Why evolution is impossible

shernren said:

Claiming that observational data supports redshift quantization is like claiming that all the points line up on the dashed line, except -



- oh wait, no except, that's real data.

http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/astro-ph/pdf/0606/0606294v1.pdf

Stop throwing sand at us.

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shernren said:

In my undergraduate degree we do research projects over the course of our three years. My most memorable one was last summer, when I spent two months observing angular momentum coupling between optical vortices and low-index dielectric spheres. (Ok, ok, I was spinning hollow glass beads with lasers. When you strip it of all the jargon it sounds ridiculously simple!)

I remember it because towards the last week or two of the project, my supervisor devised an explanation of my data that made little to no sense to me. I went to a different lecturer, got a differing opinion, and thought that it was a much more likely conclusion. In the end, my experimental design was just too ridiculously simple to resolve between my explanation and his (and that's a story in itself).

But this project has stuck with me because it helps me sympathize with creationists (and I was once a YEC myself).

Are you proud of yourself? Does it make you feel good to know that you tossed out what the Lord said about His created world and that you don't believe the words of Jesus Christ about the creation?

I've spoken up at my science lecturers more than once and pointed out mistakes or gaps in their work. Do they claim to be perfect? I've never met a professor who did. I know what it feels like to think the scientific establishment is wrong and you're right.

No, it is not 'I' that is 'right', it is the Word of God that is right. I just happen to agree with it. And all things considered the scientific facts support what the Lord says in His word.

But (and here's the big but) all this requires effort, and specialization. The only reason I had any right to disagree with my supervisor was because I had spent the past month looking down a microscope at the things I was doing. I knew their behavior inside out; I had done the equations and fiddled with the parameters; for a month nearly all of my attention had been focused on reading up the literature surrounding optical vortices and how they worked. The people at the desk next to mine were working on quantum optics, also using lasers and mirrors and things like that, but for all intents and purposes their topics were as useless to me as the economics or arts being taught halfway across the campus.

All very interesting stuff. I read on it a lot.

By all means, tell us what you think is wrong with the current scientific paradigm of understanding nature.

To believe in an accidental or incidental world of such great complexity, intricacy and with such a vast variety of living organisms that mindlessly created itself without a plan/blueprint even though there is a code in nature that could only be pre-programmed by an intelligent Engineer...is insanity. Is that clear? I have no respect for such views and will not even dignify its adherents by accepting that they are using rational thought.

The DNA alone...did not make itself. Observation tells us that it does not make itself even now. DNA can only be produced by other DNA. Nature cannot do it.

I'm always interested to hear what people like you have to say - partly because part of my interests lie in teaching, and in teaching, one cannot correct an error well unless one understands how the student got to it; partly because people like you remind me that my faith is relevant even though I'm a scientist, even if you and I disagree on exactly how that works.

I am also a teacher. I taught science/history for 26 yrs.

But stop acting like a kid building sandcastles at a beach.

Be quiet.

What you've done up to now is throw out example after example of things where you think science doesn't quite work right. Fine. But do you actually understand anything of what you've said? It took me months of studying lasers-and-nothing-else before I knew enough to start to challenge my supervisor. I don't see a similar kind of dedication from you. I'm not asking you to devote your every waking moment to creationism - I'm just asking that you pick an example, tell us exactly what is happening, and pause, and get ready for the inevitable volley of questions, and actually answer them, instead of just moving on as if nothing has happened.

All these little anecdotes are the scientific equivalents of grains of sand - irritating if you throw them at someone's eyes on in someone's food, to be sure, but they don't amount to much, and they don't amount to much even if you pile them up into a small pile of sand, one that has several thousand grains but can still be swept away by a single wave. Don't waste your time that way. Instead, why don't you take just one example? Make it your focus. Hone it, sculpt it, chisel it. You might start with just one pebble, but you would end up with a sculpture, like Michaelangelo's sculpture of David - one rock, just one, but one that nobody could possibly argue with or refute or answer.

Pick an example, and let's work on it together. I'll be waiting.

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Melethiel said:

I always take popular websites, even secular ones, with a grain of salt, because they are not always entirely accurate. I never studied astronomy, so I am not very familiar with these arguments, but would you mind quoting some peer-reviewed articles (in non-creationist journals) discussing your claims?

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shernren said:

You missed the point of me putting up that graph.

Did I?

The points are very much scattered away from the lines. Sure, you could pretend that there are straight lines running through the data. Or you could pretend that there were curved lines. Or a conical hat. Or, if you squint hard enough, a silhouette of a gorilla kissing a cat.

You know how to stretch things don't you? The skeptics Napier and Guthrie came to the same conclusion that Tift/Cocke...as did Arp, the Burgidges, etc. for what reason? The whole lot of them just made up their facts, right?

Of course if Arp and Tifft claimed that the universe's large-scale structure was that of a gorilla kissing a cat they would be met by widespread ridicule (other than the attention of a couple of misunderstood zoologists, I guess).

That kind of remark is why I don't take you seriously.

But both that outlandish claim and their actual claim about the data have exactly the same confidence.

I have no confidence in you.

Oh yes. I've read Tifft/Cocke. I've read Napier/Guthrie. Do you want to know what the latter source has to say?

Personally, I don't believe you. My opinion is that you didn't even know about them before you read this thread.


(page here: 1997JApA...18..455N Page 456)

Note a few things:

1. This periodicity was "weak". Not my words, theirs.

2. It was present in the spirals. We'll come back to this later.

3. It "strengthened progressively as sub-samples in lower density regions of the cluster were examined". Now, lower density regions of the cluster are regions in which there are less galaxies per unit volume, so is it any surprise that spurious trends are strengthened when you throw out data points? It's a little like having a drug trial on a hundred patients, seeing seventy of them die, have someone remove all the corpses in the middle of the night, and then coming back the next morning and say "Wow, we treated thirty patients and all thirty recovered! This is a wonder drug!"

4. That last sentence sounds impressive - until you realize that the Virgo Cluster has 1300-2000 galaxies. Taking a sample of 48 is quite pathetic. I bet five people out of a hundred people you know are Muslims - does that mean America is a Muslim country?

While we're at it, do you want to know what else Napier and Guthrie said?

Um, whoops! That's kind of like saying that "Our study found that no Americans drive cars. P.S. we didn't talk to anyone over 15."

That is not an honest comparison. What you ignored:

"So far the redshifts of over 250 galaxies with high-precision HI profiles have been used in the study...so far, the redshift distribution has been found to be strongly quantized in the galactocentric frame of reference."

Furthermore, they concluded, "To date, our conclusion is that extragalactic redshifts are quantized along the line originally suggested by Tifft and coworkers, with galactocentric periodicities of 37.5 km s-1 in field galaxies and loose groupings, and 71.1 km s-1 in the environment of dense clusters."

http://www.ias.ac.in/jarch/jaa/18/455-463.pdf

Since these men did this study a full two decades after Tifft/Cocke and entered the matter with skepticism about their discovery and since so many other astronomers have come to the same conclusions in the matter, I therefore think their findings are correct and matches what God's Word says about an orderly universe.

We can go on, but it seems like you're more interested in sandcastles than sculptures. Fine with me. I really should be studying atom-laser coupling equations.

Then please do so.

But let me respond to one last thing you've said:



I'm not tossing out what God says of creation,

You said you WERE a young earth creationist. But you are no longer. That MEANS that you no longer believe either Moses and his chronology of early man nor apparently the family lineage of Christ as given by Luke (chap. 3) which takes his family line all the way back to Adam. You tossed out God's Word about that matter even though the Lord Jesus Christ confirmed all that Moses said in the pentateuch.(Luke 24:25, John 5:46).

I'm tossing out what Tifft, Arp, Napier, and Guthrie say about creation. Now correct me if I'm wrong, but since when do those four fringe astronomers speak for God?

Those 'fringe' astronomers are correct and the Orwellians who dominate the 'scientific community' are in error.

Notice that up to now, I have said almost nothing about being a YEC or not. I have not put in a single word of defense for evolution or an old cosmos, other than asking you to be a bit more grounded with your attack on them. I really have little interest in trying to dissuade you from your beliefs. I just hope that you'll hold them with a bit more tact and thought than you appear to now, and I'm hoping that you'll learn a little about the critical thinking that goes into modern science - I'm sure that both you and your students will benefit greatly from it.

You know, you haven't said a single thing about why redshift quantization would prove anything about the Bible at all.

Then let me explain what should be obvious. The red shift quanitization reveals an orderly universe...not one that is randomly thrown out like so many marbles by children in a marble game. Is that difficult to understand?

Why can't a young universe have completely arbitrarily distributed redshifts? And why can't an old universe have quantized redshifts? No author of any book in the Bible even knew about redshifts, let alone wrote about them. Does it make any sense whatsoever for you to make quantized redshifts such a big deal that the moment someone tries to prove you wrong on them, you call that person someone who rejects the Lord's words?

I haven't the faintest clue what God said about redshifts, frankly, but I do know what He said about using His name in vain, laying false accusations, and submitting to one another in love. As someone who "doesn't reject God's words" I'm sure you know those passages better than I do.

I think I do. I made no false accusations.

Or at least, I hope you do.

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