Do you have a time machine?
This “25%/50%/75% there” idea rests on a total misunderstanding of evolution: you can’t say how far some species is to something else unless you first select a starting point and can see the endpoint – so for your query to be answered, you need a time machine.
Come on, he obviously spoke King James English, like everyone else in the Bible.
And we shouldn’t see living species that are 25%/50%/75% transitioned to something else if the theory of evolution is correct. Every species should be 100% transitioned into the species they are today.
What you are asking for shouldn’t exist if the theory of evolution is correct.
That’s a great way to put it!
In the past, women with small pelvises or babies with very large heads would have died in childbirth, so those genes would not have passed to future generations. With C-sections available for three or four generations now, you have genes in the gene pool that would not be there if women/babies had died in childbirth as would have been natural without the widely available medical intervention.
And back to the question leading off this topic. I would like to ask three things:
First, is it possible to determine by any actual observations whether God created this universe billions of years ago, or 6000 (or so) years ago? (Is it not possible that God created the universe 6000 years ago, with every single sub-atomic particle, every single photon, graviton, and everything else exactly where it would have been if He had created the universe in a Big Bang billions of years ago? Note: I personally do believe the universe is so vast, as observed, that it doesn’t make sense to me that something over 500 million light years in size would have been created only 6000 yeas ago; the size and scale, and Jesus’ comment that He had other sheep to save, suggest to me that there are other places in the universe where God has placed intelligent life.)
Background for my second question: It is intuitively obvious to the most casual observer that both assumptions about the age of the universe cannot be true in an absolute sense. So my next question:
What difference does it make whether the real truth is that God created the entire universe 6000 years ago, or the real truth is that God created the universe billions of years ago (or even any other possibility about when God created the universe)? I do understand that many people behave differently based on what they believe, but the fundamental fact is that noone’s belief actually makes something either true or false! So what specifically, and hopefully, observable, would be different, depending on the actual date of creation?
I have not been able to imagine anything at all that truly depends on which of the two cases being discussed in this thread is ultimately true, from God’s perspective. So, unless someone can point out a real physical effect of the timing of creation, and a real observational means of determining which is true, I have a third question: If there is no way to demonstrate conclusively which of two competing hypotheses is true, and there is no measurable difference in our observable universe whichever is true, why do we Christians, who do all believe the one basic thing that God created the entire universe, have such a contentious argument about the subject of when the universe was created?
In my viewpoint, God could have done that, and it would look the same. The real problem is what it would say about the being of God. You can Google “last Thursdayism” as well for a discussion, as God could have created the universe last Thursday as well if you accept that.
God as I know and understand him is truth, unchanging, reliable, free of deceit, and his nature is witnessed to by creation according to Romans 1:19-20 and Psalms 19 as well as elsewhere. To have creation not be what it can be seen and measured to be, seems to fly in the face of those biblical claims.
The argument is over how old the universe is. If God created a universe that is 13 billion years old, that is it’s age, so it cannot then be young.
The number of observations that show the universe/earth are ancient are vast. Using simple geometry to measure the distance to stars that are more than 6,000 light years away should be enough.
The modern YEC movement was started by a group that was afraid that the acceptance of an ancient earth would destroy the literal 6 days of creation in Genesis which was the reason for observing the sabbath on the seventh day.
Now add in later different groups that were opposed to evolution because they believed it would destroy our morality. As a way to deny evolution the 6,000 year old earth was held up as proof evolution didn’t happen. Search for the “AIG fortress cartoon” for a concise picture of this opposition.
Like an infinitely old universe? What happens when this is seen to be similarly ridiculous as believing the universe began last week?
Neat quote from Betrand Russell on this
There is no logical impossibility in the hypothesis that the world sprang into being five minutes ago, exactly as it then was, with a population that “remembered” a wholly unreal past. There is no logically necessary connection between events at different times; therefore nothing that is happening now or will happen in the future can disprove the hypothesis that the world began five minutes ago.
Not if He’s an honest being – it would be the equivalent of forging an antique.
Because the 6k year-old universe claim portrays God as dishonest and makes Christianity look foolish. All the apologetics theater required to make a 6k year old universe appear to work drives people away from the church.
It’s too bad apologists can’t build off the marvel of God calling a lowily hominid creature to bear his image. I still think that rubbed a number of angels the wrong way.
Just the number of galaxies should be a pretty strong indication. The low end estimate is 200 billion galaxies, with 100 billion stars per galaxy. That’s 20 trillion stars.
I haven’t done the math, but it would seem problematic to jam all of those stars into a sphere with a radius of 6,000 light years. Images of being inside an exploding nuclear bomb come to mind.
Oh, and an excuse to post the Hubble Deep Field image. This happens to be the first one. Later editions were even more spectacular.
Actually - 200 billion times 100 billion is 20 sextillion! (20 * 10^21). But hey. What’s a few exponents among friends?
Or as a chemist might put it - that’s about a 1/30 of a mol of stars!
Billion is a confusing term because it could be 1 thousand millions or 1 million millions. But you are correct, a few exponents is a small detail in the big picture. The figure is simply ‘terribly much’.
Another reminder that I shouldn’t do math quickly in my head. 
This time, I used python.
import math
galaxies = 200e9
stars = 100e9
vol_star = 1.4e18
ly_km = 1.057e13
yec_age = 6000
vol_yec = (4/3)*(math.pi)*(ly_km*yec_age**3)
vol_allstars = vol_star*galaxies*stars
perc_star = vol_allstars/vol_yec*100
print(f'volume of YEC universe = {vol_yec} km^3')
print(f'volume of all stars = {vol_allstars} km^3')
print(f'percent of YEC universe taken up by stars = {perc_star} (%)')
output:
volume of YEC universe = 9.563510692351903e+24 km^3
volume of all stars = 2.8e+40 km^3
percent of YEC universe taken up by stars = 2.9277951267824755e+17 (%)Using our Sun as a stand in for volume, if we jammed all of the stars in the universe into a sphere with a radius of 6,000 ly then the volume of stars would be in excess by 16 orders of magnitude. Hoping I got the math right this time.
I would call that a problem.
Added in edit: I actually did screw this one up pretty badly. I didn’t cube the entire radius but only the 6,000 year bit. Oops. Correct math below.
import math
galaxies = 200e9
stars = 100e9
vol_star = 1.4e18
ly_km = 1.057e13
yec_age = 6000
vol_yec = (4/3)*(math.pi)*((ly_km*yec_age)**3)
vol_allstars = vol_star*galaxies*stars
perc_star = vol_allstars/vol_yec*100
print(f'volume of YEC universe = {vol_yec} km^3')
print(f'volume of all stars = {vol_allstars} km^3')
print(f'percent of YEC universe taken up by stars = {perc_star} (%)')
output:
volume of YEC universe = 1.0684822757519471e+51 km^3
volume of all stars = 2.8e+40 km^3
percent of YEC universe taken up by stars = 2.6205394918970396e-09 (%)Still, having 2 billionth of a percent of the universe filled with stars is an extremely bright sky, if not lethally radioactive. As it is, cosmic rays coming from the spread out stars we do have pose a serious health risk to astronauts.
I love Python for this stuff! And your (its) math looks just fine, though I didn’t directly check it all.
But it did make me curious about one other thing - densities. (If we’re going to speak of cramming stars into places where they definitely don’t fit!)
Looking up quick on Google, I see that the sun’s photosphere (the part that actually registers as the ‘edge’ of the sun to our vision) is 3*10^-4 kg/m^3. In contrast to that, the Martian surface atmosphere (already mostly a vacuum compared to earth’s) is 0.02 kg / m^3. (And the earth sea-level air will be roughly 1 kg / m^3). This means that the outer bits of sun we actually see are about 67 times less dense than Martian surface air, and over 3300 times less dense than our own atmosphere here!
So … unrelated to anything we’ve been speaking about above … If I was transported into the sun’s photosphere, and could be temporarily protected from radiation by just having a tinfoil shield between me and the sun’s center, I might not actually feel much or any heat, right? Because my space suit would just be in a vacuum (better than most or all vacuum pumps can pull on earth), meaning that convective heat transfer would be virtually non-existent. The only thing that would roast me quickly would be exposure to the intense radiation!
Does all that sound correct?
If memory serves, the backside of Mercury is pretty cool, so you should be fine if all you are worried about is radiated heat.
However, hard radiation from accelerated atomic nuclei would probably be an issue. The strong magnetic fields around the Sun turns these into bullets travelling at relativistic speeds. Jupiter does the same thing which is why an hour on the surface of Europa would be lethal.
If you changed that to a 360 degree 3 foot thick lead shield with an outer reflective surface then it might be a bit better.
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
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