Summations Only

Because this entire thread has been an exercise in hand waving. You posit a change in physical constants, but you give us no reason to suppose that there ever was any such change.

You say that the speed of light could have been different. When it is pointed out to you that this would leave evidence, you imagine a scenario where mass changes by the exact amount needed to obscure the evidence. You are essentially arguing for us to believe in a change in physical constants on the basis of no evidence whatsoever. In fact, you are effectively claiming that you do not need evidence.

You keep claiming that your conclusions follow from the evidence. Well how can this be when the scenario you posit leaves no evidence? The evidence makes the earth look old. That is where the evidence leads us. There is no other evidence. If you want to fantasise about magically warping physical constants, be my guest, but you can't claim that it follows from the evidence because the central plank of your argument is that it would leave no evidence.

What you are doing is not "following the evidence". What you are doing is attempting to shoehorn your pet hypothesis onto the evidence and, when it doesn't fit, you claim, completely out of the blue, that it must have fit at some point, and that the very laws of physics warped to allow this conclusion. Then you declare victory. Well I'm sorry, but that's just not how rational enquiry is supposed to work. If your amazing shifting physical laws left no evidence of their change then there is no reason to believe they ever changed at all.

Your argument does not follow from the evidence ('cos there ain't any), it follows from your desire to rescue Genesis from being so woefully, hopelessly wrong. If you weren't interested in forcing Genesis to make sense then you would never have come up with these ideas; you would have no reason to. The Earth would look old, the universe would look even older and you would have no reason to believe otherwise. The only reason you have a problem with any of this is because of the Book of Genesis. That is where your argument leads from, from a rationalisation that you are using to maintain your belief in science and your belief in a literal Genesis. The fact that you have to throw the laws of physics into the dustbin to do this should give you a hint of how doomed an enterprise this is.

Mutate and Survive

Edited by Granny Magda, : No reason given.

Now I can see even less reason to suppose it true. Where reality contradicts the Bible, that means that the Bible is wrong. It doesn't mean that reality is wrong, which is essentially what you are suggesting. Since the only thing motivating you to propose this silliness is the supernatural, then I feel content to write it off entirely.

Foreveryoung, I have a newsflash for you; the Bible is not supernatural. The Bible is a human concoction, frquently wrong, often hilariously, laughably, contempably wrong. It gets it wrong as often as it does because it was written by ignorant men in an ignorant age. At best it is an interesting historical document. Basing science upon the Bible is a pathetic waste of time.

The evidence shows that the universe is around 13 billion years old no matter what I claim.

And if Grandmother had a beard she would have been a grandfather.

You seem to genuinely believe that you have cited evidence for your claims. You have not. All you have brought to the table is a string of flimsy "What if..." scenarios. None of it is evidenced, indeed you have gone out of your way to explain why there could be no evidence.

Well I have a simpler explanation for you; the rocks don't lie, the Earth is old, the universe is old and the Bible is wrong. Simple.

I know it's not what you want to hear, but sometimes the universe just fails to rearrange itself in accorance with our desires. It's tough. My advice is to accept it, get over it and move on, because right now, you are wasting your best years making poor apologetics for an intellectually bankrupt philosophy.

Mutate and Survive

Well no. But that's not the situation.

The real situation is that we have plenty of evidence. It's just that all the evidence tells us precisely the opposite of what you want to hear.

Should we bin all this evidence and the conclusions it supports in favour of your personal daydreams? Hell no!

Arguing from scripture is pointless. Would you be impressed if I offered you the Quran as evidence?

Besides, the Bible does not comment on the speed of light or ancient physical constants. That's all just rationalisation that you (and other creationists) set up after the fact in order from rescue the Bible from its many embarrassing mistakes. Don't mistake your personal pet theories for holy writ.

Yes, absolutely I would. That would be a fascinating piece of evidence and I would love to see it.

Do you have a 2 billion year old engraving? No, you do not.

Yes I would. Thing is, if those claims turned out not to be true, I would not blame reality. I would blame the claims on the rock and say that they were wrong. That's where you are going wrong; when the Bible fails a test, you blame reality rather than admit that the Bible contains errors.

Because the rock in your example was clearly not a human artifact; it was frigging 2 billion years old! The Bible very clearly is a human artifact. It has no more authority than any other human fairy story. Nonetheless, the claims in the Bible have been tested, many, many times; they failed. Miserably. Get over it.

Mutate and Survive