Dr. Hovind

[karros]

I know his name inspires joy and humility in many of you so I figured this would be most interesting. I got into a "debate" with him about the speed of light. He started making claims that we dont know that it has always been a constant and read off some cherry picked quotes from articles as if somehow those quotes represented the article. At any rate I challenged him to give me a formula for the decreasing velocity of the speed of light that would allow for a 6000 year old earth and the ability to see light from stars billions of light years away. Of course he had nothing so I asked him what his claim was based on. He went back to the we dont know if light has remained a constant and completely ignored my question.

So I told him I will take the task of trying to demonstrate a model which will show a rate of decreasing velocity for the speed of light that will allow for a 6000 year old earth. It took all of 1 hour to falsify my claim without even getting started. First the articles he gave which were supposed to help me only led me to the big bang. Using info from that immediatly destroys my claim of a young earth. Then I realized that the speed of light would have been so fast that life could not exist as we know it due the extremely close sun.

I thought about just calling Dr. Hovind and telling him it was hopeless and ignorance would be his only evidence for his claim. But I got to thinking; did Hovind give up on his doctoral thesis when he couldnt make his own chart? No, he got right to work and ripped one out of a text book. So I have taken that spirit of dedication and came up with a new idea.

What if light can use gravity to propell itself much like we use gravity to propell our orbiters!! So now my new task is to create a model for light using gravity to pick up enough speed to reach earth in less than 6000 years. Any thoughts that might help me along?

 

[Eos of the Eons]

Ohhh, I would have been so tempted to smack him!

Congrats on your self control!

Oh, and he got his "degree" from a bible school, so he wouldn't have to worry his silly lil head with REAL science.

 

[karros]

I talk to him quite a bit and he always has a way of getting me going. I realize he has no intellectual integrity so I let a lot of it slide.

 

[Eos of the Eons]

Ohhhhh!!! Smack him for ME!!!

 

[capall]

I heard him on the infidel guy once and he just made my blood boil, the way he takes quotes totally out of context and ignores the interpretation of the authors is infuriating, how people debating him don’t resort to violence is amazing to me.

 

[espritch]

According to the YECs, the speed of light was infinite at the moment of creation and then began to slow down. Of course according to Einstein, E = mc^2 meaning the energy released in a single atomic decay event back then would have been approximately infinity squared which is approximately...a whole bunch. So I guess the Garden of Eden was set in the middle of a plasma clould. So either the Bible left out a few details or...umm...Einstein must be wrong!

 

[Earthborn]

What if light can use gravity to propell itself much like we use gravity to propell our orbiters!! So now my new task is to create a model for light using gravity to pick up enough speed to reach earth in less than 6000 years. Any thoughts that might help me along?

That's tricky. Space probes do use the gravity of planets to speed them up, but of course only because they are steered into very specific orbits around the sun so they actually meet up with those planets. It doesn't the same way at all times.

The sun's gravity might work to speed up anything that falls towards it, but the closer that object gets the more it is sped up, but what you want is light that actually slows down as it nears the sun or Earth. Also the sun's gravity would hardly have an effect 13.7 thousand million light years from here.

 

[Achán hiNidráne]

Allow me to go into fundie mode for a second:

According to the YECs, the speed of light was infinite at the moment of creation and then began to slow down. Of course according to Einstein, E = mc^2 meaning the energy released in a single atomic decay event back then would have been approximately infinity squared which is approximately...a whole bunch.

Of course it's possible. God has infinite power and could supply all the energy light needs to travel at an infinite speed.

So I guess the Garden of Eden was set in the middle of a plasma clould.

Well, if God has the power to make the speed of light infinite, then he also has the power to convert pure energy to matter within the six days attributed in Geneses.

So either the Bible left out a few details or...umm...Einstein must be wrong!

Well, since the Bible is the inerrent word of God then we know that that filthy, Christ-killing, Communist, Jew Einstein must be wrong.

See, it's easy to argue like Hovind.

 

[Zep]

Of course, you DO need to check your brain at the door...

 

[Johnny Pixels]

Allow me to go into fundie mode for a second:...

Fundie fights are not unlike two kids having an argument over whether AmazingMan or Fantastico would win in a fight:

"Amazingman could punch Fantastico into orbit"
"No Way! Fantastico can increase his weight to 100x normal so Amazingman would just break his fist"
"Wrong! Amazingman has fists of diamond so he'd cut through Fantastico"
"Aha! Fantastico's suit is made Super-Carbon Steel^TM"
"But diamond can cut through steel"
"Not this steel, Fantastico added diamond dust to it to increase its strength"...

They never stop to question why God would want to create an impossible situation which he can only solve using supernatural powers, when he could quite easily create a possible situation that self-sustains using natural laws. If I were a theist, I'd be much more impressed by a god that started a universal avalanche by nudging a single grain of sand into motion, rather than one that's constantly in need of tweaking.

 

[Anacoluthon64]

According to the YECs, the speed of light was infinite at the moment of creation and then began to slow down.

How astonishingly ingenious! Infinity minus a little bit is ..., um, er, ..., must, uh, be ... well, less than infinity, obviously, and that's ... uhm, finite ... ?

'Luthon64

 

[Anacoluthon64]

If I were a theist, I'd be much more impressed by a god that started a universal avalanche by nudging a single grain of sand into motion, rather than one that's constantly in need of tweaking.

Clearly his fiddlings to keep things moving along smoothly, if at all real, fail when directed at Hovind and similar. If they succeeded, that lot wouldn't keep beating the same old tatty drum.

'Luthon64

 

[Zep]

Or he's....

Disney Copyright

 

[karros]

Funny stuff guys. Im actually not sure how to go with this. Im am 100% positive that any model I can come up with is either going to fail at building up speed for light or fail at slowing down as it approaches earth. I am either going to be straight with Hovind and let him know the real results and let him go with spin as usual, or...

Make something up that is so stupid and impossible and tell him the great and wonderful discovery I made!! Watch him run with it and make a fool of himself yet again. Oh the possibilities.

 

[Johnny Pixels]

You could try scamming him, but he'll talk his way out of it and it'll get ignored by believers, and only accepted by skeptics. He's like a wet bar of soap and a bowl of jelly rolled into one. You can't grab hold of him and you can't pin him down.

 

[Anacoluthon64]

I am either going to be straight with Hovind and let him know the real results and let him go with spin as usual, or...

Make something up that is so stupid and impossible and tell him the great and wonderful discovery I made!! Watch him run with it and make a fool of himself yet again. Oh the possibilities.

Okay, methinks this is the route to take. Introduce two hidden variables called "god's space" and "god's time." Actually, one of these on its own would suffice, but introducing both gives Hovind greater leeway for opening his mouth just to change feet. These variables are the "true" measures of distance and time, and the times and distances we normally measure are dependent on them. In keeping with creationist hooey, you can set the Earth as the centre of "god's space" and the date of creation as the origin of "god's time." You need such an absolute frame of reference. Now for the tricky bit: you can have our distance increase (linearly or exponentially) with increasing "god's distance," and our time decrease (again, linearly or exponentially) with increasing "god's time," so that the further back in our time you go, the faster the speed of light will appear, and ditto the farther from Earth you are. Suitably juggling the parameters should give you a 6,000 year old universe.

'Luthon64

 

[kevin]

According to the YECs, the speed of light was infinite at the moment of creation and then began to slow down. Of course according to Einstein, E = mc^2 meaning the energy released in a single atomic decay event back then would have been approximately infinity squared which is approximately...a whole bunch.

yeah, well the amount of mass at the time was so small as to approach 1/infinity. so
E = (1/infinity)(infinity)^2

So only an infininite amount of energy was released. Jeez.