Creationists & ID'ers: Why not a Mature Universe?

Discussion in 'Religion Archives' started by Dinosaur, Mar 14, 2007.

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  1. Dinosaur Rational Skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    I wonder how those who believe in Intelligent Design and/or a recent creation view the concept of a Mature Universe.

    Some time ago, I read an essay about god creating a so-called Mature Universe. From the point of view of an atheist, the concept seems like a much better view than the typical view of those who believe in a creation thousands instead of billions of years ago. The basic idea is as follows.
    • Consider a tree in the Garden of Eden created some time during the first six days. The tree might appear to be 100-200 years old, even it had only existed for a few days. If the tree were cut down and the stump polished, I would expect to see 100-200 growth rings.

    • A botanist would mistakenly view the rings as proof that the tree was over 100 years old, even though it had been very recently created.

    • The fossil record cited as the basis for belief in evolution could have been created during the first six days (perhaps 6000 to 20,000 years ago).

    • Similarly, all geological and astronomical evidence indicating a universe billions of years old could have been created only thousands of years ago. Consider light from Quasar seeming to have traveled for billions of years. The Quasar and the light (already almost finished its journey to Earth) could have been created only thousands of years ago.

    • If god wanted to create a vast universe far larger than our solar system, why would he create such a universe appearing as it would if it had been created recently? If he did create it exactly as it would be if created recently, no human alive today would see light from distant stars. If he created stars millions or billions of light years from Earth, why would he not allow them to visible sooner than the millions or billions of years required for the light to travel to Earth?
    The above seems like a more credible position than arguments refuting what appears to be evidence for a universe billions of years old.

    The above view does not require explaining why dinosaur fossils seem to predate the existence of humans. Such a view need not try to refute evolution or any other scientific view to support the concept of a recent creation of humans and the universe as currently observed by scientists.
     
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  3. Saquist Banned Banned

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    There are certain established religions that understand that the universe and the Earth Displays signs of a creation that took longer that 6,000 year or 6 days.

    ID does not propose that the Earth was created in 6 days or 6,000 years.
    Intrestingly The bible agrees with it. Those who bother to read there bible might have discovered other refrences to these days...

    Further study reveals the Idea that the Earth was created in six days is proposterous to how God enacts his creation. His methods are generally slow inrespects to human time frame and never sees the need to expedite such thing as creation or even the coming of his kingom.

    Light is the biggest clue that the universe is much much older than 6,000 years or six days... We can see into the night sky LIGHT that has taken 15 billion light years to reach our planet..

    This combine with bible reasoning reveals that the Earth and the universe are much older than young earth scientist and creations believe to be true..
     
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  5. IceAgeCivilizations Banned Banned

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    Gravitational time dilation during the early expansion of matter explains the apparent great age of the distant stars.
     
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  7. Nickelodeon Banned Banned

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    Whats to stop you from saying the Universe was created 5 minutes ago with "apparent" history created before that?
     
  8. IceAgeCivilizations Banned Banned

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    Nothing, but don't worry.
     
  9. Saquist Banned Banned

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    This would be deceptive...
    What's to say it wasn't? The bible says quite implicitly that God can not lie.
    I chose to take him at his word. Thus deception is beyond his ability.

    God has given us a history that is real and he never implies that it isn't.
     
  10. nova900 more spirituality,less dogma Registered Senior Member

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    More young earth nonsense.
    If you are referring to Humphreys' work on trying to prove the young universe model,it's a joke. He has no credibility in the field of astronomy and none of these young universe scientists has ever submitted a scientific paper to be seriously studied.


    Some points:
    Time dilation effects on the local universe
    In a bounded universe, creationists claim that unspecified relativistic effects might cause time to pass more slowly near the center than at its periphery. If the Earth were near the center (see modern geocentricity), then far-away objects might indeed be billions of years old, while the earth would be only thousands of years old, even if created at the same time. The author of this idea is creationist physicist Russell Humphreys. In recent years, he has argued that such a universe could have arisen from a white hole rather than from a Big Bang.

    This cosmology has been criticised on several grounds:

    A bounded universe would also have observable topological effects which are not observed. The observations currently point to a universe that is topologically constrained to be unbounded on observable scales.

    The effect of gravitational time dilation should be observable if Humphreys is correct. However, we observe (from the periods of Cepheid variable stars, from orbital rates of binary stars, from supernova extinction rates, from light frequencies, etc.) that such time dilation does not exist. There is some time dilation corresponding with Hubble's law (further objects have greater redshifts), but this can be attributed to the well-understood expansion of the universe, and it is not nearly extreme enough to fit more than 10 billion years into less than 10,000.

    Humphreys tries to use clocks in the earth's frame of reference although the cosmos is much older than the earth. The heavy elements in the Sun and rest of the solar system show that our sun is at least a second generation star. Thus, prior to the formation of our solar system, at least a generation of stars must have been born and died and the gases from the resulting novas must have then been have gathered into new star systems. This process would take billions of years and is not accounted for in Humphreys' work. Nor does Humphrey's model account for the radioisotopic dates of rocks. [1]
    Humphreys' idea assumes that the earth is in a huge gravity well. The evidence contradicts this assumption. If the earth were in such a gravity well, light from distant galaxies should be blueshifted. Instead, it is redshifted.

    The idea also assumes the existence of an edge to the universe. Observations of the topology of the universe see evidence for no physical edge. In order for Humphreys to be correct, the observed expansion of the universe would have to be explained as being due to an effect that was not found in Friedmann cosmology. The unexplored cosmological implications, the lack of explanations for cosmological observations, and the lack of supporting observations relegate Humphrey's explanation to little better than a falsified hypothesis.

    Humphreys' cosmology is impossible if one sticks to the laws of physics as we know them. This weakness Humphreys readily acknowledges, although to him it is a strength. Humphreys refers to Isaiah 40:22, Who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them out like a tent to Dwell in. To Humphreys, this is an indication that God side-stepped the laws of physics, to drag spacetime out of its own black hole and force the universe to expand, in what Humphreys calls a "white hole cosmology". The need for divine intervention comes about because Humphrey's assumes a bounded universe with a distinct center, both of which are aspects absent from standard cosmology.

    These ideas attempt to fit the same cosmological data that the Big Bang theory explains, but fail to do so in the existence of detailed measurements of the cosmic microwave background, the observed abundance of light elements, and the large scale structure observations of the means by which galaxies and clusters of galaxies are organized. Modifications to the idea try to sidestep the issue by attempting to answer the question of how light from distant stars millions of light years away could be visible from Earth if the universe is only 6,000 years old. They offer no scientific test of their proposed solutions.
     
  11. Saquist Banned Banned

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    Theories are good...I'm sure that has some validity but I work in the real world. More often than not there are real world answers to even the most complex riddles.

    However some would rather entertain these theories than alter their perception.
     
  12. IceAgeCivilizations Banned Banned

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    I work in the real world too, and the geological evidence is overwhelming that the Earth suffered the Deluge, just look at the geologic column, sedimentary layers like that are not forming today, right?
     
  13. nova900 more spirituality,less dogma Registered Senior Member

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    Nope! As Colonel sherm potter on M*A*S*H would have said---Bullcookies!

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    Counterpoints: Wikepedia


    [edit] Counterpoints

    [edit] Water source
    If the flood were a global flood, a source of water would need to be found which could provide such a deluge. Flood geology supporters have proposed several sources at different times: (1) a vapor canopy in the upper atmosphere; (2) a comet strike; (3) the Earth's crust was much flatter, requiring less water in order to cover the face of the planet; and (4), subterranean water sources. [14]


    [edit] Vapor canopy
    The proposed vapor canopy suggested a layer of water vapor in the upper atmosphere which, triggered by a meteoroid, caused a giant rain shower and so contributed to the flood. However, such a volume of water held suspended in the atmosphere would give rise to an atmospheric pressure in the order of nine atmospheres. The atmospheric temperature would also have to be extremely high to prevent the saturated atmosphere from condensing. For a more thorough discussion, see: [15]. The vapor canopy model has lost favour and is no longer accepted by most creationist scientists.


    [edit] Comet strike
    Had the Earth been struck by a comet providing enough water for a great deluge, gravitational heating would have boiled the water and nothing would have survived; any unprotected life on the surface would have been poached.


    [edit] Subterranean water deposits
    Water is less dense than rock; therefore, mainstream scientists claim, it would be forced to the surface long before the date of the flood. They add that at any significant depth beneath the surface of the Earth, the water would have been boiled, causing giant steam plumes which would be further heated by falling back to earth.


    [edit] Crust transformation
    Some flood geology supporters have proposed that the Earth's surface was much flatter in the past, thus allowing a much smaller volume of water to cover the planet. However, in order for the Earth's crust to reach its present form from such a flat stage over the past four thousand years, geologists point out, a tremendous amount of work would be required by a mechanism unstated by creationists. They point out that heating caused by the raising of the mountains and the lowering of the sea in about 150 days would be enough to raise oceanic temperatures on the order of 10 degrees Celsius (18 degrees Fahrenheit).


    [edit] Geological evidence

    The Rocky Mountains; mainstream geologists do not believe the Rockies share erosion traits consistent with a great flood - erosion would be expected equal to the Appalachian Mountains, shown at left.
    The Appalachian Mountains show an immense level of erosion. Geologists assert that if a flood had occurred, similar erosion should be found in the Rocky Mountains, shown at right.Geologists claim that the flood, had it occurred, should also have produced large-scale effects spread throughout the entire world. Erosion should be evenly distributed, yet the levels of erosion in, for example, the Appalachians and the Rocky Mountains differ significantly. [16] However, different regions of the Flood need not have the same erosional intensities, because that depends on depth and gradient as well as rock hardness.


    [edit] Archaeological evidence
    Archaeology proves to be a potent source of evidence. Flood geology claims that the current sedimentary layers were produced by liquefaction, and that objects caught in the flood (including living creatures) were sorted by mass and location at the time when the flood engulfed them. However, archaeologists state that if this sorting actually took place, heavy, dense objects (such as human artifacts) would be expected to sink to the bottom. In actuality, man-made artifacts are very close to the top of the sedimentary layers.

    Furthermore, mainstream archaeologists claim that a number of ancient civilizations (such as those of Australia, Egypt and Mesopotamia), are older than the alleged date of the Flood, and that the flood would have destroyed much of the evidence of these civilisations and deeply buried the rest. Creationists don't dispute the latter point - they reject the dates of those civilisations. Archaeologists claim that these methods of dating have been verified time and time again (see carbon dating). They also point out that carbon dating methods are entirely independent of the detailed records kept by those civilizations. See Mesopotamia and History of Egypt.


    [edit] Paleontological evidence
    If fossilization took place extremely quickly during the Flood, then — paleontologists assert — fossilized remains should be far more numerous and widespread than is actually seen. Furthermore, if creatures were differentiated by body size and density, then massive dinosaurs such as Diplodocus and Brachiosaurus should be found near the top sediments, rather than in sediments containing all the other Jurassic dinosaurs.

    Additionally, paleontologists note that if all the fossilized animals were killed in the flood, and the flood is responsible for fossilization, then the average density of vertebrates was an abnormally high number, close to 2100 creatures per acre, judging from fossil beds found worldwide.


    [edit] Grass evidence
    One example of fossil distribution that is hard to explain for flood geology is the distribution of grass. Grass leaves, grass seeds and grass pollen are found only in the upper layers of the geological column. The conventional explanation is the relatively recent evolution of grasses. Since wet grass readily sinks, it is unlikely that natural sorting would lead to the observed distribution of plant fossils in the geological column.


    [edit] Philosophical objections
    The scientific community objects to Flood Geology, and Creationism in general, on philosophical grounds as well as scientific ones. Perhaps the most fervent objection is grounded in Occam's Razor. Occam's razor is a principle of parsimony formulated so as to "slice out" redundant assumptions from scientific theories: "It is vain to do with more what can be done with less." Therefore, say scientists, because mainstream science can comprehensively describe the relevant data, flood geology, which inherently requires on God, is redundant because of its underlying assumption of divine intervention. See here for a more thorough discussion.

    Scientists also object to Flood Geology on methodological grounds: they point out that flood geology supporters approach geology with the initial purpose of finding evidence for a worldwide flood, rather than looking at the evidence and then formulating a conclusion. To cement this point, they note that the history of geology recounts that geologists had looked at the evidence for a worldwide flood in the century before Darwin, and found it lacking, dismissing it in favor of uniformitarian models. [17]

    As a result of these objections, the scientific community considers Flood Geology and Creationism a form of religiously-based pseudoscience
     
  14. Dinosaur Rational Skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    When I started this thread, I had little doubt that the view would not be acceptable to those who do not believe in ID or a recent creation.

    I was wondering about the view of those who beleive in ID and/or a recent creation. Apparently, those have no opinion on the concept of the creation of a Mature Universe.

    BTW: I am an atheist who tends to accept the mainstream scientific view and do not accept the mature Universe concept. However, I do not consider the standard anti-ID & anti-creationist arguments to be valid for purposes of refuting the Mature Universe view.
     
  15. cato less hate, more science Registered Senior Member

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    want a valid argument? there is really only one:

    Occam's razor says that we should accept the simplest theory that explains a phenomenon. ID (Mature Universe or any other form) is not that theory.

    you could counter by questioning the validity of Occam's Razor, but I will save you the trouble by saying that you would then be in the realm of existentialism, and it would be just as valid to say that the earth rests atop an infinite stack of turtles, and those turtles happen to have magic that makes us think that we live in the universe that we observe (like Plato's allegory of the cave). thus we should follow what the evidence tells us.
     
  16. IceAgeCivilizations Banned Banned

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    Nova900, know that the thickness of the Earth's crust is like that of the skin on an apple, so crustal stability is plainly quite tenuous, and tiny ridges and in the skin are the mountain ranges, rather trivial in the big scheme of things.

    Vertical displacements of a matter of a few kilometers is nothing compared to the areal extent of the Earth's crust.
     
  17. nova900 more spirituality,less dogma Registered Senior Member

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    If you have some new information to support the worldwide flood ,the scientific community is waiting.
    Otherwise.....


    "As a result of these objections, the scientific community considers Flood Geology and Creationism a form of religiously-based pseudoscience"

    Get over it man...the flood story is just a myth!
     
  18. IceAgeCivilizations Banned Banned

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    Not in your wildest dreams!

    It's a geologically verifiable event which spawned hundreds of global Deluge legends from seemingly disparate people groups.
     
  19. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    That seems to be a contradiction. Seemingly disparate groups could not have known wether their local floods were really global ones.
     
  20. SnakeLord snakeystew.com Valued Senior Member

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    A) It's not 'geologically verifiable'. Kindly stop being dishonest, (to yourself if no-one else)

    B) The reason for different cultures having flood stories is because.. well... it floods in more than one place on the planet. If you were to look back over the last few years alone you'll find many different regions on earth that have suffered floods, hell even the South of England did. If the newspapers report a flood in England and a flood in India it doesn't mean the two are part of the same flood. Get it?
     
  21. nova900 more spirituality,less dogma Registered Senior Member

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    Geologically verifiable??

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    If so, then please inform the scientific community with your evidence.
    We will let them decide!
     
  22. IceAgeCivilizations Banned Banned

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    No, the reason is that they dispersed from the Middle East by sea and overland, when the sea level was lower during the Ice Age.
     
  23. IceAgeCivilizations Banned Banned

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    Almost all geologists admit that the geologic column was catastrophically accumulated, they say through a series of catastrophes, but the extent and grading of the beds, one into another, belies that it was a series, but was only one catastrophe.
     
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