Young Earth Creationists

[PedroPonyLikesCrisps]

I know Young Earth Creationists exist, I've seen them on telly, but never met one in real life, so I'm just wondering if anyone here is one or knows one or whether they are actually just incredibly rare and reserved for extreme tv debating!

I didn't have to go far to find a list of transitional fossils which would satisfy best's requirements. here

And here's a

"Speciation has been. Again. And again. And again. And again. And again. Deny it all you like, it's a fact."

Does someone have a reading comprehension problem? I said I accept speciation - just not macroevolution. I know you think they are the same thing but there is a subtle difference.

"I'm talking about atmospheric equilibrium, not samples taken from rocks for dating."

So was I. Major communication breakdown here.

"Every thing that has ever lived has been a fully evolved organism existing in it's own right and on it's own terms."

I realize that. Do you have any arguments that aren't straw men? You seem to think I'm making arguments I'm not making, have never made and are not made by creation scientists either.

"No, I'm not watching any video. I already know that this is bull because I know some physics."

How very closed-minded of you. The people who measure the constants say they vary so you figure it out. If you're not willing to learn about science, I can't help you. The speed of light was fixed as a constant by definition in 1972. It could be varying now and they would never know it.

"No - it's rubbish. Absolute rubbish. And another example of an argument that creationists have tried to use in the past and now distance themselves from for fear of being laughed at."

Correct. And I've never used it before in my life. But since this new evidence came to light in January, I'm going to reconsider using it. My main cosmological theory is the gravitational time dilation, though, so forget the speed of light. It's not essential to my model. See? Why can't you be as honest about the fossil record as I am about the speed of light?

Dr. Brian Petley is the Head of Metrology at the National Physical Laboratory. (Metrology is the science of measuring constants.)

"As Brian Petley has pointed out, it is conceivable that:

(i) the velocity of light might change with time, or (ii) have a directional dependence in space, or (iii) be affected by the motion of the Earth about the Sun, or motion within our galaxy or some other reference frame.

Nevertheless, if such changes really happened, we would be blind to them. We are now shut up within an artificial system where such changes are not only impossible by definition, but would be undetectable in practice because of the way the units are defined. Any change in the speed of light would change the units themselves in such a way that the velocity in kilometers per second remained exactly the same."

www.sheldrake.org/experiments/constants/

This belief in fixed laws is linked to a belief in fixed constants, supposed to have been fixed exactly at the moment of the Big Bang?but are they really constant? The fundamental constants include the speed of light and the universal gravitational constant, but if you look at the data you find some very surprising things. From 1928 to 1945, the speed of light dropped by 50 km per second. Then in 1945, it went up again. So what happened? I went to discuss this with the Dr Brian Petley, Head of Metrology at the National Physical Laboratory. I showed him the data and he said to me, ?Well I?m afraid you?ve uncovered one of the most embarrassing episodes in the history of our subject.?
?Well what do you think?? I asked. ?Could the speed of light really have dropped by 50 km per second between 1928 and 1945? And, if so, what does that tell us about the universe if the speed of light can vary??
?Of course it can?t vary,? he said.
?Why not??
?It?s a constant.?
?Well then how do you explain everyone getting these much lower values? Were they just fudging the results until they got what they thought everyone else expected??
?We don?t like to use that word. We don?t say ?fudging?.?
?What do you say??
?We prefer to call it ?intellectual phase-locking?.?
?Well, can this embarrassment continue??
?No, it can?t happen again.?
?Why not??
?We fixed the speed of light by definition in 1972.?
?But what if it really varies??
?We?d never know because we redefined the meter in terms of the speed of light so the units of measurement would change with it.?

www.li.com/news-events/news/2012/08/30/freeing-the-spirit-of-enquiry-sheldrake-science-delusion

Professor of astrophysics John Webb admits that the speed of light and indeed all of the physical constants may vary. Listen to the short recording on this page. He also mentions evidence that would appear to put earth in a special place in the universe. Near the centre perhaps? (Incidentally, there is new evidence I haven't even mentioned yet which indicates we are at or near the centre of the universe.)

www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/today/tomfeilden/2010/09/inconstant_constants.html

By now, I have certainly provided substantial evidence for a varying speed of light - an argument that I don't even care about. All anyone else has done on here is make assertions that it cannot vary. Why? Because it's just not possible. But why not? Because it's not. If and when it ever becomes common knowledge and accepted within the scientific community, please remember this conversation, humble yourself for being wrong and give God the glory for being right.

As astrophysics John Webb said on the recording, "Maybe the universe is just much more interesting than we've been thinking."

I'm still intrigued about the dragons. How would they fly? Big n heavy right. Do they defy the laws of physics or is their a special YEC law of physics all the scientists are unaware of?

I'm also still wondering where the dinosaurs went if they were ambling about a mere 5000 years ago. You know, within the time of written history etc

"By now, I have certainly provided substantial evidence for a varying speed of light"

Bestvalue, as you know I watched your Sheldon video to give you the benefit of the doubt. No one is missing anything by skipping it. The poor guy thought he'd uncovered the secret of the ages when he found different measurements in old textbooks. All he discovered was that our ability to measure accurately has improved. You have even quoted people explaining this, but you apparently haven't understood what you were quoting.

I DO realize that if evolution were true, this would also be true. But to use that arguments as evidence for evolution is question-begging. Do you see what I mean?

You said "there are no transitional fossils" - I said, "Actually, all fossils are transitional"....so far from there being no transitional fossils, we are in fact in the fortunate position of having nothing but transitional fossils.

Your problem is that you don't quite know what you mean by transitional.

Transition happens in the tiniest, tiniest way, mutation by mutation - it does not happen with an organism suddenly growing a new limb, or one species suddenly giving birth to another. Evolution does not predict such an event - and if we could find the sorts of fossils that reflect that, evolution via natural selection would be shaken to it's core.

If evolution is true, we should expect to find a fossil record that reflects increasing complexity - and that's precisely what we do find. The geologic column shows, unequivocally, this progression from simplicity to complexity.

Having sad that, there are fossils that show a half/half situation. The Archaeopteryx is part reptile, part bird. This worried creationists so much when it was first found, they accused the scientists of gluing bird feathers on to a reptile fossil!

Why not just be honest and admit that the fossil record does not match evolutionary predictions and abandon it as evidence? Except it does, very clearly indeed - as I've just shown.

Most evolutionists have Really? By "most", do you mean the 0.01% of biologists who believe the same rubbish as you do?

Does someone have a reading comprehension problem? I said I accept speciation - just not macroevolution. I know you think they are the same thing but there is a subtle difference Yes, I think someone does. Hint: It ain't me .

Define what you think macroevolution means then, please.

So was I. Major communication breakdown here No. Major failure (another one) of your ability to understand the science involved.

You claimed that equilibrium of C-14 in the atmosphere would be reached in 30,000 years, and we're only a third of the way there now. You seemed to think that, not only does this indicate a young Earth, but that all C-14 dating methods are inherently flawed because of it.

I showed that you are wrong. This equilibrium would only be reached in that time scale if the production and decay rate of C-14 were equally balanced at all times. In fact they are not - they fluctuate wildly, so this argument is entirely and completely without merit.

Your only response has been "Well, if they fluctuate then how can they be reliable for dating purposes?".

They can still be reliable for dating purposes because when all of this is known and understood they can be corrected for. Obviously.

I think you have to concede this one, I'm afraid. You're simply wrong.

How very closed-minded of you. The people who measure the constants say they vary so you figure it out. If you're not willing to learn about science, I can't help you. The speed of light was fixed as a constant by definition in 1972. It could be varying now and they would never know it

No, the people who measure the constants say that the MEASUREMENTS vary, and most certainly have done over the past 100 years ago. We would expect that - technology is improving all the time, so the measurements are getting better. This does not mean that the speed of light is varying .

And how exactly do you think anyone can "fix" the speed of light to a certain speed? How bloody ridiculous. We can only measure it. Bloody hellfire. That is even stupider than your claim that we were walking around with dinosaurs.

If you're not willing to learn about science, I can't help you Er.....you seriously have to be joking. You don't know any science - you're just lifting crap off creation.com and quoting it at us. The problem is you don't have the necessary understanding of the issues to be able to argue them coherently.

By now, I have certainly provided substantial evidence for a varying speed of light If you'd done anything of the kind, there'd be a Nobel Prize with your name on and a cheque for $1m waiting to be banked.

There have been some papers published recently by actual physicists who propose that the answer to certain conundrums might be best explained by a variation in light speed, and they've offered some observations to support this possibility. Currently it is still in the hypothetical, speculative stage and is an awfully long way from being proven. As those physicists themselves say such a finding would be immensely important to our understanding of how the universe works and it would probably be on the front page of every newspaper in the world. Rather like when the OPERA team appeared to have found that neutrinos can travel faster than light (which was a measurement error, as expected).

"Despite calling these quantities constants, there has been a creeping suspicion over the last 15 years or so that some of them ? particularly the speed of light ? may be changing slowly with time."

• Dr Stuart Clark, astronomy author and journalist

cosmoquest.org/blog/365daysofastronomy/2010/10/17/october-17th-can-the-laws-of-physics-change/

S L O W L E Y being the important word there.

Oh look, another quote and another link which means nothing when you take Ellie's point into consideration. I'm still not seeing it in the papers.

The article goes on to say some evidence from a massive study in the late 90s suggest there may have been a very slight change. evidence equates to arouns 1 part in 100,000 over a 10 BILLION year period.

Bad form to take quotes out of context to try and prove your point.

From the same paper:

Numerous groups are trying to verify or disprove this idea because the discovery of changing constants has enormous consequences for our understanding of the Universe. It points to physics beyond Einstein, perhaps even to the elusive ?theory of everything.....completely confirming everything I said in my last paragraph.

So, really Best - if you actually had provided "substantial evidence for a varying light speed" then you, my dear, would possibly have found the holy grail of physics - The Theory of Everything.

No - there are groups looking into it. That's all. Your own paper says that.

Hoist by your own petard

There are theories that allow the speed of light in the vacuum to vary, that have been considered and put forward by theoretical physicists for decades.

There is no evidence to support these theories so they are not accepted by the scientific community as being relevant to this specific universe.

It is possible for a universe to exist in which the speed of light varies with time, but this universe is NOT one of those.

This universe has overwhelming evidence for the speed of light having been constant for every time period except the very initial expansion. This means that for the last 15 billion years it has been constant. This number exceeds 6000. The initial expansion it also thought to have had the same speed of light but there is on going discussion in this area, so while the consensus is still strong it is not as massively strong as it is for other time periods.

None of this can be used to support the idea that the universe is only 6000 years old.

"Your problem is that you don't quite know what you mean by transitional."

I know exactly what I mean by transitional and I defined it for you. I realize it's got to have all working parts and we don't expect to find a cross between dog and cat since they are both modern animals and not from the same lineage.

"Transition happens in the tiniest, tiniest way, mutation by mutation - it does not happen with an organism suddenly growing a new limb, or one species suddenly giving birth to another. Evolution does not predict such an event - and if we could find the sorts of fossils that reflect that, evolution via natural selection would be shaken to it's core."

Exactly. I couldn't have said it better myself.

"If evolution is true, we should expect to find a fossil record that reflects increasing complexity - and that's precisely what we do find. The geologic column shows, unequivocally, this progression from simplicity to complexity."

Fossils are often found out of order. The evolutionary progression of the horse for example is found in the reverse order in the southern hemisphere. The number of ribs in the supposedly ?intermediate? stages of the horse varies from 15 to 19 and then finally settles at 18. The number of lumbar vertebrae also allegedly swings from six to eight and then returns to six again.

The progression from simple to complex in the fossil record can just as easily be explained by a global flood and animals being buried roughly according to their ecosystems. Based on the flood model, I would predict lots of clams a the bottom (because that's where they live) and relatively few humans and birds near the op. See the image about a quarter of the way down the following page.:

www.earthhistory.org.uk/technical-issues/did-animals-escape-to-higher-ground

"The Archaeopteryx is part reptile, part bird."

I've always admitted that Archaeopteryx is a win for the evolutionists. If the fossil record were replete with such finds, I would gladly embrace evolution as fact. But because it is one of a but few lonely exceptions the silence from the absence of transitions speaks volumes.

"This worried creationists so much when it was first found, they accused the scientists of gluing bird feathers on to a reptile fossil!"

I've never heard that before. Can you provide me a reference from a creationist source? The modern creationist movement didn't even get started until well after Archaeopteryx was found in 1859. Perhaps they weren't creationists but other scientists.

There was indeed a fake dinosaur fossil with feathers glued on called Archaeoraptor that National Geographic paid a dealer in China a lot of money for ($80,000 I think) in 1999.

"I'm still intrigued about the dragons. How would they fly? Big n heavy right. Do they defy the laws of physics or is their a special YEC law of physics all the scientists are unaware of?"

You've never heard of pterodactyls?

"I'm also still wondering where the dinosaurs went if they were ambling about a mere 5000 years ago. You know, within the time of written history etc"

They were probably around much more recently. There are cave paintings of them and many dragon legends all over the world of people interacting with what I believe are dinosaurs. (Look up the Ica stones.) Detailed drawings of them that let's us know people saw them with skin on them, not just bones. (When we found fossilized dino-skin it matched the drawings.) The Chinese calendar even has a dragon. (Why would they throw a mythical animal in there amongst all the real ones?)

They might have gone extinct for many reasons but I think the last straw was man hunting them. Some say there are even some dinosaurs still alive. There are many sightings around he world. Some say the Loch Ness Monster is a plesiosaur. It sure looks like one.

"All he discovered was that our ability to measure accurately has improved."

I already brought that up and said that's what I used to think. But Dr Brian Petley, Head of Metrology at the National Physical Laboratory says the constants vary and so do many other experts who are not creationists I posted links to so take it up with them. If the constants are not varying, I won't be affected by it one bit. But if they are, apparently you all will be.

Loch Ness monster. Oh please.

"Most evolutionists have Really? By "most", do you mean the 0.01% of biologists who believe the same rubbish as you do?"

No, I mean evolutionists who are honest about the fossil record and have switched to touting DNA as their primary source for evidence.

"We don't need fossils in order to demonstrate that evolution is a fact. The evidence for evolution would be entirely secure even if not a single corpse had ever fossilized. It is a bonus that we do actually have rich seams of fossils to mine, and more are discovered every day. The fossil evidence for evolution in many major animal groups is wonderfully strong. Nevertheless there are, of course, gaps, and creationists love them obsessively." - Richard Dawkins - The Greatest Show on Earth

"The fossil record with its abrupt transitions offers no support for gradual change."- Stephen Jay Gould

"The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils. Yet Darwin was so wedded to gradualism that he wagered his entire theory on a denial of this literal record." - Stephen Jay Gould

"Our bodies are records of our evolution. Look at an unfolding embryo, a genome, or a skeleton and you will see our inner fishes, our inner mammals, our inner apes. We carry within us physical evidence of the developmental processes and biological traits that humans share with all ? yes, all ? other organisms. Accordingly, we don't need ancient fossils or artifacts to know that evolution occurs, but without them we would understand far less about all that came before us." - Holly Dunsworth

"Loch Ness monster. Oh please."

I'm not saying I believe it. I don't. But I'm sure you believe in aliens (I don't believe that either) and there's far less evidence for that.

"My ancestors had sex. Fact. That no living person was around to see it does not make it less of a fact."

Ellie, all we can rationally conclude from that is that organisms reproduce after their kind. Humans give birth to humans. Just as the Bible describes. You've inadvertently proved my point.

We have a mechanism for human sexual reproduction. We do not have a mechanism for evolution. Mutations are not up to the task and natural selection can only select from what it has available. It's a conservative force, not a creative one.