Creationist Talking Point Rebuke #4,275,410

Talking Point: The Speed of light has changed over time

Rebuke: In the dense bright distant past, about an hour after the Big Bang, the speed of light was probably slightly, overall, slower since the medium through which it moved was denser than today. But for the past 15 billion years, give or take a couple billion, the speed of light has been 300,000 kps. How do we know? Creationists love to claim that we cannot realy know about the distant past. The facts are that we use the laws of physics to determine how the past must have looked. These laws are not guesses. These laws allow us to build the modern world. They allow us to build cars, PCs, tanks, satelites, cell phones, broadcast televion stations, radios and microwave ovens, to name only a few. The internet itself is a product of modern physics. The laws of physics not only show us how to build and design things, they tell us how the universe has evolved to this point and they tell us what the probable future will be.

For instance in about 4 billion years our sun will have spent all its fuseable material and its atmosphere will have expanded to engulf the Earth. But not to worry since all life on Earth will have been long extinguished before that day since the flucuations in the suns output would have toasted the earth a billion years earlier.

Back to lights speed. It is constant. The speed of light coming from the head light of a train is the same as it is from a man holding a flashlight by the train tracks. I could go on like this spouting basic highschool physics but the creationist would still not believe. Their faith is so monumentally weak as to faint if the Bible is proven to be a book about faith rather than a book about history and science.

I believe in Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, The triune manifestation of the one God. And I read the Bible everyday. But if I am building a computer I do not consult the Good Book on what to do. If I am designing a 40 story office tower the bible is much practical help, other than telling me not to build the thing on sand.

For the biblical literalists there is NO age given for the universe. The creation date is NOT GIVEN. The location of Eden is NOT GIVEN. The location of Mount Sianai is NOT GIVEN. In short all the little bits of info that the non-faithful crave is not in the Bible. It doesn't have to be. The times and places are unimportant. It is what took place, not when, not by what amount, or even who.