Is changing a physical law like changing a speed limit sign?

[Neatras]

Changing some laws on earth is more like changing a speed limit sign.

Is the above true? If so, how does one demonstrate this to be the case?

If not, what are some physical consequences of changing a physical law outside of what one might expect?

My debate position is this: It is extremely uneducated and willfully ignorant to believe that changing a physical law only affects a limited domain of physical phenomena. For example, changing the speed of light to be faster doesn't just affect how quickly light reaches us; it also affects how quickly particles interact, the energy required for all physical interactions, and other sundry details that would, in essence, be very telling if they suddenly altered in an instant.

However, I am aware that both dad and Kent Hovind maintain that God is some sort of master engineer, complete with a box and dials that he can play with, turning some physical laws on and off while the rest remains unaffected. This is a position maintained by and expressed via ignorance and incredulity, with no physical basis or rationale behind it besides "God is awesome enough to get away with it."

So, any creationists wanna try and put it across that changing a physical law is like changing a speed limit sign?

[DeMotts]

[Replying to post 29 by dad]

If you won't accept current observations about the world then I don't know how anyone is going to convince you to accept conclusions based on observations.

Can you prove that you're not just a collection of ferrets wearing men's clothing and imitating a human? No, you can't. Therefore I'm right. You're a bunch of ferrets.

Can you prove that anything in this universe existed before this morning? No, you can't. The universe was created at 2:13 this morning when Thor bumped into Vishnu at the water cooler and spilled some coffee. This is now a fact.

Can you prove that god loves you? I talked to him. He says you stink. Can you prove me wrong? No? Ok then it's a fact. You stink and god hates you.

Yay. We're all making up facts as we go now. I'm done with this one.

[dad]

If you won't accept current observations about the world then I don't know how anyone is going to convince you to accept conclusions based on observations.

I accept all observations. For example we see light from far stars here. What is not accepted is your claim that a lot of time was involved in that light getting here...that was not observed. Do not try to piggyback your religion onto actual observations.

Can you prove that anything in this universe existed before this morning?

Yes, reasonably. Just read a newspaper.

Can you prove that god loves you? I talked to him. He says you stink. Can you prove me wrong? No? Ok then it's a fact. You stink and god hates you.

Jesus died to prove He does, and gave us Scripture to seal it in writing. We do not need any man's opinion.

[DeMotts]

If you won't accept current observations about the world then I don't know how anyone is going to convince you to accept conclusions based on observations.

I accept all observations. For example we see light from far stars here. What is not accepted is your claim that a lot of time was involved in that light getting here...that was not observed. Do not try to piggyback your religion onto actual observations.

Can you prove that anything in this universe existed before this morning?

Yes, reasonably. Just read a newspaper.

Can you prove that god loves you? I talked to him. He says you stink. Can you prove me wrong? No? Ok then it's a fact. You stink and god hates you.

Jesus died to prove He does, and gave us Scripture to seal it in writing. We do not need any man's opinion.

No you're wrong, the entire universe was created this morning. Physics was different when that newspaper was written. There was time travel involved. You can't prove me wrong. By your metric I have now won this argument.

[Still small]

[Replying to post 24 by Still small]

Surely any and all biological features that are less than perfectly optimal would suffice? Take back pain as an example.

Majority of back pain is due to our sedentary lifestyle rather than as a result of evolution. Hence the prescribed treatment for such back pain is usually exercise (McKenzie, R., Mechanical Diagnosis and Therapy for Low Back Pain: Toward a Better Understanding, Spinal Publications, Waikanae, New Zealand, Saunders, Philadelphia, 2nd Edition, 1996.). Do you have any specific 'facts', as requested as opposed to generalisations and assumptions?

Have a good day,
Still small

[Bust Nak]

Majority of back pain is due to our sedentary lifestyle rather than as a result of evolution.

Tell that to the farmers and construction workers.

Hence the prescribed treatment for such back pain is usually exercise...

What about all the back pain that isn't due to sedentary lifestyle?

Do you have any specific 'facts', as requested as opposed to generalisations and assumptions?

Or we can just stick to back pain.

[Still small]

Majority of back pain is due to our sedentary lifestyle rather than as a result of evolution.

Tell that to the farmers and construction workers.

Do you also blaming 'evolution' for a person drowning because they can no longer breathe underwater like a fish. Often injuries occur, especially back strains when one goes beyond that for which they were designed to perform or by doing it incorrectly. Not all farmers or construction workers suffer from back problems.

Hence the prescribed treatment for such back pain is usually exercise...

What about all the back pain that isn't due to sedentary lifestyle?

What! Like injuries (as previously mentioned), disease, poor nutrition, obesity or just plain senescence.

Do you have any specific 'facts', as requested as opposed to generalisations and assumptions?

Or we can just stick to back pain.

OK, what specifically about back pain that I haven't already mentioned?

Have a good day,
Still small

[Kenisaw]

[Replying to post 20 by Kenisaw]

If you accept the assumption that a god being created the universe, and that same universe contains multitudes of facts that specifically refute the existence of an intelligent design effort, then there was an attempt to deceive.

To which 'multitudes of facts that specifically refute the existence of an intelligent design effort' are you referring? (Please be specific.)

Limiting our examples to just the stuff in Genesis 1, plants didn't come before light, you cannot have a canopy of water over the Earth, flying creatures didn't come before land animals, the iron laden Earth didn't come before iron-producing stars, the moon does emit light (it reflects it)....

Bible claims being short on details is not the problem. It's the complete and utter lack of evidence for them that's the problem. Naturalistic explanations are based on facts and empirical data, Biblical claims are not. They don't compare.(Emphasis added)

Again, to which specific 'facts' are you referring? To which 'empirical data' (being repeatable and observed data) are you referring regarding a naturalistic explanation for the creation of the universe?

Have a good day,
Still small

The same facts that make the claims of the Bible simply not true.

[Kenisaw]

[Replying to post 12 by Kenisaw]

Time doesn't affect light, because AT the speed of light there is no time. Relativity. I already explained this to you. I even asked you to look it up yourself and not take my word for it. Light also doesn't experience distance. We see time and distance for light because, relative to the light, we are experiencing such dimensions. At the speed of light photons experience neither. So it doesn't matter if time exists or doesn't exist, because time doesn't affect light in the first place. NOTHING does. So the speed of light can't change because nothing affects it.

How do you align this train of thought with research that appears to contradict these statements? Such as:

Even in vacuum conditions, light can move slower than its maximum speed depending on the structure of its pulses. The finding could be important for physicists studying extremely short light pulses.
...
Researchers led by optical physicist Miles Padgett at the University of Glasgow demonstrated the effect by racing photons that were identical except for their structure. The structured light consistently arrived a tad late. Though the effect is not recognizable in everyday life and in most technological applications, the new research highlights a fundamental and previously unappreciated subtlety in the behavior of light.

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/spe ... -after-all

https://www.livescience.com/29111-speed ... stant.html

From a very general point of view, G. Ellis expressed concerns that a varying c would require a rewrite of much of modern physics to replace the current system which depends on a constant c. Ellis claimed that any varying c theory (1) must redefine distance measurements (2) must provide an alternative expression for the metric tensor in general relativity (3) might contradict Lorentz invariance (4) must modify Maxwell's equations (5) must be done consistently with respect to all other physical theories. Whether these concerns apply to the proposals of Einstein (1911) and Dicke (1957) is a matter of debate, though VSL cosmologies remain out of mainstream physics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_speed_of_light

Would this not suggest a possibility for the "laws of science" as it pertains to the speed of light could be altered by an intelligent designer. Changing the structure of light photons could result in a different speed, which would ultimately change the way light interacts with the known universe.

Wouldn't this qualify?

Most physics calculations rely on the constant c or G. If these constants were altered or varied, even for a brief moment of time, then the laws of physics would be "broken" or suspended, even if only momentarily.

Nope. The research doesn't contradict those statements. The reason the "structured" photons in the first article take slightly longer than the "regular" photons is because they actually travel a slightly longer path, due to the mask used causing some of the photons to propagate at a slightly different angle. Please read this article, it is more detailed than the one you provided. (It notes, by the way, "the results are not in contradiction with anything we know from textbooks, and certainly not with special relativity")

http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/new ... n-a-vacuum

The second article is an interesting hypothesis, but it's affect (if it's real) is so tiny as to have no significant impact on anything. And it does not actually affect the speed of light either. Photons absorbed by matter and then re-emitted out the other side of the matter still travel at the speed of light. The light appears slower because of the time the energy spends in the mass particle.

So nothing has been brought up that violates relativity or my statements.

[dad]

If you won't accept current observations about the world then I don't know how anyone is going to convince you to accept conclusions based on observations.

I accept all observations. For example we see light from far stars here. What is not accepted is your claim that a lot of time was involved in that light getting here...that was not observed. Do not try to piggyback your religion onto actual observations.

Can you prove that anything in this universe existed before this morning?

Yes, reasonably. Just read a newspaper.

Can you prove that god loves you? I talked to him. He says you stink. Can you prove me wrong? No? Ok then it's a fact. You stink and god hates you.

Jesus died to prove He does, and gave us Scripture to seal it in writing. We do not need any man's opinion.

No you're wrong, the entire universe was created this morning. Physics was different when that newspaper was written. There was time travel involved. You can't prove me wrong. By your metric I have now won this argument.

The trouble is you also lost yours. I, on the winning other hand do not deny history or the known past, let alone last week.

[dad]

Limiting our examples to just the stuff in Genesis 1, plants didn't come before light,

Oh? You know this...how?

you cannot have a canopy of water over the Earth

, Gen 1 says nothing of that.

flying creatures didn't come before land animals,

Yes. They did.

the iron laden Earth didn't come before iron-producing stars

, You have not been probably ten miles down, and you want to tell us what is down there? Even if there were lots of stuff on earth that is also in stars, that doesn't mean anything. Why not? Jesus created both. But you do not know how big stars are or how far, since we would need to know time exists in deep space to do that. So, for all we know, many stars could fall to earth, they are so small!

the moon does emit light (it reflects it)....

What verse says the moon emitted light? Ha.

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