Personally, would you prefer the theory to be right or wrong, and what would you do and believe (particularly about the earth's age) if the evidence were conclusive in either case? Have we established sufficient benefit of doubt to establish that there might be another reason for high radiometric dates? Thank you!This theory is never going to be wrong until Setterfield is dead. He has been reissuing it every 3-6 years since 1981 to make it "right."
It is very hard, increasingly so through the years, to understand what it is even saying, much less to model with it. It is important to Setterfield and perhaps to you that it never be wrong. If it cannot be right, it must at least establish some reasonable doubt that mainstream assumptions of continuity in basic processes of physics are right.
A defense attorney clawing desperately for reasonable doubt can start to invent some pretty silly stories. "My client could have a twin brother with the same DNA! Even my client wouldn't know it if his mother decided not to tell him. The prosecution has not proved otherwise. Someone else could have driven my client's car into that mud to leave those tire tracks. The prosecution has not proved otherwise. A thief could have stolen the tires, put them on his car, committed the murder, and then put the tires back on my client's car to frame him! The prosecution has not proved otherwise. That 12-year-old girl might have attacked my client! The prosecution has not addressed this possibility at all."
There's a stream of increasingly silly stories coming out of cDK. The answer is Occam's Razor.
The short version is that your response to opacity, when admittedly hasty simplifying statements and light remarks are removed, mostly just restates that excess energy has always been your concern. You have not found in my explanation a sufficient phenomenological narrative to explain why the math works and the excess energy is not a problem. As we both study this, I think we will come up with that explanation together.
But more troubling and as I suspected, you are not answering what you would do if suddenly the evidence appeared to you to conclusively support Setterfield. Instead you compare him to a desperate attorney. For me, before reading Setterfield, I handled old-young-earth questions saying, "I believe young earth, but recognize it is against old earth evidence, so will respect the views of the science leadership establishment as worthy of investigation." After Setterfield (and multiple confirmation by scientists before and after 1987, and my own independent analysis), I can argue, "I believe evidence adduced for old earth actually supports a young earth." However, if Setterfield should fail on a little thing like opacity, I will be happy to concede to the prior position and admit that science seems to falsify the Setterfield version of a young earth, even though I still believe in it for religious and minority-scientific reasons. Are you able to do the same and admit reasonable doubt if the explanations should warrant?
You say we "must at least establish some reasonable doubt that mainstream assumptions of continuity in basic processes of physics are right." That is, you don't reasonably doubt the mainstream yet. As I said, usually statistical significance is accepted as reasonable doubt. Usually greater explanatory power is accepted as reasonable doubt. I forgot to mention Montgomery 1998 added explanatory power by naming three more puzzles of physics answered by VSL: supernova remnants, helium diffusion in zircon, and spiral preservation in galaxies. Perhaps you would like to move to philosophy of science, and establish a standard which you would submit to as proving a given theory. Let's both continue studying and see what enlightenment comes.