John Hartnett Pleads Operational Science

Creation vs. Evolution : Responding to Dystopian Science · Part II of Dystopian Science, my answer part A · Part II, part B - CMI on Deeper Waters · HGL's F.B. writings : Carter's Tactics · Back to Creation vs. Evolution : Part III : On Bradley and Bessel · New blog on the kid : Do Lorentz Transformations Prove a Universal Inconditional Speed Limit? · Back to Creation vs. Evolution : John Hartnett Pleads Operational Science · Correspondence of Hans Georg Lundahl : With Steven Taylor on Lorentz Transformations, Speed of Light, Distant Starlight Problem, Creation Week, Miracles

Like in, any piece of so called "science" that is not "historic science" is operational, right?

It's a bit like saying "all science which isn't natural science is social science" ... where does that put grammar, all the field of abstract mathematics, history? And then say "oh, it isn't social science, therefore it is natural science" ... this figure in logic is called dichotomy and here is an abusive one.

What science can not safely be called operational?

Science of the past, as past, of the future as future, but also of the hidden and of the distant.

It's corresponding to the Thomistic definition of "quorum non est scientia".

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) has resolved the event horizon of a supermassive black hole
by John Hartnett | Published: 16 April 2019 (GMT+10)
https://creation.com/first-black-hole-image

On 10 April the globally coordinated announcement was made of the first ever image of the event horizon of the supermassive black hole at the centre of the distant galaxy Messier 87 (M87) (figure 1). The galaxy is 55 million light-years away and the supermassive black hole was confirmed to have a mass of 6.5 billion suns.

What if it's something else?

Above all, what of it is neither as far away, nor as big?

From the biblical creationist perspective this is, yet again, good operational science. There is nothing new here that refutes the biblical timeline of about 6,000 years because that is subject to historical science considerations. It is not an operational science question. (Modern science in creationist thinking)

Well, John Hartnett linked there.

Modern science in creationist thinking
by John Hartnett | This article is from
Journal of Creation 25(3):46–47, December 2011
https://creation.com/creationism-modern-science

As six-day creationists, can we know what God did when he created this vast universe? If we agree that God created the universe, and it was created in a form that is essentially like we observe today—a mature creation—very large, tens of billions of light-years across—very old in appearance, in terms of processes we observe—then we have two possibilities within the creationist worldview:

• God created everything 6,000 years ago and we cannot know how He did it in Creation Week but somehow we can see the whole visible universe, including “ … events which lie entirely beyond our limited understanding of nature”1; or,
• God created everything 6,000 years ago and we can (in principle) know how He did it in Creation Week as much as we are able to see the whole visible universe.

What God did when He created this vast universe?

What if it isn't as vast as calculated (by the way, a 6 or 7 millennia old world is not very young and a universe one light day or one light year in radius around earth is not exactly small - it's just younger and smaller than uniformitarian scientists want to tell us).

John never questions the "tens of billions of light-years across" part.

His wording should be reformulated:

As six day creationists and heliocentrics holding a vast universe, tens of billions of light-years across, ... we have two alternatives.

And this would reformulate neatly like:

As six day creationists, we have at least three alternatives ....

• God created everything 6,000 years ago and we cannot know how He did it in Creation Week but somehow we can see the whole visible universe, including “ … events which lie entirely beyond our limited understanding of nature”; or,
• God created everything 6,000 years ago and we can (in principle) know how He did it in Creation Week as much as we are able to see the whole visible universe.
• God created everything 6000 years ago, and no distance is equal or even comparable to that in the observed universe, even if this might take Geocentrism.

Now, these improved formulations were not Mr. Hartnett's, here are, once again, his own exact words:

As six-day creationists, can we know what God did when he created this vast universe? If we agree that God created the universe, and it was created in a form that is essentially like we observe today—a mature creation—very large, tens of billions of light-years across—very old in appearance, in terms of processes we observe—then we have two possibilities within the creationist worldview:

• God created everything 6,000 years ago and we cannot know how He did it in Creation Week but somehow we can see the whole visible universe, including “ … events which lie entirely beyond our limited understanding of nature”1; or,
• God created everything 6,000 years ago and we can (in principle) know how He did it in Creation Week as much as we are able to see the whole visible universe.

What John Hartnett did was deftly forget there was any kind of question about how vast the universe is.

And in the exact same article, he has a rubric stating "Operational or historical science" - as if all parading as science were either one or the other.

If we are to make the assumption that we cannot know, or that the laws of nature we test in the laboratory are not the same as those we observe elsewhere in the cosmos (excluding the idea that what we do know is incomplete), then we have no basis to test any hypothesis about the universe. Taking that idea further, since we cannot travel to the nearest star, why not suppose that the laws of nature and the structure of the universe are such that all stars lie within a four-light-year radius of Earth? That idea could never be disproved because it is always possible to say the laws and structure of the universe are consistent with this notion. And we would not have a light-travel-time problem.

This does not even depend on any "we cannot know" nor on any "not the same as elsewhere" hypothesis.

We can test in a lab that bodies are moved by gravitation (actually, space travel is required to illustrate that the gravitation is definitely of the near Newtonian more precisely Einsteinian type, observations on earth only could be interpreted as Aristotelic gravity : heavy matter tends to the centre of the universe). We can test in a lab that inertia plays a role. We can absolutely not test in any kind of lab that voluntarily moving an object cannot possibly play any kind of role. On Atheistic views, planets and stars are too big for any possible voluntary mover. On Christian views, involving existence of God and of angels, they are not. Pleading that "angelic movers" are tantamount to "natural laws work differently elsewhere, so we cannot really know them" is bait and switch tactics.

If position number 2) above is taken, a straight-forward reading of Genesis as true history, we would not need to say that everything in the universe must be 6,000 years old, as measured by processes in their own frame of reference. That is not contradictory of the creation timeline. But those processes measured by Earth clocks must have taken less than 6,000 years to happen. God’s creation is knowable and understandable (at least those aspects limited to the physics we know today) to us as humans. He made the universe in a way that is rational and reasonable, and the efforts since the development of modern science, say, over the last thousand years, have revealed a lot of truth. (Of course along the way we have had to throw out a lot of error.)

Well, what if this view of relativity, that starlight travelled billions of years in its timeframe, but less than 6000 years in ours, is one of the errors to thrown out?

Modern physics, by and large, is reliable; we can test relativity with GPS satellites and even with Earth-bound modern atomic clocks.

• 1) What aspects are we testing?
• 2) On what premisses is it (apart from observations as such) that relativity is tested? Is rejection of absolute geocentrism one of the premisses?
• 3) In the case of atomic clocks, are we testing a dilation of time, or a disruption of the working of the clock?

If we accept all observations about the universe, realizing they are tainted with certain assumptions, which may be wrong, then creationists have a starlight-travel-time problem. This is true if we believe only 6,000 years have passed since the creation of the most distant light sources, and that they were all created at that time, as measured by normal Earth clocks, and we hold to the convention that the timer was started when the star was created. But if the timer was started when the light first arrived on Earth, when someone first saw the event, then this is the Anisotropic Time Convention, and there is no light-travel-time problem. There is nothing to answer. Or if Earth clocks ran slow during Creation Week compared to all other clocks in the cosmos, there would be billions of years of process going on out there, and plenty of time for light to get here in the past 6,000 years. This is a relativistic effect and relates to both Humphreys’ model and mine. In all cases the universe is large, and normal, testable physics applies.

By large presumably meaning billions of light years, and where do you obtain that "knowledge" from, if not from untested assumption of relative Heliocentrism in the "Solar System"?

Back to today's article:

The data was taken from the different telescopes and was assembled and processed over a period of about a year, but those initial observations were taken over a period of 7 days in April of 2017. Over those days the supermassive black hole was ‘observed’. In the same way over the 24-hour period Day 4 of Creation Week about 6,000 years ago all the stars and galaxies (with supermassive black holes) were ’observed’ at the earth as God created them (Genesis 1:16–19). God spoke and “it was so.”

In other words, instead of God creating stars on day 4, God created stars so their light arrived at Earth on day 4.

And elsewhere in the universe, it may be billions of years old.

But God sees all time. And God is truthful.

What would this make of Mark 10:6?

But from the beginning of the creation, God made them male and female.

Other problem, why would there be an observer on earth on day 4? Angels would be there all through the universe, not limited to earth.

Men were not created to day 6, indeed biological life was not created to day 5, unless stars also have a biology of sorts.

Is John Hartnett arguing Moses was time machined back to the creation days and so Moses was present as observer?

So, the "for an observer on earth" part doesn't make much sense.

Back when I was a 6000 year and Heliocentric creationist also believing billions of light years, I believed in star light created in transit. Novas destroy that theory, unless we accept God as creating images of stars that never existed. Basically - feel free to suggest something else.

Now I am a 7200 year and absolute Geocentric creationist and I do not believe the distances called billions of light years exist. Indeed, I don't believe one can prove 4 light years, since proving alpha Centauri to be that far away involves taking "Earth to Earth" as the known distance in three trigonometric quantities.*



No, claiming billions of light years is very far from operational science. And just because I am in fact somewhat out of my depth with a statement like "we can test relativity with GPS satellites" (the atomic clocks are more like "what if the clocks change speed?") does not mean I am wrong. If John Hartnett wants to prove me wrong, let him try. The statement as it stands is an allegation, not proof.

Note, as I am a Roman Catholic and as my theory has a very clear connection to the Roman Catholic position of 1633 (and to RC astronomer Riccioli, who believed in angelic movers), John Hartnett could have a problem with me. And with my position.

I had a memory he was 7th Day Adventist, turns out I misremembered, probably and at least could not find it, and definitely those who are have an even greater problem than he, then.

He thinks one separate commandment begins in Exodus 20:4, rather than this continuing the previous, that is first commandment.

While the words I saw from internet do not tie her words on astronomic vision to rejecting heliocentrism, it is probable she did, and most 7th Day Adventist would clearly interpret her vision so. Similar to Swedenborg, there are "people" on other planets, which implies kind of human observers who would not experience absolute Geocentrism, which would imply their view of things were as good as ours. This of course is what Enlightenment promotion of Heliocentrism (relative Heliocentrism and multiplication of Solar Systems) was often enough** about. I thought Hartnett's background was reason to bring this up, well, if it isn't, perhaps I was meant to bring it up anyway.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
Tuesday of Holy Week
16.IV.2019

* Source, own drawing originally scanned here:

hglwrites : Geo vs Helio
https://hglwrites.wordpress.com/2012/05/29/geo-vs-helio/

** See Euler, of whom I wrote here:

Auf Deutsch (auf Antimodernism und später) : Euler als "Astronom"
https://aufdeutschaufantimodernism.blogspot.com/2017/12/euler-als-astronom.html