dwise1 writes:
I just wonder what most people think so that I can understand the appeal that that Hovind claim has for them.
See, people like us are at a disadvantage when it comes to stuff like this. Ordinary people usually can't understand something unless it's related to common everyday stuff. It's easier for them to understand combustion than fusion. This is how people like Hovind can make so much money by preying on the gullible.
You'd be amazed to learn how many college students don't know simple facts like this. Although I'd never encountered someone in real life that didn't know it's not combustion at work in the sun (probably because the topic ever comes up anyway), I've dealt with college students that honest to god didn't know the reason stars are so small in the sky is because they're so far away. Back in my TA days for physics, I was very surprised to find some of my students coming up to me to ask if the sun was just an ordinary star how come the stars are so much smaller than the sun?
Another example is the way we can determine the distances of the stars. Take parallax and red shifts for example. It's a lot easier for Hovind to claim that there's no way we can know the stars are such and such distance away or if they're moving away. It's a lot harder for us to actually explain to ordinary folks what parallax and red shifts tell us and how/why.
I'm at a big disadvantage with this claim, because I've known ever since about third grade that the sun and stars burn through fusion. It is virtually impossible for me to even imagine how anyone could actually think that it's by other means, such as combustion.
Now that you mention it, I seem to remember learning about this in middle school or so. We went through possibilities of what might go on in the sun. Based on the energy output of the sun, there just isn't enough mass for a chemical process to go on this long and giving out this much energy. This fact alone should tell anyone that it's not combustion at work.
Oh my goodness, I just looked at the thread title... sorry for bringing everyone way off topic.
Edited by Taz, : No reason given.
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