The not so distant star light problem

Hi shalamabobbi, I don't believe we've met before. You'll surmise from my very low member rating that I'm a creationist, though I'm not necessarily bound to a "young earth" belief.The following appears in your opening messages link;

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God created the universe supernaturally. He created it from nothing, not from previous material (Hebrews 11:3). Today, we do not see God speaking into existence new stars or new kinds of creatures. This is because God ended His work of creation by the seventh day. Today, God sustains the universe in a different way than how He created it. However, the naturalist erroneously assumes that the universe was created by the same processes by which it operates today. Of course it would be absurd to apply this assumption to most other things. A flashlight, for example, operates by converting electricity into light, but the flashlight was not created by this process.

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Since the stars were created during Creation Week and since God made them to give light upon the earth, the way in which distant starlight arrived on earth may have been supernatural. We cannot assume that past acts of God are necessarily understandable in terms of a current scientific mechanism, because science can only probe the way in which God sustains the universe today. It is irrational to argue that a supernatural act cannot be true on the basis that it cannot be explained by natural processes observed today.

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It is perfectly acceptable for us to ask, “Did God use natural processes to get the starlight to earth in the biblical timescale? And if so, what is the mechanism?” But if no natural mechanism is apparent, this cannot be used as evidence against supernatural creation. So, the unbeliever is engaged in a subtle form of circular reasoning when he uses the assumption of naturalism to argue that distant starlight disproves the biblical timescale.

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What specific question do you have that the above doesn't answer? You'll notice by the absence of creationists at EvC that most of them don't bother. It's seldom pleasant to stir up the atheist hornets nests at forums like this, but a few of us feel compelled, sometimes.But to answer your question, the paragraphs above that I referenced from your AIG link explain that some acts of God are explainable by current scientific mechanisms, and some are not. Two classifications. Why shouldn't creationists try to identify/specify naturalistic explanations, especially when the angry scientific community draws them into it? Not at all, God can guide naturalistic processes. He can also guide processes that the human mind cannot understand. It's easy to understand that atheists don't think guidance is necessary for naturalistic processes. What's not so easy to understand is how they can attribute all of reality to naturalistic processes, as if there can only be one time, and three space dimensions. Many people find it logical to believe there's more to reality than that.

This type of speculation can be very interesting to many people, but speculation and guesswork is really all it is, it isn't science. Science is supposed to be testable, repeatable, observable, falsifiable. Speculation about hundreds of thousands of light years doesn't even come close to measuring up. You seem to understand the AIG link as claiming that God created ALL stars during creation week, that the re-arrangement processes (stars dying, stars being born, etc.) couldn't happen later. I don't think it says that at all. Creationists obviously believe ~some~ evolution processes have taken/ are taking place after creation week. It's just as easy to believe that astrological (is that a word?) processes can take place following creation in the same way.If you're saying that the sn1987 explosion HAD to have happened long before creation week, then you're doing two questionable things, 1) You're still trying to fit the supernatural act of creation into the very limited time frame that humans are capable of understanding, and 2) you're taking on faith, (accepting as fact) all the guesses and speculation about hundreds of thousands of light years, things that are not science, not falsifiable.I take NOTHING the scientific community says on faith. I guess you could say I do a milder form of skepticism towards science as atheists do to Christianity. Rather than just saying WRONG WRONG WRONG, as atheists do to religion, I have to see real evidence, either personally, or from other individuals or groups that I trust, before I accept as fact what the scientific community says. I don't automatically disregard what they say, but I don't automatically accept it as fact either. What they say about sn1987 and 168,000 light years might be perfectly true, but since it comes from the same people who, a few years ago said "hey, there just might be water on the moon!!!!, but we don't know yet", I choose not unquestionably trust what they say about hundreds of thousands of light years. It must be, since someone wrote it. It makes perfect sense to me. All atheists maybe, but not necessarily all people. Not being created, just undergoing re-arrangement processes. A big difference from what happened during creation week.

You've never heard of an "old earth creationist"? Good, I'm not one of those either. I'm somewhere in between. Since the creation event happened outside of time as we know it, then attempting to assign ages to planets and stars may be a somewhat acceptable thing for us to do, to further our understanding of science in practical, nuts-and-bolts applications(not atheism), but may not really be useful in coming to conclusions about how and when creation occurred. You'd have to know more about Christianity (the nature of God) to accept the fact that he can be in control, and still allow humans free will. I realized it was sarcastic when I first saw it. Likewise, I'm sorry if I rained on your atheist love fest. No knee jerk, I've been participating on forums like this for the past 10 years. I've learned a lot about the emotion, the arrogance, the desire for power and money that the scientific community and it's followers desire. Not surprised at all, Nobel Prize winner Stephen Weinberg said that "weakening the hold of religion" could end up being one of science's greatest accomplishments, and the scientific community is obviously masterful at it, from middle school science textbooks all the way up to top-level star gazers. Sure, they're treated with respect, as long as they bend and shape their Christianity to fit whatever atheists are telling them about science. We do have irony! Have you ever witnessed 5, 10, or 15 angry atheists here insulting one creationist poster?

Let's have a non-scientists look at parallax - I posted a non-scientists look at light years a few months ago in another thread, it bears repeating here, and is perfectly on topic. It involves putting into a somewhat recognizable perspective just how far a light year is.

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8000 miles (the diameter of the earth) multiplied by 23 gets close to the 186,000 figure. So it would take light one second to get from one end to the other of a string of 23 earths lined up side by side, touching each other. If we scale down the size of the earth, it will proportionately slow the speed of light into something more comprehensible. If we make the earth the size of a grain of sand, then we have light moving at about one inch per second. (23 grains of sand lined up is about one inch long) So how far will something moving at one inch per second travel in one year? Just going by memory, not doing all the calculations again, I remember it being about the distance from New York City to Atlanta, Georgia. So if the earth was a grain of sand in New York City, (with it's microscopic Hubble telescope orbiting it about......1/64th of an inch away) one light year away would be Atlanta. We're told that the nearest star, Alpha Centauri, is about 4 light years away. That would put it about 500 miles beyond the coast of California in the Pacific ocean, from that grain-of-sand earth, in New York City.

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Again, going only by memory and not doing the calculations again, the grain of sand sized earth would be about 22 feet away from the apple sized sun. So the total parallax distance would be 44 feet. So a south to north walk of 44 feet in New York City is going to make an obvious difference to the appearance of something 500 miles east of California? With enough trigonometry and precision instruments I'm sure it would for 4 light years, but for 1000? I don't blindly accept it. Testable and falsifiable are the main words I'm referring to. Testing something involves doing more than just doing the same thing again, which is all we can do when observing something far away. Here's an example of a test, suppose we subtract 983 from 4852, and get 3869. We don't test it by simply subtracting it again, we ADD 3869 to 983 to see if we get 4852. This kind of testing is done all the time in actual science, when more than one human sense is used, when objects are observed from different angles etc. The discovery of DNA, a major breakthrough in science, was, in addition to other 'tests' "also made possible by recent advances in model building, or the assembly of possible three-dimensional structures based upon known molecular distances and bond angles..."http://www.nature.com/...a-structure-and-function-watson-397Other than more powerful telescopes, showing some more detail and distances, nothing really contradictory or surprising has been discovered since Galileo's discoveries hundreds of years ago. Also, here's a paragraph from No Nukes' first link in message 35;

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Two problems exist for any class of standard candle. The principal one is calibration, determining exactly what the absolute magnitude of the candle is. This includes defining the class well enough that members can be recognized, and finding enough members with well-known distances that their true absolute magnitude can be determined with enough accuracy. The second lies in recognizing members of the class, and not mistakenly using the standard candle calibration upon an object which does not belong to the class. At extreme distances, which is where one most wishes to use a distance indicator, this recognition problem can be quite serious.

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Too serious to be falsifiable, when using only visual observation from only one point.

MESSAGE 42 Thank you caffeine, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry at some of these responses. The scale that I'm using is no different in principle than so many other scales used in other scientific, and non-scientific disciplines. What it is, is a method of model building, it's often done in biology, and seldom if ever done in astronomy, simply because of the preferences of those who control science. In biology, it's done to bring microscopic things up to a size that humans can analyze and work with. A scaling up. Scaling down does the same thing, as one example - building plans are scaled down, many/most commercial building plans are drawn to a scale of 1/8" = 1'. Working drawings (building plans) are another way of 'model building'.I remember seeing something in a news paper long ago, about a science teacher who built a scale model of the solar system. I think he used a beach ball as the sun, and a pea as the earth, if I remember right. I think the planet Neptune was a baseball, several miles away. A school bus was his class's spaceship! This teacher probably got fired, I'd say many of his students never forgot this lesson. They're the types that , like me, would probably question "facts" that they hear about events happening thousands of light years from earth. We can only guess what their problem is, maybe they genuinely don't understand the significance of model building. Is science education really this lacking? Or maybe they're just angry about what model building does to astronomy, that is, calling into question it's actual testability and falsifiability. I think it's a serious problem, and you might not agree with me on that, and that's fine, I still appreciate your stepping up for me concerning their blind rage._____________________MESSAGE 43 I realize that, I was really responding only to your question "Whaaat?" (I should have edited your "go to hell" part out of my quote of you.) That's the ol "if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck" syndrome. It's worked really well for me over the last 10 years. Atheists need theistic evolutionists for political purposes, so many of them volunteer to masquerade as religious people. Conflicts seldom involve more than two opposing forces, and theistic evolutionists usually have very cozy relationship with atheists, and very hostile relationships with other religious people. Just like when someone's level of Christianity gets too far away from what the National Academy of Sciences (93% atheist) defines as science, you and many others here label them as flat-earthers. "Science" doesn't find things, only humans that represent science find things. There's nothing wrong with questioning what their motives are. 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?

Yours is a legit message, but I fear the moderators would consider any meaningful response to it to be too far off-topic in this thread. I've just had 4 hours of same day abdominal surgery, and am in no mood to start any new threads. If you'd like to start a thread on it (maybe a great debate?) I'd be happy to work with your lead on it. I should have plenty of time in the next week or so!

But I haven't seen examples of it on forums such as these, I didn't see it at all in my public school science education in the 1960's, and as we see, at least 4 posters in this thread are very slow to understand it, and I'm still not sure if they basically understand it even yet. But it's very informative, and it works. I believe all that you described above, but it's not done nearly enough. I don't see evidence that they're fond of it. I've described it to many many aquaintances and friends, and get different reactions, but one reaction is always the same, they've never heard of it before, just like many "scientific" posters in this thread. Because when the general public can comprehend / compare distances of thousands of miles that they may have traveled by car or bus in their lives, to a grain of sand sized earth, and use common sense reasoning that space may not be pure crystal clarity everywhere we look, they just might tend to raise the BS flag when they're told about testable, falsifiable facts of these distances. Especially when they're told that NOTHING about the concept of Intelligent Design is testable or falsifiable. Their raising of the BS flag would possibly be much more vigorous if they were to learn that it's largely their tax money that provides the scientific community with a living that is often much more comfortable than their own.It's that simple, the scientific community has double standards based on a godless worldview. I have nothing more to prove, this thread's starter and all his helpers have the burden to prove it doesn't have double standards, before they summarize with put downs of me personally and all their back slapping claims of victory.

I'm not patting myself on the back nearly as much as I'm pointing out the emotional, knee jerk reactions of those who supposedly represent science, who are so closed minded in their own worldview that they at least sometimes, (who knows how often) don't even bother to read other views of things they themselves believe. Coyote was slightly right, my math was off just a little. With the grain of sand sized earth, the sun would be about 4" in diameter, closer to the size of a grapefruit than an apple. (It'd even be closer to the correct color too huh? ) and the distance away would be about 42', not 22'. So the total parallax / 6 month difference would be about 84'. That doesn't change my basic point, however. So you really think I never had any idea of the sophistication used in today's astronomy? Of course I know that there is much complex knowledge and instrumentation used for all these deep space conclusions that we're seeing today from science. I also know that Galileo used a sector. There is one thing I don't know, and you should be able to educate me. Is there ANY ONE THING that Galileo discovered with the instruments he used that's been turned on it's head by the updated methods that are used today? If not, and I suspect there's not, wouldn't that be a strong indicator that deep space astronomy is not testable and is not falsifiable? (something that was believed in biology only 150 years ago - the cell is little more than a simple lump of protoplasm - HAS been turned on it's head, because that claim was testable and falsifiable)

If you've read my above posts here (PLEASE READ, PLEASE READ, PLEASE READ) you'll notice that your assumption that I've made an error is nothing more than your opinion, and not necessarily a fact?

I've seen writings, seen speakers from the ICR and AIG. I've seen Ken Ham speak in person. I've found them to be moral, mature, well raised people. They're simply not the type to emotionally "spank behinds" of people who slightly, or completely, disagree with them. I've seen Richard Dawkins call people who disagree with him "stupid, ignorant, insane, wicked.". I've seen his followers make fools of themselves by not attempting to read something before responding to it. Sure, there are exceptions to every rule, but in general, I'm not afraid of arrogance from anyone with a similar worldview to mine. Did you READ my message 31? Here are the two relevant paragraphs;

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You seem to understand the AIG link as claiming that God created ALL stars during creation week, that the re-arrangement processes (stars dying, stars being born, etc.) couldn't happen later. I don't think it says that at all. Creationists obviously believe ~some~ evolution processes have taken/ are taking place after creation week. It's just as easy to believe that astrological (is that a word?) processes can take place following creation in the same way.

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If you're saying that the sn1987 explosion HAD to have happened long before creation week, then you're doing two questionable things, 1) You're still trying to fit the supernatural act of creation into the very limited time frame that humans are capable of understanding, and 2) you're taking on faith, (accepting as fact) all the guesses and speculation about hundreds of thousands of light years, things that are not science, not falsifiable.

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I bolded the relevant sentence, please READ IT!

Yes, several messages of my posting history includes this list of titles;

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The Long War Against God/ Henry Morris - 2000

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Darwin’s Dangerous Idea / Daniel Dennett - 1995
The End of Faith/ Sam Harris - 2004
The God Delusion/ Richard Dawkins - 2006
Letter to a Christian Nation/ Sam Harris - 2006
The Atheist Universe / David Mills - 2006
Breaking the Spell/ Daniel Dennett - 2006
Everything you know about God is wrong/ Russ Kick - 2007
The Quotable Atheist / Jack Huberman - 2007
The Atheist Bible / Joan Konner - 2007
Nothing - Something to Believe / Lalli Nica - 2007
The Portable Atheist / Christopher Hitchens - 2007
God is Not Great / Christopher Hitchens - 2007
God - the failed hypothesis - How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist / Victor Stenger - 2007
50 Reasons People Give For Believing in God/ Guy Harrison - 2008
Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America’s Leading Atheists / Barker/Dawkins - 2008

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Also, you could peek at some of the other posting history, in the SCIENCE forums here at EvC;EvC Forum: Why "YEC"/Fundamentalist Creationism is BAD for America(Did you READ that, shalamabobbbi? That topic is in the SCIENCE forums)

Thank you.

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You're still trying to fit the supernatural act of creation into the very limited time frame that humans are capable of understanding,

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I can't make it any clearer than that. Your view seems to be that humans are capable of understanding all of reality, and I don't think they are. The AIG link from your opening message states my belief

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...the way in which distant starlight arrived on earth may have been supernatural. We cannot assume that past acts of God are necessarily understandable in terms of a current scientific mechanism, because science can only probe the way in which God sustains the universe today. It is irrational to argue that a supernatural act cannot be true on the basis that it cannot be explained by natural processes observed today.

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Why, they (including you) haven't let me know theirs, have they? So this gang against one can have yet another angle of attack against only me? Wasn't it you accusing ME of the "shotgun approach" earlier in this thread? In message 22 of this thread, the forum administrator describes himself like this;

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I myself am neither an atheist, nor an agnostic, nor a member of or adherent to any organized religion.

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Percy

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Why don't you ask him if he "doesn't want to debate anything"?But I'll answer your question, I have faith in what the 66 book Bible says, concerning the history it contains, and the guidelines it puts forth for living this life. A significant part of it concerns not always placing trust in the wisdom of humans. It gets the front seat, science gets the back seat. I have no faith in science, unless I see actual evidence, not just what is said by scientific organizations who may have political motives.

To me, it's common sense that if any human endeavor is undertaken involving distances of two or more differing lengths, with all things being the same other than a distance, the one with the longer distance is going to be more error prone. There is supposedly, what, one hundred billion stars in our galaxy alone? Hundreds of billions of galaxies all around ours? When looking from only one point, what are the chances of counts and distances and stars being directly in line with each other from our line of sight getting messed up? Is there not dark matter and black holes that could also give some incorrect readings, consistently, no matter how many different people take the same readings with the same equipment, from the same spot in the universe?I think this is largely referred to in the following c/p that I showed in my message 36;

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Two problems exist for any class of standard candle. The principal one is calibration, determining exactly what the absolute magnitude of the candle is. This includes defining the class well enough that members can be recognized, and finding enough members with well-known distances that their true absolute magnitude can be determined with enough accuracy. The second lies in recognizing members of the class, and not mistakenly using the standard candle calibration upon an object which does not belong to the class. At extreme distances, which is where one most wishes to use a distance indicator, this recognition problem can be quite serious.

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"QUITE SERIOUS" - too serious to pass the "testable" and "falsifiable" test that the scientific community supposedly requires of itself. That is my main point in this thread, no one has yet been able to come close to refuting it, and it has obviously generated much anger. Why? Is science about open inquiry, or is it a closed minded worldview? I've spent about 10 years on forums like this, and I think I'm very close to the answer.

Let me word the question in a more complete way. Before Galileo, there was Copernicus, after Galileo there was Huygens, then Newton, Messier, Herschel, Leavitt, Einstein, Hubble, Hawking. Each of them seemed to build their discoveries at least partially on the work of the previous guy. Did any of these famous astronomers find something that a previous famous astronomer got completely wrong? I did a little search on it myself, and find no evidence that it's happened. If new instrumentation can detect facts of deep space further and clearer, and yet can't find anything wrong with discoveries made with the very primitive instruments of Galileo, Newton, etc. then that's a strong indicator that nothing's being tested, and nothing's being falsified.

No, because it's not about astronomy. We're not discussing physics here. There was limitations in Copernicus work, and the work of those before him, many who yes, got their work turned on its head. (those who thought the sun revolved around the earth, etc.) But if nothing's been falsified since the very primitive days of Copernicus and Galileo, 500+years, then it's safe to say that astronomy is too vague to be falsifiable. I'm qualified to see the double standard that's applied to astronomy versus the concept of Intelligent Design by the scientific community. A 6th grader could do it. Here's what I'm arguing, please read carefully. Curiousity, and vagueness etc. has always been a part of science, and there's nothing wrong with it. But a few decades ago, a book called Darwin's Black Box came out, complete with plenty of scientific model building, and for the very first time, a type of scientific exploration clashed with the closed minded worldviews of those who control science. Their solution to their problem was to invent brand new 'entrance requirements' for something to be science. The words "testable", and "falsifiable" being two words used. Those entrance requirements didn't exist 500 years ago, astronomy didn't have to comply with them then, and they don't have to comply with them now.If the scientific community was honest, the only kind of space exploration permitted today with public funds would be within our solar system, possibly including a few of the closest stars. So your question probably would be; "so we’re supposed to completely forget and not be permitted to study what we currently know about deep space?". My answer, not at all, here's the same answer the scientific community gives to ID proponents; JUST DO IT ON PRIVATE TIME AND WITH PRIVATE MONEY, AND DON’T TEACH IT IN SCIENCE CLASSES. Here's a repeat of something from my message 55. No one has even addressed it yet, let alone refuted it;

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Because when the general public can comprehend / compare distances of thousands of miles that they may have traveled by car or bus in their lives, to a grain of sand sized earth, and use common sense reasoning that space may not be pure crystal clarity everywhere we look, they just might tend to raise the BS flag when they're told about testable, falsifiable facts of these distances. Especially when they're told that NOTHING about the concept of Intelligent Design is testable or falsifiable. Their raising of the BS flag would possibly be much more vigorous if they were to learn that it's largely their tax money that provides the scientific community with a living that is often much more comfortable than their own.

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It's that simple, the scientific community has double standards based on a godless worldview. I have nothing more to prove, this thread's starter and all his helpers have the burden to prove it doesn't have double standards, before they summarize with put downs of me personally and all their back slapping claims of victory.
  —marc9000

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