Four questions for YECs - (and a little history of creationism vs evolution)

[FreeGrace]

Sparks,

I just realized I could google a light year.  It is 5.88 trillion miles.  And you were only talking about 14.6 billion light years.  Where is the difficulty?

Maybe the difficulty is simply the vast majority of calculators don't have enough space to record all those digits.

[teddyv]

Just now, FreeGrace said:

Sparks,

I just realized I could google a light year.  It is 5.88 trillion miles.  And you were only talking about 14.6 billion light years.  Where is the difficulty?

Maybe the difficulty is simply the vast majority of calculators don't have enough space to record all those digits.

I think he's talking about distance determination by use of Cepheid variables, red-shift and parallax. The latter is a simple trigonometric calculation, and with the use of the Gaia probe (and some others as well), which extended the baseline, we can measure stars out to about 10,000 light-years. 

[The Barbarian]

2 hours ago, Sparks said:

There is no evidence because you cannot measure those great distances, and I say trillions because you might as well say trillions.

As you know, the evidence says billions.  Here's how we know:

For the newer estimate of 13.8 billion years old, announced in 2020, Simone Aiola, a research scientist at the Center for Computational Astrophysics at the Flatiron Institute in New York City, led a team of scientists who reexamined the cosmic microwave background using the ACT, according to their study, published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics. 

"Although these maps cover a smaller region than the ones released by the Planck team, their improved resolution allows for more precise measurements," Aiola told Live Science. "Our observations provide an independent measurement of the CMB sky that can be compared to the measurement made by the Planck team."

https://www.livescience.com/how-know-age-of-universe

And I think physicists are a much more reliable source of information about physics than you are.   Sorry about that.

 

[The Barbarian]

26 minutes ago, teddyv said:

I think he's talking about distance determination by use of Cepheid variables, red-shift and parallax. The latter is a simple trigonometric calculation, and with the use of the Gaia probe (and some others as well), which extended the baseline, we can measure stars out to about 10,000 light-years. 

And that's a key point.  Being able to directly measure the distance to relatively near stars out to 10,000 light-years, means the YE beliefs are invalidated by direct observation.

[Sparks]

28 minutes ago, The Barbarian said:

And that's a key point.  Being able to directly measure the distance to relatively near stars out to 10,000 light-years, means the YE beliefs are invalidated by direct observation.

If you cannot measure past 10,000 light-years (and believe me, that claim is a gift), then how do you know the universe is 14.6 billion years old?

That's right, you cannot know.  It's made up.

[The Barbarian]

1 hour ago, Sparks said:

If you cannot measure past 10,000 light-years

Actually, we can measure out billions of light years.   We can show that the universe is incompatible with YE beliefs just by triangulation.   But it's a lot older than that, as astronomers have shown.   Here's another way we know:

The Andromeda Galaxy is a galaxy like ours, but somewhat larger.   It is a tiny blur of light in the night sky, but it has billions of stars like our own.  Comparing the sizes of our own solar system which is about 0.0005 light-years across, we're looking at a galaxy about 152,000 light years across.   And yet that is only a tiny smudge of light in the sky, about 3 degrees of arc.  Doing a bit of trig, one can determine the distance, which is about 25 million light-years.  

So YE is completely refuted by the night sky.

But of course, the red shift accurately shows that the universe is billions of years old.   Better telescopes give us better measurements of the shift, but even the lowest estimate is in billions of years.

 

 

[Sparks]

51 minutes ago, The Barbarian said:

Actually, we can measure out billions of light years.   We can show that the universe is incompatible with YE beliefs just by triangulation.   But it's a lot older than that, as astronomers have shown.   Here's another way we know:

The Andromeda Galaxy is a galaxy like ours, but somewhat larger.   It is a tiny blur of light in the night sky, but it has billions of stars like our own.  Comparing the sizes of our own solar system which is about 0.0005 light-years across, we're looking at a galaxy about 152,000 light years across.   And yet that is only a tiny smudge of light in the sky, about 3 degrees of arc.  Doing a bit of trig, one can determine the distance, which is about 25 million light-years.  

So YE is completely refuted by the night sky.

But of course, the red shift accurately shows that the universe is billions of years old.   Better telescopes give us better measurements of the shift, but even the lowest estimate is in billions of years.

Trigonometric Parallax works exceptionally well at relatively short distances.  You are not going to be able to measure far from Earth, because the angle is too narrow (see below, it takes 1 year to get your angle).

With the Cepheids Variables method, there are too many assumptions, and the same with Inverse Square method, though Inverse Square works really well here on Earth at short distances.

So you got nothing.  Sadly, I don't think you know that you got nothing, so cut-and-paste away! 

[Sparks]

3 hours ago, The Barbarian said:

As you know, the evidence says billions.  Here's how we know:

For the newer estimate of 13.8 billion years old, announced in 2020, Simone Aiola, a research scientist at the Center for Computational Astrophysics at the Flatiron Institute in New York City, led a team of scientists who reexamined the cosmic microwave background using the ACT, according to their study, published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics. 

"Although these maps cover a smaller region than the ones released by the Planck team, their improved resolution allows for more precise measurements," Aiola told Live Science. "Our observations provide an independent measurement of the CMB sky that can be compared to the measurement made by the Planck team."

https://www.livescience.com/how-know-age-of-universe

And I think physicists are a much more reliable source of information about physics than you are.   Sorry about that.

At least I understand the math and know why it fails.

[Retrobyter]

On 5/19/2023 at 9:39 PM, The Barbarian said:

See, here's another issue where Poe's Law comes in.   Or maybe you just don't get how half-lives work.    Essentially a half-life is the time that it takes for half of an isotope to decay.   So it looks like this:

5730 years  50% left

11460 years 25% left

17190 years 12.5% left

22920 years 6.25% left.

28650 years, 3.125% left

34380 years 1.562% left

40110 years 0.781% left

45840 years 0.390% left

51570 years  0.195% left. 

And there are labs capable of measuring that amount of C14.

So you've been given some wrong stories about that, too.

 

Shalom, The Barbarian.

See, THIS is what I take issue with when it comes to the interpretation of simple equations by evolutionary scientists.

The RATE of decay does NOT mean that the substance being tested has been around that long!

What is being described in these instances of "half-lives" is a RATE of change. It does NOT mean that the substance has actually gone through all those half-lives! This descibes a hyperbolic regression in the form of t(1/2) = ln 2 / k, where k is the half-life value for first-order decay rates. In the case of C-14, the value of k is 5730 years.

BUT, that does NOT mean that the substance has necessariy been around long enough to have gone through more than a single half-life period.

It's just as @Sparks said. NO ONE WAS AROUND TO OBSERVE THE ORIGINAL SUBSTANCE! The half-life has been CALCULATED to be that amount, but again, that doesn't mean that it was actually FOLLOWED to be that amount in the past! There are NUMEROUS contributing factors that could affect the expected results! Thus, one is making the ASSUMPTION that "all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation!" (2 Peter 3:4b).

Peter goes on:

2 Peter 3:5-6 (KJV)

5 For this they WILLINGLY are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens (skies) were of old, and the earth standing out of the water (the Pangaea continent out of the Panthalassa ocean) and in the water (within the canopy of water above): 6 Whereby (by which) the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished: (The FLOOD)!

Why is it that people have such a hard time just accepting the Bible for what it claims?!

Today, we have a name for this assumption (that "all things continue as they were from the beginning"): It's called uniformitarianism. And, it is fundamentally wrong! It's wrong because we have EVIDENCE of a world-wide disaster by water! Thus, "all things" DID NOT "continue as they were from the beginning!"

The Grand Canyon couldn't have been formed in thousands or millions of years, because of a little thing called EROSION! It had to have been cut QUICKLY! Indeed, we have such evidence in canyons formed more than 100 feet deep from the aftermath of Mount St. Helens eruption on May 18, 1980 in just 4 years time afterward! See Mount St Helens research. The canyons were already showing evidence of erosion! So, why doesn't the Grand Canyon have more erosion?

[Retrobyter]

7 hours ago, The Barbarian said:

Since the text makes it clear that the days are not literal ones, (can't have mornings and evenings before there is a sun) it's not a problem.

 

Shalom, The Barbarian.

This is a FICTION that you've accepted as though it was fact! One should not stubbornly adhere to something simply because one has the wrong definitions! "Mornings" and "evenings" simply need light, not necessarily the sun!

The definition of the Hebrew word "boqer" is "From baaqar; properly, dawn (as the break of day); generally, morning." It comes from a Hebrew verb "baaqar" meaning "A primitive root; properly, to plough, or (generally) break forth."

Indeed, the "sun" is not even mentioned in Genesis 1! It is a "greater (brighter) light to rule the day!" God created LIGHT on the first day! He did NOT create the sun!

On day 4 AFTER creating the "greater light," THEN it says "he made the stars also." In Hebrew, he just said  "וְאֵ֖ת הַכֹּוכָבִֽים׃" or "v'eet hakowkhaaViym! " "And the-stars/round-objects!"

"Light" is energy; a "round object" is matter with mass. I maintain that the energy was created BEFORE the matter was created that was the "supposed SOURCE" of the energy! God can create energy without first creating matter!