Quote:Let me be clear here. I do not, and cannot argue against a deist's god. Even a god who, from deep antiquity, engaged in a single creative motion that inevitably led to everything that we see around us. This is a powerful god.
I'm glad you have conceded the point that you are unable to refute a Deist God. I applaud your intellectual honesty. You have stated that even if such a God exists, it couldn't possibly be my God, because of these specific claims:
1. The Universe is very old
2. Evolution is true
3. No global flood ever happened
So now I will address those claims.
Here are a few evidences from Astonomy, first of all, which suggest a young Universe
Appearance of Venus
The high surface temperatures along with its dense atmosphere should have long ago eroded its surface features if the planet is 4 billion years old. The features that we see therefore represent a young planet. Richard A Kerr wrote in "Venus is looking too pristine" from Science magazine that "The Venus flybys have shown that planet to be young in the extreme. When they read the geological clock that tells them how old the Benusian surface is, they find a planet on the brink of adolescence."
Appearance of Mars
Neither can Mars be billions of years old, because in only a few thousand years, the type of harsh dust storms occuring on Mars would have eroded away its many craters and volcanoes. Yet,they're still there. This long term erosion should have also obliterated the strong color differences on the surface of Mars, but obviously this hasn't happened.
Isotopes on the Moon
Isotopes known as U-236 and TH-230 which are short-lived were found in lunar materials. If the moon were billions of years old, these isotopes would have long since decayed and would be absent from the samples. Since they were in relative abundence, it showed the age of the moon has to be measured in thousands, not billions of years.
Hot Jupiter and Saturn
Jupiter and Saturn radiate twice as much energy as they receive from the Sun, the same with Venus and Uranus. If they were billions of years old, they would be stone cold right now. Neptune radiates at 2.7 times the amount it receives. This is consistant with a 6000 year timeline but not a 4.5 billion year timeline.
a - H. H. Aumann and C. M. Gillespie Jr., “The Internal Powers and Effective Temperatures of Jupiter and Saturn,” The Astrophysical
Journal, Vol. 157, July 1969, pp. L69–L72.
•“Jupiter radiates into space rather more than twice the energy it
receives from space.” G. H. A. Cole, The Structure of Planets (New
York: Crane, Russak & Co., Inc., 1978), p. 114.
•M. Mitchell Waldrop, “The Puzzle That Is Saturn,” Science, 18
September 1981, p. 1351.
•Jonathan Eberhart, “Neptune’s Inner Warmth,” Science News, Vol.
112, 12 November 1977, p. 316
Solar Wind
The suns solar wind pushes small particles out of the solar system. Particles less than 100,000th of a centimeter should have been blown out of the solar system if it were billions of years old. Yet, they are plentiful. This suggests the solar system is young. After showing abundant photographic evidence for the presence of micrometeorites as small as 10-15 g that “struck every square centimeter of the lunar surface,” Stuart Ross Taylor stated, “It has been thought previously that radiation pressure would have swept less massive particles out of the inner solar system, but there is a finite flux below 10-14 g.” Stuart Ross Taylor, Lunar
Science: A Post-Apollo View (New York: Pergamon Press, Inc., 1975),
p. 90.
Galaxy Red Shift
Galaxies frequently appear connected or aligned with other galaxies or quasars that have vastly different redshifts. This happens too often for all examples to be coincidences. If redshifts imply velocities (which is most likely), these galaxies and quasars haven’t been moving apart for very long. If redshifts do not always
imply velocities, many astronomical conclusions are in error.
Spiral Galaxy Formation
Computer simulations of the motions of spiral galaxies show them to be highly unstable; they should completely change their shape in only a small fraction of the universe’s assumed evolutionary age. The simplest explanation for so many spiral galaxies, including our Milky Way Galaxy, is that they and the universe are much younger than has been assumed.
Star Clusters
A star cluster contains hundreds or thousands of stars that are moving and held together by gravity. The problem is that in some clusters the stars are moving so fast that they could not have held together for millions or billions of years. They should have long flown apart or unclustered themselves by now. Therefore, since we still have clusters of stars, the age of the Universe should be measured in thousands, not billions of years.
Galaxy Clusters
A similar statement can be made concerning many stars in spiral galaxies and gas clouds that surround some galaxies. These stars and gas clouds have such high relative velocities that they should have broken their “gravitational bonds” long ago if they were billions of years old. If the redshift of starlight always indicates a star’s velocity, then a multi-billion-year-old universe s completely inconsistent with what is observed. If redshifts can be caused by phenomena other than a star’s velocity, much of
current astronomical thinking is wrong.
These observations have led some to conclude, not that the universe is young, but that unseen, undetected mass is holding these stars and galaxies together. For this to work, the hidden mass, sometimes called dark matter, must be 10–100 times greater than all visible mass, and the hidden mass must be in the right places. However, many experiments have shown that the needed “missing mass” does not exist. Some researchers are still searching, because the alternative is a young universe.
a - “In 1933 the late Fritz Zwicky pointed out that the galaxies of
the Coma cluster are moving too fast: there is not enough visible
mass in the galaxies to bind the cluster together by gravity.
Subsequent observations verified this ‘missing’ mass in other
clusters.” M. Mitchell Waldrop, “The Large-Scale Structure of the
Universe,” Science, Vol. 219, 4 March 1983, p. 1050.
b - Faye Flam, “NASA PR: Hype or Public Education?” Science, Vol.
260, 4 June 1993, pp. 1417–1418.
Even if dark matter existed..
It turns out that in almost every case the velocities of the individual galaxies are high enough to allow them to escape from the cluster. In effect, the clusters are ‘boiling.’ This statement is certainly true if we assume that the only gravitational force present is that exerted by visible matter, but it is true even if we assume that every galaxy in the cluster, like the Milky Way, is surrounded by a halo of dark matter that contains 90 percent of the mass of the galaxy.” Trefil, p. 93.
• Gerardus D. Bouw, “Galaxy Clusters and the Mass Anomaly,”
Creation Research Society Quarterly, Vol. 14, September 1977, pp.
108–112.
• Steidl, The Earth, the Stars, and the Bible, pp. 179–185.
• Silk, The Big Bang, pp. 188–191.
• Arp, Quasars, Redshifts, and Controversies.
• Halton M. Arp, “NGC-1199,” Astronomy, Vol. 6, September 1978, p. 15.
• Halton M. Arp, “Three New Cases of Galaxies with Large Discrepant
Redshifts,” Astrophysical Journal, 15 July 1980, pp. 469–474.
Hidden mass
A huge dust ring has been observed orbiting two galaxies. The measured orbital velocity of this ring allows the calculation of the mass of the two galaxies and any hidden mass. There was little hidden mass. Statistical analyses of 155 other small galactic groups also suggest that there is not enough hidden mass to hold them together. [See Stephen E. Schneider, “Neutral Hydrogen in the M96 Group: The Galaxies and the Intergalactic Ring,” The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 343, 1 August 1989, pp. 94–106.]
Crater Creep
A tall pile of tar will slowly flow downhill, ultimately spreading into a nearly horizontal sheet of tar. Most material, under pressure, “creeps” in this way, although rocks deform very, very slowly. Calculations show that the growing upward bulges of large crater floors on the Moon should reach their current extent in only 10,000 to 10,000,000 years.[see footnote] Large, steep-walled craters exist even on Venus and Mercury, where gravity is greater, and temperatures are hot enough to melt lead. Therefore, creep rates on those planets should be even greater. Most large craters on the Moon, Venus, and Mercury are thought to have formed more than 4,000,000,000 years ago. Because these craters show no sign of “creep,” these bodies seem to be relatively young.
Glenn R. Morton, Harold S. Slusher, and Richard E. Mandock, “The Age of Lunar Craters,” Creation Research Society Quarterly, Vol. 20, September 1983, pp. 105–108. The above study drew upon the work of Z. F. Danes, which was described as follows: The history of a circular crater in a highly viscous medium is derived from the hydrodynamic equations of motion by Z. F. Danes. The variation in shape of the crater in the course of time is expressed as a function of a time constant, T, that involves viscosity and density of the medium, acceleration of gravity, and radius of the crater lip. Correspondence between theoretical crater shapes and the observed ones is good. However the time constant, T, is surprisingly short if commonly accepted viscosity values are used. Geological Survey Professional Paper 550-A (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1966), p. A 127.
Since Danes’ work was published, rocks from the Moon have been returned to Earth and their viscosity has been measured. Their values fall in the range of 1021 to 1022 poises. According to the Geological Survey paper just quoted, “If viscosities of lunar rocks were around 1021 to 1022 poises, the ages of large craters would have to be only 104 to 107 years.”
Comets
Comets are divided into two groups: short-period (<200 years) comets, such as Halley’s (76 years); and long-period (>200 years) comets. But the comets from the two groups seem essentially the same in size and composition. Short-period ones normally orbit in the same direction as the planets (prograde) and in almost the same
plane (ecliptic); long-period comets can orbit in almost any plane and in either direction. One exception is Halley’s, which has retrograde motion and a highly inclined orbit. Some astronomers suggest that it was once a long-period, and strong gravity from a planet dramatically shrunk its orbit, and thus the period. So long-period and Halley-type comets are grouped together and called ‘nearly isotropic comets’ (NICs).
The highest period of a stable orbit would be about four million years if the maximum possible aphelion (furthest distance of an orbiting satellite from the sun) were 50,000 AU.9 This is 20% of the distance to the nearest star, so there’s a fair chance other stars could release the comet from the sun’s grip.10
However, even with this long orbit, such a comet would still have made 1,200 trips around the sun if the solar system were 4.6 billion years old. However, it would have been extinguished long before. The problem is even worse with short-period comets.
Comets lose so much mass every time they shine that they could not be billions of years old. Evolutionists propose various sources to replenish the comet supply, but there is no real observational evidence, and numerous unsolved theoretical difficulties.
Super Nova Remnants
According to astronomical theory, in galaxies of our size, approximately 7250 super nova remnants should be visible if we've been around for billions of years. If we estimate we have been around for 6000 years, we should expect to find 124 - 200 super nova remnants. The actual number of super nova remnants that are visible from earth is 205, which is very close to the creationist numbers.
Rapid Star Changes
Evolutionary Astronmers claim star evolution takes millions or billions of years. Yet now there is direct observation that shows that stars can dramatically change in a very short time. A team of astronomers including Bengt Gustafsson at McDonald Observatory in Texas and Martin Asplund of the Uppsala Observatory in Sweden have observed a star called Sakurai’s Object in the constellation of Sagittarius.
In only a few years, the star has changed from a white dwarf star about the size of earth to a bright yellow supergiant 80 times wider than the sun. This means the diameter has increased by a factor of 8,000, and the volume by a factor of over 500,000 million.
New Scientist 154 (2085):17, 7 June 1997; referring to Astronomy &
Astrophysics 321:L17, 1997.
Lack of population 3 stars fatal flaw in big bang cosmology:
http://www.trueorigin.org/pop3bigbang01.asp
Amount of Hydrogen
Hydrogen is constantly being converted into helium throughout the Universe. If the Universe were billions of years old, there would be no, or almost no hydrogen left. It should have long since disappeared by now. However, noted professor of astronomy Fred Hoyle revealed "The universe consists almost entirely of hydrogen" This shows us the Universe must in fact be quite young.
Planets rings
The rings of Saturn and Jupiter are primarily composed of ammonia and pebbles of various sizes. If the Universe has been here for billions of years, they should have been vaporized into out space long ago or been destroy by meteoroids. Jupiters magnetic field should have also swept them away. Futher, the rings of Saturn are still distinctly bright when the debris left behind by comets should have caused those rings to turn dark by now. This suggest they have not been around for very long.
Sun is shrinking
The sun has been discovered to be shrinking in size, which means it used to be bigger. If the solar system was 4.6 billion years old, the sun, shrinking at a constant rate of about 0.01 percent per century would have been so big it would have made life on earth impossible. In as little as 50,000 years, it would have boiled off our oceans.
(September 28, 2011 at 6:20 pm)Rhythm Wrote: We
