The not so distant star light problem

Can you explain specifically what is dubious about large distance measurements. It would be best if this could be expressed purely in terms of the techniques themselves and their possible weaknesses, not in terms of vague suspicions of the "scientific establishment".

Nor does it address my refutation showing that your scale model had no point. When you accurately scale up or down the sizes of objects and their distance relationships, you don't change the angles involved and those angles are completely comprehensible, understandable, and most of all measurable.Your inability or unwillingness to consider large distances is not an argument. Hilarious. You claimed otherwise in your own post. But there seems to be very little anyone can rely on in your posts. Further, it is not just instrumentation that has improved. Galileo was not familiar with even Isaac Newton's work, let alone Einstein's. Your attempts to impress with your knowledge are just revealing more ignorance. Your claim above makes no sense to me, but I'll take a stab at it. The milky way galaxy would have been a new idea for Galileo. With his instruments he could not identify that he lived in a galaxy or that there were other galaxies. He had no idea how far away any star was. Galileo suspected that the speed of light was finite, but was unable to measure it. Yet none of those things turn Galileo's discoveries "on its head".The distance to SN1987a does not even contradict anything Galileo worked on. So why should Galileo's observations about say, the moons of Jupiter be cast into doubt? Your question seems silly and of course telling.And how does any of that make deep space astronomy testable or not testable? It does not. Your suspicions have origins not based in science or logic. They are based on self-enforced ignorance and denial. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Simply clicking on your name allows displaying a long history your posts. I'm sure your list is fine, but it is not as convenient for casual perusing. We wouldn't want anyone to miss those "science is dominated by atheists and their collaborators rants" you've authored, now would we?

Thank you.

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You're still trying to fit the supernatural act of creation into the very limited time frame that humans are capable of understanding,

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I can't make it any clearer than that. Your view seems to be that humans are capable of understanding all of reality, and I don't think they are. The AIG link from your opening message states my belief

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...the way in which distant starlight arrived on earth may have been supernatural. We cannot assume that past acts of God are necessarily understandable in terms of a current scientific mechanism, because science can only probe the way in which God sustains the universe today. It is irrational to argue that a supernatural act cannot be true on the basis that it cannot be explained by natural processes observed today.

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Why, they (including you) haven't let me know theirs, have they? So this gang against one can have yet another angle of attack against only me? Wasn't it you accusing ME of the "shotgun approach" earlier in this thread? In message 22 of this thread, the forum administrator describes himself like this;

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I myself am neither an atheist, nor an agnostic, nor a member of or adherent to any organized religion.

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Percy

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Why don't you ask him if he "doesn't want to debate anything"?But I'll answer your question, I have faith in what the 66 book Bible says, concerning the history it contains, and the guidelines it puts forth for living this life. A significant part of it concerns not always placing trust in the wisdom of humans. It gets the front seat, science gets the back seat. I have no faith in science, unless I see actual evidence, not just what is said by scientific organizations who may have political motives.

To me, it's common sense that if any human endeavor is undertaken involving distances of two or more differing lengths, with all things being the same other than a distance, the one with the longer distance is going to be more error prone. There is supposedly, what, one hundred billion stars in our galaxy alone? Hundreds of billions of galaxies all around ours? When looking from only one point, what are the chances of counts and distances and stars being directly in line with each other from our line of sight getting messed up? Is there not dark matter and black holes that could also give some incorrect readings, consistently, no matter how many different people take the same readings with the same equipment, from the same spot in the universe?I think this is largely referred to in the following c/p that I showed in my message 36;

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Two problems exist for any class of standard candle. The principal one is calibration, determining exactly what the absolute magnitude of the candle is. This includes defining the class well enough that members can be recognized, and finding enough members with well-known distances that their true absolute magnitude can be determined with enough accuracy. The second lies in recognizing members of the class, and not mistakenly using the standard candle calibration upon an object which does not belong to the class. At extreme distances, which is where one most wishes to use a distance indicator, this recognition problem can be quite serious.

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"QUITE SERIOUS" - too serious to pass the "testable" and "falsifiable" test that the scientific community supposedly requires of itself. That is my main point in this thread, no one has yet been able to come close to refuting it, and it has obviously generated much anger. Why? Is science about open inquiry, or is it a closed minded worldview? I've spent about 10 years on forums like this, and I think I'm very close to the answer.

Let me word the question in a more complete way. Before Galileo, there was Copernicus, after Galileo there was Huygens, then Newton, Messier, Herschel, Leavitt, Einstein, Hubble, Hawking. Each of them seemed to build their discoveries at least partially on the work of the previous guy. Did any of these famous astronomers find something that a previous famous astronomer got completely wrong? I did a little search on it myself, and find no evidence that it's happened. If new instrumentation can detect facts of deep space further and clearer, and yet can't find anything wrong with discoveries made with the very primitive instruments of Galileo, Newton, etc. then that's a strong indicator that nothing's being tested, and nothing's being falsified.

I would not call Einstein an astronomer, but Einstein's corrections to Newton's formulation of gravity have to be one of the most well known advances in physics. You did not find at least this in your search?You are completely unaware of the limitations in Copernicus' work? Despite the fact that Copernicus was correct about the planets orbiting the sun, it turns out to be impossible to accurately predict the positions of the planet with only that information.If your search could not turn those things up, then perhaps you are simply not qualified to opine on how science has been advanced and what has or has not been falsified. Your idea is complete nonsense. Ideas that are correct won't be falsified no matter how much we investigate.

Well, marc9000. Tell us what are the chances? What are the chances of that happening every single time we measure the distance to multiple different objects in the same distant galaxy? What are the chances that each measurement is blocked by a direct line but at the exact same distance from each of those objects? Is that probability high or low? Are you even qualified to guess at the probability? Would you recognize the right answer if you saw it.And would not the result of such interference be that we would underestimate the distance to the object rather than overestimate it? Exactly what are you arguing here?Your nonsense is simply not credible. The chance that such an object blocked the view to SN1987a and that as a result SN1987a is closer than we think is exactly zero. How would you know whether an argument refutes your point. Refutations have been offered. But you aren't qualified to weigh them.ABE: It turns out that you are correct. Our estimates of the distances to distant objects are surely billions of miles off. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

You're welcome.RIFLE(focused single topic) Ok. Thank you. But my thread, despite the side discussions about starlight, is about the sun. Is it your view that the way sunlight reached the earth may have been supernatural?
This is one reason I asked you for your view of creation because without this input I don't know if you disagree with the OP. The other reason I asked was so that other posters could stop wasting their time proving arguments that you perhaps don't disagree with.SHOTGUN(scattered topics that distract from a focused discussion upon a single subject long enough to learn anything) Ok if it is clear to you then please express it differently and maybe it'll become clear to me. From my perspective this is a contradiction. You are saying that this is something humans are incapable of understanding and yet somehow that it is clear? Is it saying that the creation period really was a very long period of time? Even longer than the presently accepted age of the universe, because humans are capable of understanding that, so it must be longer? Are you referring to aspects of reality of which we are presently unaware? Or do you mean that you think we are incapable of understanding the reality of which we are aware? Are you simply distinguishing between God's manner of creation and his resulting creation once completed? You are the one challenging the scientific viewpoint. We are not. I am sincerely trying to help you, not attack you. I can appreciate that you are sincerely trying to help me.
If you feel outnumbered go get some of your friends and return and launch Armageddon. To my knowledge he has not participated in my thread. But how long did creation week take? Eons of time for each creation day? A thousand years for each creation day? Not 24hrs each because you are not YEC, right? How big is your God? Bigger than a billion?(credit to ICR for that insight). Mine was only as big as the square root of 31. I never had a problem believing God could work miracles. What caught my attention was not so much the lack of evidence for some of the recorded biblical events as much as the existence of contradictory evidence for those events. Did God create false evidence to test our faith? I know people that believe the fossils of dinosaurs were specially fabricated by God to test our faith. I couldn't remain on board that boat. Well who's keeping you from looking at the actual evidence? Hint: It's someone close by.

You do realise that you only know about all these people because they were proved RIGHT don't you?Do you think the science books would be full of references to, say, Newtonian gravity, if he was wrong? How many statues do you think there would be of Darwin in natural history museums if later scientists had been able to prove him wrong?If Newton hadn't written his Principia and concentrated instead only on his alchemy, you wouldn't have heard of him because he was WRONG about it.

Fair enough, this is reasonable.

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There is supposedly, what, one hundred billion stars in our galaxy alone? Hundreds of billions of galaxies all around ours?

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About four hundred billion stars in the Milky Way, and around 200 billion galaxies in the observable universe.If our current estimate of the number of extrasolar planets per star continue to hold for other galaxies, then that gives around 300 sectillion planets in the observable universe. Low enough to be statistically negligible when averaged over millions of stars. Space is extremely sparse. Think about it. Draw a sphere 10 light years in radius around the sun. The Sun (Sol), Alpha Centauri, Sirius, Bernard's star occupy around 0.0000016% of this volume. Hence the chance of objects being directly in line with each other is about one in fifty million. This error is swamped when one does a statistical analysis on millions of stars. Not really, black holes a relatively rare, there is only one per hundred thousand stars, so again that gives you a one in five hundred billion chance that a black hole will introduce an error into a distance measurement. In fact the chance is even less, since black holes aren't luminous, the stars light would have to align almost exactly with the black hole itself, which are usually only a few kilometers in diameter.Dark Matter is non-luminous and its only effect would be gravitational lensing, which distorts images, but wouldn't change calculations of their distance. Lensing doesn't magnify or shrink images. In either case the density of Dark Matter is too low to cause significant lensing.

Couldn't lensing increase the brightness of an object thus throwing off a particular distance measured using standard candle techniques? Of course, lensing produces detectable patterns of distortion. So I would not expect this to be a feasible explanation.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

No, because it's not about astronomy. We're not discussing physics here. There was limitations in Copernicus work, and the work of those before him, many who yes, got their work turned on its head. (those who thought the sun revolved around the earth, etc.) But if nothing's been falsified since the very primitive days of Copernicus and Galileo, 500+years, then it's safe to say that astronomy is too vague to be falsifiable. I'm qualified to see the double standard that's applied to astronomy versus the concept of Intelligent Design by the scientific community. A 6th grader could do it. Here's what I'm arguing, please read carefully. Curiousity, and vagueness etc. has always been a part of science, and there's nothing wrong with it. But a few decades ago, a book called Darwin's Black Box came out, complete with plenty of scientific model building, and for the very first time, a type of scientific exploration clashed with the closed minded worldviews of those who control science. Their solution to their problem was to invent brand new 'entrance requirements' for something to be science. The words "testable", and "falsifiable" being two words used. Those entrance requirements didn't exist 500 years ago, astronomy didn't have to comply with them then, and they don't have to comply with them now.If the scientific community was honest, the only kind of space exploration permitted today with public funds would be within our solar system, possibly including a few of the closest stars. So your question probably would be; "so we’re supposed to completely forget and not be permitted to study what we currently know about deep space?". My answer, not at all, here's the same answer the scientific community gives to ID proponents; JUST DO IT ON PRIVATE TIME AND WITH PRIVATE MONEY, AND DON’T TEACH IT IN SCIENCE CLASSES. Here's a repeat of something from my message 55. No one has even addressed it yet, let alone refuted it;

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Because when the general public can comprehend / compare distances of thousands of miles that they may have traveled by car or bus in their lives, to a grain of sand sized earth, and use common sense reasoning that space may not be pure crystal clarity everywhere we look, they just might tend to raise the BS flag when they're told about testable, falsifiable facts of these distances. Especially when they're told that NOTHING about the concept of Intelligent Design is testable or falsifiable. Their raising of the BS flag would possibly be much more vigorous if they were to learn that it's largely their tax money that provides the scientific community with a living that is often much more comfortable than their own.

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It's that simple, the scientific community has double standards based on a godless worldview. I have nothing more to prove, this thread's starter and all his helpers have the burden to prove it doesn't have double standards, before they summarize with put downs of me personally and all their back slapping claims of victory.
  —marc9000

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Yes. Not only reached the earth, which only takes a few minutes even now, but the way it originally developed within the sun at creation. Which may not be the way it works now, in the way God sustains it, but only in the way he created it. Yes, I disagree with the entire tone of your OP, including this line;

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you cannot shorten the time required to fit the text of the Bible.

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You can, if the supernatural is considered. Exactly, it's possible to understand the fact that something happened, without knowing the details of how it happened. A person can use a flashlight without knowing exactly how it works. An atheist can believe abiogenesis happened without knowing how it worked. "Long" isn't a consideration if it happened in a time realm that is outside of the simple, one dimension time frame that humans know about. Yes. I guess you got me there. I would think maybe the thread starter would have the burden of sharing his worldview so readers would better know where he's coming from in the discussion he's starting, but these are after all the science forums. Secularism/atheism owns them. But there are many threads started here from an atheist viewpoint, who's starter claims to be a "mainstream" Christian, not the 0.00001% of wackos like me who actually believe what the word of God says.But you do have my answer as to what my beliefs are. I don't need any help. My points are made, I'm almost done in this thread. I don't consider the time frame to be identifiable. I guess I disagree with AIG slightly on that one. I think (in some cases) we have to stop short of trying to identify times for religious purposes, or try to claim that early humans and dinosours lived at exactly the same time, as I think AIG does. I think it's a mistake to go out on that limb. Could be, but I think it's clearer that man bends over backwards to dig up false evidence. Or tries too hard to put God to the test, something frowned upon by the one book of the Bible that the scientific community dislikes the most, Genesis. This is a result of "putting God to the test", or "leaning on our own understanding".

Why are you telling me that? You are the one who included Einstein in a list of astronomers. I gave two example because you claimed not be able to find any examples at all starting with Copernicus and Galileo. You claimed to have searched and yet you couldn't even find those two. And even further, you specifically asked about discoveries that Galileo could not find. Do you understand now why I say that your posts are not to be relied on?An example of some more recent discoveries include the falsifying of steady state models of the universe, the discovery that the expansion of the universe is accelerating rather than slowing down.Those, in addition to the Galileo and Copernicus examples I gave show that you are utterly unable to tell if anything has or has not been falsified. You demonstrate the truth of a contrary proposition every time you post. You are opining on a topic about which you know jack diddly squat and you couldn't hide that fact from a sixth grader.The rest of your post is just more of the typical marc9000 rant about we've all come to know and love. I don't see any need to comment on it.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.