Intelligent Design Is Creationism in a Cheap Tuxedo

anyone who thinks evolution lends credence to atheism is an idiot. I don't really care what an idiot thinks anyway.

Oh, yeah, I run into these creationist atheists all the time. Nothing unusual at all.

By the way, it would behoove you to learn a manner or two.

Abagado: > Evolution IS a Religion!

Supercat: > "There exists more biodiversity today than could possibly have fit in Noah's Ark. How can this fact be reconciled with the Genesis story of the Flood, unless some of the diversity of life we see today developed after the flood?"

Where is the proof of the fact you assert?

huh?

Really. Then I suppose you haven't read my post about the variability of the speed of light. I believe that you don't want to, and that if put in front of your eyes with your eyelids propped open with toothpicks, you'd conclude it was all a delusion.

In October 1983 the speed of light, c, was declared a universal constant of nature defined as 299,792.458 Km/s and as such is now used in the definition of the meter. However, in a recent article on this subject, Wilkie² points out that ëmany scientists have speculated that the speed of light might be changing over the lifetime of the universeí and concludes that ëit is still possible that the speed of light might vary on a cosmic timescale.í Van Flandern1 agrees. He states that ëAssumptions such as the constancy of the velocity of light ... may be true in only one set of units (atomic or dynamical), but not the other.í

Historically, the literature, particularly from the 1920's to the 1940's, amplifies this conclusion and indicates that if c is varying it is doing so in dynamical units, not atomic. Thus, the values for c obtained by Michelson alone were as follows in Table A (with full details in Table 5).

DATE VALUE OF C (km/s)
1879.5 299,910 ±50
1882.8 299,853 ±60
1924.6 299,802 ±30
1926.5 299,798 ±15
These results are not typical of a normal distribution about today's fixed value. However, the 1882.8 result is confirmed by the values from two other experiments. One by Newcomb in 1882.7 yielded a c value of 299,860 ±30 Km/s, while Nyren using another method in 1883 obtained a definitive value of 299,850 ±90 Km/s (see discussion below for details). In other words, Michelson's 1882.8 result was completely consistent with the other values obtained that year. The mean of these three values (299,854 Km/s) lies above today's value by 61.8 Km/s, though the standard deviation of these three values is only ±5 Km/s. The quoted probable errors thus seem to be conservative.

Assuming no c variation, the least squares mean for all these data show they are distributed about a point 53 Km/s above today's value. The mean error is ±45.8 Km/s, which places today's value beyond its lower limit. If the students t-distribution is applied to these data, the hypothesis that c has been constant at its present value from 1879.5 to 1926.5 can be rejected with a confidence interval of 98.2%. One would expect that other results from this type of experiment would lie below today's value by a similar amount to restore the normal distribution. This is not observed.

Assuming, then, that the variation is real, it represents a measured decay of 112 Km/s in 47 years. A linear, least squares fit to these data gives a drop of 1.62 Km/s per year. The resulting correlation coefficient r = -0.879, and this decay correlation is significant at the 98.9% confidence level from the t-statistic. This is not an isolated instance: similar trends occur with all methods of c measurement, individually and collectively, involving 163 data points. Some are illustrated in Figures I and II. Despite a preference for the constancy of atomic quantities, Dorsey3 did concede that 'As is well known to those acquainted with the several determinations of the velocity of light, the definitive values successively reported...have, in general, decreased monotonously from Cornu's 300.4 megameters per second in 1874 to Anderson's 299.776 in 1940...' In fact, even Dorsey's reworking of the original data left c values generally above those currently prevailing.

The continuing drop in the measured value of c with each new determination elicited further remarks on the topic until the mid 1940's. By then the wealth of comment can be gauged by the representative sample in the final reference (360) given below. The listing includes 18 from Nature alone. A variety of possible decay curves for c was espoused, and the resulting experiments invalidated some proposals. The effects of c variation on some other quantities were discussed, and a number of scenarios eliminated by experiment.

It can be shown that however things are dated, that if c is not constant, then the date is not either.

So who wants to discuss Maxwell's Equations?

Oh, I know you guys are all worried about the ramifications of the Roemer, Bradley, Whittaker/Kulikov and toothed wheel experiments. I could go on forever, but I'm sure that would bore most evolutionists. I'm sure that evolutionistst are scientists. That's why I include the following table concerning measured light-speed. I'm certain that non-creationists can explaing the results:

REFINED LIST OF C DATA

NO. DATE OBSERVER METHOD VALUE OF C (Km/s)

1 1740 Bradley Aberration 300,650
2 1783 Lindenau Aberration 300,460 ±160
3 1843 Struve Aberration 300,020 ±160
4 1861 Glasenapp Jupiter Satellite 300,050
5 1874.8 Cornu (Helmert) Toothed Wheel 299,990 ±200
6 1874.8 Cornu (Dorsey) Toothed Wheel 299,900 ±200
7 1876.5 Harvard Observat. Jupiter Satellite 299,921 ±13 8 1879.5 Michelson Rotating Mirror 299,910 ±50
9 1882.7 Newcomb Rotating Mirror 299,860 ±30
10 1882.8 Michelson Rotating Mirror 299,853 ±60
11 1883 Nyren Aberration 299,850 ±90
12 1900.4 Perrotin Toothed Wheel 299,900 ±80
13 1902.4 Perrotin Toothed Wheel 299,860 ±80
14 1902.4 Perrotin/Prim Toothed Wheel 299,901 ±84
15 1906.0 Rosa and Dorsey Electromag. Units 299,803 ±30
16 1923 Mercier Waves on Wires 299,795 ±30
17 1924.6 Michelson Polygonal Mirror 299,802 ±30
18 1926.5 Michelson Polygonal Mirror 299,798 ±15
19 1928.0 Mittelstaedt Kerr Cell 299,786 ±10
20 1932.5 Pease/Pearson Polygonal Mirror 299,774 ±10
21 1936.8 Anderson Kerr Cell 299,771 ±10
22 1937.0 Huttel Kerr Cell 299,771 ±10
23 1940.0 Anderson Kerr Cell 299,776 ±10
24 1947 Essen,Gordon-Smith Cavity Resonator 299,798 ±3
25 1947 Essen,Gordon-Smith Cavity Resonator 299,792 ±3
26 1949 Aslakson Radar 299,792.4 ±2.4
27 1949 Bergstrand Geodimeter 299,796 ±2
28 1950 Essen Cavity Resonator 299,792.5 ±1
29 1950 Hansen and Bol Cavity Resonator 299,794.3 ±1.2
30 1950 Bergstrand Geodimeter 299,793.1 ±0.26
31 1951 Bergstrand Geodimeter 299,793.1 ±0.4
32 1951 Aslakson Radar 299,794.2 ±1.4
33 1951 Froome Radio Interferom. 299,792.6 ±0.7
34 1953 Bergstrand Geodimeter 299,792.85 ±0.16
35 1954 Froome Radio Interferom. 299,792.75 ±0.3
36 1954 Florman Radio Interferom. 299,795.1 ±3.1
37 1955 Scholdstrom Geodimeter 299,792.4 ±0.4
38 1955 Plyler et. al. Spectral Lines 299,792 ±6
39 1956 Wadley Tellurometer 299,792.9 ±2.0
40 1956 Wadley Tellurometer 299,792.7 ±2.0
41 1956 Rank et. al. Spectral Lines 299,791.9 ±2
42 1956 Edge Geodimeter 299,792.4 ±0.11
43 1956 Edge Geodimeter 299,792.2 ±0.13
44 1957 Wadley Tellurometer 299,792.6 ±1.2
45 1958 Froome Radio Interferom. 299,792.5 ±0.1
46 1960 Kolibayev Geodimeter 299,792.6 ±0.06
47 1966 Karolus Modulated Light 299,792.44 ±0.2
48 1967 Simkin et. al. Microwave Interf. 299,792.56 ±0.11
49 1967 Grosse Geodimeter 299,792.50 ±0.05
50 1972 Bay,Luther,White Laser 299,792.462 ±0.018
51 1972 NBS (Boulder) Laser 299,792.460 ±0.006
52 1973 Evenson et. al. Laser 299,792.4574 ±0.0011
53 1973 NRC, NBS Laser 299,792.458 ±0.002
54 1974 Blaney et. al. Laser 299,792.4590 ±0.0008
55 1978 Woods et. al. Laser 299,792.4588 ±0.0002
56 1979 Baird et. al. Laser 299,792.4581 ±0.0019
57 1983 NBS (US) Laser 299,792.4586 ±0.0003
Lets not discuss how everthing came from nothing. Lets not discuss the issue of chirality, even so that's a really interesting issue in my mind (and quite impossible short of a miracle). Lets discuss how varying light-speed might affects how evolutionists view their world.

Is anybody interested in discussing the physics of light speed variability and the affect of light speed on dating of things presumed to be billions of years old, or will this devolve into a flame war?

exactly what I was thinking at the moment.

I was being sarcastic. You made a rather ridiculous statement in saying that evolutionism does not in any way support atheism. I think if you polled most atheists, you'd find that they believe quite fervently in evolution. I highly doubt you'd find too many ID advocates among them. Just a guess, though.

How specifically does evolution in any way lend credence to atheism? I'm afraid you'd better think long and hard about this before you answer, and next time think before you decide something is 'ridiculous'.

Just let me know when you come across an atheist who believes in ID.