44 PM


All of nature abides by the physical laws of the universe. Much of creationism is "proven" wrong because its claims violate known physical laws. What if there were a different set of values for all the constants and the equations for forces and fields and energies were slightly different at the beginning than they are today?
First, I disagree with your basic premise about what proves much of creationism wrong. And by "creationism," I am sure what we both are not talking about belief in Divine Creation (which cannot be disproven, except through creationist logic), but rather the set of very specific claims about the physical universe based solely on a particular interpretation of the Bible (and which include a 6,000-to-10,000-year-old young earth and the Noachian Flood), claims which are contrary-to-fact, and the supporting "scientific" claims of "creation science" which all turn out to be false and even, in a few cases, fabricated. It is because those claims are contrary-to-fact that disproves them and it is because supporting claims are demonstrably false that disproves them.
One problem that creationists face is radio-dating and the constancy of decay rates, so in order to try to neutralize that problem creationists have taken Q's advice and have attempted to change the laws of physics in order to have those decay rates to have somehow changed and been different in the past. This is where your exercise comes from and Setterfield's disproven claims of the decay of the speed of light, which would have affected decay rates, is one of the better-known examples. However, one thing that has always been lacking from such creationist claims was lack of follow-through. They would change a physical constant and claim that it would produce the effect that they wanted, but they then neglected to also determine what other effects that would have, whereas part of the disproof of their claims would be to look at those other effects. They didn't think it through completely and hence hoisted themselves on their own petard (research that expression; it has an interesting history, albeit short and explosive).
An example would be one that you may have seen me describe before, Kent Hovind's solar-mass-loss claim. Hovind had read that the sun loses 5 million tons of its mass every second through "burning its fuel" (ie, through nuclear fusion), so in his own Gedankenexperiment he figured that the sun had to have been more massive 5 billion years ago, so much so that it would have "sucked the earth in" (his own words) and hence the sun and the earth could not be anywhere near that old, more like about 10,000 years old. But he did not follow through; he did not do the math. But I did follow through and do the math. That rate of mass loss is correct (though it's more like 4.5 million tons per second) and the astronomical number of seconds in 5 billion years times that rate does yield an astronomical mass to the order of 1024 tons. But the sun's is about 1,000 times greater than that, to the order of 1027 tons, meaning that in 5 billion years it had lost a few hundredths of one percent of its total mass, the effect of which on the earth's orbit would have been negligible, "sucking it in" much less than 100,000 miles.
You keep bristling over being asked to produce evidence. Now, since you're doing Gedankenexperimente, I can understand your frustration, because you're not doing a physical experiment that would produce physical evidence. But Gedankenexperimente also produce evidence. After the initial imagining "what if?" to set up your hypothetical situation, then you need to examine that situation to figure out what the effects will be. Part of that would involve some calculations, which would not only be of use to determine what would happen, but also give you some idea as to the magnitude of the effect. That produces evidence! And it also suggests to you what kind of physical evidence you would expect to find and how to set up a physical experiment to test your Gedankenexperiment. So when they're asking you for evidence, they're wanting to see how much you've been able to think it through and what results you've been getting; they don't want a lot of hand-waving, like Hovind used in his solar-mass-loss claim.
For that matter, since you will undoubtedly find yourself picking up on or relying on another creationist's work, you will need to know exactly what they had done. Most of them will just publish their conclusions with a minimal description of their work; that is perfectly normal and there's nothing wrong with it per se. But then when you contact them for more information, they should be forthcoming with more information and with more complete explanations. Hovind was not. Instead, he repeatedly ducked and dodged and did everything he could to avoid answering my simple requests for information, including twice trying to pick a fight with me over my AOL screenname; IOW, what I have found over the past three decades to be sadly typical creationist misconduct. You will be in the same position as I was, you will be contacting creationists for more information on their claims because you will be trying to do scientific research based on their work.
That last point is very important. A decade and a half ago, I had one of many epiphanies, this one about the primary difference between scientists and creationists and the reason for that difference. In science, honesty and scholarship are of paramount importance. The reason for that is that every scientist's own research depends on the research of others, so if that other research is flawed then your own research will be adversely affected. That is why scientists need to publish and why scientists critically read the research of other scientists. That is why repeatability and testability of one's results is so important, so that other scientists can test your research for themselves -- for example, almost literally the very instant that the research on cold fusion was published, scientists around the world raced to set up their own experiments to test that research, and they all found it to be flawed when nobody could reproduce the results. And if any scientist is found to have falsified their data or committed a hoax, then they are dealt with harshly by the scientific community, often with their careers coming to an end.
But while the goal of scientific research is to discover more about the universe, the goal of creationism is to persuade. Creationists are trying to persuade the public to support their political agenda (primarily to remove or to try to neutralize the teaching of evolution in the public schools), to persuade non-Christians to convert, and to persuade themselves that they are indeed right and that science is wrong. A creationist's "research" only has value if it sounds convincing; whether it is actually true has no bearing. And if a creationist is found to be false, then it will continue to be used just so long as it sounds convincing. And if the publicity of that claim being false becomes to great and embarrassing, then the creationists will retract it and, if it is convincing-sounding, wait a few years for the public to forget about it and then re-release it as "new" evidence. And if a creationist is caught lying, nothing will happen to him, just so long as his claims sound convincing. And it doesn't matter that all the creationist does to "support" his claims is to wave his hands; as long as his claim sounds convincing to the audience, he never has any need to show his work -- indeed, the last thing he would want would be to show his work, since that would expose the flaws in his false, but convincing-sounding, claim.
So here's where you can make a difference. Even though many other creationists have gone that way before, you can do what none of them did before: you can think it through thoroughly and apply the due diligence and rigor to determine all the effects of the hypothesized changes. And even if you do not succeed in your quest, what you will have learned about physics and chemistry and astronomy, etc, will be more than ample reward.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by foreveryoung, posted 05-11-2012 10:44 PM foreveryoung has not replied

  
jar
Member (Idle past 394 days)
Posts: 34026
From: Texas!!
Joined: 04-20-2004


(2)
Message 20 of 309 (662333)
05-14-2012 8:56 PM


So let's really look at mass.
Back in Message 11 foreveryoung said:
foreveryoung writes:
A higher speed of light would not result in greater energy if the mass were less by an amount equal to the square root of its former value.
So what difference would that make?
First, none of us would be here and there would be no star sitting at the center of this solar system.
HUH?
How can that be true?
Well the mass of the Sun is currently about 2 x 1030kg.
If the mass was "less by an amount equal to the square root of its former value" what would the effect be?
Well the mass would be √2 x 1015 or 1.4 x 1015kg.
Now that's still a really big number, BUT, how big is it?
Mass of Jupiter = 1.9 x 1027kg.
Mass of Saturn = 5.7 x 1026kg.
Mass of Uranus = 8.7 x 1025kg.
Mass of Earth = 6 x 1024kg.
Mass of Mars = 6.4 x 1023kg.
It's less than the mass of Jupiter, of Saturn, of Neptune, of Uranus, less than the mass of the Earth, even less than the mass of Mars. Jupiter is too small, has not enough mass to become a Sun. And all the others are real lightweights compared to Jupiter.
So IF the assertion above was true, there would be no sun, likely no solar system, maybe something like the Oort Cloud at best.
It's possible to imagine a Universe where the laws and constants are different than here, but it's impossible to have THIS universe.

Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

Replies to this message:
 Message 127 by foreveryoung, posted 05-27-2012 9:02 PM jar has replied

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


(4)
Message 21 of 309 (662336)
05-14-2012 9:26 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by foreveryoung
05-11-2012 10:44 PM


This is food for thought for the anti-creationists. It is true that if all the physical laws and constants have been the same as they are today then the claims of creationism are impossible without invoking "poof" type magic. Of course, changing all the laws and constants would be "magic" because there is no physical mechanism that could make such a thing happen. But, what if there is more to reality than the physical world. What is there is another reality that cannot be detected by physical means? If so, such a change in laws and constants would not be magic; it would merely be the result of actions of beings in the non-physical world.
OK, the supernatural. Could it exist? Yeah. Does it? Who knows? It is outside our ability to perceive or detect in any objective manner, and subjective means are notoriously unreliable. I don't know, and neither do you. All you know is what you had been taught by teachers who only knew what they had been taught, and so on, for generation after generation, since long before 2000 years ago, with each generation injecting its own ideas and interpretations, just as you had.
Discussing the supernatural, especially with respect to science, is a non-starter. The supernatural cannot possibly play any role in science and incorporating the supernatural into science, as the IDists want to (refer to the Discovery Institute's Wedge Document), could only serve to kill science, which is not an option.
And yet your message raises yet again an old question that keeps resurfacing. Very much like a quote from Dr. Adequate that subbie keeps in his signature block:
quote:
It has always struck me as odd that fundies devote so much time and effort into trying to find a naturalistic explanation for their mythical flood, while looking for magical explanations for things that actually happened. -- Dr. Adequate
Just what exactly is creationism trying to do? Most fundamentally, it's trying to support belief in Divine Creation, which is, as you put it, "'poof' type magic." And for three decades, the one consistent line of reasoning that I have seen used in so many creationist claims and arguments has been that a naturalistic explanation for something denies God; as ID founder Phillip Johnson once put it in an essay, his main opposition to evolution was because "it leaves God with nothing to do." (a very mistaken idea) Both in creationism and IDism, not having a naturalistic explanation for something is evidence for God (ie, the only "explanation" is "goddidit!") and having a naturalistic explanation is evidence against God. As I said, this line of reasoning has pervaded creationism for decades and continues to.
And yet, creationism and creationists and many other Christians as well also spend an inordinate amount of trying to come up with naturalistic explanations for miracles! Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot, Over? What are they doing? What are you doing? Miracles are, virtually by definition, examples of "'poof' type magic.", of the direct intervention of an omnipotent supernatural entity, YHWH (that's your god's name). It's magic, so why try to explain it away? Because, by that one consistent line of creationist reasoning that if there's a naturalistic explanation then you're disproving God, the very last thing a creationist would want to do would be to explain away a miracle with naturalistic causes! WTFO? That just doesn't seem to make any sense!
As best as I can guess, I see two causes for this for creationists with other Christians sharing this first one with them. There's an old joke in academia about the other sciences suffering from "physics envy", since they are not as purely mathematically rigorous as physics is. Similarly, it seems that many Christians have suffered from a form of "science envy", though the reasons for that may be varied and not altogether clear. Certainly there has long been tension between science and religion, though I feel that it's felt mainly on religion's side, especially as it must have appeared that science was laying claim to areas of knowledge that used to be the domain of religion. And certainly, science's discovery of natural causes for what used to seem supernatural (eg, lightening, St. Elmo's Fire, disease) had to have been disconcerting. One of the oldest uses of gods was to explain the unexplainable, like lightening and the changes of the season, so when science started providing the actual explanations, that need for the gods started to go away; obviously, many Christians must have thought that science had that fate in for their god as well.
But at the same time, regardless of what they felt about science, those concerned Christians had to admit that science was very successful at what it did, which was learning things about nature and the physical universe, plus there were the immense advances being made in technology fueled by scientific discoveries. Scientists became authority figures, especially in the time before our Vietnam experience and Watergate. What science did had an air of authority about it that religion seemed to be losing, so that was probably something that the Christians wanted to gain for themselves as they talked about the miracles in their faith.
There's a tradition of trying to find scientific evidence for the Bible that's almost as old as modern science itself. Along with the development of geology entering into the 19th century, there was an effort to find geological evidence for the Flood, Scriptural Geology (AKA "diluvialism"). Even though the movement continued for many years despite never finding that evidence, many members quickly gave up, including its founders William Buckland and Adam Sedgwick whose own work ended up undermining diluvialism; they went on to become vocal critics of the diluvialists. That diluvialist tradition was revived in the 1920's and 1930's by George McCready Price, a non-geologist, whose work in turn was taken up, largely without credit, by the "Father of Flood Geology", Dr Henry Morris, PhD Hydraulic Engineering (ie, another non-geologist). In addition, throughout the 1940's and into the 1960's, there were many educational and inspirational films produced that tried to merge science and religion, such as "Sermons from Science" and the Moody Institute educational films, which would first present the science and then conclude by giving God the credit for having set it all up that way -- actually, not a bad approach to take.
So we see that there was a long tradition of trying to meld the success and authoritativeness of science in with religion, but this must have also started to create some embarrassment for believers when they talked about the miracles, which clearly went against science. Apparently, this was part of what motivated them to come up with scientific explanations for those miracles, a new tradition that continues to the present -- in a recent trade journal, I read of research an on-line acquaintance, a fundamentalist Christian and opponent of "creation science", is doing in determining whether wind could have backed up the water causing the Parting of the Red Sea.
The second cause, which applies only to creationists, is the original deception of "creation science": the need to hide their religious purpose in order to circumvent the post-"monkey law" courts (since now it was unconstitutional for a law to ban the teaching of evolution for religious reasons) and instead to pretend that their opposition to evolution was "based purely on science, nothing religious about it." This was the start of creationism's old game of "Hide the Bible". From the 1970's on, they played that game to the hilt -- though in 1987 when the courts found that "creation science" was just religion in disguise, they switched to the game of "Hide the Creationism" by using "intelligent design" as their new cover, which in turn was also found to be just "creation science" in disguise in 2005 (Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District); they don't seem to have decided yet on a new game to play. "Creation science" practitioners cranked out "scientific" claim after claim, all of them false and misleading. Their goal was to create the appearance that scientific evidence actually supports their young-earth creationism claims ... and perhaps they actually believed that it did, though there are too many cases in which it greatly strains credulity to believe that they couldn't have known they were engaging in deliberate deception. At any rate, that body of false "creation science" claims found its way back to the creationism-based Christian community and contaminated its water supply. Followers began basing their proselytizing campaigns on "creation science" claims and to use those false teachings to reassure themselves and to bolster their own faith.
So now we have the situation where creationists hold mutually contradictory beliefs, that naturalistic explanations deny God and that they should embrace naturalistic explanations of miracles. I've tried to make sense of that. Do you have anything to offer?
I guess I'd be remiss if I weren't to mention Omphalos (Greek, "belly button"). It's already been mentioned to your as Last-Thursdayism, which competes with Last-Tuesdayism, both of which distrust that middle-of-the-road theology, Last-Wednesdayism.
As you will recall, back at the beginning of the 19th century the science of geology was growing and Christians felt threatened by it and its discoveries, both of the great age of the earth and the lack of any evidence for Noah's Flood. As I had reported it on CompuServe back in 1990 (reposted on my website):
quote:
The Omphalos Argument was advanced in 1857 by an experimental zoologist, Philip Henry Gosse, who was obsessed with the need to protect his extreme fundamentalist view of special creation from the geological evidence against it. The argument derives its name (Omphalos means "navel" in Greek) from an old theological question (of the same general class as counting angels on the head of a pin): Since the navel is evidence of a past event (i.e. having been born of a woman) and Adam was not born of a woman but rather was created whole and fully formed, did Adam have a navel? The answer is: if it would have so pleased God for Adam to have the appearance of having been born of a woman, then he would have had a navel.
In his book, _Omphalos: An Attempt to Untie the Geological Knot_ (1857), Gosse argued that everything was created with the appearance of a history; everything was created fully-formed with evidence of its growth and development and pre-existence, all of which had never actually happened. Thus, any scientific findings supporting the earth's great antiquity could immediately be discounted as false evidence of a non-existent past. The earth only appears to be ancient because it was recently created with the appearance of great age. It isn't that the scientists have gotten the story wrong, it's just that they don't realize that it is ONLY a story.
So the apparent fossil remains of non-existent creatures were created in the strata to give the false impression of evolutionary change. The proper ratios of parent and daughter isotopes were created in new rock to lend it spurious age. Light was created in space with the proper Doppler shift to make it appear that the distant galaxies had produced it. And so on.
Indeed, Gosse himself developed this effect of "Indeterminate Creation" to its logical conclusion. Why assign the Creation to 6000 years ago? Why not 4000 years ago or 1000 years ago or 100 years ago or 10 years ago or 10 days ago or even a few minutes ago? If the Creation had occurred a few minutes ago with all the false evidence of pre-existence, even down to our individual memories, intact, then how could we know it?
Of course, the Omphalos argument fell into disrepute with everybody almost immediately. Many just laughed at it, but others were deeply offended by the idea of God being a lying and deceitful prankster who had written an enormous and superfluous lie in the rocks. But even worse for many believers was the thought that the events of the Bible, most importantly the Resurrection, might have never happened and so their faith might be based solely on a Divine Hoax.
So why bring it up again? Because it is still being used. Some months back, a Forum member tried to argue for the Creation of an "established earth" along with all its apparent geological history. More recently, another Forum member tried to argue that life only appeared to be interrelated because of common themes used by the Creator. Even the ICR will use Omphalos on occasion, but not by name. The argument that the light from the distant stars and galaxies were created en route is pure Omphalos. In his standard textbook, _Scientific Creationism_, Morris states that the universe was created with the appearance of age.
I once received an e-mail from a creationist, one of the very few cordial ones, in which he proposed a variation on Omphalos. He suggested that since Satan was given dominion over the earth, it was He who had planted all that false geological and fossil evidence to fool us into not believing in God. After a moment of reflection, I responded with a different, more likely scenario. What he described was an awful lot of work and Satan is, after all, a clever devil. Instead, all he had to do was to create a false religious belief, that if the earth is as we do find it then Christianity is false, and give it to some zealous fundamentalists who will knock themselves out spreading it. Worked like a charm. Clever devil, that.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by foreveryoung, posted 05-11-2012 10:44 PM foreveryoung has not replied

  
godsriddle
Member (Idle past 4310 days)
Posts: 51
From: USA
Joined: 12-20-2007


Message 22 of 309 (662367)
05-15-2012 3:40 AM
Reply to: Message 15 by Dr Adequate
05-13-2012 12:36 AM


Re: change leaves evidence.
It is important to examine evidence for fixed laws and fixed constants by beginning with the first principle of science, the idea the Bible predicted for the false teachers of the last days. What idea? That all things remain the same (2 Peter 3:3 - 6)
Where did this idea come from? The pagan Greeks tried to find a first principle upon which to found a natural science for hundreds of years. They understood that if everything is changing (as all people believed 2000 years ago), they could never invent a valid form of science. After all, if matter is changing itself, what is true today would not be so true for another era. In that era, Greek had no independent words for substance, being, or essence. (Aristotle used the word for wood - but he also called ideas wood (hyle). Another problem was that in Greek , the present tense of the verb to be - einai - is not static. It continues to change because the Greek present tense referred to something that continues to act. These two impediments in the Greek language prevented the Greeks from inventing an empirical form of science. Aristotle understood they could not invent science without assuming that something does not change. He proposed that something under (he called in hypokeimenon) does not change even as the form of everything is growing like a baby in the womb of its mother. People who think like that are not like modern scientists.
1500 years later, Friar Thomas adjusted Aristotle's system by inventing new Latin concepts of being and essence. Eventually the Catholics provided for science a new metaphysic - that the essence of substance is changeless.
With this ASSUMPTION, generations of scientists have built a vast empirical system of operational definitions, measuring units and mathematical constants - almost all of which depend on the notion that atoms are immutable and dither with perpetual motion. The scientific universe is crammed full of magic, invisible matter, an exploding vacuum, stretching vacuums, vacuums that stretch light and all sorts of other speculations to protect their sacred creed that atoms are perpetual motion engines. After all they measured them circularly by defining them as unchanging to begin with.
Only a biblical version of physics is confirmed with the light from long ago. Indeed, only a literal biblical creation is visible exactly as it happened long ago. We observe that every clock (atomic and inertial) is accelerating as galaxies intrinsically grew - the stars coming out from tiny naked galaxies evidently made of tohu bohu matter - exactly as stated in the text of genesis. Billions of galaxies grew into huge local growth spirals as the visible properties of matter continued to change.
The problem is that if you have a sacred creed, and build a whole system of measuring and mathematicating on that baseless assumption, you end up with pure myths. It is baseless because we observe how every atom keeps changing itself throughout cosmic history. Scientists have invented the greatest system of mythology every contrived by man - to support their basic assumption - their first principle. Their universe by their own admission is 99% invisible and undetectable with light.
How great will be the triumph of the Word of God over science, the system built on a single assumption - the very one the Bible predicted for the false teachers of the last days.
Victor

This message is a reply to:
 Message 15 by Dr Adequate, posted 05-13-2012 12:36 AM Dr Adequate has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 23 by Dr Adequate, posted 05-15-2012 4:08 AM godsriddle has replied
 Message 26 by RAZD, posted 05-15-2012 7:16 AM godsriddle has replied

  
Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


(1)
Message 23 of 309 (662368)
05-15-2012 4:08 AM
Reply to: Message 22 by godsriddle
05-15-2012 3:40 AM


Re: change leaves evidence.
The thing about these things you say we "observe" --- is that we don't. For example, you write: "we observe that every clock (atomic and inertial) is accelerating as galaxies intrinsically grew". No we don't. Again, you state: "we observe how every atom keeps changing itself throughout cosmic history". To speak only for myself, I have observed neither cosmic history nor every atom. And again you say: "a literal biblical creation is visible". Not so much, no.
---
The opinions you attribute to scientists are not those that they actually hold, which would be another problem with your post. For example, scientists do not think that "all things remain the same". Nor do they believe that "atoms are perpetual motion engines".
How great will be the triumph of the Word of God over science ...
Not all that great. Nor all that triumphant.
... the system built on a single assumption - the very one the Bible predicted for the false teachers of the last days.
Let us know when you with reference to the "Word of God" can do stuff remotely comparable to what scientists can do. They can (in certain cases) make the blind see, the lame walk, and cure lepers, not to mention making this conversation possible, putting people on the moon, flying people through the air faster than the speed of sound, etc.
Now if they are doing all this based on one single assumption (which you say is false) then just image what you could achieve based on the matchless truth of the Word of God.
But wait! You've achieved nothing like that. You've achieved nothing remotely approaching a shred of a shard of a fragment of anything like that. All you can do is sit in a chair posting stuff on the internet, while scientists are busy finding another cure for another disease or planning their next mission to Mars ...
Could it be that the principle they've got hold of is in some way sounder than yours?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 22 by godsriddle, posted 05-15-2012 3:40 AM godsriddle has replied

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 Message 24 by godsriddle, posted 05-15-2012 4:30 AM Dr Adequate has replied

  
godsriddle
Member (Idle past 4310 days)
Posts: 51
From: USA
Joined: 12-20-2007


Message 24 of 309 (662369)
05-15-2012 4:30 AM
Reply to: Message 23 by Dr Adequate
05-15-2012 4:08 AM


Re: change leaves evidence.
I don't think you understand what a first principle is.
1. It is elementary.
2. It is the basis for understanding the physical universe.
3. Its disciples only were trained to think in a box, with their assumption.
4. In a system of mature science, most evidence ciruclarly depends on it.
5. It is historical - as I tried to point out where science got its first principle - metaphysical ideas drilled into westerners by centureis of medieval Catholic schools.
A comparison between biblical principles and the scientific one.
The Bible plainly states that the creation is enslaved to change. It even claims Gold continues to corrupt itself. It claims that light reveals the truth.
We see the creation of the universe. Those ancient galaxies shone at less that 1/10th the frequencies of modern atoms. Scientists, because they think with a single assumption, claim that the vacuum of space time is stretching the light. Yet no one has ever detected any spacetime or vacuums that change passing light frequencies. We see tiny globs packed with stars in equal chains around many of those tiny cores in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field. We observe at closer ranges how the globs rotated OUTWARD, spread out. THe light clocks accelerated as the stars took up more space as galaxies grew into huge growth spirals.
Even locally calibrated clocks, when they transmitted their clocks signals yesterday, do not track with today’s clocks. The radio signals from Pioneer 10 and 11 changed frequencies with distance (that is the past) relative to NASA’s hydrogen maser clocks of the moment. The ratio of distance to clock differences from the Pioneers approximated the Hubble ratio that scientists use to estimate the distance to galaxies using their observed light frequencies. When we compare galaxies at many ranges, we observe that, in general, ancient atomic clocks ran much slower than modern atoms. Despite this visible evidence by international agreements the second of time is defined by assuming that cesium atoms always clock the same frequencies. Then scientists define the meter with their seconds, the speed of light and thousands of other measuring units and the laws of physics are built upon the notion that clocks are linear. Yet no linear clocks are visible anywhere in the vast universe.
You can test the first principle of science with the light from long ago.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 23 by Dr Adequate, posted 05-15-2012 4:08 AM Dr Adequate has replied

Replies to this message:
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Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 25 of 309 (662372)
05-15-2012 5:24 AM
Reply to: Message 24 by godsriddle
05-15-2012 4:30 AM


Re: change leaves evidence.
I don't think you understand what a first principle is.
And I think I do.
Now, you say that science is built on a single assumption, which you also condemn. Suppose you're right about it being built on a single assumption --- then since science works, are you right to condemn this foundational assumption?
Science flies men to the moon ... that worked. And scientists did indeed plan that little excursion on the basis that the laws of gravity wouldn't change halfway though the mission, and that worked. And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock.
Scientists, because they think with a single assumption, claim that the vacuum of space time is stretching the light.
As the phrase "the vacuum of space time is stretching the light" gets no google hits, this is apparently not what anyone thinks. How about you quote some actual scientists?
The radio signals from Pioneer 10 and 11 changed frequencies with distance (that is the past) relative to NASA’s hydrogen maser clocks of the moment. The ratio of distance to clock differences from the Pioneers approximated the Hubble ratio that scientists use to estimate the distance to galaxies using their observed light frequencies.
Possibly if you gave me a reference to what it is you are trying to talk about I could tell you what you should be saying about it.
We observe that, in general, ancient atomic clocks ran much slower than modern atoms.
Y'see, that is, again, not something that we observe. I am not observing ancient atomic clocks.
We see tiny globs packed with stars in equal chains around many of those tiny cores in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field.
Again, I think I can say with the greatest of confidence that I have never seen anything which is both tiny and packed with stars. Stars are big.
Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

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RAZD
Member (Idle past 1405 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 26 of 309 (662376)
05-15-2012 7:16 AM
Reply to: Message 22 by godsriddle
05-15-2012 3:40 AM


Re: change leaves evidence.
Hi godsriddle, and welcome to the fray.
I'll add one comment to what Dr Adequate is saying.
It is important to examine evidence for fixed laws and fixed constants by beginning with the first principle of science, the idea the Bible predicted for the false teachers of the last days. What idea? That all things remain the same (2 Peter 3:3 - 6)
The scientific concept that physical laws and constants are fixed comes from the objective empirical evidence that this is so. This evidence comes in many forms and from several different fields of science.
See Are Uranium Halos the best evidence of (a) an old earth AND (b) constant physics?
Also google SN1987A.
Enjoy.
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Edited by RAZD, : ps

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This message is a reply to:
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Replies to this message:
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Admin
Director
Posts: 12998
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Message 27 of 309 (662380)
05-15-2012 8:04 AM
Reply to: Message 24 by godsriddle
05-15-2012 4:30 AM


Off-topic Notice
Hi GodsRiddle,
If you'd like to discuss how science is a house of cards then please propose a new topic over at Proposed New Topics.
This thread is about what the universe would be like were the physical laws different. If you'd care to switch to that topic then please carry on.

--Percy
EvC Forum Director

This message is a reply to:
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godsriddle
Member (Idle past 4310 days)
Posts: 51
From: USA
Joined: 12-20-2007


Message 28 of 309 (662415)
05-15-2012 1:37 PM
Reply to: Message 26 by RAZD
05-15-2012 7:16 AM


Re: change leaves evidence.
What you consider objective evidence depends on your first principle. The objective is the main mirror on a telescope or the first lens in a microscope. I consider light, gathered and recorded by any instrument as objective evidence. Scientists on the other hand view mathematics and symbols (causal explanations based on their laws of physics) as objective. Where did they get their empirical system from? From their first principle, an idea promoted by Catholic scholars centuries ago and cemented into place when Newton claimed that reality is what one measures (such as the notion that clocks measure time).
What would the universe look like if all the laws of physics were false, all of them based on a presumption (that atoms are immutable and dither with perpetual motion) upon which the empirical system depends.
I claim it would
1. Look exactly as we see with light in every part of the spectrum.
2. It looks exactly as the text of the Bible so plainly states (if one accepts the text heremeutically) instead of tailoring it to fit science. There is not a single verse in the Bible that a contemporary of the author could understand scientifically - since western science is recent.
If mass energy and time do not actually have a real existence, if they were contrived mathematically with a false first principle, then we are allowed to believe what is visible. No sacientist can believe the only history that is viisble as it happened, galactic history. THey have filled the universe up with magical things like black holes, invisible matter and vacuum stretching energies - thing never detected anywhere - to protect their fundamental creed that atoms are not changing relationally as they age.
I suggest joining the galaxyzoo project and spending a few hours examining ancient galaxies. What anyone can see is that galaxies started out as compact and dense with packed together tiny stars. In defiance of every law of physics, they spread out, moved out, took up more space as their atomic clocks also kept accelerating, growing into huge local growth spirals.

This message is a reply to:
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Replies to this message:
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godsriddle
Member (Idle past 4310 days)
Posts: 51
From: USA
Joined: 12-20-2007


Message 29 of 309 (662416)
05-15-2012 1:42 PM
Reply to: Message 27 by Admin
05-15-2012 8:04 AM


Re: Off-topic Notice
The laws of physics exist only in human minds. My claim is that if the fundamental assumption upon which western science was historically constructed were false, then we would not need to believe in magical things like subduction or redshifts. We could simply accept the visible evidence that the continents only fit together on a tiny globe and the seafloors are much younger than the continents. We could also accept the visible cosmic history instead of filling the whole universe up with magic in order to force them to fit our laws of physics which do not work in any galaxy anywhere.

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frako
Member (Idle past 305 days)
Posts: 2932
From: slovenija
Joined: 09-04-2010


(1)
Message 30 of 309 (662424)
05-15-2012 4:31 PM
Reply to: Message 29 by godsriddle
05-15-2012 1:42 PM


Re: Off-topic Notice
My claim is that if the fundamental assumption upon which western science was historically constructed were false, then we would not need to believe in magical things like subduction or redshifts
redshift isnt magical have you ever herd a car driving on the road in front of your house or on a straight road. How does the sound change when the car is coming twords you and how does it sound when it passes you and is moving away from you? redshift works on the same principle
Nothing scientific relies on magic. Magic man making life in the same form as it is today using magic is well relying on magic to explain things.

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