Starlight Within a Young Universe

Here is what Old Earth Creationist Hugh Ross has to say about Starlight and Time.

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...[Humphreys] solicited, publicly and privately, feedback from Christian physicists who did have formal training in these disciplines. Starting even before the appearance of Starlight and Time and continuing to the present, such feedback has been forthcoming, and, to our knowledge, it has been uniformly critical of the theory

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So Humphreys asked for expert opinion - and then ignored it ?

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Four years after the original publication of Starlight and Time, Humphreys has abandoned all the central arguments of that hypothesis. All that remains is a skeleton, consisting of the idea of a bounded universe and a phrase, "gravitational time dilation."

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So Humphreys has abandoned his original arguments because they have been proven false, but kept the conclusions ?It doesn't look good for Humphreys.

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There are definitely Kuiper objects around, they just aren't comets!! So Humphrey's argument still hold regarding comets.

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We wouldn't see comets in the Kuiper belt because they are so small. So Humphrey's argument doesn't provide any positive reason to think that they aren't there. The fact that there are larger objects in that part of space that we can see, on the other hand, is a good reason to think that there will be smaller objects. And why should they not include comets ?So Humphreys' argumetn was never any good in the first place, and there is good circumstantial evidence against it - which he is ignoring. Hardly the mark of good scientific work.

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I think you miss the argument

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No, the argument is clear - Humphreys claims that there are no comets in the Kuiper belt, and therefore no source for short-term comets.But Humphreys has given no valid reason to suppose that there are no comets in the Kuiper Belt.

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If the universe really is as old as you claim, you will need a HUGE reservoir for all these comets.

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The age of the Universe is irrelevant - it is only the substnatially younger age of the solar system that matters.

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They should have been observed by now. However, we do not

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So your argument is that we should have seen something that is too small to see even with current instruments. Obviously we should NOT see them, whether they are there or not.

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And what 'good circumstantial evidence' might that be?

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That we have observed larger objects of course. Larger objects are less common than small objects - consider the asteroid belt for example. Consider how many meteors hit the Earth's atmsophere compared with the number of really large meteorites. Thus if we see larger objects it is a reaonable inference that smaller objects are also there, unless there is a good reason to suppose otherwise. In the Kuiper Belt there is no such reason.

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I admit, that it is poor science to conclude something based on lack of evidence. But the evidence we see today does fit with a young age for our solar system. So the point is still relevant, but we cannot deduce that there are no comets, and you are totally right on that.

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I am trying to give you the benefit of the doubt but you are not making it easy.The argument is based on misrepresenting the situation. The lack of observations is due to technical limitations and has nothign to do with the presence or absence of comets. Therefore it is consistent with ANY age for the solar system. It is not relevant evidence.
It is not a good point, it is either a dreadful error or an intentional misrepresentation.

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Here is a point that I can use in my favour. Your logic is that the larger objects mean that there are more smaller objects of the same type. So the Kuiper belt with its many known large objects, which do not consists of known comets, must therefore have a multitude of smaller objects. However, based on your logic, these smaller objects will be of the same non-comet type material.

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You misrepresent my point. I nowehre made the invalid assumption that the material composition of the objects present must be identical. Since a comet is composed of quite normal materials there is no good reason to suppose that they are absent. (Indeed, for all I know the larger objects do contain these substances - I have not investigated that matter).

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Again, this is not enough to say there will never be comets observed. But to say that comets do exist there is likewise a un-scientific assumption

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Which of course is not what I have been saying. My point is that Hummphrey's argument is worthless because it takes our inability to observe something as a good reason to assume that it is not there.In fact, given the other evidence of age, it would be scientifically valid to assume that the Kuiper belt is a source of comets. It is the expanation which best fits the evidence. Humphreys on the other hand takes a piece of non-evidence, puffs it up with false significance and asserts that we should ignore all the genuine evidence of age. THAT is not only unscientific, but anti-scientific.