all that has to be done by the 'young earthers' is to relax the requirement that every mention of 'day' mean the 24 hour solar day. for instance, the ref. to 'morning' and 'evening' in genesis 1 are not solar days since there is no sun or moon until the fourth creation day.

This reminds me of the nut jobs who believe that dinosaur fossils were planted by Satan to deceive us. You should ask your friend why God is so deceiving that he would give us inquisitive minds only to mislead us from the truth.

(January 15, 2014 at 7:36 pm)Statler Waldorf Wrote:

(January 6, 2014 at 12:25 am)orogenicman Wrote: Are you suggesting that the speed of light is not natural?

The one-way speed of light in any given direction is stipulated by man as long as the round trip speed remains the experimentally verifiable value, this is a core principle of special relativity.

“That light requires the same time to traverse the path A → M as for the path B → M is in reality neither a supposition nor a hypothesis about the physical nature of light, but a stipulation which I can make of my own freewill in order to arrive at a definition of simultaneity.” -Einstein 1961, p. 23 [emphasis is in the original]

Quote: You're the one who considers the one-way speed of light to be instantaneous (and thus magically affects the age of the universe) sans any supporting evidence whatsoever. Congratulations.

Yes, using this convention it moves at an infinite speed towards the observer, meaning we witness cosmic events in real-time. Imagine that.

So your basic premise is that the speed of light is entirely dependent on an observer?

What is the speed of light without an observer?

N.B. You are utterly misinterpreting special relativity.

Why would light travel instantly in one direction and at light speed in the other?

Answer: to give creationists a last desperate attempt to explain reality that doesn't sound stupid. even though it is stupid).


Why isn't the speed of light instantaneous.

Quote:Were there an infinite value for the speed of light, light itself would not exist at all. Mathematically, the wave equation that describes light as an electromagnetic wave would lose its time-dependence.

Quote: if you think light is a wave, then it has to be something that propagates and takes time to go from one point to another. In other words, it has to travel at a finite speed. Infinite speed of propagation is an instantaneous magical change in things everywhere all at once, and not a wave at all!

http://www.scientificamerican.com/articl...eed-of-lig

After spending some time researching why on 'earth' are the 'young earthers' insisting on this minuscule timeframe like 10,000 years, I reached an epiphany; they want to easily dispose of evolutionary models for the origin-of-life which would require eons of time. of course they have to argue that the law of physic have changed, but they being biblically based should know God has stated those laws are fixed throughout the U's existence.

I smell a heavy dose of cherry picking, and a slight whiff of 'science' to prove a pre-determined conclusion, which isn't actually science at all. I'm sure Lawrence Krauss would have a right bloody riot with this one. Notice again that scientific theories establish clearly what would disprove the said theories, whereas you won't ever catch young-earth cranks conceding anything that could ever qualify as disproof. Also notice again, if there was really a convincing argument for variable light speeds but one that demonstrated clearly a 6-10 k universe age then we'd have ourselves a nobel prize winner by now. Waldorf is pretty good though, he's managed to re-work the entire realm of physics AND critical thinking from his keyboard. He's god deductive proof of god AND he knows the exact age of the universe........ using absolutely no mathematics whatsoever, bloody genius! Ultimate heroic armchair win.

(January 21, 2014 at 2:55 am)snowtracks Wrote: After spending some time researching why on 'earth' are the 'young earthers' insisting on this minuscule timeframe like 10,000 years, I reached an epiphany; they want to easily dispose of evolutionary models for the origin-of-life which would require eons of time. of course they have to argue that the law of physic have changed, but they being biblically based should know God has stated those laws are fixed throughout the U's existence.

I agree with you as to the YEC's motives and add merely that this 'single-bullet', checkmate approach is misguided in a textbook cart before the horse sense. Evolutionary models for the diversity - not the origin - of life as we see it today do not require aeons of time so much as happen to have taken them to reach the current state. Species evolve over generations; those that take several years to reach reproductive maturity are necessarily going to have longer periods between generations than those reproducing over a shorter timescale, thus evolutionary effects are going to take much longer to become apparent. That's why biologists use fruit flies and bacteria in their experiments rather than humans with their inconveniently long maturation period.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPZ_cRv9P8Y

(January 16, 2014 at 12:36 pm)Chas Wrote: So your basic premise is that the speed of light is entirely dependent on an observer?

It’s not my premise; it’s a stipulation of the convention. Under either convention it’s completely dependent upon the observer, in this one it’s the observer’s position in the isotropic convention it’s the observer’s velocity. Neither is more correct than the other.

Quote: What is the speed of light without an observer?

Where at and measured how?

Quote: N.B. You are utterly misinterpreting special relativity.

Even though I quoted from Einstein’s work that explicitly agrees with me? Nice try.

(January 16, 2014 at 1:49 pm)downbeatplumb Wrote: Why would light travel instantly in one direction and at light speed in the other?

It doesn’t, it travels at 1/2 experimental c in the opposite direction. All of relativity is counterintuitive.

Quote: Answer: to give creationists a last desperate attempt to explain reality that doesn't sound stupid. even though it is stupid).

Why would non-creationists develop something “intended to save creationism and to make creationists not sound stupid”? If you’re going to postulate such conspiracy theories I’d first make sure that they made one iota of sense.

Quote: Why isn't the speed of light instantaneous.

It is in one direction, the round-trip speed cannot be in order to preserve causality.

(January 21, 2014 at 2:55 am)snowtracks Wrote: After spending some time researching why on 'earth' are the 'young earthers' insisting on this minuscule timeframe like 10,000 years, I reached an epiphany; they want to easily dispose of evolutionary models for the origin-of-life which would require eons of time. of course they have to argue that the law of physic have changed, but they being biblically based should know God has stated those laws are fixed throughout the U's existence.

1. The creation timeline predates any such model, so that cannot be the reason.
2. Perhaps that’s the reason Darwinists desperately want the Universe to be that old…because they need it to be? Ever think of that?
3. You can have all the time you want, it’s not going to save your paradigm.

(January 21, 2014 at 2:16 pm)WesOlsen Wrote: I'm sure Lawrence Krauss would have a right bloody riot with this one. Notice again that scientific theories establish clearly what would disprove the said theories, whereas you won't ever catch young-earth cranks conceding anything that could ever qualify as disproof. Also notice again, if there was really a convincing argument for variable light speeds but one that demonstrated clearly a 6-10 k universe age then we'd have ourselves a nobel prize winner by now.

1. Variable light speeds do not prove the Universe is 6,000 years old; they merely demonstrate that distant starlight in no way proves it is older than 6,000 years.
2. What on Earth makes you think the Nobel committee does not have their personal biases? That’s laughable.

Quote: Waldorf is pretty good though, he's managed to re-work the entire realm of physics AND critical thinking from his keyboard.

No, I merely managed to comprehend it.

Quote: He's god deductive proof of god AND he knows the exact age of the universe........ using absolutely no mathematics whatsoever, bloody genius! Ultimate heroic armchair win.

I do not know the exact age, but I know a very narrow range.

(January 21, 2014 at 7:11 pm)Stimbo Wrote: I agree with you as to the YEC's motives and add merely that this 'single-bullet', checkmate approach is misguided in a textbook cart before the horse sense.

Pretending to know someone else’s motives is not misguided? I believe what I believe because I know the Bible is what it claims to be.

Quote: Evolutionary models for the diversity - not the origin - of life as we see it today do not require aeons of time so much as happen to have taken them to reach the current state. Species evolve over generations; those that take several years to reach reproductive maturity are necessarily going to have longer periods between generations than those reproducing over a shorter timescale, thus evolutionary effects are going to take much longer to become apparent. That's why biologists use fruit flies and bacteria in their experiments rather than humans with their inconveniently long maturation period.

Even though fruit flies are still flies and bacteria are still bacteria after tens of millions of generations. The evidence just does not fit what you are saying.

Quote: Astronomy kitchen video

That’s measuring the round-trip speed of light which nobody here is disputing. I cannot believe I wasted seven minutes watching that.