The not so distant star light problem

All I'm doing is responding to you, your comments about loving me then telling me to go to hell, your references to "flat-earthers" etc, all of which have nothing to do with your opening post. What's your opinion of the brilliant analysis of my scientific model building idea found in messages 37, 38, 39, and 40 in these sophisticated science forums?

Fair enough. Since you asked, I don't find it to be compelling evidence in support of your position.

I'm sorry you've taken offense where non was intended. I was not offended at your labeling of me. I was just trying to use it to illustrate a point. Are you sure the folks at ICR would consider you orthodox? I'd bet they'd spank your little behind for self-identifying as anything other than YEC.

But since you mentioned the OP and shared a concern with staying on topic, and are the only creationist participating in my thread, I was hoping you'd share your views about how the sun got to be the way it presently is. Did it exit creation week in its present state? Was c variable after creation week? Thanks.

Hey man, take care in recovering from your abdominal surgery. No hurry on replies.

Did you READ my message 31? Here are the two relevant paragraphs

To be honest it isn't intelligible. Can you not simply share your view of creation along with the relevant time frames?

I think you owe it to the posters who have spent their time and energy in preparing posts for you to challenge your position that you might grow to let them know what it is you believe rather than to leave them guessing don't you?

I know you aren't YEC. What exactly are you? Or did you not want to debate anything?

Thank you.

You're welcome.

RIFLE(focused single topic)

The AIG link from your opening message states my belief...the way in which distant starlight arrived on earth may have been supernatural.

Ok. Thank you. But my thread, despite the side discussions about starlight, is about the sun. Is it your view that the way sunlight reached the earth may have been supernatural?
This is one reason I asked you for your view of creation because without this input I don't know if you disagree with the OP. The other reason I asked was so that other posters could stop wasting their time proving arguments that you perhaps don't disagree with.

SHOTGUN(scattered topics that distract from a focused discussion upon a single subject long enough to learn anything)

You're still trying to fit the supernatural act of creation into the very limited time frame that humans are capable of understanding, I can't make it any clearer than that

Ok if it is clear to you then please express it differently and maybe it'll become clear to me. From my perspective this is a contradiction. You are saying that this is something humans are incapable of understanding and yet somehow that it is clear? Is it saying that the creation period really was a very long period of time? Even longer than the presently accepted age of the universe, because humans are capable of understanding that, so it must be longer?

Your view seems to be that humans are capable of understanding all of reality, and I don't think they are.

Are you referring to aspects of reality of which we are presently unaware? Or do you mean that you think we are incapable of understanding the reality of which we are aware? Are you simply distinguishing between God's manner of creation and his resulting creation once completed?

Why, they (including you) haven't let me know theirs, have they?

You are the one challenging the scientific viewpoint. We are not.

So this gang against one can have yet another angle of attack against only me?

I am sincerely trying to help you, not attack you. I can appreciate that you are sincerely trying to help me.
If you feel outnumbered go get some of your friends and return and launch Armageddon.

Why don't you ask him(Percy) if he "doesn't want to debate anything"?

To my knowledge he has not participated in my thread.

But I'll answer your question, I have faith in what the 66 book Bible says, concerning the history it contains

But how long did creation week take? Eons of time for each creation day? A thousand years for each creation day? Not 24hrs each because you are not YEC, right?

It gets the front seat, science gets the back seat

How big is your God? Bigger than a billion?(credit to ICR for that insight). Mine was only as big as the square root of 31. I never had a problem believing God could work miracles. What caught my attention was not so much the lack of evidence for some of the recorded biblical events as much as the existence of contradictory evidence for those events. Did God create false evidence to test our faith? I know people that believe the fossils of dinosaurs were specially fabricated by God to test our faith. I couldn't remain on board that boat.

I have no faith in science, unless I see actual evidence,

Well who's keeping you from looking at the actual evidence? Hint: It's someone close by.

Yes. Not only reached the earth, which only takes a few minutes even now, but the way it originally developed within the sun at creation. Which may not be the way it works now, in the way God sustains it, but only in the way he created it.

Ok, got it. So no to Barry Setterfield and similar arguments for a variation in the speed of light AFTER creation. And the laws of physics are in operation AFTER creation.

Yes, I disagree with the entire tone of your OP, including this line; quote:you cannot shorten the time required to fit the text of the Bible. You can, if the supernatural is considered.

Yes, you are correct here as NoNukes has pointed out. This was a flaw in my OP. You score points here.

quote:

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In the case of the sun, all that's needed is some mechanism for light to escape the sun (I misunderstood NoNukes here and initially assumed he meant core) quicker than you say, and the photons could then have been produced by fusion.

---

I simplified the argument and not only accepted such a mechanism but went even further and allowed for a supernatural creation of the light in transit from the core to the surface. Then I made the point that even with that, the fusion is superfluous. Why create it to generate light when it's never really needed to do so. In fact a YEC argument at this point might be "Maybe there isn't a core and fusion isn't really taking place within the sun, you don't know, have you been there?" To which I'd reply, "No, but I was visited by my late Aunt Dorothy who has and she told me all about it," which wouldn't phase him a bit because it wasn't previously recorded and written down 2,000 years ago. (with regard to your objection to the tone of my OP - guilty as charged)

I never posted this after it dawned on me that NoNukes was referring to a variation in c. But a variation in c as he pointed out has a bad consequence for life in our solar system. Increase c and you increase the energy output of the sun and the earth is a cinder. He continued by suggesting more YEC nonsense to which I didn't reply. The suggestion that the reaction rate simultaneously slowed for example is a contradiction as an increase in energy output would result in an increase in the reaction rate.

The superfluous nature of the core to produce light is something to at least wonder about, no? It's similar to those single celled organisms discovered deep within the earth that divide once every thousand years. One has to wonder what the purpose of their creation is.

Let me insert this here as it relates to a point of the OP:

quote:

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Are you referring to aspects of reality of which we are presently unaware? Or do you mean that you think we are incapable of understanding the reality of which we are aware? Are you simply distinguishing between God's manner of creation and his resulting creation once completed?

Yes.

---

With this catch-all you can weasel out of the superfluous core observation above. Let's assume that we don't understand the laws of physics correctly(the reality of which we are aware).

If we speculate that by some unknown natural mechanism the photons are moving from the core to the surface faster, then the energy density is lower in that region of the sun and gravitational forces are no longer balanced against pressure forces so the sun begins to shrink, until a balance is re-established. But now we supposedly have a smaller balanced sun, which has a higher energy density again, which means the photons must be moving slower again, which contradicts the initial speculation.

Faulty speculations like this lead to contradictions by which they are detected in the first place.

YECs don't think of the laws of physics as being intertwined such that making a change here affects an outcome there. They see them as a mixed bag of tricks any one of which can be set aside or used independent of the rest. In reality the laws operate together as do the various parts of an airplane. YECs want to break off a wing and replace it with a boulder and expect the plane to continue to fly.

If you are a YEC it would be advantageous to study the laws of physics as they actually operate before wandering off to invent faith promoting realities. These self-contradictory pseudo-scientific explanations are not really any different in substance from plain old vanilla supernaturalism to begin with.

Exactly, it's possible to understand the fact that something happened, without knowing the details of how it happened. A person can use a flashlight without knowing exactly how it works. An atheist can believe abiogenesis happened without knowing how it worked.

Alright, I'll concede points here.

"Long" isn't a consideration if it happened in a time realm that is outside of the simple, one dimension time frame that humans know about. and this I don't consider the time frame to be identifiable. I guess I disagree with AIG slightly on that one. I think (in some cases) we have to stop short of trying to identify times for religious purposes, or try to claim that early humans and dinosours lived at exactly the same time, as I think AIG does. I think it's a mistake to go out on that limb.

Of course it is. More contradictory evidence then needs to be dealt with. Simply add the assumption that we cannot even comprehend the words of the bible. Of course this makes one wonder why God communicates with us in the first place.

I would think maybe the thread starter would have the burden of sharing his worldview so readers would better know where he's coming from

My world-view is growing and changing as I learn new things. It isn't static as I search for ways to prop it up against the evidence.

the 0.00001% of wackos like me who actually believe what the word of God says.

I hope I have not called you a wacko (and that your percentage figure is accurate). I am respecting your stance in supernaturalism. What I am objecting to is the wall of pseudo-scientific nonsense which YECs erect to hide behind, like ID.

I don't need any help.

Well of course not. You're a student of life with the world's tiniest crib sheet, supernaturalism.

Did God create false evidence to test our faith? Could be, but I think it's clearer that man bends over backwards to dig up false evidence.

It is one of the purposes of threads like this to allow lurkers the opportunity to decide what is clearer for themselves.

This is a result of "putting God to the test", or "leaning on our own understanding".

As a YEC in high school I remember reading a paper about the sun and understanding most of it but being able to reject it all because at the time the accounting for neutrinos didn't add up.

Eventually I encountered enough facts that caused a sufficient level of cognitive dissonance that I began to experience mental blocks that prevented me from not merely accepting the science but from understanding it in the first place. This was a very scary place to arrive at, because I knew, I absolutely knew, that this was damaging and harmful. It finally began to dawn on me that my flavor of superstition that made comprehension taboo could not be a good thing and if it wasn't good it wasn't anything to do with God if there was one.

My points are made, I'm almost done in this thread.

If you don't mind, (stunning victory BTW, congratulations are in order), would you mind starting a thread in the faith and belief forum to elaborate on the merits of refusing to use our minds to think (leaning upon our own understanding) or why you believe it is something worthy of reward in the hereafter. From my recollection this doesn't sit well with the parable about the talents.

Edited by shalamabobbi, : No reason given.

Early in the dawn of creation the Gods spake amongst themselves.
How big shall we make the sun?*
56.
Yes 56 sounds about right.
We need to get these gammas out in a hurry and we don't have time to let them take their random walk to the surface, for behold, it is late October and time to set the clocks back.
We need to multiply and thermalize them to the proper black body spectrum.
Poof- It is done my Lord.
And don't forget to give the matter its portion of energy lest there be solar burping.
Why did we not simply make it to work the way we wanted without having to constantly tweek it my Lord?

I wrote the Genesis script in a hurry and once the word has left my lips it cannot return void.
At this, Lucifer took note. Writing and speaking are not the same thing.
Be thou cast down, Lucifer!
What's next my Lord?
Off with your head!
Whaaat?
There can be only one!

*Hebrew punctuation is similar to that of English and other Western languages, Modern Hebrew having imported additional punctuation marks from these languages in order to avoid the ambiguities sometimes occasioned by the relative paucity of such symbols in Biblical Hebrew.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_punctuation

I contend that the light we see when we look at the sun was either from the core having its beginning at least 10,000 - 170,000 years ago or it had to be magically created rendering the core superfluous.
You are saying that by allowing God to do it some other way we could get the light from the core to the surface quickly without a variation in c and so the core might be considered non-superfluous.

Your scenario is really no different in substance from my proposal of poofing the photons between the core and the surface into existence and carries only the illusion of a distinction.

The expression of the idea that the core was the source of the photons escaping the surface of the sun is to rely upon an explanatory framework based upon our understanding of physics. As soon as that framework is set aside it no longer makes any sense to argue for a causal connection between the two.

Don't misunderstand me. The creationist allows God to become the mechanism of causation. But that makes my point that the core is relieved of that duty the instant that argument is put into play.

It's difficult to talk about nonsense. Communication breaks down. Add to that the YECs acceptance of the premise that thinking is taboo if it threatens their world view and it isn't possible to communicate at all with a YEC.

What I am saying instead is that you are insisting that Creationist must believe that God created the sun by gravitational collapse of a ball of gas because science claims that the sun was created from such a collapse.

No, that's not quite what I'm saying. God can use any trick in the book.

Well, no that is not the only option for a creationist. God might well have used a creation process that as either a side effect or a desired effect produced light instantly.

Then it is not from the core but from some side effect.

Yes, they are similar in the fact that a miracle is required, but yes there is a difference. One process implies deception on God's part, and the other does not.

There is no essential difference in the level of deception. God made things to appear as if we could infer an explanation that apparently is false.

Quite obviously, forming a solar system in a single day cannot be completely explained using natural processes.

It cannot even be partially explained in this manner. When the explanations become some mixture of the natural explanation with the super natural non-explanation they are not really any more explained except in the mind of a YEC.

So yes, the Creationist is going to rely on some miracles.

Some? God is a miracle. He upholds all, so we are living in 100% miracle land to the YEC. Contradictory evidence does not matter in this world view since God put it there to test our faith. The only way out of this delusion is to question the merits and purposes of this kind of behavior on the part of God. To this the YEC replies with some nonsense about Daddy knows what's better for you. This shut down of your mental capacity is somehow for your own good. And then he tosses in some vague allusions to pleasure and he thinks he has an argument that makes sense.

The distinction between the miracles for the sun, and the miracle for distant stars is that the latter requires postulating deceptions that at least some Young Earth Creationists are loathe to invoke regardless of what miracles they rely on.

marc9000 doesn't seem to posses such a loathing. I found consideration of the sun to be more persuasive.

If in fact, you don't care about that difference, then I wonder what the point of this thread really is. Perhaps I have missed your point.

The point was not to argue about which is the better device, the sun or the distant star argument. Perhaps the chosen title of the thread has created some mis-understanding there. The point was that the distant star problem was met with by AiG by stating that it depends upon several assumptions on the part of scientists any one of which if wrong means that the scientific explanation is wrong. This manner of 'reasoning' is deeply ingrained in the YEC approach to apologetics. It is identical to the manner in which I tossed out the scientific explanation of the operation of the sun by pointing to a nit, the neutrino accounting issue. Marc9000 does the same thing when he quotes the standard candle issue in post #65 and is able to toss out all of cosmology. Again, AiG does it by alluding to the 'unreasonable' assumptions of science. I thought the sun argument relied upon none of these assumptions except naturalism, then all the rest could be stripped aside, and the YECs could be forced to rely upon supernaturalism alone. In reality that is all they rely upon anyhow. The pseudo-scientific arguments they construct might sound impressive to the man in the street but they are really just smoke and mirrors.

The right approach is to accept marc9000s criticism of the candle issue and allow him to toss out the universe as understood and accepted by the scientific community but then to demand of him his view of the universe in its place. OK marc9000 let's have your tiny universe with the stars really all much closer in then we suppose them to be because this obviously has no problems whatever with any observed data right?

OK AiG we see that we were relying upon faulty assumptions so lets have your model that doesn't contradict any evidence whatsoever. Then they toss down the bible on top of the desk and as the dust clears we see that what they have is supernaturalism alone because their nit-picking at the assumptions of science is far outweighed by the mountain of contradictory evidence that their model incurs.

Edited by shalamabobbi, : No reason given.

I'd like to hear how you reached that conclusion. Marc9000 completely denied the possibility that scientists could know that a star could be hundreds of thousands light years away despite the fact he is not even a proponent of YEC.

Yes, so would I as you are reading the meaning of my statement 180 degrees opposite to what I thought I meant.

The distinction between the miracles for the sun, and the miracle for distant stars is that the latter requires postulating deceptions that at least some Young Earth Creationists are loathe to invoke regardless of what miracles they rely on.

So the YECs who ARE loathe to invoke deceptions despite their stance in supernaturalism are the ones who might be inclined to accept the distant starlight problem as a reasonable argument against their reliance upon supernaturalism, but the ones who don't seem to possess such a loathing are the ones who aren't moved from their position regardless of the deception(s) involved.

On the other hand, with regard to the sun, he sees no problem, but that's exactly what I am arguing should be the case. Creationists have absolutely no difficulty with the sun providing light instantly and will invoke whatever magic is necessary. They can use bits and pieces of science as necessary (using fusion, gravitational balancing, etc.) to explain how the sun operates.

But notice the manner in which he had no problem with the argument.(message 74)

quote:

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Yes, I disagree with the entire tone of your OP, including this line;

quote:you cannot shorten the time required to fit the text of the Bible.

You can, if the supernatural is considered.

---

He couldn't muster a pseudo-scientific explanation (like Barry Sutterfield) in an attempt to provide a natural explanation as to how the scientists had it wrong. He had to fall back on supernaturalism.

quote:

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This thread is an opportunity for young earth creationists to explain how scientists have it all wrong and to explain how light takes no time at all to get from the core of a star to its surface. This is your chance to be a star and shine.

---

This should be a natural explanation showing how the 'false' assumptions of scientists have led them to arrive at 'false' conclusions and how by correcting those 'false' assumptions we could see how the matter might be cleared up.

That was the reason for the thread. The sun argument didn't rely upon any possible false assumptions, except one, naturalism.

My goal was not so ambitious as to topple supernaturalism. It was merely to back the YECs into a corner where they could no longer claim that the scientific viewpoint of an old universe and/or earth was based upon good reasoning that was unfortunately founded upon faulty assumptions. Rather than debate the notion that the assumptions are faulty I provided an example that I thought was immune to the need of any 'faulty' assumptions with the exception of naturalism.

Now that that's cleared up let's return to the tangential argument we were having because, it's fun.

No, no. I proposed that the light came from the core. By side effect I mean something produced but not necessarily intended. In this case, according to the narrative, human beings and other life were going to show up on earth in a few days. So God would want the light to arrive ASAP and it would be understandable that he chose a method that would make light appear quickly. If instead there were no reason for light to appear instantly, then it is possible that the quick appearance of light was a mere side effect of whatever method God used.

Thanks for the clarification.

We are left with a side effect from the core. So by the operation of some other laws that existed during creation the core was the source of light but not the way it is at present. When we look at the sun, the light we see came from the core but not in the manner it does at present.

Before answering this let me state that now the goal posts are shifting in the sense that God is no longer operating supernaturally. Supernaturalism would be God operating by the sheer power of his will where he is not bound by any law but is rather the source of all law.

So now we have a scenario where God is more like us and exists within some framework of laws different from our own by which he is bound and in accordance with which he has to act but those actions are not limited by our laws which offer no constraints upon what he may choose to do in our realm.

So I would lay the supernatural argument to rest at this point with the following argument:

quote:

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The only constraint is the boundary condition that the sun is in its present SS condition 6,000 years ago. Let this boundary condition be represented by the origin of a 2 axis coordinate system.

Arriving at the boundary condition through naturalism is represented by moving along the axis of the reals towards the origin. Arriving at the boundary condition through supernaturalism is represented appropriately by moving along the imaginary axis towards the origin.

Any explanation that involves some combination of the natural and the supernatural lies on a trajectory towards the origin other than along either the real or imaginary axis. But any such path will always have a component that lies along the imaginary axis.

And so the core is at least partially superfluous. QED

God made something that couldn't quite do the job w/o special assistance.

---

If I get to hold onto the short length of time within which this creation took place:

Suppose there are two realms and two sets of laws of physics. There is our realm and that for God. In Gods realm the evolution of the sun can take place very quickly but in ours the process runs slower. How do you transition from one realm to the other? Our only constraint is the boundary condition that the sun be in its current steady state condition about 6,000 years ago.

It happens faster in that realm where God operates and then it is transitioned here into our slower realm. This could be a smooth transition (the trajectory to the origin is tangent to the axis of the reals at the origin.)
Faster and fewer photons TO slower and more photons keeping the power output the same. Where did the more come from? (assuming the same spectrum here as necessary for plant life)
Or keep the photon count the same during the transition. Faster means more energy and the earth is toast.
There is no way to make this work without removing cause and effect and state that we are living in the matrix where nothing can be inferred from the evidence and everything is unexplainable which would return us back to supernaturalism.

Supernaturalism. YECs need to end it there. Trying to mix it with reasonable sounding explanations adds nothing to the argument and only weakens it. There is an inherent incompatibility between mixing supernaturalism with naturalism unless one accepts the premise that God sustains everything. Then there is no conflict since false evidence that contradicts the narrative is a possibility. Then nothing can be inferred from the evidence and nothing is explainable. It is the rabbit hole down which fundies are forced to retreat.

I'm more than aware that YECs are capable of relying upon supernaturalism to avoid abandoning the narrative. I had a discussion with one where I used the fact that the brain being a neural net requires time and experiences to learn. I thought this a good argument against a *poofed* Adam. Instead the YEC accepted it as proof that Adam was created with false memories. With respect to whether the sun argument has merit in persuading a YEC to reconsider their stance, my feeling is that if it helps just one person it has some value. YECs aren't moved by the solid arguments of radioisotope dating methods because they don't understand them. What are more helpful are examples that are basic and easy to comprehend, tree rings, the slow conveyor belt of photons from the core to the suns surface, the existence of ice sheets with their ice core samples that didn't have time to form since the 'global flood', etc.

I wish I could come up with a solid argument to disprove last thursdayism. But maybe this one is good enough:
Consider the individual who is the only one to understand the bible correctly. God wrote it just for him. This seems a sufficient proof that he is wrong.
How similar this is to the view that God provided all this contradictory evidence as some sort of test of our faith, as it is only such a test at this point in the history of the world and only for those who have taken the time to study and weigh the evidence, and most of those aren't even theists to begin with. But for the very small number who are, God fabricated the Greenland ice sheet(after the 'flood'), the false record of ERV events within DNA, the nucleosynthesis of the elements within stars, the removal of vocal cords from snakes, etc. All this to provide a test of faith for a rather insignificant percentage of the human family.
Perhaps this enough of a proof against last thursdayism.

If God used an earthquake to cause the Red Sea to back up at exactly the proper time, then according to your definition, God's use of an earthquake would render the saving of the Hebrews from Pharoah's army non-supernatural.

Come on NoNukes, you know this wouldn't change a thing. How did he cause the earthquake? Did you never play the board game mousetrap as a child?
Feel free to reject the definition and offer one or two of your own. Just so long as we can nail down the woo before declaring victory in an argument where it is being casually sloshed about.

I don't really care if I'm proven wrong here. This was not what my thread was about. I am not in disagreement with you that fundies can blame it on supernaturalism. What I am interested in is the notion that conclusions about woo can be arrived at at all. It's called woo for a reason.

I don't understand what you want here. I'm not advocating using supernatural explanations of anything.

I'm aware of that.

Using supernatural means of course. I don't see any point to changing the definition of the term supernatural to forbid the use of anything natural. Why don't you simply ignore all conversations about the supernatural?

What I am saying is that there isn't a workable/useful definition. At least not one that can be used for any "intelligible" discussion. We are not having a debate, we were having the illusion of a debate. This was a side discussion. The OP was about the pseudo-science rather than the supernatural per se.

Come ye and hear the parable of the YECs. Unto what shall I liken them?
They are like unto children playing make believe.

YEC: Pretend you could flap your arms and fly. Then I could go visit my cousin in New Zealand.
ASS: (atheist secular scientist) Your cousin's not in New Zealand. Anyhow you can't do that fast enough to work and even if you could your body can't store enough calories to make it to New Zealand.
YEC: Well pretend it could.
ASS: Then you'd weigh too much to begin with and when your arms flapped fast enough to accomplish lift off, they'd detach from your body.
YEC: Well, pretend your joints are made from Titanium and your ligaments from spiders silk.
ASS: But that's not the case, really.
YEC: Pretend God did that part.
ASS: God? Please define what you mean here?
YEC: Pretend there's an over unity perpetual motion machine. That is God. And if you're good he'll recharge your batteries free for all eternity.
ASS: Why can't you just face reality? Your cousin's dead.

Imagine the fun if they added a Neuroscience section to this board.

http://www.susanblackmore.co.uk/journalism/ns02.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_free_will

Looking at some of these threads I'm seeing this vision in my mind of brains on platters responding to one another in a fashion not unlike frogs on lily pads down at the lake's edge croaking randomly and in response to one another.