Really? What would that be? Does it have anything to do with your previous career as a marine biologist?
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But never claiming to have completely reached it, with all conclusions being provisional. But you donāt overturn science just by writing books aimed at laypeople in which you misrepresent the actual data.
And religion is about the āWhyā question. Most Christians view the Genesis account as being about the āWhy?ā question, with the āHow?ā parts being poetic.
I donāt think youāre understanding ātestableā in the same way as we scientists understand it, given your omission of the role of the hypothesis.
Agreed. I think thatās by design. Intelligent design, even. 
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The interesting thing is that there is no evidence (Edit: read as empirical evidence) for said regularities over large periods of time (such as million or billions of years) and over large distances (such as many light years away from us).
I always wonder
a) how scientists are so sure of these things.
b) Believe a small set of data over space and time can actuall represent trends across the whole of space and time.
even with these assumptions of regularity, Scientist end up with singularities where the laws break down such as the big bang, or the first life ( where the principle reproduction/evolution comes to an end).
There is definitely a certain hubris in the certainty attributed many of these theories imo.
You will find fraunhofer lines in light coming to us from the most distant lightsources in the universe. That tells us the laws of quantum physics were operating back then, just as they are today(because those lines in the electromagnetic spectra are due to quantum phenomena).
A galaxy is an emergent consequence gravitational attraction between atoms, you canāt have galaxies without gravity. That tells us gravity was operating back then also. What we are seeing is light from stars, which entails nuclear fusion, which means the laws governing the nucleus of the atom were in operating back then.
We can simply, literally, look up into the night sky with a telescope and confirm that the four fundamental forces of physics(electromagnetism, the weak and strong nuclear forces, and gravity) have been operating relatively unchanged for as far back and as far away that it is possible for us to see.
There is nothing BUT empirical evidence for the regularity of nature.
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I think this boils down to the speed of light being constant. If its not, the calculated distance of the stars and the age calculated would be wrong.
I am not saying it is. But the fact is that this depends on the assumptions about the speed of light being constant being true.
You need dark matter to explain where the galaxies are with how gravity is explained currently.
This could just be a correction for a wrong theory.
This is why there are theories like MOND. Even though only a small group hold to it.
This makes senseā¦ Provided our understanding of the speed of light is correct and predictions of āback thenā hold.
Provided nature works in a regular fashion.
There is no reason not to think so. But the confidence in this idea is not from science or empirical observation in itself.
Sure there is. Testing the constancy of physical laws (or of physical constants) over large spans of time and space is a niche but active field of physics.
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No, as far as I am aware (Iām no physicist, so Iād be happy to take correction here from someone who is) the speed of light does not have to be constant for the Fraunhofer lines we know, to exist.
The speed of light has to be constant for us to accurately determine the distance to faraway objects by way of redshift, but that is not a question of relevance to the issue of the existence of Fraunhofer lines in the electromagnetic spectrum. Maybe Iām wrong, but if the speed of light needs to be constant for Fraunhofer lines to exist, then it seems to me the detection of Fraunhofer lines in distant objects confirms that the speed of light is similar āover thereā to what it is here on Earth.
I am not saying it is. But the fact is that this depends on the assumptions about the speed of light being constant being true.
In the case of Fraunhofer lines, can you explain how so?
Dark matter is part of the explanation for the shapes of galaxies, and their distributions into clusters and so on. But that is true both for galaxies very near to us(including the one our solar system is part of), and galaxies far away.
No matter how far away those galaxies really are (and thus, whether the speed of light is truly constant or not over long intergalactic distances), it is nevertheless a fact that galaxies seem to have the same overall distributions of shapes(differen types of irregular and spiral galaxies), and cluster into the same filamentous structures both immediately surrounding our own galaxy, and in the most distant ones.
That implies gravity has been operating at least very close to consistently over those distances and times(whatever the actual distances and times are).
No, that is still not necessary. You donāt seem to understand exactly what I am arguing. Iāll try to clarify.
I am not making claims that entail we know exactly how far away distant galaxies are. Just that they ARE further away, than nearby galaxies, and that we can roughly speaking tell the difference between close and distant galaxies. We can basically infer that merely by using angular size. More distant galaxies appear smaller. We donāt have to assume a constant speed of light to make an inference using angular size.
My fingers appear smaller to me the further away I move my hand. The same goes for ANY object I look at. The further I move away from it, the smaller itās angular diameter becomes. How fast the light travels from that object to my eye(or whether it is constant) is not relevant to the question of angular diameter. Make it more distant => decrease itās angular diameter.
So when I say we are seeing what appears to us to be starlight coming to us from galaxies with smaller angular size, we can infer that those galaxies with smaller angular size are further away(because smaller angular size), and since the starlight looks to be starlight(because it has Fraunhofer lines, falls into certain spectra that agree with models of stellar evolution and our understanding of stellar nuclear physics), that implies stellar nuclear fusion as-we-know-it is happening inside them, which implies that the laws of physics governing the behavior of atoms-as-we-know-them is also in effect in those stars.
And, again, we know simply from the fact that their angular size is smaller, that they are further away. Hence, nuclear physics must be operating further away from us, in the same way it is operating near us.
Now, I am no nuclear physicist, but I suspect nuclear physics of atoms and fusion processes in part depends on the speed of light. And I suspect a significantly altered speed of light would change the behavior of nuclear physics, which in turn would change the behavior and radiative output of stars, which in turn would entail changed starlight spectra, if in fact stars and nuclear physics could even exist with a significantly altered speed of light.
So I suspect we might even be able to infer a constants speed of light from the fact that distant galaxies are made of stars that fall into the āusualā distributions on a Hertzsprung-Russell-diagram.
Perhaps this is something @PotQ can speak more knowledgeably about than I can?
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What argument do YECs use to allow the ignoring of Jeremiah 33:25?:
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Canāt speak for YECs as I am not one.
However, there is very little reason to equate what is said in Jeremiah with the ālawsā of Science.
It speaks about how day and night and seasons occur as per Godās will. They will regularly occur till he wills them to. A day will come when He will put an end to this cycle and there will be no sun or moon to give us light. But rather, the Lord will be our light.
Do you believe natural cycles will go on for eternity?
Edit: or that the last day will occur due to ānatural causesā?
Do you not believe in a new heaven and new earth? Or, how is that question not off-topic?
Indeed, he once speculated in a letter that angels were subtly pushing on the known planets in order to slightly modify their orbits from pure ellipses.
How did that speculation fare, @BWhite?
Best,
Chris
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There is every reason to equate what is said in Jeremiah with the laws of nature, the laws of heaven and earth. How are the āālawsā of Scienceā different? They are merely the discovery and codification of what God has already established.
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I think that what Dale was getting at is that the laws of science have to do with a methodology for studying nature. Science is not nature itself.
Note that @DaleCutler spoke of the laws of science, while you responded by speaking of the laws of nature. They are not the same.
Later in your post you used laws of science as a synonym for laws of nature. I think thatās where the ambiguity enters. If you agree with me that itās best to distinguish between the two, then you and @DaleCutler and I will be in agreement on the issue.
Best,
Chris
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If the speed of light were faster the further out it originates then that should make some testable predictions about the rates of evolution for distant cosmological objects. In a sense, we should be able to see them age, right?
I have explained this once before. Scientific ālawsā are approximations of how nature functions.
Equating them with the laws of God is ridiculous. I donāt know why you insist of holding to this confusion.
I donāt think @DaleCutler is talking about the scientific method when he is talking about the ālaws of Scienceā. He seems to be speaking about theories like that of gravity which explain the rotation of planets and thus the seasons, day/night etc.
The verse in Jeremiah is definitely not talking about the scientific method/the rules followed when doing science.
Lete just say that ālaws of natureā exist only to the extent that the lawgiver exists and nature obeys His decrees.
Since science does not acknowledge the law giver, no scientific theory describes the kind of law spoken of in the text from Jeremiah.
Scientific theories are models that predict how nature will behave. These models have varying degrees of accuracy.
Iāve always liked the characterization of scientific laws as summarizations of how the universe functions.
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Agreed. You make very valid case.
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Are you serious or joking?
No offence meant, but sometimes I donāt get your jokes.