Re: [asa] Near Starlight Problem; Adam would never see all of Orion's belt?

Don't rub it in that my maths goes no further than elementary partial
differentiation and mostly forgotten!

Still I think it needs airing.

It does reflect the closed mind of some and unwillingness for real debate.
Not that I didn't know that!

Michael
----- Original Message -----
From: "Iain Strachan" <igd.strachan@gmail.com>
To: "Michael Roberts" <michael.andrea.r@ukonline.co.uk>
Cc: <asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Friday, February 20, 2009 8:57 PM
Subject: Re: [asa] Near Starlight Problem; Adam would never see all of
Orion's belt?

> Hi, Michael,
>
> I think all that needs to be publicised is the original letter that
> Bill sent to the TJ, which can be found on the Web at:
>
> http://creationontheweb.com/images/pdfs/tj/j15_2/j15_2_46-47.pdf
>
> It is simple and direct. As Bill's letter begins:
>
> Any possible cosmological model
> purporting to provide a solution to the
> long-standing creationist problem of
> distant starlight in a young universe
> must:
> 1. agree with Scripture,
> 2. utilize sound scientific principles,
> 3. be internally consistent, and
> 4. agree with observation.
>
> He goes on to point out that the first three points are OK, but 4 is a
> problem. The graph on Figure 1 shows clearly the problem. The
> lookback time is negative for anthing from 6,000 LY to 10 billion LY (
> I remembered this incorrectly before as 2 billion).
>
> I think to publish the paper would firstly put Bill in a difficult
> position as an active YEC who still writes himself for TJ, and also
> that it would add little more; it was a strenuous attempt to make the
> theory work with different values of k, the curvature of the universe,
> but none of them proved any different from the initial case. The
> maths is so difficult that I doubt if even you could understand it,
> Michael!
>
> I would also encourage the more vitriolic members of the list who seem
> to think it's perfectly fine to "chew out the brethren", to take note
> of the courteous tone of Bill's letter. That is the sort of tone I
> expect to see on a list like this, of Christians.
>
> Regards,
> Iain
>
> On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 8:14 PM, Michael Roberts
> <michael.andrea.r@ukonline.co.uk> wrote:
>> Iain cant you persuade Bill to publish it somewhere ? What about Science
>> and
>> Christian Belief or PSCF, or get ASA and CIS to put it on their website.
>> Ask
>> Jack Haas for the ASA.
>>
>> Please do it!!
>>
>> I could check the maths:):)
>>
>> Michael
>> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Iain Strachan"
>> <igd.strachan@gmail.com>
>> To: "Ted Davis" <TDavis@messiah.edu>
>> Cc: <asa@calvin.edu>
>> Sent: Friday, February 20, 2009 4:17 PM
>> Subject: Re: [asa] Near Starlight Problem; Adam would never see all of
>> Orion's belt?
>>
>>
>> Dear Ted,
>>
>> I was wondering if the Humphreys cosmology would come up here.
>> Following my talk with my creationist colleague, I looked up some
>> pages on the Distant Starlight problem, and came upon a page from
>> "ChristianAnswers" that approached it from a YEC perspective. Right
>> till the end it did a very good job of debunking the existing ideas;
>> it showed clearly how c-decay doesn't work, and it explained how the
>> light could not have been created "in transit" as it would contain
>> recorded information about events that never occurred. However, it
>> finished by describing the Humphreys model in some detail, saying that
>> though it wasn't infallible, it was an exciting approach with
>> considerable theoretical support.
>>
>> However there is no support and it was completely sunk by a former
>> colleague of mine, Bill Worraker, who is also a YEC, and an
>> accomplished amateur astronomer and a former post-doc researcher in
>> mathematics.
>>
>> Bill's simple observation completely sinks the theory without trace.
>> If one examines the "light curves" from Humphreys's model, the
>> inevitable conclusion is that the "look back time" for anything
>> between 6000 LY and 2 billion LY is negative (it just falls out of the
>> equations and can be demonstrated on a spreadsheet that takes about 10
>> minutes to construct). In other words, nothing between 6000 LY and 2
>> billion LY is visible from the earth because the light hasn't got here
>> yet. Andromeda should not be visible, as a direct prediction of
>> Humphreys's theory.
>>
>> Bill wrote and got published a letter to the AiG Technical Journal
>> explaining this, with accompanying graph from the spreadsheet.
>>
>> The result was tragi-comic. Humphreys wrote to Bill asking him to try
>> and get the model to work in different formulations of the General
>> Relativistic equations (I think with different values of the
>> cosmological constant). The maths he had to work through was quite
>> horrendous, but he was well up to it (I'm afraid it was a bit beyond
>> me). He wrote up the mammoth task in a paper containing over 160
>> equations, rigorously worked out (I can claim that my input was to
>> help him to typeset the LaTeX, which I had used to write up my PhD).
>> His conclusion was much as he had predicted - the model failed in
>> exactly the same way in all possible conclusions.
>>
>> He sent his work off to several creationists in the field, including
>> Humphreys (who had initially helped him by translating a 1920's key
>> paper by Schwartzschild from the German).
>>
>> Practically no-one read his work or took any notice of it. Humphreys
>> simply wrote back and told him not to be so negative; it was his job
>> to come up with a better model, and until he did this, he would
>> continue with his own - ignoring the fact that Bill had completely
>> busted it.
>>
>> And from what you say, this theory of Humphreys is still being mooted
>> as a valid approach.
>>
>> There are some YEC's I respect enormously, and one of those is my
>> former colleague Bill, who is honest enough to admit that there is
>> currently no solution to the distant starlight problem that works. He
>> treats it as an "unsolved problem".
>>
>> However, all that is pretty hard to understand, GR etc, which is why I
>> proposed a simpler model about when the stars could be seen following
>> creation, as a means of getting people to think about the logical
>> consequences of the YEC interpretation of the bible.
>>
>> Iain
>>
>> On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 3:47 PM, Ted Davis <TDavis@messiah.edu> wrote:
>>>
>>> I'm quite sure that arguments about what Adam could see in the night sky
>>> on the "day" of his creation have been made multiple times. I can't
>>> cite
>>> chapter and verse without doing some checking, but an internet search
>>> could
>>> be helpful for this type of thing.
>>>
>>> The larger "omphalos" problem (look that up on the web to fill in the
>>> blanks if this isn't already clear) is among the most serious problems
>>> faced
>>> by a YEC position, and YECs generally admit this. Understandably, there
>>> is
>>> great reluctance to employ arguments from apparent age (vs real age),
>>> though
>>> in some cases they must still be used--e.g., Adam was not created as
>>> newborn
>>> babe, so he had to look "older" than he really was. Related questions
>>> about
>>> whether (e.g.) he had any evidence in or on his body of specific
>>> incidents
>>> from a past history he never actually had (such as the remnants of
>>> yesterday's dinner in his bowel or a slight scratch (which must not have
>>> involved any real pain, according to YEC theology) on his left arm from
>>> brushing against a tree last week are relevant here, but usually
>>> overlooked.
>>> Those are obviously similar to questions about historical events
>>> revealed
>>> by the starlight (such as a magnetic storm on the sun 5 mins before he
>>> was
>>> created, revealed b!
>>
>> y the light that arrives 3 and a half minutes later).
>>>
>>> In general, today's creationists try to answer at least some of the
>>> astronomical questions by appealing to Russell Humphreys' "white hole"
>>> cosmology as much as possible. When I attended the planetarium show at
>>> the
>>> Creation Museum 18 months ago, that model was apparently behind some of
>>> the
>>> more interesting things that astronomer Jason Lisle said, including his
>>> frank acceptance of cosmological distances larger than a few thousand
>>> light
>>> years (believe me, I was listening for any such and definitely heard
>>> it),
>>> which creationists traditionally just rejected out of hand. I will
>>> admit
>>> that I haven't made the effort to understand Humphreys' model in detail;
>>> I
>>> have forgotten too much physics to plow through some of it anyway. I
>>> leave
>>> that task to others. The new issue of PSCF, which arrived in
>>> yesterday's
>>> mail, contains an essay by physicist and philosopher of science Brian
>>> Pitts,
>>> in which there are some negative comments about Humphreys' model with
>>> (apparently) a lot more in t!
>>
>> he citations, but Pitts' essay (which is mainly about how the RATE
>> project
>> fails to account for the dissipation of the enormous heat they need to
>> "explain" why radioactive dating is just no good) is also just too
>> technical
>> for me to read anymore. A leading Christian astrophysicist, Don Page (a
>> former student of Hawking) has been among the most pointed critics of
>> this
>> view (see e.g. http://www.trueorigin.org/rh_connpage1.pdf), but allegedly
>> the various criticisms have been answered satisfactorily by Humphreys (it
>> always seems to work out this way somehow).
>>>
>>> That's enough for now,
>>>
>>> Ted
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> -----------
>> Non timeo sed caveo
>>
>> -----------
>>
>>
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>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
> --
> -----------
> Non timeo sed caveo
>
> -----------
>
>

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Received on Fri Feb 20 16:06:43 2009