The speed of light, stars, and YEC?

[Minimalist]

Evolution is a fact, and those who choose to deny it are denying a fact.

True, Alei, but it won't even slow Waldork down. He's committed to his sky-daddy and if facts contradict his fantasies he must ignore them.

What he needs are many years with a shrink.

[Erinome]

Extensive deprogramming therapy. STAT!

pun intended.

[dtango]

I appreciate the kind replies. many thanks.

.
That’s very nice of you but “thanks” will not be enough. You have to answer a question yourself:
Have you ever studied the evolution of theological thought?
Do you have an idea what the symbol that follows stands for?



I am sure you don’t and so I will answer the questions for you.

Theological thinking evolved from empirical knowledge. Traditionally all peoples on earth claim creation by gods, only that the creation in question was completely natural and in complete harmony with science because it was realized by means of sex making.
Theologians adopted originally sex making as the system for creating people, but thought it was proper to dispense with the female part and have the male gods produce offspring by themselves. So they said that the great god Atum produced his Children Shu and Tefnut through masturbation.

The Egyptians, being perfectionists, provided in their writings of the story of Atum the masturbator the above symbol in order to clarify, in order to eradicate even the slightest shadow of doubt, of the great achievement of Atum.

The theologians that took over from the one with the masturbating theory, thought they could, and did, expand the creation of people to include the creation of universe but they decided not tell the truth and just tell that the great god was creating by his thought or by his voice.

In reality, of course, they knew the universe was created the other way.

[Norfolk And Chance]

These religion and science debates are fascinating to me. A poster above mentioned that our physical laws show no evidence of changing. Given that, and the law of entropy, how does any model of cosmology make sense? The chain of events that produced life is infinitely ordered. It is so ordered, in fact, that it produced a self ordering human race. Not only that, but the order can be seen even at microscopic levels. How does one account for this scientifically?

Time.

Nothing is really ordered but a product of circumstance. The reason everything fits together so well is because everything has had enough time to do the necessary evolution.

You can look at it two ways - we eat an orange because it was given to us and designed for us, or we eat an orange because oranges were there before us and we evolved so that we could take advantage of the orange situation by evolving a capacity to ingest them. If we couldn't we may die.

I know some christians seem to have a hard time accepting that life is down to chance and evolution. How could something so complex as DNA just evolve? Surely it had to be made and programmed by somebody? It is actually harder to believe that a supreme deity managed to programme something so complex, not just for us but for billions and trillions of other things too. It's just too easy an answer. Goddidit.

But how could everything have just programmed itself? Such complexity? Well, random interaction, innumerable times, survival of the fittest meaning eventually everything develops its own station in the chain.

Over TIME. Give it enough time and enough interactions can occur.

People don't often seem to me to really comprehend how long a time 4.5 billion years really is. It's just a number right, a big number right, but you need to understand the hugeness of it. Think of light. It travels at c186,000 miles per second. Around 670 million mph. Travelling at the speed of 670 million mph it still takes over 4 years to reach the nearest star. The vast distance travelled in that 4 years is mindboggling, yes? We all understand that right?

A man walking at 3mph, walking pace, would take c220 million times longer than light to reach any destination, right? It would take a man c900 million years to WALK the incredibly vast distance to the nearest star.

My point? 900 million isn't even 1 billion. A man could WALK to Proxima Centauri FIVE times in 4.5 billion years. THAT is how big a number 4.5 billion is.

That is a looooooooong time for things to evolve on their own to fit their environment. Almost anything is possible given enough time, and life has has plenty of it, a vast amount of it.

So yeah, time.

[DeistPaladin]

I might be able to see if I understood how a metaphoric fall from grace would work. Can you help me out here?

I think he is pointing out the fact you are committing a composition fallacy. Just because there are allegedly aspects of Genesis that are figurative, does not necessitate that all parts of the story are indeed figurative (i.e. the fall).

yup, what he said

Actually, that wasn't my point, that one part being figurative means the whole book is.

What I need to understand is how a proverbial fall from grace needs to be paid by a real sacrifice on a cross (putting aside how blood sacrifice makes sin go away in the first place).

[popeyespappy]

You've correctly ascertained that it is impossible. The laws of physics are demonsterably and demonstratably unchanging and hold true everywhere we see. The speed of light is about 300,000 kilometers (186,000 miles) per second and can and will never be anything else - same as gravity, thermodynamics, and numerous other things that creationists otherwise ignore.
The creationist arguement of C (the speed of light) being able to change over time is disengenuous because there is no evidence that any of our laws of physics has or even can change over time. At best, they can argue that our understanding and ability to express and predict using physics has changed but that doesn't help their arguements at all.

Variable speed of light (VSL) is supported by the same kind of evidence that supports inflation. It is an alternative explanation for the observations that led to the introduction of inflation. The same goes for Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MND). It is an alternative explanation for observations that most cosmologists attribute to Dark Matter. At this point both VSL and MND are fringe theories without a large following among cosmologists. But so was the Big Bang model in the middle part of the 20th century.

We don’t currently have a theory of everything. We don’t KNOW if the correct answer is inflation, VSL along with MND or some other theory. Whether you like inflation or VSL as an explanation for current observations it doesn’t make a difference. Both theories require a point in time in the history of our universe in which the laws of physics did not operate the same as they appear to today. Either we have inflation which has matter with mass moving faster than light, or a speed of light which has not always been constant.

Unfortunately for the YEC crowd, VSL as proposed by credible cosmologists does not support an Earth much younger than the age science currently assigns to it. VSL still requires an old universe and says nothing about the age of Earth. In fact it requires an old Earth to be viable because without an old Earth it stands in direction to other observations. Like the fossil and geologic record or radiocarbon decay when someone tries to tout these things as support for a young Earth it is a misrepresentation or distortion of the facts.

[Anomalocaris]

Evolution is a fact, and those who choose to deny it are denying a fact.

True, Alei, but it won't even slow Waldork down. He's committed to his sky-daddy and if facts contradict his fantasies he must ignore them.

What he needs are many years with a shrink.

An eternity with all the Shrinks in the universe can't help stupidity.

[tackattack]

---

I might be able to see if I understood how a metaphoric fall from grace would work. Can you help me out here?

I think he is pointing out the fact you are committing a composition fallacy. Just because there are allegedly aspects of Genesis that are figurative, does not necessitate that all parts of the story are indeed figurative (i.e. the fall).

yup, what he said

Actually, that wasn't my point, that one part being figurative means the whole book is.

What I need to understand is how a proverbial fall from grace needs to be paid by a real sacrifice on a cross (putting aside how blood sacrifice makes sin go away in the first place).

---

I hoped your point would be better than reitterating the initial fallacy which I addressed and will again.

Fallacy Of Division:
assuming that what is true of the whole is true of each constituent part. For example, human beings are made of atoms, and human beings are conscious, so atoms must be conscious.

Your observation also boarders Argument By Generalization. One part being figurative doesn't means the whole book is, it just mean that that one part is seen as figurative. It doesn't mean it didn't happen, just that it isn't believed to have happened exactly as described. For an example from an elementary school workbook:
Literal: I can’t find my keys and I keep forgetting appointments.
Figurative: My mind is oatmeal.
Both reference an actual occurance (forgetting the keys). I'm aware most atheists and some theists see this as cherry picking as well, but that's not what this is about. It's not proverbial in that it's not illustrating a proverb or common saying. It's figurative in that it is a metaphor, during an unrecorded time in man's history, for the struggle between human nature and God's will.

To answer your question of contrast in this figurative story and the literal sacrifice of Christ; a real fall from grace needs a real atonement, regardless of how it's conveyed, described or the language used.

[DeistPaladin]

I think you still managed to miss my point. Let me try again going a little slower.

1. Christian theology states that Jesus died on the cross to save humanity from its fall from grace.
2. The fall from grace occurred when humanity ate the magic fruit they weren't supposed to in the Garden of Eden.
3. Turns out there was no fall from grace.
4. Because there was no fall from grace, there was no need to save us.
5. Because there was no need to save us, there's no need for the sacrifice on the cross.

Now, you have suggested the fall was "metaphoric". First, what do you mean by that and second, why would a real blood sacrifice be needed for a metaphor?

[tackattack]

I'll answer using your words for clarity
1. yes
2. The fall from grace occurred at a time that wasn't observably recorded. When humanity ate the magic fruit they weren't supposed to in the Garden of Eden, it was a phrase applied to something to which it is not literally applicable in order to suggest a resemblance (metaphor).
3. disagree
4. and 5 then don't follow logically


6- why would a real blood sacrifice be needed for a metaphor? Because whatever the cause (or literal details) of human's rejection of God and willfullness (effect of the metaphorical event) that is evidenced today would require atonement.