I just thought i’d point out that the calculations Phil made had already been made by Faulkner at the link Phil provided (http://www.creationresearch.org/crsq/articles/35/astrodesign.html).

Specifically relating to Epimetheus, Faulkner writes: “The best candidates for total eclipses are Saturn XI (0.95), Saturn XVI (l.02), and Uranus VI (1.08)”

Where the number in parenthesis is the ratio of apparent satellite angular size/apparent sun angular size, and Saturn XI is Epimetheus. Thus as early as 1998, creationists were aware that Epimetheus came close to giving the same sort of solar eclipse as we get from earth.

However, he goes further, describing the duration of the eclipse:
“For Saturn XI the duration of eclipse is 19 seconds, while Saturn XVI has duration of 17 seconds. These durations are for the entire eclipses from first to fourth contacts, including the partial phases before and after any totality (or annularity). The length of totality is impossible to calculate with the current knowledge of the diameters of these two satellites, but it would likely be less than one second. Such eclipse would be almost unnoticeable, let alone enjoyable or useful for scientific study.”

His comment about current knowledge of the diameters of the two satellites refers to their non-sphericity.

Phil says “So that site does say that solar eclipses are possible from outer satellites, then immediately narrows their definition.”

The site does not immediately narrow its definition. In the abstract it mentions the uniqueness of the earth-moon system, and this view is upheld throughout the article.

Whether any conclusion based on such an argument is valid is a different matter, but i hardly find the site guilty of ‘typical creationist misdirection’

While I agree with Phil and the majority of the posters here that the concept of ‘enjoyable, or beauty’ is entirely subjective and holds little weight in an argument for design, I thought it important for some more facts about the issue to be brought to the forward (and by forward I mean hidden deep in the depths of the comments of a blog post made a week ago)

Actually, I know. Here’s a Stupid Deist Trick to change things up a bit.

Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that at least one supernatural entity responsible in some aspect for the universe as it is today (a god) exists. Whether or not there are particularly multiple gods, a prime mover, an intercessory agent, a sort of divine spirit or spirits is left vague, for there to be something to argue about.

Present the case that any given religion is more true than all other religions. You don’t even have to prove that it’s right, and all the others are wrong; just argue its superiority, as its potential to exist is given.

Uh, show me again where Phil targets Christianity.

Dean Baird said:
> Did I miss Creationist Philip’s list of his top five scientific publications?

Irrelevant, unnecessary, and complete waste of time. Philip never claimed to have written/published Creationist science papers. He says he wrote/published science papers, and that he is a theist. He did not try to argue that his science papers are related to his religious beliefs. Ergo, they are irrelevant, as is his identity.

Philip said:
> At least you are in good company. The Scribes and Pharisees were also diligent scholars and knew the bible very well. They likewise rejected Jesus.

What is that, guilt by association? Some attempt to ridicule/denigrate us non-Christians by virtue of association with other non-Christians?

Barton Paul Levenson said:
> Stupid Atheist Trick #3.

Labeling it a “stupid trick” doesn’t in any way negate or refute the statement. It’s just you sticking your fingers in your ears and chanting “la la la”.

We hadn’t thought about the Creationist implications though!

[[Almost all of the Atheists I know are more serious bible and religion scholars than the Christians I know.]]

This must be some strange new meaning of “serious bible and religion scholars” that I never encountered before.

Let’s see how good a Bible scholar you are, Ty. Would you agree with the following sentences:

1. The Bible says insects have four legs.
2. The Bible says bats are birds.
3. The Bible supports slavery.

[[Both an electron’s position and momentum are measurable. The fact that both can’t be accurately determined at the same time does not change the fact that both are measurable properties. Comparing these quite measurable properties of the universe to unmeasurable supernaturalism is disingenuous at best.]]

The more measurable one is, the less measurable the other is, Ty. You can’t know both at once no matter how good your instruments get. There are aspects of reality that definitely exist, but are closed off from empirical inquiry. Dig on it a while.

[[Show me the case where your god is proven to exist any more than santa, the easter bunny, thor, zeus, or (my personal favorite) loki and I’ll agree with you. Until then you make no point at all. ]]

Stupid Atheist Trick #3.

Heh. Those dirty, dirty Pharisees. Or, rather, the individual rules-lawyers amongst the Pharisees. You know, the same kinds of rules-lawyers that tend to turn people away from the Abrahamic God more than anything else.

I know from experience it’s essentially hair-splitting so far as Christianity goes, but most non-Christians don’t really reject Jesus as a philosopher, seeing how he was mostly a harmless hippie with the occasional bout of righteous indignation (the fig tree and the moneylenders come to mind) and perhaps some Emperor Norton syndrome. What most people seem to reject, and I know I certainly do, is the Gunnery Sergeant Hartmann God so willing to kill and slaughter and maim because He loves us so very, very much. A God who is so insecure that He demands fawning, unthinking worship and should he not get it He will hit us with a very big stick for all eternity. Doubting Thomas was bad, remember, for using the three pounds of meat in his skull and saying “resurrection from the dead? Sounds unlikely. I need proof.” A God who, because some chick in a creation myth broke one (well, admittedly, the only) rule once decided to damn billions of unsaved innocent children to Hell because, let’s face it, no one’s innocent. We’re all depraved and deserving of damnation.

Oh, and of course He’s the God of Love and not responsible for evil at all. Doesn’t even instill the instutitional confidence to say “YES! God is responsible evil, for he is the Lord of All!” Cop out, in my eyes.

I cannot hold myself to such a dystheism. Should anyone else like to, that’s their own affair; should it make them a better person than they otherwise would be, whether it be through faith or fear, more power to them. I simply request that I be left to pave the way to one-Hell-or-another with my own good intentions, just like everyone else.

And they believe that time goes at different rates as seen from different places! Believing in Galilean relativity makes FAR more sense.

What’s real doesn’t always correspond to what’s congenial to our minds.”

Barton, do I even have to say this? Physicists at the least have mathematics to back up their theories. What evidence do you have that your God had himself murdered to save His creation from Himself?

“Almost all of the Atheists I know are more serious bible and religion scholars than the Christians I know.

I’ve read all of the apologists, including Lewis, and I’ve read the bible several dozen times (including John). I’ve also taken comparative religion classes at University, and studied the bible with three different Christian religions: Catholics, non-fundamentalist Protestants, and fundamentalist Protestants.

Believe me, when I dismiss Christianity I am not dismissing a straw-man. I know exactly what I’m talking about”

At least you are in good company. The Scribes and Pharisees were also diligent scholars and knew the bible very well. They likewise rejected Jesus.

Philip

There is a famous saying, ” Do not throw your pearls in front of
swine. It will be trampled upon”.

Philip

I’ve read all of the apologists, including Lewis, and I’ve read the bible several dozen times (including John). I’ve also taken comparative religion classes at University, and studied the bible with three different Christian religions: Catholics, non-fundamentalist Protestants, and fundamentalist Protestants.

Believe me, when I dismiss Christianity I am not dismissing a straw-man. I know exactly what I’m talking about.

Did I miss Creationist Philip’s list of his top five scientific publications? He boasted he was a published scientist and politely declined to “burden us” with a list. C’mon, Philip; burden us! Just the top five from your burdensome list. BABlogees can carry such load! Unless it be a load of BS, of course. Yikes, I think that’s what it might be.

OK then.

Are there other bubbles on the shore where the BIG BANG floats? Is our reality, the only reality?

I am only recycled stardust. Soon I will become recycled, once again. Creation/Chaos are the 2 dicotamies of faith and science. JMHO/FWIW

Tim Coloton

We’ve got some pretty impressive scientists in the creation camp like Dr. Francis Collins (our current poster boy), the head of the human genome project. Check this out: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2006/08/07/findrelig.DTL.

If you’re going to reject Christianity, at least consider what it’s greatest thinkers have proposed first. I’d recommend a helping of “Mere Christianity” by C.S. Lewis to start.

Better yet, read some of the New Testament. The book of John was written so people would believe. You can read it here: Bible Gateway.

—–

And ….

I love everything to come back from Cassini. This picture just blew me away. Can you imagine how cool it would be to live out there?

Phil, just wanted to say that I couldn’t resist to send the link to this post by e-mail to my “Basis for Astronomy and Astrophysics” teacher (he’s an Astrophysics university professor, by the way). Perhaps he’ll show it to us in class tomorrow.

And, Donnie B., considering that the angular size of the Sun as viewed from Saturn is much smaller than viewed from the Earth, you will note that the penumbra zone will be smaller and the umbra zone bigger when you get that away from our star. So the shadows will be sharper in eclipses there.

http://www.salagram.net/solar-eclipse.gif

Once you realize that, other methods of knowing are on the table.”

Both an electron’s position and momentum are measurable. The fact that both can’t be accurately determined at the same time does not change the fact that both are measurable properties. Comparing these quite measurable properties of the universe to unmeasurable supernaturalism is disingenuous at best.

And that’s the problem. These “other methods of knowing” mysteriously tend to lack any measurable properties of any kind. They propose no falsifiable hypothesis. At that point, the odds of Santa existing and any other supernatural and unfalsifiable thing existing are exactly the same.

Phil, I enjoy your site, your science and your very healthy disdain for creationists and other anti-scientists.

However, the article’s purpose would have been better served to leave the religious angle out entirely – the image and discussion about it are enough to attract and to hold the attention of your average blog surfer….

…which builds credibility for this site…

… which opens the door to sensible consideration of other matters, eg education policy, politics in general or religion, creationism,… whatever!

Phil, I think that you over-reached a little here and the result is there for all to see. A degenerating discussion of life, the universe and everything, descending to personal attacks, offense and turn-offs.

You know that you’re right, do you? But I cannot claim that my opinion is the only right and true one, far from me to do that! That’s why I can accept that people do not believe and some other people are muslim or Buddhist. Maybe god sent different religions to different parts of the world and … well… just wandered what we were doing with all that stuff . That I don’t give a damn what others think and believe makes it very easy for me.
Of course, I could also hold a speech here, why I think Christianity is one of the best ideas ever “invented” (even if you leave out “god” and that stuff), but that would leave us much too far.

I just can emphasize what American Voyager and TomR said:
Just look at that wonderful picture and realise how beautiful the universe (and life!) really is! We should enjoy it!

Show me the case where your god is proven to exist any more than santa, the easter bunny, thor, zeus, or (my personal favorite) loki and I’ll agree with you. Until then you make no point at all.

Heliocentrism can be demonstrated, beyond a shadow of a doubt, to be the correct model of our and indeed all other solar systems. You can do the math on it if you so choose, you can do the observations to verify the math and you can even use the math to send a rover to Mars if you want. All because it is verifiable and falsifiable. This is why we don’t “believe” in Tycho’s system or geocentrism – they don’t hold up under scrutiny.

In fact the reality that geocentrism cannot accurately predict the apparent movement of any object in the sky except the moon (and there are even issues there) demonstrates another thing nicely – namely that a theory with no supporting evidence gets tossed out on it’s ear… much like religion does for most of the posters here. Religion (any religion) has no supporting evidence whatsoever, ergo it is a flawed and innacurate belief.

Physicists don’t believe that an electron has properties of a wave and a partical any more than they believe anyhting else. They can however prove that their ideas about the makeup and behaviour of particles fit the observed realities better than any previous theory ever has. In fact they’re theories are so good and have proven to be so accurate that we can build shockingly amazing things (like the computer you are using) using the predicitions those theories make. Of course science has managed to refine it’s understanding of the universe and make increasingly accurate predicitions of how things work (a very useful thing that) while religion hasn’t changed it’s tune in millenia. But hey, stagnation can be a good thing right?……

You are, of course, welcome to have whatever strange beliefs you like but don’t expect that in a group of folks who base their world view on evidence to be sympathetic to them. Especially when you come off as an intolerant ass

[[rational evaluation of evidence is the only reliable tool for determining ‘what’s real.’]]

Sorry, we disagree from the start. Who says that only the natural world is real? The religious question is whether something exists ASIDE FROM the empirical world. Saying that only empirical evidence counts is to prejudge the question.

We know, from science itself, that there are some things science cannot ever tell us; that there are areas of reality permanently closed off from us no matter how good our instruments get. The obvious example is the simultaneous position and momentum of a subatomic particle — if you know one precisely, you cannot know the other. Another example would be what causes one nucleus to decay at a given time and not another. So we know from empiricism itself that empiricism does not exhaust reality.

Once you realize that, other methods of knowing are on the table.

[[What I do know is all the major religions are profoundly wrong. They’re not even close.]]

And you know this how…?

Indeed. Which is why rational evaluation of evidence is the only reliable tool for determining ‘what’s real.’

“I.e., maybe there are ways of distinguishing among supernatural beings, and some might be more plausible than others. Ya think?”

I would love to see the rational evaluation of evidence that leads to belief in your particular supernatural being.