On Mon, 8 Jan 2001 10:15:40 -0500 "Vandergraaf, Chuck"
<vandergraaft@aecl.ca> writes:
> I don't quite agree that there is no difference. There is no physical
> evidence left of a floating ax head,
Ah, but there is. We have a word picture etched into the inerrant Word.
This picture of the floating axhead is as good as any fossil (to a
believer).
> but there is ample physical evidence in
> God's general revelation that strongly suggests that it took longer
than
> 6000 years for the earth to get to the stage we find it in today.
There is at least one line of evidence where I agree with you. I sort of
glaze over when I try to understand radioactive dating, magnetic
reversals, heat flow from batholiths, etc., when used to measure time -
due to the possible unknown variables that may affect the calculations.
However, there is one clean measure of time, which as far as I can see,
is irrefutable for YEC.
I've seen short period comets used as "proof" of a young solar system. I
disagree with that incidentally; the short period comets were not
necessarily created at the same time as the solar system so short period
comets could be young and the solar system old. However, I can't
remember seeing long period comets used as "proof" of an old solar
system.
Time on the earth is measured by the period required for the earth to
make one revolution around the sun. The orbital periods of planets is
obviously well established and constant. The same is true of comets
bound gravitationally to the sun. Glenn, in his book _Foundation, Fall
and Flood_ notes "Some comets have been observed that have hyperbolic
orbits. Comets with hyperbolic orbits are definitely not members of the
solar system and most of the near parabolic comets are probably not
members of the solar system. The near-parabolic comets come from all
directions in space and show absolutely no preference for the ecliptic
plane.... This is probably indicative that they are wanderers through the
galaxy. In that case, the supply of short period comets can be
replenished by capturing the wanderers." ( page 45)
Tom Van Flandern, in _Dark Matter, Missing Planets & New Comets_: "The
absence of observed comets on hyperbolic orbits, which encounters with
passing stars over billions of years must produce in abundance, requires
a much more recent origin for all comets."
My first question is, are there comets with hyperbolic orbits or not?
Glenn's source said yes, Van Flandern says no. Who is correct, or is the
data inconclusive? The velocity of a comet should tell us if it has
enough momentum to escape the sun's gravity, regardless of the shape of
the orbit.
Secondly, comets with parabolic orbits bound to the sun have observed
periods up to I'm guessing a couple of thousand years. Are all comets of
such low velocity that they are short period?
If we have comets with a range of periods from short to millions of
years, then I would suggest that the long period comets are similar to
the pendulum of a clock and would indicate a long timeframe also of
millions of years.
Danny Faulkner said "Kepler's third law shows that the maximum orbital
period [of long period comets] would be about 10 million years. One
hundred trips would give an age of one Gyr. This is a maximum age: the
actual would be less. This would result in no bright comets - we do see
bright comets, so they could not be that old. Therefore we can conclude
that the existence of comets gives us an age of the solar system far less
than 4.6 Gyr." ("The Current State of Creation Astronomy", Proceedings of
the Fourth International Conference on Creationism, 1996, p 206)
Again, Danny assumes that comets were formed at the same time as the
solar system, which may well not be. Van Flandern postulates an exploded
planet 3 million years ago produced the asteroid belt and comets are
debris from the explosion raining back down on their point of origin. I
have looked in his book for a statement to the effect that we see comets
with orbital periods in the range of 3 million years, but I haven't been
able to find such a statement tonight.
> I could
> even accept the concept of a god who created the earth and, with it,
> evidence that would strongly suggest a very old earth, just to tempt
> believers, but, somehow, I can't imagine the God of the Bible doing
> that.
I understand, but if He said He created it a short time ago, even though
it looks old, if we accept His Word then we should not be tempted to
believe it is old. Example: the wine of Cana in John 2.
> Even if one accepts a 6-day "flurry of creation" as described in
Genesis 1,
> there's the flood to deal with. It occurred well after creation and
well
> after considerable human activity.
Yes, and from my view, there is data to support both YEC and OEC. We
have discussed coal seams of the eastern US, which I now maintain more
strongly than I did two or three years ago are the result of the
deposition of organics transported by water rather than buried in situ
from swamps. The only possible explanation I can envision consistent
with the data is catastrophic erosion of the organics and deposition from
floating mats of vegetation.
Bill Payne
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