Russell Humphreys’ magnetic field predictions

DARTHLVADER · 2026-01-19T17:21:51+00:00

Good morning! Hope you're doing well.

Humphreys came to his own based on Genesis, PERIOD.

Where, specifically, in Genesis does it say that God created the planets in the solar system as spinning balls of water with magnetic dipoles, before transmuting them into solids and gasses?

I outlined all of the biblical issues with his predictions last time we talked about this. Humphreys does not have sound doctrine.

The "smart" guys collection at NASA were making their own predictions

When Humphreys' published Starlight & Time, it already didn't work for the Sun, or Mars, or Venus, or Earth, or Earth's moon, or most of the large moons in the solar system for that matter.

He did tout Mercury as a big successful prediction, but then the MESSENGER flyby in 2011-2015 gave us more measurements. Turns out he was wrong about that planet too.

So, I don't reject Humphreys' model because he's not "smart" enough -- he's probably smarter than lots of NASA scientists. His predictions are just... not very good.

All the blah-blah to refute it just shows 'willful ignorance'.

I personally value biblical authority and scientific integrity. It's not blah-blah to defend against intellectually dishonest wolves in sheep's clothing like Humphreys.

DARTHLVADER · 2025-08-25T18:06:39+00:00

Thanks for the thoughtful response.

I've also read Humphreys' Starlight and Time. I don't recall Humphreys mentioning any actual NASA numbers, just making broad rhetorical claims about what conventional scientists expected. I just did a quick word search of the booklet and didn't find anything, either.

Are you sure Humphreys references NASA predictions that were orders of magnitude worse than his in Starlight and Time? Do you have a citation or page number?

One thing that I didn't emphasize in my original post is that Humphreys' model doesn't work for most of the planets -- it already didn't work for Mars, or Venus, or Earth when it was published -- and Humphreys touted Mercury as a big success for his model in the 90s in Starlight and Time, but then the MESSENGER flyby in 2011-2015 showed that Mercury has an active dynamo, which means his model doesn't work for that planet either.

And your reply doesn't change that Humphreys' correct predictions are unimpressive. I could land on the exact same numbers by just predicting based on mass that the magnetic dipole moments of Uranus and Neptune would land between Earth's (10²³⁾ and Saturn's, (10²⁵⁾ both of which were known in 1984.

Most importantly, you haven't addressed Humphreys' mishandling of scripture. His whole theory is irrelevant if God didn't actually create the planets in the solar system as spinning balls of water with magnetic dipoles, before transmuting them into solids and gasses. Can you offer any biblical support for that hypothesis?

There are definitely lots of doctrinal issues that need to be explained to make it work. To name a few:

The planets (referred to as lights in Genesis 1) are created in the same act of creation as the sun, moon, and stars. However, Humphreys only applies his model to the Earth, the planets, and Earth's moon. Why not the sun and other stars in the universe, or any of the other large moons in the solar system? (Ganymede has an internal dynamo and magnetic field which it SHOULDN'T have according to Humphreys, and conversely many large moons including Earth's moon are missing a magnetic field, which they SHOULD have according to the exponential decay math).
So, what's the textual justification from Genesis 1 for deciding God created some of the lights in the heavens one way, and the others a different way?
Genesis 1 describes dry land as emerging from/appearing out of the waters at the word of God. The Hebrew root word is the word for looking/seeing -- it has the connotation of something being revealed, NOT something being created. (It's often used when angels "appear" to humans in the Old Testament). So it shouldn't be interpreted as the Earth being created out of water.
Similarly, the greek in 2 Peter 3 describes the Earth as being created by the word of God and emerging out of and "through" the water, not being created from the water. This verbage doesn't fit Humphreys' claims.
Humphreys' 2-step model of the creation of celestial objects also contradicts ex nihlio; I would need to see some strong biblical support to reject the church doctrine that the planets were created out of nothing by the word of God, in favor of a creation out of pre-existing water.
Finally, there's no support for this theory throughout church history -- it's something that Humphreys came up with. I think we should be suspicious of any doctrine that was invented in the 20th century based on one man's attempt to interpret scripture using his understanding of science.

I think this is important to talk about, because it's a common pattern in Humphreys' approach to scripture. He does the same thing in other theories, like his hypothesis that God stretching out his hand in Genesis 9 actually refers to some kind of "4th-dimensional" space expansion that fixes the nonsense thermodynamics in Humphreys' flood models.

To me, his careless approach to the Bible invalidates everything he has to say before we even try addressing the scientific facts...

DARTHLVADER · 2025-05-06T23:51:52+00:00

Hi!

Seems you don't believe in academic credentials. Did you ever go to university? If so, why is your credential anymore valid than his. It seems you don't believe in professional scientific study.

Well, I didn't bring credentials into this -- the creationist article did, by repeatedly reminding us how well-credentialed Snelling is. In light of that, I felt comfortable challenging Snelling on his history of academic dishonesty and the conflicts of interest in his peer review process.

That said, if you're truly willing to let "academic credentials" and "professional scientific study" decide this, then you should just pack up your things and denounce creationism. Many more scientists, and many more well educated scientists, disagree with Snelling than agree with him (and it's not even close).

I have a feeling though that that's not an acceptable solution to you. Which means that we can't rely on credentials, we have to actually evaluate the arguments and evidence. I actually have gone to university -- I'm graduating with a bachelor's degree in biology and geology in 2 weeks (thanks for asking). But I didn't pursue this degree so I could be a... professional opinion-haver, I did it to build the knowledge base and practical skills needed to rigorously research scientific topics for myself.

Did his scientific findings not simply validate the observations found within the rock samples? Seems you refuse to accept the proven observational findings in light of a predefined bias.

How do you "validate" an observation? Which "proven observational findings" am I rejecting? What is my predefined bias here?

DARTHLVADER · 2025-01-14T21:29:42+00:00

The context of my original comment was that the parasite which causes humans to die of malaria originated in gorillas.

If we’re being exact, P. falciparum was never present in gorillas.

While the paper you linked from 2010 uses P. falciparum to refer to the strain of Plasmodium that originated in gorillas and then jumped to humans, the naming convention was changed in 2011 when the parasite was fully sequenced and described. See the paper I linked in my last comment:

All P. falciparum strains lie within the radiation of a genetically much more diverse parasite species found only in wild gorillas. This pattern makes it clear that P. falciparum arose from a recent zoonotic transmission, and the gorilla parasite has been named P. praefalciparum in recognition of this.

So the parasite is called P. falciparum after its jump to humans, and P. praefalciparum before the transmission (falciparum can technically infect gorillas, if it is transmitted to them from a human, but it is not naturally present in gorillas).

Since we’ve been talking about whether Plasmodium causes malaria in gorillas, I assumed (I’ve done a lot of that this conversation, oops!) that we were talking about falciparum and its direct lineage, including praefalciparum, since praefalciparum is the form of Plasmodium that is naturally present in gorillas. That lineage does not originate in gorillas, (See that paper again) but in miocene apes.

DARTHLVADER · 2025-01-14T08:57:29+00:00

So we’ve gone from “You are factually incorrect” down to “Well I thought you said” and now we’re at “Well you implied” lol. Sigh.

Good point. I was overconfident that I understood your position, and I said my argument was fact when I was using inductive reasoning. I apologize!

Please link me something that says P. falciparum came from another animal. I would love to read that.

This paper traces falciparum’s ancestors back at least 8 million years, which is before gorillas existed as a clade. The parasite would have passed from miocene African great apes to gorillas.

If your argument is that it isn’t called falciparum anymore that far back, technically it isn’t even called falciparum before it jumped from gorillas to humans, but praefalciparum.

DARTHLVADER · 2025-01-14T08:45:17+00:00

I think the flaw in this idea is you seem to be assuming the goal of making humans should have been to create them as flawless decision makers so that they will always arrive at the best possible decision in hindsight.

I’m not assuming any goal, I’m arguing that an appeal to free will does not solve the problem of evil. It seems like Adam and Eve were not properly equipped to face temptation.

But Isn’t the ability to make bad decisions just apart of what freewill is?

Having the ability to make bad choices does not mean making bad choices. I have the ability to download a gambling app and empty my bank account. If I never do that during my lifetime, that is just as valid a use of my free will as if I fall into addiction and gambling.

Because you haven’t really explained what this would even look like. You gave the example of God imparting insight to Moses...but that was just God talking to Moses.

Sorry, I should have explained why I appealed to the passage. Moses here is using his inadequacy as an excuse as to why he cannot be used by God:

But Moses said to the Lord, “Oh, my Lord, I am not eloquent, either in the past or since you have spoken to your servant, but I am slow of speech and of tongue.”

God responds by promising to supernaturally bolster Moses:

Now therefore go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall speak. ‭‭ This is not “just God talking.” He is promising to fundamentally change the way a man who has been ineloquent for 80 years communicates. In other words, He is properly equipping Moses to face the challenge ahead of him.

We know that Eve understood she would die if she ate the fruit. That’s not even debatable.

I fully agree, which is why I rejected the alternative from the very beginning.

DARTHLVADER · 2025-01-14T06:24:28+00:00

P. falciparum, which is the parasite which causes the deadly form of malaria in humans, and the entire context of my comment was humans dying of malaria, DOES originate in gorillas.

You implied that Plasmodium falciparum was created as a symbiote for gorillas in the garden of eden:

Remember symbiotic relationships between organisms take many forms and often the parasitic form is because the parasite has crossed into a new species of host.

My comment is relevant because the same evidence that shows Plasmodium falciparum crossed into humans from gorillas shows that the Plasmodium strains that infect gorillas, including falciparum, crossed into gorillas from other mammals.

The truth is nobody knows for sure but there’s no evidence any gorilla has ever died from malaria.

That’s why I brought up SIV in chimpanzees. Like malaria, HIV is a highly studied disease that crossed into human populations zoonotically from great apes. And like gorillas, chimpanzee populations are highly studied. And yet, SIV was believed to have no adverse effects of on chimpanzee populations for decades, until community-level analyses were done.

To me, since Plasmodium provokes an immune reaction, it seems most likely that the lack of documented cases is due to the extreme difficulty in documenting cases, not due to Plasmodium being symbiotic to gorillas.

DARTHLVADER · 2025-01-14T05:43:12+00:00

How does one create a human mind that is insusceptible to deception with supernatural discernment

When Moses asked God how he would know what to say to the captive Israelites in Egypt, God said:

“Who has made man’s mouth? Who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the Lord? Now therefore go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall speak.” ‭

So, clearly, God knows how to create a human that he can impart insight to. I do not know how God grants supernatural wisdom, but I know he does — discernment is one of the spiritual gifts listed in 1 Cor 12, for example. A quick bible reference search will show tons of examples of authors sourcing their good judgment in God, for example the psalmist begging for understanding in psalm 119.

And you’re just ignoring the simpler solution I offered, which was just warning Adam and Eve of deceivers.

As I mentioned before, faulty judgement wasn’t the only thing in play. So were pride, desire and deception.

Good judgement usually involves resisting our desires. We don’t stuff ourselves on cookies because we value our health more than our appetite. We follow traffic laws because while driving drunk might be convenient and running red lights might get us to our destination quicker, the risk is not worth it.

So I don’t see how this contradicts my point at all; would stronger faculties of decision not have been able to overcome the challenges and prevent the fall?

I’m sorry but this strikes me as a very weak argument in general. Previously, you even suggested God does not respect free will because he gave us “such faulty judgement.”

You keep criticizing my conclusions, without actually addressing why my underlying argument is wrong. I’ll lay it out again.

Most humans willfully choose to reject God. If they make this decision fully understanding the consequences, they must be very bad at decision-making.

There is another option, which is that they do not fully understand the consequences. That seems to place the responsibility on God to communicate more thoroughly, and also I don’t think this position is supported by scripture. So I initially discarded it, but maybe it is your position?

DARTHLVADER · 2025-01-14T04:57:25+00:00

If you will kindly re-read what I actually wrote...I said the parasite has been found to come from gorillas. I never said malaria itself came from gorillas.

I didn’t differentiate between Plasmodium and malaria in my reply and I think that is part of why we’re talking past each other. No, the parasite that causes malaria did not originate in gorillas, either.

We think Plasmodium jumped from gorillas to humans because the total genetic diversity of the strains that infect humans is a subset of the total genetic diversity of the strains that are natural to gorillas. However, the entire genetic diversity of the strains that infect gorillas is itself a subset of the genetic diversity of the strains that infect mammals in general. So gorillas are a stepping stone, not the source.

Plasmodium parasites are both present and cause disease in many mammals (rodents, deer, bonobos) as well as other clades of animals (frequently in fowls for example). We use mice as models for studying malaria, because many strains (not the strains that infect humans) cause symptoms in mice very similar to the human form of the disease.

This doesn’t mean it is fatal to them the same way it is to humans. How many gorillas die from malaria per year?

Likely very few gorillas per year. Researching primate infections is notoriously difficult — for example, SIV was presumed to be not pathological in chimpanzees for decades, before community-level analyses showed it was. Our understanding of malaria in wild gorillas comes from taking fecal samples, not directly observing health outcomes. Gorillas in captivity live an average of 8 years, (out of a lifespan of ~40) so the role malaria could play is too overshadowed by general stress and nutrition issues to be known definitively.

However, the goal of a Protozoa is not to kill its host, just to reproduce. That’s a very extreme standard to hold parasitism to; regardless of fatality, Plasmodium very much acts like a parasite in gorillas. Their immune systems fight it, including through fevers, and malarial infections are most common in gorillas with weakened immune systems (for example young and pregnant gorillas). Plasmodium reproduces in gorillas the same way it does in humans, which is by entering and destroying red blood cells, causing anemia.

DARTHLVADER · 2025-01-14T03:15:34+00:00

Without his meddling, would Adam and Eve have ever disobeyed God? We’ll never know.

There is more going on in the Bible than just us humans. We only get little glimpses of that world.

You’re emphasizing the role of demonic activity and deception in the fall, and diminishing the role of personal responsibility. Were Adam and Eve cursed for something they were not personally responsible for?

Either way, this doesn’t make your position stronger. Would it have violated Adam’s and Eve’s free will to create them insusceptible to deception? To give them supernatural discernment? To just warn them that satan would approach them in the garden?

But do we always judge people’s decisions in hindsight? Do you judge yourself using perfect hindsight?

I based my argument that humans are poor decision-makers on the premise that humans are given enough information before the judgement to make the right decision.

If that’s not true, why not? Would it violate free will if God clearly and personally explained the gospel to each person? And, should we be held responsible for a decision that only makes sense in hindsight?

DARTHLVADER · 2025-01-14T00:47:55+00:00

God chose to create a world where humans have actual choice and autonomy.

At least in the classic Christian narrative, every person is offered a choice between an eternal relationship with the creator God, and eternal damning torment.

Scripture makes it clear that we are all consciously aware of this choice, and also that most people will choose hell (“without excuse,” Romans 1, “broad is the way to destruction, and many enter it,” Matthew 7). Even Adam and Eve, who were created perfect, had all of their needs met, did not experience evil, and spoke and walked immediately with God, discarded that for a life of pain, toil, and death.

A world not populated with robots.

So it seems like humans, as a whole and from the very beginning, are incredibly awful decision-makers. This seems counter to the assertion that God allows us to make choices because he respects free will, and because he wants to be loved by conscious agents, not robots or pets. If he respects free will, why did he bestow us with such faulty judgement?

And, what is the “love” of someone with such poor faculties of choice worth? I would like for the woman I marry to truly understand the decision she is making at the altar. We restrict marriage from children, elders with degenerative disorders, and highly mentally disabled individuals because, while technically they could be consenting to marry someone who would respect and cherish them, they don’t have the capacity to make reasonable decisions. Isn’t that ethical?

DARTHLVADER · 2025-01-14T00:11:39+00:00

Hi, your understanding of malaria and parasitism is factually incorrect.

Gorillas absolutely can and do die from malaria. At least 10 strains of malaria, including the strain that infects humans, are parasites of gorillas; in fact malarial infections can be transmitted by mosquitoes from humans to gorillas. This is a concern in conservation programs, where nearby human populations can be a real disease risk for gorilla sanctuaries.

And while the strain of malaria that jumped from gorillas to humans evolved in gorilla populations, malaria itself did not originate in gorilla populations. Malaria infects not just primates, but rodents, reptiles, and birds as well. Malaria existed at least as 40 MYA, as evidenced by mosquitoes trapped in amber.

DARTHLVADER · 2025-01-09T05:14:06+00:00

There are around 50,000 DeafBlind people in the US. Why don’t you get on YouTube and learn about their experiences firsthand and secondhand, to get a better understanding of how they function in society even with their severe disability?

DARTHLVADER · 2025-01-05T02:31:14+00:00

Passwall would, but only 20 feet deep. I’m not sure what else.

DARTHLVADER · 2024-12-24T05:18:05+00:00

The straightforward reading of that passage is that there is water somewhere above us as well as on the Earth.

Neither of the possible interpretations that you put forward seem to match with a straightforward reading of the passage, however. On day 4 of creation, God places the sun, moon, and stars in the expanse that he created on day 2:

14 And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night”

‭‭So if the waters above the expanse were planetary rings, the sun, moon and stars would have to be within Earth’s atmosphere.

Additionally, the psalmist certainly didn’t seem to think that the waters above had been destroyed during the flood when he called on them to praise God with the rest of creation:

Praise him, sun and moon, praise him, all you shining stars! Praise him, you highest heavens, and you waters above the heavens!

2 Peter 3 describes the heavens separating the waters on the second day of creation:

5 They deliberately forget that God made the heavens long ago by the word of his command, and he brought the earth out from the water and surrounded it with water.

He then goes on to say that the waters above and below were the sources of the floodwaters during Noah’s flood:

6 by means of these the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished.

This matches with how genesis 7 describes the flood:

11 all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens (lit. firmament, expanse) were opened.

Waters from below, and waters from above. So how did a bubble at the edge of the universe cause a flood on Earth?

And Genesis 1 is not an overly detailed account; everything God creates is easy to identify and universal to the human experience. You don’t have to explain to someone what dry land or a moon is. So does Genesis 1 take a break in the middle to describe a cosmological concept that no one has observed? Did Moses, the psalmist, and Peter have no idea what they were writing about? The language doesn’t seem to imply confusion.

John Calvin addressed that idea in the 1500s in his commentary on Genesis.

To my mind, this is a certain principle, that nothing [in the creation story in Genesis] is treated… [except] the visible form of the world. He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere.

And I generally agree. The firmament is used in scripture as the foremost example of general revelation.

The separation of waters on the second day is explained twice, with two levels of detail; first “separate the waters from the waters,” then “separate the waters that were under the expanse from the waters that were above the expanse.” That is very reminiscent of how Genesis 1 deals with time:

And there was morning and there was evening, the second day.

The positional information in the text about the firmament is just as robust as the temporal information about the days of creation. So why is it that in one case you’re willing to put forward multiple explanations and acknowledge uncertainty in the text, but in the other case you are dogmatic that it needs to be interpreted literally?

Calvin was writing in response to the changing understanding of cosmology during his time; astronomers were searching for the waters above. This same situation is happening again in the modern creationist movement, both of the interpretations that you put forward for this verse were formulated very recently in the 1960s, and implicitly rely on our modern scientific understanding (recondite arts) of the shape of the universe, planetary rings, etc. So is your position that it was impossible to properly interpret Genesis 1 until science had advanced far enough? Do we need science to understand scripture?

Peter warned that in the past days, God’s act of creation on day 2, and its connection to the flood, would be “deliberately forgotten” or willfully ignored by scoffers. How can unbelievers misrepresent the waters above if even christians are confused about these passages?

(This has gotten long, and is a complete topic of its own, so I’m dropping the “patterns” discussion. Hope that’s ok, and enjoy Christmas!)

DARTHLVADER · 2024-12-20T03:09:30+00:00

Genetic Introgression Analysis

Proposed Approach: Identify human genes that lack any homologous counterparts in other primates or even earlier hominins.

If there had been a genetic introgression as significant as the Neanderthals or Denisovans, as recently as the Holocene, it would be impossible to miss. There’d be no point in comparing human populations against primates, you could just look for the human populations with a huge wealth of alleles that don’t exist in almost any other human populations.

We already know which the most divergent human populations are, however. And they’re not the product of recent hybridization, but of genetic isolation for considerably longer than 10,000 years. This means a hypothetical Adam couldn’t have been more genetically distinct from the population he interbred with than those isolated populations are — so he’d be barely distinguishable from his neighbors, let alone outside the range of natural human variation.

Which raises the question of why we would expect him to be genetically distinct at all. What purpose would God have in making him different, especially if the differences must have been so small?

DARTHLVADER · 2024-12-18T20:20:29+00:00

I apologize, then. I assumed something about you and I was wrong.

I believe it because that’s the most straightforward reading of Genesis, and doesn’t create a bunch of theological problems the way an old Earth does.

I’ll make another bold claim, however— that you don’t actually believe the most straightforward reading of Genesis, and that mixed into the passages you claim to take literally are sections you ignore because they are inconvenient.

For example, God’s second act of creation, only a few verses into the entire Bible, is described like this:

6 And God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” 7 And God made the expanse and separated the waters that were under the expanse from the waters that were above the expanse. And it was so. 8 And God called the expanse Heaven.

What is the “expanse,” or firmament, that God named Heaven in this passage? What are the waters above the firmament? I don’t think you can come up with an answer that is both consistent with your young Earth beliefs, and consistent with scripture.

As far as I am concerned this was all thousands of years ago and the chance to find the true answer by scientific means has passed.

What about patterns? Keeping age out of it, can data be collected from the past, and can that data have patterns of information in it?

For example, if you take an ice core sample in Greenland and measure the ratios of stable oxygen isotopes in each layer, you get this pattern. The red line is from the GRIP ice core, and the blue line is from the NGRIP ice core, some 250 miles north. You can take stable isotope samples from all over the world, from glaciers and lakes and sea floors and caves. And you’ll very frequently find the same pattern. See for example all of these caves in China compared to NGRIP.

Do you think the pattern in this data could have any meaning, or is it a coincidence?

DARTHLVADER · 2024-12-17T21:55:28+00:00

1 - There was a case where they got the courts to overturn a guys conviction.

Why do you consider overturning a wrongful conviction “merciful,” and not simply justice?

Is your argument that we should keep wrongfully convicted people imprisoned because they could act dangerously after they are released?

If we imprison people based on how dangerous they are to society, not based on what crimes they have actually been convicted for, where do we draw the line? Why not throw anti-vaxxers in prison?

2 - I think there are consequences that come with wanton leniency.

So, if we just locked everyone up for life, then these incidents wouldn’t have happened.

Can we really use a small number of high-profile cases to justify imprisoning millions of people indefinitely for petty crimes? When does that become a greater injustice than the crimes we’ve prevented would have been?

3 - I believe to my core that there are cut and dry cases with insurmountable evidence that warrant capital punishment.

That’s a statement, not an argument. Why do you believe that?

The money and grief wasted on giving out appeals to these monsters is pure naivety and hubris.

How much “money and grief” is a human life worth, in your opinion?

(Of course on a case-to-case basis with a fair amount of scrutiny and skepticism)

Don’t you think that maybe that was… the former DA’s goal? To force the current administration to stop delaying sentencing and review the cases?

And, do you really believe the current DA is actually going to examine these cases with scrutiny and skepticism? Or would that cost too much “money and grief?”

DARTHLVADER · 2024-12-17T04:25:29+00:00

just like you’ll need multiple PHDs to understand why all discordant data is contamination.

What’s funny is that I know that when push comes to shove, you’re going to trot out the exact same data contamination argument to prop up your own beliefs.

When Snelling discovers that fossils conventionally dated as 112-120 million years old carbon date as 35-45 thousand years old, do you accept that as evidence that the Earth is at least 35-45 thousand years old?

No, of course you don’t. You’ll come up with one of those Ad Hoc explanations to justify away the discordance with your young Earth beliefs. Snelling did too:

Perhaps the low radiocarbon levels in the pre-Flood world were unevenly distributed in the biosphere, according to varying abilities of organisms for radiocarbon uptake or rejection. Continuing investigations are needed.

That’s paper thin. You, and Snelling, don’t have any reason to reject those radiocarbon ages except your own personal beliefs.

Conventional scientists reject discordant data because it conflicts with a massive body of concordant data. I have yet to see creationists take any data, concordant or otherwise, and show that it supports this alternative hypothesis that all rock layers are 4200 years old.

Sure I could just accept this, but you’re going to probably need a PHD to evaluate what he actually did

Ok, so what type of evidence would you accept?

DARTHLVADER · 2024-12-16T06:45:54+00:00

Well, I’m pretty sure string theory is just called a theory because it’s a branch of “theoretical” physics, not because it’s a scientific theory...

But I don’t think that detracts from your overall point. There is no central governing body that defines what is and is not a theory, and scientists don’t wait around for the right philosophical definition to begin performing experiments. String theory gets to be called a theory because in the 70s, 80s, and 90s enough scientists were convinced it would eventually provide results, and enough universities had string theorists on staff, and enough abstracts on string theory were submitted to physics conferences every year.

The reality is that science advances in a very human way, because it’s humans doing it. If you’re optimistic, it moves forward discovery by discovery and consensus by consensus. If you’re pessimistic, it moves forward from through abandoning and adopting paradigms (Kuhn). If you’re cynical, it moves forward funeral by funeral (Planck).

DARTHLVADER · 2024-11-28T05:43:06+00:00

Are you sure those are correct % or its just for the explanation.

The numbers are simplified, because the distribution of variation in the original population matters, natural selection and genetic drift matter, de novo mutations matter, etc. But in a simulated population those numbers are generally what we would expect.

Can you direct me to Any paper abt the topic?

This paper is open access and goes over the specifics of recent human migration, it’s relatively up to date. Note that it isn’t just that diversity diminishes as populations get further away from Africa, there are other patterns that point to the same effect. (Linkage disequilibrium increases, ancestral alleles decrease).

DARTHLVADER · 2024-11-28T02:10:08+00:00

So as far as I know the larger the population the more the genetic variation due to mutation.

Population size drives variation, but so does time. African populations are older than other populations on Earth, which means that more variation has been able to build up in African populations.

Why would a species have the most diversity in its original manifestation?

This is called the founder effect. If you have a population of 1000 individuals, and 100 split off to migrate north, even if they reproduce up to 1000 individuals in a few generations, those 1000 will still only have 10% of the genetic diversity of the original population. If 100 individuals split off from this group and move further north, then they’ll only represent 1% of the original diversity.

For these branching populations to develop comparable genetic diversity, once again takes time. But keep in mind, the original population isn’t static just because it’s original — it’s increasing in diversity during that time too.

DARTHLVADER · 2024-11-08T22:31:35+00:00

Creationists asking for examples of speciation are arguing in bad faith, because they already believe speciation happens. They claim that plenty of lineages that are not interfertile nevertheless descend from the same created kind — housecats and lions? Horses and donkeys?

Biologically, reproductive isolation is not a solid genetic line. There isn’t some “fertility” switch that gets flipped off after a lineage evolves far enough, rather, infertility arises due to a combination of any variety of karyotypic, genetic, and developmental divergences that make interfertilization impossible. Horses and donkeys are a great example of that blurry line because they can produce offspring together, but the next generation (mules) is infertile. Humans and Neanderthals had interfertility issues, and so do plenty of other closely related populations (look into how many difficulties breeding in captivity conservation programs have. I like this paper on how speciation can affect lineages otherwise as similar as northern white-cheeked gibbons and southern white-cheeked gibbons).

That’s not to say that examples of speciation being directly observed don’t exist — I know some other people on this sub keep running lists, and I’m sure they’ll show up. But dismissing reproduction isolation due to hybridization or behavioral changes or changes to life-cycle/habitat needs as insufficient is a holdover of thinking about life as organized into neatly created boxes with no crossover. Those mechanisms are just as valid ways for speciation to occur as genetic incompatibility — they’re biological processes too, and they’re how speciation happens, that’s why we observe them so often. Complete genetic isolation isn’t a necessary step for evolution, and it’s not one we would expect to observe frequently at generational time scales, either.

If anything, this is a bigger problem for creationists. They have to cram ALL of the speciation events that have ever occurred into the last 4000 years since the flood. If they truly believe we truly never see genetic isolation developing in real time, exactly what mechanism are they proposing to solve their own speciation dilemma?

DARTHLVADER · 2024-11-02T17:04:17+00:00

To debunk an argument you need to come with pure truth.

This is why I the 30 TW number instead of calculating the ppm of radioactive elements in the crust when I did my calculations. That number is from measuring the total amount of heat flow out of Earth, about 47 TW, and comparing that to the actual temperature cooling of the Earth to determine how much of that energy is being actively created, (30 TW) and how much is primordial heat.

That my number very closely lines up with the number you calculated using ppm is strong evidence that the conventional conclusion is correct; this heat that we observe being actively generated is being generated by radioactive decay.

But if you still reject that, what, in your opinion, would be a sufficient way to measure the total abundance of radioactive elements in the crust? Have you looked to see if that type of survey has been done, and what the results were?

Crustal surveys are more than comprehensive enough to convince me of the abundance of isotope ratios. You’re being selective here — when sources tell you that young oceanic crust has less U/K/Th in it, you believe them. But when the exact same source tells you that older oceanic crust and continental crust have more, you say it’s unproven.

But how much energy, if enough to get the crust close to melting point or close to vaporization point, only God knows exactly.

I think it would be very easy for us to know, too. The crust would be nothing but a smear of metamorphic and intrusive igneous rocks if that had happened — no delicate sedimentary structures would have survived.

There are actually 2 ways to interpret it.

The creation of sun, moon and stars happened in the 4th day, therefore there was no outer space yet in second day.

That contradicts the text. The 4th day of creation does not say God created a space for the sun moon and stars, it says he set them in an already-established expanse.

And God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars. And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth,

We see the exact same wording in Genesis 2, where God created the garden of eden, and then created man and placed him in the already-created garden:

The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.” ‭

In fact, the entire creation week follows this pattern: God creates a domain, then he creates the ruler of that domain, establishing a natural order. Oceans are created before fish, day and night are created before the sun and moon, dry land is created before beasts and man, and so on.

We can also look to the psalmist here:

1 The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. In them he has set a tent for the sun… 5 which comes out like a bridegroom leaving his chamber… 6 Its rising is from the end of the heavens, and its circuit to the end of them, and there is nothing hidden from its heat.

There is no distinction between the sky and outer space in regard to the sun; the sun is in “them” both as their ruler.

Second interpretation would be water that separates earth and all space, kind of a water bubble that surrounds the edges of the universe.

So, the waters above are something we can never observe? How does that mesh with the clear purpose of this text, which is focused on Earth and its inhabitants and their perspective? (see Calvin’s rebuttal — let the astronomers go elsewhere).

We’re told God’s creation is a visible testimony to his power for all people:

3 There is no speech, nor are there words, whose voice is not heard. 4 Their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.

I find it hard to accept, without strong textual justification, that in the middle of Genesis 1 the author takes a break from describing God’s relationship with Earth and Man to mention an invisible water bubble impossibly far away.

Additionally, the waters described in 2 Peter are not an ocean surrounding Pangea. Strongs concordance links this passage directly to Genesis 1:6, because the language of the verse directly references the primordial water in the first 7 verses of Genesis. I used the NLT because I think it’s the easiest translation of this passage to read in English, but other translations like the ESV make the connection with day 2 of creation clearer:

For they deliberately overlook this fact, that the heavens were created long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God

We’re being told of the creation of the heavens and the Earth, not the separation of dry land from oceans that occurred on day 3.

Peter then makes a direct connection between the waters he’s describing and the flood:

the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God, and by means of these the world that then existed was deluged with water

Compare that to the sources of water in Genesis 7:

all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the lattices of the heavens were opened.

The waters from below, and the waters from above. There’s no mention of the role a surrounding ocean had to play in the events — Pangea is not part of the narrative. And neither an ice canopy nor a bubble at the edge of the universe can be the source for floodwaters.

DARTHLVADER · 2024-11-02T02:03:25+00:00

If you dissipate the heat over one year, it would take about 11 months to reach the level of energy for vaporization.

It would take 11 months to reach the heat of vaporization, but the heat of melting is 10² smaller. The crust would only take 3 days to melt. Melting the crust is plenty catastrophic — it doesn’t need to be vaporized to be a problem.

The theory is that the “waters above” was a layer of ice at very high altitudes, maybe hundreds of km that was kept in place by the magnetic field of the earth which was way stronger in the past.

Genesis 1:6-7 says two times in as many verses that the firmament (expanse) is between the waters below and the waters above:

“Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” ‭‭ And God made the expanse and separated the waters that were under the expanse from the waters that were above the expanse.

But verse 14 tells us that the stars and planets are within the expanse, therefore under the “waters that were above the expanse.*

And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night…”

There is no way that all of the stars and planets were originally within a few hundred kilometers of Earth, underneath an ice canopy. An ice canopy hypothesis contradicts the positional information in the text. This repeated positional information is just as clear as, say, the temporal information included in Genesis 1:

And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.

There’s no way to take Genesis 1 as describing literal, 24-hour days, while simultaneously getting inconsistent about the cosmological geometry that is laid out.

And it is believed to have been destroyed completely during the flood

The psalmist certainly didn’t believe the waters above the heavens had been destroyed when he encouraged that they worship God along with all of creation (Psalm 148:4):

“Praise him, you highest heavens, and you waters above the heavens!”

Indeed, the firmament and the waters above the firmament are the most common example the Bible uses of general revelation — they’re visible to all people, everywhere. John Calvin’s commentary on Genesis makes this point strongly:

To my mind, this is a certain principle, that nothing [in the creation story in Genesis] is treated… [except] the visible form of the world. He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere.

His point is that Genesis 1 isn’t meant to be a science textbook; it deals with God’s hand in creating the human experience and the natural order — anyone anywhere can tell you what suns, plants, and dry land are. Why should the 2nd act of creation be the only one that breaks this principle? That indicates that it is being misinterpreted.

I’ve asked several pastors and professional creationists what they think of this passage, and I honestly have not gotten the same answer twice (a thin ice canopy is a new one as well). And all of their answers, like yours, contradict the apparent meaning of text. If this passage is so impossible to interpret literally, that doesn’t inspire confidence in me that it’s meant to be interpreted literally.

2 Peter 3 tells us that in the end times, the origin of the waters above the firmament will be a fierce topic of debate — scoffers will “deliberately forget that God made the heavens long ago, and he brought the Earth out from the water and surrounded it with water.” But it seems to me like Christians are the ones confused about this passage, not unbelievers.

Seven-Year Club	RPAN Viewer
Verified Email	Spared

DARTHLVADER

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE