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To: Messianic Jews Net
Sorry, Patrick, this might need to be dropped as a link; it looked like a less professional description of the supernova, and the primary error which it made has already been shown in 121 and 393. The most telling point is that the same author also passably describes this refuting argument, then mutters his own ignorance, "Does this sound confusing? If it doesn't then you are ahead of me! I'm still trying to put the pieces together!"

I disagree, I regard the attempt to eliminate the decay rate argument by postulating that decay may have occurred faster by exactly the same proportion as light has got slower (#121 and #393, I think) deeply unconvincing. Decay rate is not an isolated phenomenon, it is dependent on other universal constants and their application to physical laws. When we look into the distant past we don't see a universe that apparently has different physical laws to our own so why make up this complex stuff in order to fit bronze-age creation myths? Others have posted numerous physical difficulties with the variable constants ideas proposed.

When someone has come up with a coherent cosmology that shows how all the constants have varied over time, and performed some experiments that would falsify that hypothetical cosmology, and they've shown how it explains current observations better than the simple current paradigm of "constant constants" then VSL might have something to say. Until then VSL is just tinfoil-hat-crankery. Further, the decay-rate argument is not the only one against VSL provided in that SN1987A link. If you want to discredit that link you need to dispose of its other arguments too.

415 posted on 02/19/2005 1:28:31 AM PST by Thatcherite (Conservative and Biblical Literalist are not synonymous)
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To: Thatcherite
All the posted physical difficulties I saw are addressed above. If it were simply that radioactive decay rate "may have exactly matched" lightspeed decay rate by chance, that would be a deus ex machina. Instead, the model predicts that they "do exactly match" because they mathematically cancel. Half-lives decrease in the same proportion c increases because they are a function of the rate at which the nuclei are moving; so the increase in emitted particles is precisely matched by the decrease in their speed before we observe them.

I'm unlikely to spend more time on SN1987A unless you wish to summarize the arguments you think telling.

We already have the coherent cosmology, falsifiable experiments, and predictive power. Please back up your dismissive comments with specific arguments. Otherwise you will be perceived as serving the silicon-age creation myth of the god whose physical laws are exactly the ones we understand. The laws have never changed with any scientific growth, only our improved explanation of them.

Please, let's avoid being the scoffers prophesied by Peter who say, "Where is this 'coming' he promised? Ever since our fathers died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation." Every line lambastes the uniformitarian assumption and its results (2 Pet. 3:3-10).

419 posted on 02/19/2005 4:31:35 AM PST by Messianic Jews Net
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