Tag: physics

An Empty ‘Bottle of Water’ with Daniel Pech -Selah.ca Guest

Why do we espouse Young Earth Creation? Earth is a member of the total cosmos that God created. Would it not be more accurate to call it Young Cosmos Creation? Today, it is popular to think of Earth as a member of ‘the cosmos’. Secularist cosmologists even think of her as entirely the product of him. But not even the cosmological constants are sufficient; their fine-tuning for life is necessary, but not central. There must be an Earth.

I’m happy to introduce a paper by Daniel Pech, an enthusiastic creationist with lots of ideas, in which he proposes a reading of Genesis 1 that includes subtly more nuanced perspectives between the heavens and the earth while retaining a young-earth creationist perspective..

Daniel contacted me after reading my post concerning the complementary nature of Genesis 1 and 2 (as opposed to a self-contained and contradictory nature).

You might be interested in getting to know Daniel a little bit more. If that’s the case, head over to my post entitled Daniel Pech – Bio, Aspiring Creation Writer -Selah.ca Guest.

The first section below, The Best of Both Worlds, is a primer to Daniel’s main idea in his paper on a reading of Genesis that highlights what Daniel believes is a lack of reading the full ‘dimensionality’ of the text.

The second section is an excerpt to Daniel’s paper which more fully reveals his argument and direction.

I hope you enjoy the introduction and take a look at his full paper if you’re interested.

The Best of Both Worlds
by Daniel Pech

The best of both the physics and terrestrial readings conceivably can both be that meant by the author of the account.

By a perhaps very simplistic analogy, suppose we wanted to make a pictograph of a particular portion of a particular year of the Tour De France in which some or even all of the riders saw, on a particular portion of the road, an unusual event in which a flock of birds were on and near the road eating seeds. Here is a single pictograph every bit of which serves to account this particular instance of this particular year of the Tour De France:

O<O O<O
O<O O<O
O<O O<O

Notice that the selfsame set of data comprising the above series of shapes can serve simultaneously to tell both halves of the whole basic story.

Continue reading “An Empty ‘Bottle of Water’ with Daniel Pech -Selah.ca Guest”

Isaac Newton: Crazy man!

I’ve just finished reading Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time. It’s a great read and has really firmed up some ideas on physics I’ve had for a long time. But I thought I’d paste this exert here as it’s a really crazy summary of Isaac Newton’s life. It’s a short biography at the back of A Brief History of Time. I’m always surprised seeing people act so childishly. I hope Newton was happy acting like an idiot.

Update 2012-05-20: Other historical sources don’t seem to agree with Hawking’s short biography of Isaac Newton and Hawking certainly has his own biases. Readers should be aware that Hawking’s biography is certainly not completely objective. As always, the truth seems to lie somewhere in the middle of two extremes.

I’ve just finished reading Stephen Hawking‘s A Brief History of Time. It’s a great read and has really firmed up some ideas on physics I’ve had for a long time. But I thought I’d paste this excerpt here as it’s a really crazy summary of Isaac Newton’s life. It’s a short biography at the back of A Brief History of Time. I’m always surprised seeing people act so childishly. I hope Newton was happy acting like an idiot.

Isaac Newton was not a pleasant man. His relations with other academics were notorious, with most of his later life spent embroiled in heated disputes. Following publication of Principia Mathematica – surely the most influential book ever written in Physics – Newton had risen rapidly into public prominence. He was appointed president of the Royal Society and became the first scientist ever to be knighted.

Newton soon clashed with the Astronomer Royal, John Flamsteed, who had earlier provided Newton with much needed data for Principia, but was now withholding information that Newton wanted. Newton would not take no for an answer; he had himself appointed to the governing body of the Royal Observatory and then tried to force immediate publication of the data. Eventually he arranged for Flamsteed’s work to be seized and prepared for publication by Flamsteed’s mortal enemy, Edmond Halley. But Flamsteed took the case to court and, in the nick of time, won a court order preventing distribution of the stolen work. Newton was incensed and sought his revenge by systematically deleting all references to Flamsteed in later editions of Principia.

A more serious dispute arose with the German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz. Both Leibniz and Newton had independently developed a branch of mathematics called Calculus, which underlies most of modern physics. Although we now know that Newton discovered Calculus years before Leibniz, he published his work much later. A major row ensued over who had been first, with scientists vigorously defending both contenders. It is remarkable, however, that most of the articles appearing in defense of Newton were originally written by his own hand – and only published in the name of friends! As the row grew, Leibniz made the mistake of appealing to the Royal Society to resolve the dispute. Newton, as president, appointed an “impartial” committee to investigate, coincidentally consisting entirely of Newton’s friends! But that was not all: Newton then wrote the committee’s report himself and had the Royal Society publish it, officially accusing Leibniz of plagiarism. Still unsatisfied, he then wrote an anonymous review of the report in the Royal Society’s own periodical. Following the death of Leibniz, Newton is reported to have declared that he had taken great satisfaction in “breaking Leibniz’ heart”.

During the period of these two disputes, Newton had already left Cambridge and academe. He had been active in anti-Catholic politics at Cambridge, and later in Parliament, and was rewarded eventually with the lucrative post of Warden of the Royal Mint. Here he used his talents for deviousness and vitriol in a more socially acceptable way, successfully conducting a major campaign against counterfeiting, even sending several men to their death on the gallows.

− Stephen W. Hawking, A Brief History of Time

Starlight, Time and the New Physics

Dr. John Hartnett’s 2007 book, Starlight, Time and thew New Physics, extends on Russel Humphrey’s intriquing Starlight and Time attempting to solve the problems of the original proposition. He does so with fascinating results.

Dr. John Hartnett’s 2007 book, Starlight, Time and thew New Physics, extends on Russel Humphrey’s intriquing Starlight and Time attempting to solve the problems of the original proposition. He does so with fascinating results.

The problem that both books try to do solve is that of a young creation being able to see the stars when they were created. Because even light from the nearest star, not our own, takes years to reach earth, it is not possible for the biblical account of creation to be correct: in that account, Adam, the first man, could already see the stars. If, in fact, they could see the stars that would imply creation is not young but very old and thus contradictory to the young creation the bible appears to talk about.

The question then is: How did Adam see starlight in the first week of creation?

As a poignant aside, note how christians differ from others when given a contradiction in their bible. The one who doesn’t believe the bible already sees an apparent contradiction and dismisses the entire thing. The one who does believe knows their bible and trusts it because they know it has told the truth a vast number of times before. Therefore, they give the bible the benefit of the doubt and go out and see if they can brainstorm how it might have come about according to God’s word. Many times in the past we’ve doubted the bible and then some years later it turns out it was quite right after all.

Christian cosmology effectively came out of nowhere to some pretty good ideas  in the past 30 years. Humphrey gave us all a kick in the rear by thinking outside the box and using Einstein’s theory of relativity to explain that time on earth may have proceeded slower than time out in the universe. It might sound like crazy talk but Einstein’s theory has been tested and found quite valid for a long time now. The key is a catalyst that would alter the time of clocks locally and remote.

Humphrey’s model was a good starting point but had problems. Hartnett attempts to solve those problems and he makes some decent sense of it. Definitely worth a read. Harnett’s writing is necessarily dense but not overladen beyond what the uninitiated can handle. I highly recommend this read.