tuppence wrote:I don't have the time this afternoon for as detailed a response as I would like, but a few notes:
1. Speciation/variation happens quickly when part of a population is isolated. That is the entire bit of evidence that we have seen that evolution can claim! You and I are not evolutionists, but their demonstration of fast speciation -- within a generation or two, is a very good clue regarding what would have happened after the great migrations sparked by the Babel catastrophe. Animal breeding today is simply a speeded up process of what happens when that isolation occurs. This is not an argument that a good many domestic dogs could live in the wild. Most couldn't. But that was not the point. The point was that selective breeding can produce very rapid changes. When small populations get isolated, exactly the same thing happens. Thus Indian and African elephants are different. Wild horses in Russia are different from the American mustangs. And so it goes. If you get a couple of decent texts on population genetics you will have plenty of examples. Check with someone who knows this subject about the guppies in one of the Caribberan islands or about the Bahama (I think it was) lizards. These are both rather famous examples in pop. gen. Even Darwin's finches are good examples, as pretty significant changes in size and beak configuration take place in a couple of generations, depending on rainfall, and thus the hardness of the seeds that must be eaten. There have been a couple of studies on this and one book written.
I am not at all convinced that speciation through natural selection is the explanation for darwins finches. There is no convincing evidence of this other than the naturalists saying "we don't believe in special creation hence this is the only way". In addition, each example you gave required significantly more than one or two generations of population isolotion before interbreeding would not result in viable offspring, or morphology made any observable changes. I am not sure how your examples support your position.
from astronomer MEJ Gheury de Bray – 1931. in Nature – April 4th
“If the velocity of light is constant, how is it that, INVARIABLY, new determinations give values which are lower than the last one obtained…There are twenty-two coincidences in favour of a decrease of the velocity of light, while there is not a single one against it.”
In 1941, physicist R. T. Birge, the physicist from UCB who kept track of the values of all atomic constants spoke of c values obtained by a variety of methods since the mid 1800’s acknowledged in the journal Reports on Progress in Physics that:
“These older results are entirely consistent among themselves, but their average is nearly 100 km/s greater than that given by the eight more recent results.”
Then something strange happened in August 1941. Birge wrote an article on atomic constants which had in its title “with special reference to the speed of light.” The introductory paragraph read, in part::
“This article is being written upon request, and at this time upon request…Any belief in a change in the physical constants of nature is contrary to the spirit of science.” I don't have the exact reference for this one without going into a couple of files looking for it, but it has been posted on this forum before, so someone else might be able to dig it up fast.
At any rate, that shut down the discussion officially. However, in 1999, Physics Review D (January) published two articles on the possible variation in the speed of light. And the subject has taken off again. The data cannot be avoided. It doesn't matter if someone tries to make excuses for it or ignores it, it is still there. The speed of light has not been constant historically.
Setterfield is hardly a credible source and he clearly misunderstood that "correction factor" in Olaus Romers work as evidence for lights velocity to have decreased by 3% since 1675. In fact there have been many recent (post 1990) studies that show that if Romer had obtained more precise data for one part of his calculation, the speed of light (c) would have agreed with modern physics to within .5%. (Netterfield, Miller, A.T. Lee, Pryke, and other researchers all from 1999 to 2002 have published articles dispelling the idea that the velocity has changed).
In addition, the fine structue constant is the same in galaxies 11-12 billion light years away to the degree of 1 in 100,000, hence the speed of light has been constant over that period of time (according to C.L Bennett et al., in press (astroph.0302207); Alessandro Melchiorri et al., pp.L1-L3;alessandro Melchiorri and Carolina J. Odman, "Current Contraints on Cosmological Parameters from Microwave Background Anisotropies," Physical Review D 67 (2003): id 081302).
As you can see this is a study done in 2003. JC Mather is another researcher that has published studies post 2000 that emphatically state the constancy of the speed of light.
In addition, life chemistry would be screwed up if the speed changed even a slight bit. Protein synthesis using copper and vanadium require the relativistic dilation factor ({1 - v2/c2}to the -.5}) the v2 and c2 are supposted to be superscripted in this formula, I am sure you know, but I don't know how to type them that way on here. You can see that the 'c squared' would dramatically differ and alter the production of these proteins that are essential for the central nervous system and bone developement. Any change in C would drastically effect this.
Plancks constant (relation of the energy of a photon to its frequency) would also dramatically change with any even slight change in the speed of light. If this were so, star formation would be severely altered and in fact, no star greater than .8 solar mass or less than 1.4 solar mass would exist. This as you must know, totally screws up element production necessary for life.
You must adhere to a 'god of the gaps' to explain all the changes to life or its impossibility if the speed of light were to be significantly different at any time in our history.
As far as the ice caps go, and the reefs, I can only say right now that there have been articles on both in the past ten years which question the standard explanations. We are currently finding out much more about coral reefs, for instance, and realizing some of what we thought we knew was wrong. Again, I don't have the time to dig up the references right now, and for that I apologize. But, as an ex-evolutionist, then old-earther, and now young-earther, I think you will find that as we find out more and more, the data point rather strongly toward a very young universe.
I have read most of them, and find the explanations lacking. Again, poor science is at the root of the explanations I have read. I respect your position Tuppence, but I totally disagree on the age of the universe issue. I think the more we see, the more evidence for the ancient age of the universe, and the awesome creativity of God, whos attention to detail is unfathomable!
Recent studies of the Vostok Ice core in Antarctica (Petit) are dated 420,00years in age. Maybe not billions, but sure blows the 6-10K year old earth theory all to bits.