ID Phylosophy and YEC Increadibilities

[Magnetic]

ID Phylosophy

Was listening to the radio yesterday. An ID speaker was talking about the chances of evolution happening being the same as you going to the Saharah dessert, taking a piece of sand, painting it black, putting it back in the sand, mixing up the sand, then blindfolding yourself and being able to pick out the grain of sand you painted black, and do so three times in a row. "Such would be the chance that life would produce itself randomly."

YEC Increadibilities

On guy stated that the universe was created on the first day of the Genesis creation. When the idea of the Speed of Light came up, and how long it takes light to reach our planet, he stated that the Speed of Light may not be absolutely constant and can vary.

My question is, how many times greater than the Speed of Light would the light from M31 take to reach us if it was placed in the heavens 6,000 years ago? In other words, since M31 is roughly 3 million light years away, how much quicker would light have to travel from that distance to reach us in 6,000 years?

[The Spartan]

500 times faster or 1.5x10^11 m/s.

But, and you probably know this already, the idea that the speed of light has changed is ludicrous.

[Darth Wong]

Why do you listen to these idiots?

ID Phylosophy

Was listening to the radio yesterday. An ID speaker was talking about the chances of evolution happening being the same as you going to the Saharah dessert, taking a piece of sand, painting it black, putting it back in the sand, mixing up the sand, then blindfolding yourself and being able to pick out the grain of sand you painted black, and do so three times in a row. "Such would be the chance that life would produce itself randomly."

And did he prove that evolution theory predicts such low probabilities? Or is he just using the analogy without justifying its accuracy?

YEC Increadibilities

On guy stated that the universe was created on the first day of the Genesis creation. When the idea of the Speed of Light came up, and how long it takes light to reach our planet, he stated that the Speed of Light may not be absolutely constant and can vary.

If it varies too much, then the laws of physics break down because the speed of light defines the relationship between space and time themselves. Any variations can only take place within the tiny margins afforded by the need for stars to continue operating, organisms to function, etc.

[Magnetic]

Why do you listen to these idiots?

To be honest, I listen to them to keep abreast of what they believe. Sometimes just so I can say, "Oh, come on!"


Thanks for the reply concerning the Speed of Light. It just cements the idea that because M31 is 3 million light years away, the fact that we can see M31 proves that the universe is much older than the YEC beliefs.

[Lord of the Abyss]

Was listening to the radio yesterday. An ID speaker was talking about the chances of evolution happening being the same as you going to the Saharah dessert, taking a piece of sand, painting it black, putting it back in the sand, mixing up the sand, then blindfolding yourself and being able to pick out the grain of sand you painted black, and do so three times in a row. "Such would be the chance that life would produce itself randomly."

Two comments. First, evolution is not the same as the emergence of life; you can't have evolution until life shows up. Second, both evolution and nature in general work in large numbers. A better anology would be "Ten billion people go into the Sahara, each picks up some sand and paints it black. They do this a million times in a row; if any sand is painted three times, that's the same as evolution working or life producing itself randomly."

Another example of this kind of fallacy : You step into a heavy rainstorm. A drop of rain forms high in the air, falls while buffeted by wind, and lands right in your eye as you look up. The odds of a raindrop hitting so small a target are miniscule; surely God aimed it at your eye, right ?

Of course not. With so many raindrops, the odds of one hitting you are irrelevent. Almost all will miss, but due to sheer numbers one or more will likely hit. Or, in terms of life, the odds of a random chemical reaction starting life are small; the odds of a vast number of reactions doing so are quite high. With evolution itself, the odds are even better, since it mostly consists of reshuffling genes already tested by evolution; the random creation of new genes by mutation is actually a secondary factor in evolution.

[Zero]

The furthest objects that we actually recieve light from are up to 14 billion light years away, aren't they? How fast would the speed of light have to be to have gotten here in 6000 years? It's madness.

[The Spartan]

The furthest objects that we actually recieve light from are up to 14 billion light years away, aren't they? How fast would the speed of light have to be to have gotten here in 6000 years? It's madness.

2 1/3 million times faster. Which really illustrates how ridiculous the claims are.

Of course, both of my numbers are actually estimates that don't take into consideration that it would have to be slowing down the entire time to meet the actual value in order to match their claims. In fact, light would have to have been traveling even faster at the begining of time to have reached us and slowed down enough to be 3x10^8 m/s in 6000-10000 years.

[bilateralrope]

Of course, both of my numbers are actually estimates that don't take into consideration that it would have to be slowing down the entire time to meet the actual value in order to match their claims. In fact, light would have to have been traveling even faster at the begining of time to have reached us and slowed down enough to be 3x10^8 m/s in 6000-10000 years.

I remember seeing something on http://www.badastronomy.com a while back about some quicky shot down theory for YEC fundies saying that the further back you go, the faster light moved then, yet by the time we had accurate ways to measure light it had stopped slowing down.

[Instant Sunrise]

There was an ID/YEC guy who spoke at my church not too long ago about this subject.

Among his arguments:
"Back then, everything lived much longer. And regular lizards don't stop growing. Therefore, dinosaurs are just overgrown lizards."

and "The universe was created in 6 days because the (english TRANSLATION) bible says that there was an evening and a morning"

And yes, he did use the Mt. Rushmore = Grand Canyon analogy.

[wolveraptor]

What analogy is that? I've never heard it.

Of course, the obvious retort to the overgrown lizard theory is that dinosaurs vary so much from any known lizards in morphological characteristics. All lizards are diapsids, unlike archosaurian dinos. Did they suddenly grow holes in their skulls and erect limbs when they grew larger? This leniently ignoring the mechanism for longer life as well.

For the 2nd one, using the source to prove itself: bad idea.

[mr friendly guy]

ID Phylosophy

Was listening to the radio yesterday. An ID speaker was talking about the chances of evolution happening being the same as you going to the Saharah dessert, taking a piece of sand, painting it black, putting it back in the sand, mixing up the sand, then blindfolding yourself and being able to pick out the grain of sand you painted black, and do so three times in a row. "Such would be the chance that life would produce itself randomly."?

He fails to realise that evolution is not purely random. The natural selection component of evolution's mechanism is definitely non random.

YEC Increadibilities

On guy stated that the universe was created on the first day of the Genesis creation. When the idea of the Speed of Light came up, and how long it takes light to reach our planet, he stated that the Speed of Light may not be absolutely constant and can vary.

My question is, how many times greater than the Speed of Light would the light from M31 take to reach us if it was placed in the heavens 6,000 years ago? In other words, since M31 is roughly 3 million light years away, how much quicker would light have to travel from that distance to reach us in 6,000 years?

Durandal's website shows the bullshit of Satterfield's slowing down of the speed of light argument. One of the obvious weakness of this argument is that gravity attraction is inversely proportional to c and energy from a nuclear reaction is directly proportional to c squared. Thus if the speed of light was much higher, the gravity would be weaker, and the sun would produce more energy 6000 years ago. Thus life would fly out into space while the sun would make the earth inhabitable with its energy.

[The Guid]

Perhaps the probability element was a cunning half truth. I would imagine that the chances of evolution turning out precisely as it did might be as unlikely as the above mentioned comparison but the probability of life existing (indeed, intelligent life) is much higher.

Just a thought.

[Magnetic]

Well, I relayed this point of how much quicker light would have had to travel from M31 to get to us in 6,000 years (I came up with 368 times faster, but it was an elementary figure) and as of Tuesday of this week, there hasn't been anymore responses from the other guy.

[Magnetic]

Perhaps the probability element was a cunning half truth. I would imagine that the chances of evolution turning out precisely as it did might be as unlikely as the above mentioned comparison but the probability of life existing (indeed, intelligent life) is much higher.

Just a thought.

I think his statement is for Christians to say, . . ."Yeah, that must be true and evolutionary chance couldn't have happened. Score one for our side!"

[Darth Wong]

Perhaps the probability element was a cunning half truth. I would imagine that the chances of evolution turning out precisely as it did might be as unlikely as the above mentioned comparison but the probability of life existing (indeed, intelligent life) is much higher.

Just a thought.

The deliberate confusion of predestination with probabilistic impossibility is a common creationist rhetorical trick, and it's not even a half-truth: it's a strawman.

[Stormin]

Since life is a chemical reaction it cannot be looked at as happening by blind chance. Like all chemical reactions, given the right conditions life may probably come about nearly every time.
They are saying something along the lines of fire being a random event, while in reality given fuel, heat and air it will happen.