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Is there any obvious evidence today for the biblical global Flood?

Right Divider

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As I said to RD. You really think my interpretation of "windows of heaven" rises to the level of God's admonishment of adding to His word? Saying God said something that He didn't say is taking His name in vain, which is something God took a very dim view on.
I'm not saying that you are adding to scripture. I'm saying that you are adding a canopy based on your interpretation of scripture.

There is no reason to believe in a canopy other than by interpreting scripture improperly. There is no scientific basis for a canopy (or any other physical evidence).
 

Yorzhik

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You're just being silly here. Even without the word "necessarily", my sentence means exactly that.
I'm not being silly. You're being flippant. The word "necessarily" makes all the difference because it changes the meaning from you being sure to you understanding there can be room for other interpretations.

No only is a canopy unneeded, it is physically impossible based on many problems that it would cause. @JudgeRightly has pointed out some of these problems.
You say it is physically impossible as if you know. You don't know the construction of the canopy any more than I do therefore you don't know.

What do we "know about the pre-flood atmosphere? Provide that information with its evidence.
Since we both agree it was different, that isn't necessary. Still, the much more vast amount of plant life would have needed a greater amount of CO2, and the bible tells us about the longer lifespans, and we have viewed the greater sizes of animals in the fossil record.

Again, that additional pressure COULD have benefits is NOT evidence that it did exist.
LOL. Then you don't understand the nature of evidence. As with a great deal of forensic evidence, since it is indirect, speculation/conjecture/hypothesizing are built on what that evidence presents with the only requirement that the ideas are consistent with the evidence. Since the evidence we have consists of little data, both a world with a canopy and without are consistent.
 

Yorzhik

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I'm not saying that you are adding to scripture. I'm saying that you are adding a canopy based on your interpretation of scripture.
Aha. JR said I'm adding to scripture ("I'm accusing you of adding to scripture"), and you said, "As @JudgeRightly has pointed out, you are adding this to scripture." so I'm sure you can understand my confusion.

But if you want to say I've added my interpretation to the figure of speech... well, yeah, that's what they are for.

There is no reason to believe in a canopy other than by interpreting scripture improperly. There is no scientific basis for a canopy (or any other physical evidence).
Except the forensic evidence, which would be properly interpreting a figure of speech in scripture.



I'll add this to my response to JR, but I'm not even arguing whether there was a canopy or not. What I'm arguing is a proper way to interpret scripture and not stepping beyond what scripture says based on what we know since what we know must always be consistent with scripture.
 

Right Divider

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I'm not being silly. You're being flippant. The word "necessarily" makes all the difference because it changes the meaning from you being sure to you understanding there can be room for other interpretations.
Edited original post to satisfy you.
You say it is physically impossible as if you know. You don't know the construction of the canopy any more than I do therefore you don't know.
Agreed up to a point. But AGAIN, you need to give some evidence that it was not only possible, but actually existed. Please proceed to do that.
Since we both agree it was different, that isn't necessary.
Neither of us know that it was different. We simply agree that it probably was.
Still, the much more vast amount of plant life would have needed a greater amount of CO2, and the bible tells us about the longer lifespans, and we have viewed the greater sizes of animals in the fossil record.
So it was probably different and yet did not necessarily require addition pressure.
LOL. Then you don't understand the nature of evidence.
LOL. You keep saying this, but it's not true.
As with a great deal of forensic evidence, since it is indirect, speculation/conjecture/hypothesizing are built on what that evidence presents with the only requirement that the ideas are consistent with the evidence. Since the evidence we have consists of little data, both a world with a canopy and without are consistent.
Please provide actual evidence that a canopy existed. Claims of what might be are not evidence.
 

Right Divider

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Aha. JR said I'm adding to scripture ("I'm accusing you of adding to scripture"), and you said, "As @JudgeRightly has pointed out, you are adding this to scripture." so I'm sure you can understand my confusion.
Yes, I apologize for not being more clear. I don't believe that you are adding to scripture; you are simply incorrectly understanding it.
But if you want to say I've added my interpretation to the figure of speech... well, yeah, that's what they are for.
"Windows of heaven" is a figure of speech either way.
Except the forensic evidence, which would be properly interpreting a figure of speech in scripture.
No clue what you're talking about.
I'll add this to my response to JR, but I'm not even arguing whether there was a canopy or not.
Really?
What I'm arguing is a proper way to interpret scripture and not stepping beyond what scripture says based on what we know since what we know must always be consistent with scripture.
The canopy is not consistent with scripture.
 

Derf

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This has been my position, it comports with the story in the Garden, man and woman were made fully formed adults as far as we can tell. That means their development as human organisms "already happened" on the day they were made by God. Same goes for all the trees created in the Garden, plus all the other creatures. Plus even the soil all the plants were living in, as fertile soil is a mixture of sand, silt and clay, plus organic material (compost or humus for example). The formation of compost and humus also "already happened."

It's the "creation with the appearance of age" theory, I think it's called.
That was one of the theories for where dinosaur bones came from--except they said Satan planted them. Suggesting that the "fossils" of stars are merely illusions or fake remnants is not a helpful position to take, imo.
 

Derf

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What is being added?
That the source for the windows is the fountains. The two water features are presented on par with each other, so to make one a source of the other is not intuitive, and certainly not explicit.
Sure.



Except people who hold to any canopy theory assert that there was a literal canopy.

HPT says there was no canopy, only that the events recorded in Genesis 7:11-12 are a causative chain of events. Fountains broke forth, thus windows of heaven (gives an indication of how tall the fountains were) were opened, and the rain fell for 40 days and 40 nights.



The fountains were not stopped at exactly the same time as the rains. The waters prevailed upon the earth for another 150 days AFTER the rain stopped.

Rather, the HPT proposes that after 40 days and nights, there was enough water on the earth that the fountains, still pushing out water, from under the crust, were suppressed enough that they didn't launch any more water into the atmosphere.
Except that 8:2 doesn't allow for a continuation of the fountains AFTER the rain stopped. Remember that you used the order of the sources to say the first (fountains) was a source of the second. You need to be consistent and allow the order to maintain its prominence in 8:2 as well.
Genesis 8:2 KJV — The fountains also of the deep and the windows of heaven were stopped, and the rain from heaven was restrained;

I haven't done any investigation into it, but if I were to hazard a guess, I would say that of all the times in the Bible that the word is translated as "lattice," there is NO relation to water in the context.
I just gave you the two references of note in the flood narrative where the Young's Literal translates it as "net-work", which is essentially "lattice".
Here, we have both fountains, and rain, on either side of the word, and I would go so far as to assert that "floodgates/sluices" would be a better word than "windows."
Perhaps. But it still suggests that the water is passing from one place to another through an opening.
Only if the firmament of Genesis 1:6 is not the crust of the earth.

If it is the crust, then there's no support for a canopy, and if it's not the crust, then HPT is false anyways, because there's no source for the fountains.
I dont get this. Just because the bible doesn't speak of water under the crust doesn't mean there's no water under the crust. Just because the bible doesn't speak of China doesn't mean there's no China.
As far as I can tell, the evidence is in favor of the HPT regardless of whether there's a canopy or not.
That may be so, but it is a red herring in a discussion about a canopy.
 

JudgeRightly

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There isn't any way it could have happened that way, JR.

That's why it's a problem for you, not for me. I'm the one here who's saying that God can make things in whatever state He chooses to make them and that there isn't any necessity or even utility in insisting that God made things in a "pristine" state, for want of a better term. What advantage is there in believing that the Moon was a featureless perfectly smooth celestial body when God made it?

I don't believe this is the case to begin with.

I just think it was a whole lot cleaner than it is today, with no maria or craters.

Why couldn't there have been winding river beds, water falls, canyons and other erosion related features on the Earth before Noah's flood?

No one is saying there wasn't.

Why must we believe that there were no objects in the night sky akin to the Crab Nebula when God created the universe?

The Crab Nebula was recorded as exploding in 1054 A.D. and is only 6500 light years from earth. Meaning it wasn't always a Nebula.

So no, the Crab Nebula was not in the night sky when God created the universe.

Would you like to use a different example?

Well, at the risk of sounding flippant, its because light has only been traveling at 1 light year per year since God did whatever stretching He did.

Duh.

Meaning that whatever light gets to us today has been traveling at 1 light year per year for the last 7500 years and so could not have started its journey toward us from 20,000 light years away, never mind 2.5 million light years way.

Sure.

But what if God created the stars much closer originally, so that the light from them had already begun traveling towards us from closer, and then God moved them by stretching out the heavens so that they were farther away, affecting both them AND the light that was in transit?

If God created the stars first, THEN stretched out the heavens, or even if He created each star within 7500 light years, and moved it individually, then started on the next star, and moved it (the stretching out of the heavens), then that could explain why we see things that are further than 7500 light years away.

As to how that would work, I would appeal to mystery. But it's an alternative that you don't seem to have considered.

Take another example....

Back on February 24, 1987, the Earth got to witness a supernova that occurred in the Large Magellanic Cloud. It's been given the name SN1987a because it was the first supernova seen in 1987. The "A" was, I suppose, someone's wishful thinking that there would be more to come within that same year. It is the closest supernova to Earth since Kepler's Supernova which the Earth witnessed on October 8, 1604. Kepler's Supernova (a.k.a. SN 1604) was only about 20,000ly from Earth but SN1987a, as I mentioned, is in the Large Magellanic Cloud which we know is something like 168,000ly from Earth. We could use either one. The only difference is the numbers.

Assumptions:
  • The universe was created 7500 years ago.
  • Light from distant objects has been brought to the Earth by God by whatever means (i.e. God stretched out the Heavens)
  • Light has been traveling at basically the same speed since God finished His creation.
If either SN19787a or SN1604 started as an intact star 7500 years ago and then exploded, we wouldn't know about it yet because the light wouldn't have arrived here yet. Since we do see them, it means that the light from those two events was already most of the way here when God finished His creation. The light from SN1604 started it's journey 7081ly from Earth and the light from SN1987a started it's journey 7464ly from Earth.

Or, the way in which God stretched out the heavens affects how light travels, allowing us to see things further away than we should physically be able to.

The objects themselves are 20,000 and 168,000 light years away which means that neither star that exploded could have ever actually existed. The light from the star that would have existed was present but the star itself had already exploded. It had to have been created in an already exploded state and if the universe exists for long enough, in 17,977 years, the Earth will get to see the state in which God actually created SN1604, and to see what God actually did with SN1987a, the Earth will have to wait another 160500 years.

Supra.

His logic was completely sound. He started with the same premise as you're arguing here. That premise being that exploded stars started as intact stars when God created the universe. And that's not a wacky thing to think. It seems intuitive that God would start with intact stars and then they'd explode at some point after, for whatever reason.

This is the position I [still] hold to.

And if that was the starting condition, then Bob would have been correct and then the fact that all supernovae are less than 10,000ly from Earth would stand as an awesome evidence for the young age of the universe. The problem, however, is this doesn't seem to be the case. We have some pretty strong evidence that says that a whole lot of supernovae are very much further away than the light from those events would have had time to get here from.

I have an idea which I'll share below, since you asked for an alternative.

It doesn't matter. It's no mystery if we see one happen within 7500ly because the light has had that long to travel. It's when its further away than 7500ly that it is an issue in regards to the state in which it was created.

The one in the first link is around 8,000 light years away.
The one in the second link is around 60 million light years away.

The one we just saw go off a couple of months ago was in the Andromeda Galaxy, some 2.5 million light years away. The bigger the distance, the bigger the issue.

It's only an issue for those who refuse to consider what "stretching out the heavens" could potentially mean. More on that below.

It cannot be the latter. IF we assume that the universe was created 7500 years ago (or any length of time ago less than 2.5 million years) then what we are seeing had already happened (i.e. was created in an "already happened" state), and the light from the event was most of the way here when God finished His creation.

See below.

I didn't suggest otherwise.

That's what you seem to be saying, though.

I understand that, but the state of things (i.e. the evidence) would seem to falsify that position.

IF the universe was created 7500 years ago, there's very few possibilities, really.
  1. Things like supernovae are less than 7500 light years away, which was Bob's theory. If this is the case, then there is something seriously wrong with the way we measure distances to these objects.
  2. The speed of light is completely different everywhere else but here in our celestial vicinity, which we have absolutely no evidence for whatsoever.
  3. Events like supernovae were created in an "already happened" state.
I cannot think of another alternative. Can you?

I can.

I would agree with the second half of your "1" above, that there is something seriously wrong with the way we measure the distances to these objects, but I don't think it's entirely flawed, and can at least get us within the ballpark, if not quite accurately enough.

I point back to https://kgov.com/stretch, where the observation is made that God sprouted, as in, "pulled" the plants out of the ground in growing them.

If we consider this as an analogy for how God stretched out the heavens, then it just might explain why we can see stars that do exist and have actually exploded that are further than 7500 ly away.

There's two ways to consider it. Either:

1) God created the stars close by (well within 7500 light years), and then moved them out to their current locations (or at least, within 7500 ly of where they are now), and in "stretching out the heavens," this aged the stars and the light, to the point where some of them popped. (In my opinion, this is less likely to be the case.)
OR
2) God created the stars near (again, 7500 light years from) their current positions, and then "grew" ("pulled") the light from, as though growing plants from the soil at 1000 times (hyperbolizing here, no idea how fast God actually grew them) their normal rate, and as a result of doing so He gave the stars the appearance of age, despite them still only being 7500 years old. He could have pulled the front edge of the light well past the earth.

Consider: God created Adam and Eve as fully capable adults. They could run, jump, talk, think, and even have sex. Yet they were (if Bob is right on this) less than a year old, and likely not even a month old (but definitely more than a week old) before Adam made a move on Eve.

Could not God also create stars that have the appearance of age, not "old," but "full of life"?

A dead star (supernova) no longer burns.

A human being still runs while alive, and afterwards, is just as dead as those stars.

I don't think God created any dead things, including stars.

The OTHER alternative is that God stretching out the heavens is just referring to Him moving them physically, and it has nothing to do with the light. However, in this alternative, the "one way" speed of light is instantaneous. Of course, jury is still out on that, so until we're able to (if we are even able to) determine what the "one way" speed of light is, this idea is nought but a hypothesis. But if it WAS instantaneous, then it would explain why we can see stars further out, because we're seeing them in real time!

Incidentally, I'd have to say that options 1 and 3 are just about equal in terms of plausibility in my mind. If Plasma Cosmology turns out to be true then all bets are completely off when it comes to determining distances to far away objects. It's basically down to parallax measurements and assumptions made about the brightness of various types of stars and almost nothing else.

I don't think the speed of light has changed. Or if it has, it has not changed significantly enough to account for any of this discussion.

I think God MOVED the light itself faster (or just the stars alone, if light travels instantly in one direction) when He stretched out the heavens, and THAT is why we can see stars that are further out.

Remember, God created light first, THEN the stars, and set them as lights (I see this as God having "attached" the light to the stars, making it so that they give off light. This was part of the "dividing the light from the dark."

(Just to reiterate: The same line of thinking could be applied to things like heavily cratered planets and moons and anything else that would have taken longer to occur naturally than the 7500 years that the universe has existed.)

This is a false dichotomy you're presenting.

You're saying "either heavy craterization was done directly by God, or it was done over a long period of time."

You've completely precluded the possibility that it all happened in a short period of time.

None of that is relevant to YOUR point which was that God wouldn't have created the solar system in a manner that He had to protect the rest of His creation from. The fact is that He did precisely that!

My position is that they WOULD NOT have happened, had the Fall never occurred. Hence "the whole of creation groans..."

It isn't proof that He did but that wasn't the point. The point is that there isn't any good reason to suppose that meteors and asteroids are exempted from the list of dangerous things in the solar system that God made in a manner that is no significant threat to us.

Alternatively, they didn't exist at the time (at least, they hadn't been launched into space yet by the Flood which hadn't happened yet, and until the Fall, was likely not going to happen), and so there was no need to protect the creation from them because they were safely contained within the earth.

They haven't been. There are no large objects that anyone has any evidence for that are in any danger of impacting the Earth.

I assume by "large" you mean something that is several kilometers in size...

However, I would like to introduce you to this, if you weren't aware of it already:

I'm sure there are other such occurrences, but it's getting late, and I want to go to bed soon.

There's no need. Before the fall, God would have intervened had it been necessary to do so, which there's no reason to think it would have been.

So then you do think that God meticulously set up the orbit of each rock and snowball in the solar system in such a manner that it would never impact the earth, or at the very least, ones that would not greatly affect life?

As I said before, that seems inane. Not impossible, especially not for God. Just inane.

After the fall, there would have been no motive to do so except in cases where the whole planet was in jeopardy. I very much doubt that any such case has or will ever exist, by the way, and if it does, it will indeed be because God directly intervened to cause it. The Earth will not ever be destroyed by accident.

This we agree upon.

Nothing here conflicts with my position. I do not believe that God would have needed to actively (supernaturally) protect the Earth from asteroid impacts prior to the fall and "Very good" does not imply "perfectly safe" as though God had rubber bumpers installed on the corners of any sharp rocks Adam and Eve might encounter.

What is your definition of "very good"?
 

Idolater

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That was one of the theories for where dinosaur bones came from--except they said Satan planted them.
I have no idea what you're talking about.
Suggesting that the "fossils" of stars are merely illusions or fake remnants is not a helpful position to take, imo.
Do you think it's helpful to postulate that every crater in the Solar System is because of the Flood?
 

Derf

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I have no idea what you're talking about.

Do you think it's helpful to postulate that every crater in the Solar System is because of the Flood?
Absolutely. That doesn't mean I'm completely on board with it, but it is a biblically sound, physical, material cause (fountains of the deep) for a physical, material phenomenon (flood ejectiles), that results in a physical, material scar.

Rather than postulating that He made something look scarred without a scarring event.

As @Clete pointed out, there are other options.

I'm okay with idea that the process of creating the moon caused some scarring. But you can't have a star explode before it exists. God giving evidence of such is a delusion, if not a lie (different thread, but important). That's not to say God can't make a mature man or tree, but to make a dead tree is delusory.
 

Clete

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The OTHER alternative is that God stretching out the heavens is just referring to Him moving them physically, and it has nothing to do with the light. However, in this alternative, the "one way" speed of light is instantaneous. Of course, jury is still out on that, so until we're able to (if we are even able to) determine what the "one way" speed of light is, this idea is nought but a hypothesis. But if it WAS instantaneous, then it would explain why we can see stars further out, because we're seeing them in real time!



I don't think the speed of light has changed. Or if it has, it has not changed significantly enough to account for any of this discussion.

I think God MOVED the light itself faster (or just the stars alone, if light travels instantly in one direction) when He stretched out the heavens, and THAT is why we can see stars that are further out.

Remember, God created light first, THEN the stars, and set them as lights (I see this as God having "attached" the light to the stars, making it so that they give off light. This was part of the "dividing the light from the dark."
We're stuck because you just are not getting the point about this light travel thing. It's important that you understand this because I think its been a problem for the "stretching out the heavens" proponents for quite a while and people aren't seeing the issue. Let's try it a step at a time...

Let's say that God did precisely as you suggest, which I believe He did, by the way.

Given that we also agree that the speed of light has not changed significantly since creation was completed and given the fact that it is now some 7500 years since the creation was completed, including whatever stretching took place, then any event that has happened since then, at a location that is further away from us than 7500 light years, would not yet be visible to us because we'd still be waiting for the light from that event to get here.

Do you agree with that?

If not, why not?
 

Derf

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We're stuck because you just are not getting the point about this light travel thing. It's important that you understand this because I think its been a problem for the "stretching out the heavens" proponents for quite a while and people aren't seeing the issue. Let's try it a step at a time...

Let's say that God did precisely as you suggest, which I believe He did, by the way.

Given that we also agree that the speed of light has not changed significantly since creation was completed and given the fact that it is now some 7500 years since the creation was completed, including whatever stretching took place, then any event that has happened since then, at a location that is further away from us than 7500 light years, would not yet be visible to us because we'd still be waiting for the light from that event to get here.

Do you agree with that?

If not, why not?
@JudgeRightly.
If I may jump in here, I think I understand what Clete is getting at.

If the stretching was completed prior to day 7, then anything older than 7500 years would have occurred during the "very good" portion of creation, and stars imploding or exploding dont fit your definition of "very good".
 

JudgeRightly

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We're stuck because you just are not getting the point about this light travel thing. It's important that you understand this because I think its been a problem for the "stretching out the heavens" proponents for quite a while and people aren't seeing the issue. Let's try it a step at a time...

Let's say that God did precisely as you suggest, which I believe He did, by the way.

Given that we also agree that the speed of light has not changed significantly since creation was completed and given the fact that it is now some 7500 years since the creation was completed, including whatever stretching took place, then any event that has happened since then, at a location that is further away from us than 7500 light years, would not yet be visible to us because we'd still be waiting for the light from that event to get here.

Do you agree with that?

If not, why not?

I do. I guess the question at that point becomes, to what extent did God stretch out the Heavens.

I want to say that if there was any stretching done to the light, it was that God brought the light to earth.
I wonder if what Bob was discussing on the show shortly before he passed has something to do with is.

Either way, I think that there's a good possibility that the speed of light one way is instantaneous. This would resolve the problem with seeing things that are happening further away, and it's what I'm leaning towards, since it also doesn't exclude the possibility that God stretched out the light to earth, though, what, exactly, that means is another discussion.
 

Derf

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I do. I guess the question at that point becomes, to what extent did God stretch out the Heavens.

I want to say that if there was any stretching done to the light, it was that God brought the light to earth.
I wonder if what Bob was discussing on the show shortly before he passed has something to do with is.

Either way, I think that there's a good possibility that the speed of light one way is instantaneous. This would resolve the problem with seeing things that are happening further away, and it's what I'm leaning towards, since it also doesn't exclude the possibility that God stretched out the light to earth, though, what, exactly, that means is another discussion.
Personally, I find the one-way speed of light idea to be similar to employing miracles to explain everything we don't understand.

I'm pretty sure Bob was against it, too. He had devised an experiment to test it, if I remember correctly. (I'm not sure his experiment would work, but he explained it on one of the RSR episodes.)
 

Yorzhik

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Edited original post to satisfy you.
In that case, I would change my response to "Sure, it doesn't necessarily mean the pressure was higher. But the benefits of a canopy allow me to speculate it was there." See the difference? I can agree with your statement because it changed from meaning one thing to another just because of one word.

Agreed up to a point. But AGAIN, you need to give some evidence that it was not only possible, but actually existed. Please proceed to do that.
No! That's the whole point of continuing to answer your posts! If I was arguing that I was right about a canopy and you were wrong, then I'd have to have more evidence. But since we simply don't have said evidence to tip the scale on the surety of a canopy existing or not, it's left up to speculation based on the evidence we do have. I can't be sure I'm right, and I can't be sure you are wrong. That's why we speculate and keep working to figure out the truth.

Neither of us know that it was different. We simply agree that it probably was.
I'd say the evidence is pretty strong, which is why we agree. Thus, in a discussion, we can move on to things we disagree on to figure out which possibility is correct instead of making no progress by keeping going over the same ground.

So it was probably different and yet did not necessarily require addition pressure.
Correct.

LOL. You keep saying this, but it's not true.
It's true. We have evidence which we base larger truths on. But we don't always have more evidence to be sure exactly what happened next. So we speculate. This is helpful for us so we know where to try and look for new evidence.

But the point is we guess at what happened next based on evidence we understand from before the next things could have happened.

Have you ever watched Forensic Files? It's a TV show that shows murder cases, frequently cold cases, and how forensic evidence solves the case. So often a cold case is re-opened because new technology allows for new evidence they can use to crack a case. And so often they originally speculated at least two possibilities, based on the evidence they had at the time. Are their speculations not based on evidence? It's true that they did, in fact, base their speculations on evidence. And because of their speculations they had their eyes open for evidence related to what they were guessing, and when the new technology gave them the additional evidence, they solved the case.

Please provide actual evidence that a canopy existed. Claims of what might be are not evidence.
Sorry, for additional evidence more than we have it will take more time and effort. However, even though claims of what might be are not evidence, the claims of what might be are based on the evidence we have.
 

Yorzhik

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No clue what you're talking about.
There is forensic evidence that leads us to speculate why things were the way they were. I'm speculating there was a canopy, while you speculate there wasn't - both of us using the same evidence.

Yes, really. I care so little about whether there was a canopy or not that in comparison I find dinner a great deal more important. And I'll forget what I had for dinner within a few days. This discussion itself and the dynamics of how we know and talk about what we know is vastly more interesting.

If it turns out there was no canopy, the extent of my surprise will be "huh, what'a know". Unless there is a bet. Then I'll pay up, with a smile. Of course the bet won't be for much since I don't have a lot of confidence in my speculation.

The canopy is not consistent with scripture.
It sure is. If there was a canopy, the windows of heaven would be an adequate mention of it.
 

Clete

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I do. I guess the question at that point becomes, to what extent did God stretch out the Heavens.
I'm pretty sure it doesn't matter because it isn't the object itself that the issue, its the event. If the star was created intact and exploded after the stretching has already been done then Bob was correct when he reasoned that we shouldn't ever see any supernovae that are further away than the 7500ly that the light has had time to travel. (I think Bob used the number 10,000ly at the time when I heard him say this but that's just trivia. I'm using the 7500 number just because that's the number you put forward.)

If we were to ever see a star explode from further away than that, it would have to mean that either....
  1. we have the distance wrong
  2. we have the speed of light wrong
  3. we the age of the universe wrong
  4. the star was created in an already exploded state
  5. some combination of the above
I'm reasonably certain that those are all the possibilities.

I want to say that if there was any stretching done to the light, it was that God brought the light to earth.
I wonder if what Bob was discussing on the show shortly before he passed has something to do with is.

Either way, I think that there's a good possibility that the speed of light one way is instantaneous. This would resolve the problem with seeing things that are happening further away, and it's what I'm leaning towards, since it also doesn't exclude the possibility that God stretched out the light to earth, though, what, exactly, that means is another discussion.
So, this would fall under option two above and I do not believe it can work because we see far away stuff from all directions. If light was instantaneous in one direction and went at half the speed in the other then there should be a directionality to the supernovae we see. We'd have a real time, live view of things in one direction and a time delayed view in the other.

So, if that were the case and all the stars were created intact and we only have 7500 years to work with then all of the supernovae (and other celestial events) on one side of the sky could have occurred as much as 7500 years ago and any found on the opposite side of the sky would have to be no further away than 3750ly away. No such differential exists.

For the instantaneous one way speed of light to fix the issue, it would have to work such that light travels instantaneously toward the Earth, from every direction and at half speed when going in any direction away from the Earth. That would get quite complicated since the Earth is constantly in motion relative to everything else, including the photons of light. That doesn't seem plausible.

If we're going to entertain issues regarding the speed of light in order to explain what we see, it seems that a better hypothesis would be that the speed of light has slowed dramatically since the creation was complete. This seems like it could work to explain our ability to see events that happened more than 7500ly away but since we are seeing events that are estimated to be 2.5 million light years away, the decaying speed of light would have to be quite dramatic, to say the least. I don't know how to do the math on that but I suspect that if the speed of light was decaying at such a rate, we'd have noticed it.

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JudgeRightly

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So, this would fall under option two above and I do not believe it can work because we see far away stuff from all directions. If light was instantaneous in one direction and went at half the speed in the other then there should be a directionality to the supernovae we see. We'd have a real time, live view of things in one direction and a time delayed view in the other.

For the instantaneous one way speed of light to fix the issue, it would have to work such that light travels instantaneously toward the Earth, from every direction and at half speed when going in any direction away from the Earth. That would get quite complicated since the Earth is constantly in motion relative to everything else, including the photons of light. That doesn't seem plausible.

This is not what is meant by the "one-way speed of light."

The one way speed of light not in a universe relative direction, or in an earthward direction, it's ANY direction, particularly the initial direction light travels when being measured.

The problem is that in order to measure it, we need the clocks to be synchronized, which requires the reflection of the light, which makes it impossible to know if the speed of light in the first direction is the same as the second, or if it's instantaneous, and the second pass, the reflection, is half of c.


If we're going to entertain issues regarding the speed of light in order to explain what we see, it seems that a better hypothesis would be that the speed of light has slowed dramatically since the creation was complete. This seems like it could work to explain our ability to see events that happened more than 7500ly away but since we are seeing events that are estimated to be 2.5 million light years away, the decaying speed of light would have to be quite dramatic, to say the least. I don't know how to do the math on that but I suspect that if the speed of light was decaying at such a rate, we'd have noticed it.

Which is why I don't think it's a good direction to go. But it is certainly a possibility.

And again, maybe the fact that God stretched out the heavens has something to do with it.
 

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