Re: [asa] Creation Museum report

Ted,

First of all, could I have your permission to cross-post your excellent
report to another discussion list I'm involved with on Facebook? The
discussion group is called "Theistic Evolutionists Sanctuary" and is mostly
peopled by TE's but there is an extremely irritating creationist who is
pumping his propaganda and refusing to listen to peoples' arguments against
him?

Secondly, on this:

> I also learned that AIG, at least, is now admitting the legitimacy of the
> vast distances in interstellar and intergalactic space--ie, they don't
> blink
> an eye about saying that a certain astronomical feature is much farther
> than
> 6,000 light years away. This would have shocked many in the earlier
> generation of creationists. How to account for this, which strongly
> implies
> that those objects are vastly older than a few thousand years? A lot of
> handwaving referenced in a few words during the technically impressive
> planetarium presentation. Clearly, AIG is now committed unequivocally to
> Russell Humphrey's "white hole" theory (if I can call it a
> theory). Hardly
> anyone in their target audience is going to realize this, of course; nor
> will they realize most of the other things I saw.
>

I take it by the "white hole theory" you mean the theories expounded in
Russel Humphreys's book "Starlight and Time"? I happen to know a little
about this and it's disappointing and shocking to see they are still pushing
this, as the theory has been completely disproven by another YEC who happens
to be an ex-colleague of mine.

My former colleague is an amateur astronomer, and pretty respectable
scientist, who has his own hand built telescope, and has published reputable
observational work in the secular literature on variable stars. As well as
being an observational astronomer, he is also a very talented theoretician
who did post-doctoral work in applied maths at Cambridge University. I'd
prefer not to reveal his name as this is a sensitive issue for him, but I
know he is very upset that his work has been completely ignored by the YEC
community. He still adheres to YEC ideology, but, exceptionally for a YEC,
has admitted to me that there is ABSOLUTELY NO current solution to the
"distant starlight" problem. As he is a pretty good astronomer, I'm
inclined to take his word for it.

Shortly after Humphreys's book came out, he noticed a simple flaw in the
reasoning - from the equations for the "look-back" time to various stars, it
was apparent that the theories could account for being able to see
extremely distant stars (of the order of billions of light years), by the
time-dilation effect of an expanding universe - whereby billions of years
could elapse "out there" during a single day (day 4) of creation week on
earth. However, the theory equally clearly broke down for stars and
galaxies between 6,000 LY and 2 billion LY, because the general relativity
equations would indicate that light in this region would not have reached us
yet. Thus we should not be able to see the Andromeda galaxy (2.2 million
LY).

He wrote a letter that got published in the AiG "Creation ex Nihilo"
Technical Journal explaining all this. The upshot of this was that Russ
Humphreys contacted him and said that he knew that this was a deficiency in
the theory, but perhaps it could be fixed by looking at possible cosmologies
where different constants were used (I think principally the cosmological
constant). Humphreys provided him with some quite extensive support, namely
in translating a German paper from 1921 by Schwartzschild that described the
different metrics required in the GR equations that would be examined.

My colleague performed extensive mathematical analysis of the equations for
a number of different values of the cosmological constant, each of which
required radical changes to the very complex maths. As it happens, I helped
him to typeset the 160 or so very complex equations in his paper, using
LaTeX, the typesetting system I was using for my own PhD.

This massive effort produced the result that he had expected from the start
- in every single scenario he tested, the result was the same - the
Humphreys cosmology failed in exactly the same way - anything between 6,000
LY and 2bn LY would simply not be visible. It is a true testament to my
colleagues dedication that he went through this tortuous calculation,
despite doubting from the start that it would give a positive result (and of
course as a YEC he would have wanted to see a positive result). I think he
mentioned other possibilities that he had not had time to examine (to do
with "rotating universes"), but I got the impression that he was not
optimistic that these would bring the desired result either.

The response he has had from the YEC community has been absolutely
disgraceful. Humphreys wrote back to him and said basically
"Don't be so negative. Until you can come up with a better theory, we'll
stick with mine".

This was a theory that my colleague had shown was about as much use as a
proof with the central step assuming that 2+2=5. As far as I'm aware, not
one single other creationist has even bothered to read his work. I'm afraid
I've not read it in detail myself, as it's not my field and so it's beyond
me, but there are plenty of creationists who do cosmology who ought to be
able to assess it. But the usual response I've found with confronting
creationist with hard science is to clap hands over ears and say "La la la I
can't hear you!"

My feeling is that my former colleague is good enough at the maths, and
honest enough to have done a thorough job and that his paper is
trustworthy. The fact, therefore that AiG are still pushing a busted theory
is nothing short of a disgrace.

Iain

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Received on Sat Sep 8 19:27:27 2007