Posted by AF [AF] on November 27, 1999 at 17:18:17 {nwG7wj0NI.1EwaxRomAMdaOt1gg/Zk}:
Having gotten home I was able to find an old post that discussed the specific problems with Gerald Schroeder's ideas. Note that his arithmetic error is something like using "1/x" to prove a theorem when you should have used "x". How someone capable of getting a Ph.D. from MIT can make such an elementary error is beyond me, but suggests that his religious biases have overidden his good sense.
Here is the post. I'm responding to someone who had thought that Schroeder made a good argument.
"Physics" has proven no such thing. In fact, below I demonstrate a very simple disproof.
What you should have said is that author Gerald Schroeder claims that his interpretations of physics and Genesis can be reconciled.
: Einstein demonstrated that when a single event is viewed fron two frames of reference, a thousand or even a billion years in one frame, can indeed pass for days in the other. Dimensions in time and space are not absolute. There very measurement is an intimate relationship between the observed and the observer. This is very simply, relativistic time dilation.
True, but irrelevant since Schroeder has got the application completely inverted, which disproves his ideas.
: The biblical inventor of bronze tools, Tuval-Cain is placed in the bible at 1350 years after the appearance of Adam-4400 years ago. The earliest brass tools are dated at 2400 years b.c.e., 4400 years ago. This man lived in the time of Noah, before the flood.
Think about this for a bit. Taken literally, Genesis speaks of a global flood, which wiped out all mankind and animal kinds except for those on the ark. Naturally it would have wiped out all traces of pre-Flood civilization. Yet here you're claiming that such traces have been found. Your claims are inconsistent.
: I hope you find reading the book "Genesis and the Big Bang", by Gerald Schroeder, Ph,d, applied theology/applied physics, an interesting read. Check it out!
I read the book. It's a pretty good shot at trying a reconciliation, but Schroeder appears to have gone off his rocker in his applications. A good physicist can simply do the math and show that Scroeder's application is completely screwy. Below, I do it another way.
J.H. has already shown that the timetable Schroeder presents contradicts a number of known facts. Now let's take a cursory look at what Schroeder says, from a slightly different perspective. This is from Schroeder's article that J.H. posted a link to:
Every time the universe doubles, the perception of time is cut in half. Now when the universe was small, it was doubling very rapidly. But as the universe gets bigger, the doubling time gets exponentially longer. ...The calculations come out to be as follows:
The first of the Biblical days lasted 24 hours, viewed from the "beginning of time perspective." But the duration from our perspective was 8 billion years. ...
The fifth day -- one-half billion years.
The sixth day -- one-quarter billion years.
Note what Schroeder says: every time the universe doubles in size, time runs slower ("the perception of time") by half. What this means is that the universe must have doubled in size from the 6th day to the 7th day, from the 5th day to the 6th day, from the 4th to the 5th day, and so on back to day one. Now, it should be clear from reading any modern cosmology book that the universe has not doubled in size in the last quarter billion years, or in the half billion years before that, and so on. In fact, the time it takes to double in size, measured from our perspective has been getting longer not shorter. So Schroeder has gotten it completely backwards, which disproves his claims.
But there's more. The Bible goes out on a limb and tells you what happened on each of those days. Now you can take cosmology, paleontology, archaeology, and look at the history of the world, and see whether or not they match up day-by-day. And I'll give you a hint. They match up close enough to send chills up your spine.
J.H. has already pointed out why Schroder's claims here are dead wrong. The events don't match up, unless you allow that out-of-order sequences are a match.
AF