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Author Topic:   Physical Laws ....What if they were different before?
godsriddle
Member (Idle past 4310 days)
Posts: 51
From: USA
Joined: 12-20-2007


Message 166 of 309 (664228)
05-30-2012 2:53 AM
Reply to: Message 157 by ringo
05-29-2012 4:27 PM


Re: question unanswered ...
ringoddle: On the contrary, Ecclesiates 3 clearly states that time is reality-based:
quote:To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted....
Three different time words are used in this chapter - because ancient people did not have a unified view of time.
eth is the Hebrew for event time and is used 32 times in this chapter. Event time is observed - you react to presently happening events when you play ball.
olam is the word of long time, time that is not now present. Olam is the kind of time that only exists in our minds.
Ancient people, including the biblical authors did not have a unified concept of time. You could not run out of time, because only events existed, not time. For example, the first Roman calendar sometimes had 20 days in a month and sometimes 35. (See Plutarch) Why? The months were not measuring time, they were merely markers for the passing of cyclical events. A new month only happened when you SAW the new moon. If it was raining, you had a longer month. The first Roman calendar only had only 10 months. Can you see the Latin numerals in the following months? Septermber 7, October 8, November 9, December 10. Januarius and Februarius did not exist because months without agricultural activity had no meaning. The first Roman king (Numa) added the names for these months. In societies that used cyclical calendars, men adjusted their activities to fit the pulse of nature. They did not run their lives with symbolical representations of linear time - because linear time had not yet been invented. Their earth history was about change. They saw change in the very places modern people see constants.
This is why claims that the universe is 6,000 linear years or that the bible is wrong because we measure 13 billion years are both efforts to twist the words of the Bible to fit a concept of time that is foreign to the authors. Moses could no more have imagined a 24 hour day than he could visualize a cell phone.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 157 by ringo, posted 05-29-2012 4:27 PM ringo has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 168 by ringo, posted 05-30-2012 11:49 AM godsriddle has replied
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Taq
Member
Posts: 9970
Joined: 03-06-2009
Member Rating: 5.6


Message 167 of 309 (664240)
05-30-2012 11:33 AM
Reply to: Message 161 by godsriddle
05-29-2012 7:10 PM


Re: question unanswered ...
2. Operational definitions are a way of getting around the reality of nature. Scientists DEFINED time as what clocks measure. Yet no one has ever detected any time. Then they extend their definition circularly by inventing other undetectable things like mass and energy.
Nope. Measuring space, time, energy, and mass are all real things in the real world. The fact that you have to deny reality in order to cling to creationism shows just how weak creationism really is.
Scientists have defined time as:
"the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom"
Second - Wikipedia
The second is based on a very real occurence in the very real world.
Tell you what. Why don't you tell us what observations we should make with Supernova 1987a if the speed of light has been constant for the last 200,000 years.

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Replies to this message:
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ringo
Member (Idle past 411 days)
Posts: 20940
From: frozen wasteland
Joined: 03-23-2005


(1)
Message 168 of 309 (664241)
05-30-2012 11:49 AM
Reply to: Message 166 by godsriddle
05-30-2012 2:53 AM


Re: question unanswered ...
godsriddle writes:
The months were not measuring time, they were merely markers for the passing of cyclical events.
That's what measurement is: counting the markers. We measure the age of a tree by counting the rings. We measure the speed of something by counting the number of heartbeats that it takes to move a certain distance.
goddsriddle writes:
Moses could no more have imagined a 24 hour day than he could visualize a cell phone.
Your contempt for the Bible authors is noted.
Of course, Moses did (as the traditional author of Genesis) go to considerable trouble to establish the orderly passage and measurement of time, right in Chapter 1.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 166 by godsriddle, posted 05-30-2012 2:53 AM godsriddle has replied

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


(1)
Message 169 of 309 (664243)
05-30-2012 11:52 AM
Reply to: Message 166 by godsriddle
05-30-2012 2:53 AM


Re: question unanswered ...
Ancient people, including the biblical authors did not have a unified concept of time. You could not run out of time, because only events existed, not time. For example, the first Roman calendar sometimes had 20 days in a month and sometimes 35. (See Plutarch) Why? The months were not measuring time, they were merely markers for the passing of cyclical events. A new month only happened when you SAW the new moon. If it was raining, you had a longer month.
So if it rained on the day of the new moon, and for the next few days, the Romans would see a new moon 35 days after the previous one, because it would wait to be a new moon until Romans had looked at it ... and as it always rains on exactly the same days each year in Italy, this meant that certain months were always 35 days long.
The 20 day months, of course, were caused by those "early new moons" we hear so little about.

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Panda
Member (Idle past 3712 days)
Posts: 2688
From: UK
Joined: 10-04-2010


(1)
Message 170 of 309 (664246)
05-30-2012 12:28 PM
Reply to: Message 169 by Dr Adequate
05-30-2012 11:52 AM


Re: question unanswered ...
Dr Adequate writes:
because it would wait to be a new moon until Romans had looked at it ...
By this logic, would blind people be immortal?

CRYSTALS!!

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 171 of 309 (664316)
05-31-2012 12:15 AM
Reply to: Message 168 by ringo
05-30-2012 11:49 AM


Re: question unanswered ...
Of course, Moses did (as the traditional author of Genesis) go to considerable trouble to establish the orderly passage and measurement of time, right in Chapter 1.
Moses did not mention time. The translation of beryshit as in the beginning was not what the word meant before Augustine came up with his notion that time exists. It simply means first in order, first in rank or importance. The sequence and duration are recorded - but there is no reference to time, per se. The fact that durations are not linear is clearly stated because God formed the Sun, Moon and stars out of the things created on day One and continued to place them in the spreading place (raqiya). Raqiya is the noun form of the verb to spread out.
The most powerful evidence for a biblical creation is how galaxies started out as naked globs of tohu bohu stuff and intrinsically grew, the stars accelerating outward, spreading out as the atomic clocks also accelerated. Look and glorify the God who will make foolish the wise of this age, the scientists. Look!

This message is a reply to:
 Message 168 by ringo, posted 05-30-2012 11:49 AM ringo has replied

Replies to this message:
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foreveryoung
Member (Idle past 582 days)
Posts: 921
Joined: 12-26-2011


Message 172 of 309 (664323)
05-31-2012 1:40 AM
Reply to: Message 88 by ringo
05-19-2012 3:09 PM


Re: first assumption
Maybe it's time for you to move ahead to the nineteenth century when at least scientists knew what science was.
Science used to be called philosophy. It was the search for certain knowledge. Just because science has bastardized itself from the nineteeth century onward from its honest beginnings, does not mean it is more correct than its original state.

This message is a reply to:
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Replies to this message:
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foreveryoung
Member (Idle past 582 days)
Posts: 921
Joined: 12-26-2011


Message 173 of 309 (664325)
05-31-2012 1:49 AM
Reply to: Message 167 by Taq
05-30-2012 11:33 AM


Re: question unanswered ...
the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom"
Second - Wikipedia
The second is based on a very real occurence in the very real world.
......And if the duration of the periods of the ground state of cesium133 changed......?
How on earth would you know??????

This message is a reply to:
 Message 167 by Taq, posted 05-30-2012 11:33 AM Taq has replied

Replies to this message:
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 Message 179 by Taq, posted 05-31-2012 10:45 AM foreveryoung has not replied

  
foreveryoung
Member (Idle past 582 days)
Posts: 921
Joined: 12-26-2011


Message 174 of 309 (664326)
05-31-2012 1:58 AM
Reply to: Message 153 by Taq
05-29-2012 3:30 PM


Re: copied from RAZD's dendrochronology thread
And even worse, all of the above is asserted sans evidence.
I have no idea what you mean by that.
You have pretty much confirmed what we already knew. The reason that creationists assert that the laws of physics were different in the past is because their beliefs require it, evidence be damned.
Bald lie. I do not state they were as if I were stating a fact. All I am saying is that it is possible.
The fact of the matter is that if the physical laws were different in the past we would see those changes in distant starlight.
Nice claim, but you have not made your case.
Those changes are not there.
That is because there would not NECESSARILY be changes in distant starlight. You have not gone through all the possible variations in constants and the possibility that we do not know the very foundations of space, energy and matter, particularly the nature of space itself.
The evidence clearly indicates consistent physical laws.
...Only in the mind that wishes it to be so.
The reaction of creationists? Denial.
That is because we don't believe something just because an atheist tells us to believe it.
No evidence. No logic. Just Denial.
Didn't your mom tell you it's wrong to lie?
Edited by foreveryoung, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 153 by Taq, posted 05-29-2012 3:30 PM Taq has replied

Replies to this message:
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NoNukes
Inactive Member


(1)
Message 175 of 309 (664336)
05-31-2012 9:00 AM
Reply to: Message 173 by foreveryoung
05-31-2012 1:49 AM


Re: question unanswered ...
And if the duration of the periods of the ground state of cesium133 changed
Why would this even be relevant? The second was not defined in that way until recently. Let's not confuse stable units with stable or changing lengths or physical constants.
In any event, the problem I see with your changing constants is that you want most stuff to have continued pretty much as normal, but allowing a few things in the Bible that don't correspond with current observations and physics to be correct. If you want to convince anyone that such a thing is possible, the best way to do that would be to provide a set of constants and to explain how it would work. Cherry picking just a couple constants and leaving us to consider the rest won't cut it. I suspect that at least some of the changed constants arguments will be contradictory. That is, you'll want the mass of a proton (for example) to be large for one reason and smaller for a different one.
The other problem is that we have observational evidence that some of the constants have not changed to hundreds of thousands of years, and in some cases hundreds of millions of years.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846)
The apathy of the people is enough to make every statue leap from its pedestal and hasten the resurrection of the dead. William Lloyd Garrison

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jar
Member (Idle past 393 days)
Posts: 34026
From: Texas!!
Joined: 04-20-2004


Message 176 of 309 (664339)
05-31-2012 9:17 AM
Reply to: Message 173 by foreveryoung
05-31-2012 1:49 AM


question answered!
You would know because change leaves evidence.
It's possible to imagine a universe where the physical laws are different, but it would not be THIS universe.
AbE:
See Message 5, Message 12, Message 20, Message 41, Message 48, Message 59, Message 125 and Message 141.
Edited by jar, : add AbE links.

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

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JonF
Member (Idle past 167 days)
Posts: 6174
Joined: 06-23-2003


Message 177 of 309 (664344)
05-31-2012 10:27 AM
Reply to: Message 173 by foreveryoung
05-31-2012 1:49 AM


Re: question unanswered ...
......And if the duration of the periods of the ground state of cesium133 changed......?
How on earth would you know??????
See my previous post on the constancy of constants. Short answer: it would leave traces, which we've looked for and they aren't there. Note that just because you don't know something that doesn't mean nobody knows that something.

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JonF
Member (Idle past 167 days)
Posts: 6174
Joined: 06-23-2003


(2)
Message 178 of 309 (664345)
05-31-2012 10:32 AM
Reply to: Message 174 by foreveryoung
05-31-2012 1:58 AM


Re: copied from RAZD's dendrochronology thread
The fact of the matter is that if the physical laws were different in the past we would see those changes in distant starlight.
Nice claim, but you have not made your case.
Until you have read and understood the papers I listed in Message 144 you do not have a meaningful opinion on the subject.
{ABE}
That is because there would not NECESSARILY be changes in distant starlight. You have not gone through all the possible variations in constants and the possibility that we do not know the very foundations of space, energy and matter, particularly the nature of space itself.
You have no idea of what possible variations have been considered.
That is because we don't believe something just because an atheist tells us to believe it.
We've provided plenty of evidence and, as a typical creationist, you've refused to look at it.
Edited by JonF, : No reason given.

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Taq
Member
Posts: 9970
Joined: 03-06-2009
Member Rating: 5.6


(1)
Message 179 of 309 (664347)
05-31-2012 10:45 AM
Reply to: Message 173 by foreveryoung
05-31-2012 1:49 AM


Re: question unanswered ...
......And if the duration of the periods of the ground state of cesium133 changed......?
How on earth would you know??????
By looking at distant starlight. Changes in the ground state requires changes in fundamental forces which will be seen in how distant stars behave. We would also see differences in the isotopes produced in the Oklo Reactors. How on Earth you ask? How astute. The evidence is right inside of the Earth.

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jar
Member (Idle past 393 days)
Posts: 34026
From: Texas!!
Joined: 04-20-2004


Message 180 of 309 (664348)
05-31-2012 10:50 AM
Reply to: Message 178 by JonF
05-31-2012 10:32 AM


evidence of change? thread
There was a study IIRC (remember I'm old and so often forget things)...(where was I? )... (oh yea)... about two years ago out of Cambridge and one of the Australian universities that did show very slight changes to the electromotive force in a few far different galaxies. I'm not sure about any follow up studies.
The point is we can look and science has looked for evidence of changes. Changes leave evidence. And IIRC the changes they did find were only of the magnitude of a few parts per million.
And none of that has any relevance to the Earth and during its history.

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

This message is a reply to:
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Replies to this message:
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