Barry Setterfield?

[Chris_Falter]

@cewoldt

I freely acknowledge that I don’t know enough to evaluate it myself.

I appreciate your candor here, Craig.

@cewoldt

From a layman’s standpoint, however, I can easily understand what he is saying, and it is coherent to me.

But then you take back what you just said!

Science is the methodology that defeats common sense and laymen’s arguments. The notion that “makes sense to me” == “scientifically plausible” is 100% false.

From my layman’s standpoint, I intuitively sense that space is uniform and time is universally constant. But my common sense is 100% wrong, and relativity is right.

From the layman’s standpoint, I intuitively sense that I can predict the future state of a particle given its current state. Quantum mechanics says my common sense reasoning is folly.

From the layman’s standpoint, a photon should only be able to travel through one pinhole at a time. Quantum mechanics says it can travel through two simultaneously (and the experimental evidence proves it).

From Aristotle’s common sense standpoint, denser objects fall faster than lighter objects. A science experiment on the moon showed his common sense was wrong.

@cewoldt

Light slows down as it encounters zero point energy.

This doesn’t sound like an accurate formulation to me. The velocity of light in a vacuum is related to zero-point energy via Maxwell’s Equation AFAICT, but the physics sources I have read do not depict light as “slowing down” due to ZPE.

@cewoldt

As the universe continues to expand, zero point energy continues to increase

This is wrong in 2 different ways:

1. ZPE “appears to be of a constant density everywhere and always” (source). This means that whatever interaction a deep space photon had with ZPE on April 21, 1020, it has with ZPE on April 21, 2020.
2. The sum of ZPE in the universe is constant. “Observations from many lines of evidence — including the cosmic microwave background, distant sources of light (like supernovae), and the clustering of galaxies in the Universe — all point to the same tiny, non-zero value of the amount of dark energy in the Universe. It appears to be a form of energy inherent to space itself, it appears not to change with time” (source)

@cewoldt

Further, Setterfield believes that the universe is not the result of the “big bang,” but rather embraces the plasma theory of cosmic origins. There are not a lot of scientists that hold to plasma theory

There’s a reason for that.

In 1993, theoretical cosmologist Jim Peebles criticized Alfvén–Klein (plasma) cosmology, writing that “there is no way that the results can be consistent with the isotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation and X-ray backgrounds”. In his book he also showed that Alfvén’s models do not predict Hubble’s law, the abundance of light elements, or the existence of the cosmic microwave background. A further difficulty with the ambiplasma model is that matter–antimatter annihilation results in the production of high energy photons, which are not observed in the amounts predicted." (source)

@cewoldt

I haven’t been able to get anyone to tell me specifically what is wrong with his argument.

Admittedly, there are some dismissive comments in this thread. However, you have overlooked numerous very specific critiques, Craig:

• If Setterfield were right about the speed of light, the earth would have been about 30 times hotter at the time of Noah. Post #28
• Setterfield’s hypothesis does not take into account the large error bars on early measurements of the speed of light. Post #20
• Setterfield’s data stops 60 years ago, when instruments became sensitive enough to detect any real changes in the speed of light. This, in spite of the fact that plenty of measurements continue to be made with extraordinarily sensitive instruments. Post #20
• Setterfield omitted some older data that contradicted his hypothesis. Post #15
• Setterfield’s radioactive decay change hypothesis is contradicted by the relative quantities of Pb₂₀₇ and U₂₃₅. Post #15
• Setterfield’s radioactive decay change hypothesis implies that the earth was 115,000^o C on day 6. Post #15
• If conservation of energy is correct, Setterfield’s physics imply that the Earth was rotating 5.7 million times per second (non-relativistically) on Day 1. Post #15
• No fluctuations in the speed of light have been observed over the past 60 years. Post #10 Note: the universe has continued to expand over the past 60 years at basically the same rate it was expanding the previous 200 years.

@cewoldt

YEC folks would argue that they start with biblical data

As a professional in the field of natural language processing, I can affirm to you that a text, no matter how sacred, does not translate itself. Accurate translation requires an deep understanding of grammars, vocabulary, explicit cultural references, and a tremendous amount of implicit context in which a text is embedded.

Therefore:
“I am relying solely on biblical data” is basically the same as “I assume that my context is very close to the original context, if not identical. Therefore I can go straight to the text without giving serious credence to cultural considerations.”

Consequently, the stance can be effectively summarized as follows:

“I am relying on Biblical data plus my own culture’s understanding of context.”

@cewoldt

But others such as John Lennox point out what he sees as serious problems with Walton’s positions

I would be interested in Lennox’s arguments–could you provide a link or two? Bear in mind that Lennox’s expertise is in formal mathematics, not Ancient Near East culture or languages.

Best,
Chris Falter