Author Archives: randomraindrops

Excited Hydrogen and Probability

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Vaugh Mancha posted this photo.

I wrote the following analysis to Vaughn in response.

Vaughn Mancha Let us assume all the particles in the universe are hydrogen atoms. There are 1 x 10^83 of them. Lets assume all are in gaseous form at room temperature. What is the probability of one of these hydrogen atoms having an electron elevated above ground state?

We calculated it in statistical physics class.

1 x 10^(-338).

That is a very tiny number. 1 x 10^(-40000) is vastly smaller.

So in our universe, if we assume 10^83 hydrogen atoms at room temperature, how many ar excited above ground state at any given instant?

The answer is ABSOLUTELY ZERO.

Why?

There is a granite lab table in the front of classroom. You know the type in chemistry labs, it is a black granite slab on top of a cabinet with a sink and and a tall spigot.

The professor asked the above question and then he climbed on top of the table and stood there. And with a huge swing of his arms he shouted, “ABSOLUTELY ZERO”, and he jumped off the table.

Think about this: in one hydrogen atom if it has an electron in an excited orbit it will decay, giving off a hydrogen line. Can humans even detect it? No. It is too faint. There is no known technology that can detect it.

How does this compare to P = 1 x 10^(-338). First we need a sample size of 1 x 10^338 particles. And one atom excited out of that many. (BTW, it is called an ensemble and is part of partition theory.)

Lets assume every atom has an entire universe inside it consisting of 1 x 10^83 hydrogen atoms. How many atoms do we have? 1 x 10^166. Of all of those lets assume each also has an entire universe inside it. How many now? 1 x 10^249.

Lets assume all those atoms have an entire universe inside them.

How many now?

1 x 10^332 atoms.

That is an ensemble that is still a million times too small to be guaranteed that a single hydrogen atom is excited at any given time.

Can you even visualize that ensemble? It is not easy.

THIS is why I don’t believe life just randomly popped into existence given what humans know about the universe. and even if it did there still wasn’t natural selection going on because that takes a lot more mechanism than just the first cell could provide (reference Sy Garte).

I don’t have enough faith to believe in abiogenesis. And neither did Fred Hoyle.

The materialists are asking us to have faith in something that is impossible to believe. I cannot do it. There simply is not enough explanation coming from them. I think they are lying.

But morons will come here to your page to tell you Vaughn Mancha that you have done something stupid by quoting Fred Hoyle.

But they cannot tell you why. You are supposed to believe them based on blind faith.

Investing Ideas

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An analyst writes:

I rank stocks across five categories: Quality, Growth, Momentum, Value, and Risk.

Quality measures how efficiently a company turns capital into profit and how durable those profits are, using metrics like ROIC, gross margin, and free cash flow conversion. SNDK scores 2.01 on a 5-point scale for quality.

Growth captures the trajectory of the business, primarily through forward earnings growth and analyst estimate revisions. A company scores well when its earnings are not just growing but growing at an accelerating pace. This is where SNDK really shines – scoring 4.76 out of a possible 5.

Momentum measures the stock’s price strength relative to its peers over the past 1, 3, 6, and 12 months. The premise is straightforward: stocks that have outperformed tend to continue outperforming over intermediate horizons, so persistent relative strength earns a higher score. It should come as no surprise that SNDK scores very high – 4.81 – for momentum.

Value assesses what you’re paying for the company’s earnings and cash flow, using measures such as forward P/E and free-cash-flow yield. Lower valuations relative to the company’s sector earn higher scores, which keeps the system from overpaying even for high-quality names. SNDK scores 1.55, which supports my hold rating.

Risk gauges the stock’s downside vulnerability, drawing on historical volatility and drawdown behavior. Stocks that deliver their returns with a smoother ride and shallower declines score higher, so the framework rewards return quality, not just return magnitude.

Riley Barton Debate

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Trying to follow the debate on origins between YEC JD Longmire and ex-YEC Riley Barton?

The URL’s will be posted here and go directly to the relevant blog sites, bypassing facebook entirely. I need to add the first two sets of URLs, so stay tuned.

Round 3 in Riley Barton’s debate with JD Longmire, as of June 14, 2026.

Riley’s statements: https://theevidenceisplain.blogspot.com/2026/06/scripture-nature-and-time-round-3.html

JD’s statements: https://www.oddxian.com/p/scripture-nature-and-time-round-3

Consilience of Evidence in Geological Dating.

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See also: https://randomraindrops.com/creation-museum-millions-of-years/ for why I see the problem differently.

Corey Taylor on Geological Dating

I saw this on a facebook group which I am *not* joining. He is talking about consilience of evidence.

Corey Taylor · ·

After years of discussing young earth creationism, Noah’s Flood, and evolution debates, I’ve come to an interesting conclusion:

Almost ALL of it ultimately rests on one thing being wrong: absolute dating.

If radiometric dating works, then the Earth is not 6,000 years old. Period.

Think about this logically. Radiometric dating isn’t some obscure tool used only by paleontologists digging up dinosaur bones. The biggest evidence of effective is that industries worth trillions of dollars rely on it. The oil and gas industry uses radiometric dating and related geological dating methods constantly to understand sediment layers, reconstruct ancient environments, map basins, and determine where resources are likely to be. Companies spend billions drilling wells. If these methods were wildly inaccurate, they’d be hemorrhaging money at a scale capitalism simply doesn’t tolerate. The reason companies keep using them is because they work. Money talks.

Now here’s where things get even harder to dismiss. We don’t just have ONE dating method. We have multiple radiometric methods using different isotopes with different decay rates: uranium-lead, potassium-argon, rubidium-strontium, carbon dating (for recent stuff), and more. If these methods were built on terrible assumptions, they should constantly disagree. Instead, they often converge on the same ages. Even more importantly, they match entirely different dating methods that have nothing to do with radioactive decay at all: tree rings, ice cores across two continents, varves (annual sediment layers), coral growth patterns, and historical records. You can align known volcanic eruption ash layers with multiple dating methods to confirm effectiveness. There’s no logical way they would align coincidentally. They can’t all be off by exactly the same amounts.

And yes… before Mount St. Helens appears in the comments again. The common argument comes from using potassium-argon dating on very young rocks and obtaining old ages. Here’s the problem: potassium-argon dating generally should NOT be used on extremely young volcanic rocks because not enough radiogenic argon has had time to accumulate yet. Even tiny amounts of inherited argon trapped in magma before eruption can completely overwhelm the signal you’re trying to measure. Scientists have known this for decades. Using potassium-argon dating on fresh volcanic rock and then acting shocked when it gives nonsense results is like weighing yourself with a broken bathroom scale and declaring gravity false. All this demonstrates is that if you use a tool improperly, you get bad results.

My favorite example of proof of concept is Vesuvius. We know when the eruption happened because people literally wrote about it. Pompeii was buried in AD 79. When volcanic material from Vesuvius was radiometrically dated, we got ages consistent with reality. This isn’t deep time speculation. It’s a direct calibration against calendar dates. The question isn’t really “does radiometric dating have assumptions?” Every measurement system does. The question is: do those assumptions produce accurate results when tested against reality? Over and over again, the answer appears to be yes

Creation Museum: Millions of Years

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The Sneaky Origins of Millions of Years is Sneaky.

 

Robin Majorbanks had a comment about the below youtube video:

It’s a complete misconception that early earth-scientists conceived they were upsetting Biblical truth. In fact the point is that Christians, by and large, did *not* subscribe to the notion today of Young Earth Creationism — that is not a fundamental belief of the Church, at all.

YEC really began as 19th Century thought, making much of Ussher’s back-of-the-envelope calculations, and it was popularized by Seventh-Day Adventists through the 20th Century. It is not ancient Church thinking, it is man’s invention — in the sense of a new filtering of how to read text, and without much reference to how the Bible would have originally been understood, and without much authentic exegesis.

YEC is in fact a very product of ‘scientism’ — a perceived need to come up with science-sounding explanations to allow a personally-forced interpretation of Genesis. “The Genesis Flood” by theologian John C. Whitcomb and hydraulic engineer Henry M. Morris is a good example of the felt need for scientifically justifying a shallow non-seeker’s reading of Biblical truth, and it ends up in awful pseudo-science, that in no way exalts Biblical Creation.


I agree with him, but I think it is just a modernist form of concordism turned into a science-sounding explanation. But it is based on a theological presupposition. To get to that presupposition listen to the first part of the video.

What I see in the presentation is a pink elephant in the room: a theological presupposition:

Listening to the audio it seems to me he claims natural processes are not involved in geology. Instead geology is based on supernatural processes.

That is a 100% theological claim. And it rules out, or at least ignores the idea of God’s immanence, ie, God working through nature.

I say “rules out” because he is doing an exclusive-or contrast.

That is bad theology.

Please note: it is not just geology at issue. It is all the sciences.


There is no point debating science with YEC. The theological foundations are like shifting sand at their very root. The real debate is the YEC theological presupposition.

I was recently asked by YEC Chris Coatney if I believe God is supernatural. The answer is YES. But I also believe God is immanent. God is in nature and works through nature. So God is both. He is supernatural and he is immanent. God has multiple attributes. And Christianity has recognized this and taught this throughout it’s entire history. The YEC people ignore some of the attributes of God and focus on one attribute only. God’s supernatural attribute.

The YEC rule is this: God does not and can not work through nature. To do that God would have to be immanent.


Hugh Ross May 29 2026

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Hugh Ross asks,



Social Media Question of the Week: Didn’t Adam’s sin and the sin of Noah’s contemporaries blanket/impact the entire Earth? Therefore, didn’t Adam’s sin alter Earth and all its inhabitants and must not Noah’s flood cover the entire Earth?

My Answer: After Adam sinned, “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it” (Genesis 3:17). What changed was the soil humans worked to grow their food. It became damaged because sinful humans were abusing it. Earth’s physics remained unchanged. The remainder of Earth’s surface was unchanged. Noah’s flood is an example of God surgically removing malignant reprobate sin (uncontrolled evil infecting everything in its vicinity). Note that when God judged Sodom and Gomorrah, he left the wicked Amorites to survive because “the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure” (Genesis 15:16). Therefore, Noah’s flood extended to all the land inhabited by humans and their animals, but no more. It was only the world of the ungodly that was wiped out (2 Peter 2:5).

Falling Apart Quietly

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Seven ways men look stable while quietly falling apart.
From JR McGregor.

1. He functions, but he doesn’t feel alive Gets up. Works. Provides. Shows up.

Still feels numb most days. Like he’s running a life on autopilot that he never consciously chose.

2. He tells everyone he’s fine because explaining feels harder Not lying. Just tired.

If he starts talking, he doesn’t know where it will go. So he keeps it short. Keeps it light. Keeps it moving.

3. He stays busy so the silence can’t catch him Work. Gym. Projects. Fixing things that don’t matter.

As long as there’s noise, nothing has space to ask him the questions he’s avoiding.

4. He laughs a lot, but sleeps badly Easy with jokes. Easy with banter. Hard alone at night.

Mind racing. Chest tight. Thinking about everything he hasn’t said and everything he doesn’t understand about himself.

5. He’s reliable for everyone except himself Keeps promises to work. To family. To partners.

Breaks every promise he makes to his own body, his own needs, his own life. Then wonders why he feels invisible.

6. He hasn’t cried in years but feels heavy all the time Not dramatic sadness. Just a constant weight. Pressure in the chest. Short temper. Low patience.

Grief that never found a way out.

7. He has a quiet fear that this isn’t the life he’s meant to be living Not because it’s bad. Because it doesn’t feel like his.

Like he stepped into a role before he ever figured out who he actually was.

And here’s the part no one tells men.

You don’t fall apart loudly. You fall apart slowly.

By functioning. By coping. By surviving. By calling it adulthood.

If you’re reading this and felt uncomfortable instead of offended, DM me HEAL

That’s usually where a man finally admits he’s not broken… he’s just been carrying too much alone.

Some Introspection

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My thoughts on purpose and place in the universe.

A friend received a bunch of messages or posts from me which had not been delivered. Until today. So she sent them back to me, telling me facebook had bunched them up and delivered them all together. Really? I didn’t remember them. Then slowly it came back to me, yes, I had written them. I told her I would write a raindrop because they are all on the same topic, and who can trust facebook? Better to blog.

I may have them copied in the wrong order here. I told her I must surely have been feeling introspective when I wrote them.

Two of these were marked 2 years old. I have put them at the top.


Two years ago it seems I wrote this to my friend:

At some point in time you realize you appreciate that God hangs in there and keeps annoying you by re-arranging you life. You start to look forward to it. It creates a smile. HEY HEY HEY, just get your hands off that vase! That MY vase!

Every born again Christian experiences this. Sometimes Jesus just dusts a shelf in a corner. Because you throw things at him! I figure most people do that. They are not comfortable with him. Because they are the captain of their ship and want to control control control.

Later, you might decide he is more welcome and he moves a piece of furniture.
This is a process.

I meet scholars and bible students and church goers who haven’t got a clue what I am talking about. They got religion. They don’t got Jesus as the Christ of their life though. They talk big. Its like tinkling chimes blowing against a window pane.

There’s two kinds of people in the universe. Those who have eternal life (being adopted children of God) and those who will spend the next several trillion years in oblivion (at best).

The first kind do not have it easy. It can be agonizing as the spirit of the new redeemed man wars with the old unyielding carnal nature.

The second kind have no internal struggle, just the old self centered egotistical sin nature that rules them.

A bit later:
Today someone told me “I am very different from you”.

She refused to recognize the internal struggle that Paul writes about. SHE IS THE CAPTAIN OF HER SHIP. Not Jesus.
All the religious talk was just talk.

I have heard that “I am very different from you” before. It means “I am obstinate and you are full of crap”. And that was to my question “Who do you serve? Is Christ in your life anywhere?” It was a denial of Christ. Just like Peter. Lets hope it doesn’t hold. But there is no meeting of minds past that point. There is no fellowship possible.




March 8 2026:
I daily ponder with growing enjoyment that Jesus moves into your life (your inner house) and re-arranges the furniture. I used to resist and resent this.



A couple of days ago: This is when all the above were delivered as a bunch. She had never seen the previous messages.

I am meeting some people that whatever they do, whatever it is, is liturgy. Service to God. I see it. Even the miscreant Christians have some of that. The unadopted not so much.
What about the undiscovered adopted?
Not meaning to sound Calvinist here. 😉 There are some “shall be redeemed in the future” people out there.
Maybe our purpose is to weed, water, fertilize, and serve God by serving them?
Thats not trivial. There is a cross to bear in that process.
Jesus is a power boat, twin 427 hemi engines, and I am here on skiis, white knuckled grip on the tow rope. Afraid to let go. Tempted. But I cant swim. The apostle Peter was a skiier. Same thing. . 😉







Taxon Cycles

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Taxon cycles refer to a biogeographical theory of how species evolve through range expansions and contractions over time associated with adaptive shifts in the ecology and morphology of species. The taxon cycle concept was explicitly formulated by biologist E. O. Wilson in 1961[1] after he surveyed the distributions, habitats, behavior and morphology of ant species in the Melanesian archipelago.[2]

Stages of the taxon cycle

Wilson categorized species into evolutionary “stages”, which today are commonly described in the outline by Ricklefs & Cox (1972).[3] However, with the advent of molecular techniques to construct time-calibrated phylogenetic relationships between species, the taxon cycle concept was further developed to include well-defined temporal scales[4] and combined with concepts from ecological succession and speciation cycle theories.[5] Taxon cycles have mainly been described in island settings (archipelagos), where the distributions and movements of species are readily recognized,[6] but may also occur in continental biota.

  • Stage I: Young, rapidly expanding, undifferentiated, widely and continuously distributed species in the initial colonization stage inhabiting small island, coastal or disturbed (marginal) habitat. Such species are hypothesized to include very good dispersers, ephemeral species and ecological “supertramps“.
  • Stage II: Species that are generally widespread across many islands, but where geographical expansion has slowed, population differentiation has generated subspecies or incipient species, and local extinction on small islands may have created gaps in the distribution. This stage includes species that have maintained a relatively good dispersal ability such as “great speciators“.[7] Early-stage “species complexes” may consist of stage II species.
  • Stage III: Older, well-differentiated and well-defined species that have moved to habitats inland (and uphill) and where reduced dispersal ability and extinctions have fragmented the distribution to fewer and larger islands. These species may be niche specialists, but novel adaptations or accidental dispersal may restart the taxon cycle.
  • Stage IV: Old, relictual, endemic species in the “final” stage are restricted to island interiors (mountains) on a few, large islands. This stage includes sedentary high‐elevation specialists with limited dispersal abilities and small range sizes. These species are evolutionary distinctive, as closely related species (and subspecies) have gone extinct.


The ecology and evolution of the Melanesian ants that originally inspired Wilson’s hypothesis have since been shown to be consistent with the taxon cycle predictions using modern methods.[8] Ricklefs & Bermingham (2002)[6] estimated that taxon cycles take place over periods of 0.1-10 million years in different bird groups of the Lesser Antilles islands. Pepke et al. (2019)[5] used the difference in mean age of late- and early-stage species as a lower estimate (4.7 million years) of the tempo of taxon cycling in an Indo-Pacific bird family.

References

 Economo, Evan P.; Sarnat, Eli M. (July 2012). “Revisiting the Ants of Melanesia and the Taxon Cycle: Historical and Human-Mediated Invasions of a Tropical Archipelago”. The American Naturalist. 180 (1): E1 – E16. doi:10.1086/665996. ISSN 0003-0147. PMID 22673659. S2CID 9729804.

 Wilson, Edward O. (1961). “The Nature of the Taxon Cycle in the Melanesian Ant Fauna”. The American Naturalist. 95 (882): 169–193. doi:10.1086/282174. ISSN 0003-0147. JSTOR 2458389. S2CID 83701216.

 Wilson, Edward O. (1959). “Adaptive Shift and Dispersal in a Tropical Ant Fauna”. Evolution. 13 (1): 122–144. doi:10.1111/j.1558-5646.1959.tb02996.x. ISSN 1558-5646. S2CID 87203686.

 Ricklefs, Robert E.; Cox, George W. (1972-03-01). “Taxon Cycles in the West Indian Avifauna”. The American Naturalist. 106 (948): 195–219. doi:10.1086/282762. ISSN 0003-0147. S2CID 84412686.

 Jønsson, Knud Andreas; Irestedt, Martin; Christidis, Les; Clegg, Sonya M.; Holt, Ben G.; Fjeldså, Jon (2014-02-22). “Evidence of taxon cycles in an Indo-Pacific passerine bird radiation (Aves: Pachycephala)”. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 281 (1777) 20131727. doi:10.1098/rspb.2013.1727. PMC 3896003. PMID 24403319.

 Pepke, Michael Le; Irestedt, Martin; Fjeldså, Jon; Rahbek, Carsten; Jønsson, Knud Andreas (2019). “Reconciling supertramps, great speciators and relict species with the taxon cycle stages of a large island radiation (Aves: Campephagidae)”. Journal of Biogeography. 46 (6): 1214–1225. doi:10.1111/jbi.13577. ISSN 1365-2699. S2CID 164517439.

 Ricklefs, Robert E.; Bermingham, Eldredge (2002). “The concept of the taxon cycle in biogeography”. Global Ecology and Biogeography. 11 (5): 353–361. doi:10.1046/j.1466-822x.2002.00300.x. ISSN 1466-8238.

 Pedersen, Michael Pepke; Irestedt, Martin; Joseph, Leo; Rahbek, Carsten; Jønsson, Knud Andreas (April 2018). “Phylogeography of a ‘great speciator’ (Aves: Edolisoma tenuirostre ) reveals complex dispersal and diversification dynamics across the Indo-Pacific”. Journal of Biogeography. 45 (4): 826–837. doi:10.1111/jbi.13182. hdl:11250/2593769. S2CID 46029743.

SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxon_cycle

Reasons I added the post: I am interested in the work of Edward O Wilson.

Currently blogging about Virtual LAN for HOMELAB.

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December always sees service interruption on wordpress and I will be back soon.


WINDOWS STUPIDITY ONCE AGAIN STRIKES.

Turns out Windows 11 has a bug where certain websites are blocked because of an ethernet/wireless chip driver problem in the lastest update but only for Gigabyte 650 motherboards which use a certain RealTek chipset. ARGGGHHHH! My main desktop. All other devices can get packets back from wordpress sites but W11 cannot. This update happened in late November/Early December whle I was traveling for thanksgiving holiday.

Extrapolation and Poor Assumptions

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I am forming some thoughts here based on discussion with Riley Barton and Jeff Reichman. I stole this first paragraph from Jeff Reichman. Jeff describes the situation very well.

[BEGIN]

Science, Assumptions, and the YEC Double Standard

Young Earth Creationists often argue that radiometric dating cannot be trusted because it rests on “unprovable assumptions.” At first glance, this sounds like a serious critique, but the reality is that all of science rests on assumptions. The difference is that these assumptions are tested, confirmed, and relied upon every day in ways that even YECs accept without question.

Every airplane that takes off depends on the assumption that the laws of aerodynamics apply universally and consistently. Every bridge that stands depends on the assumption that material strength behaves predictably under stress. Every car, phone, and GPS device depends on the assumption that electromagnetic laws, atomic behavior, and relativity are stable and reliable. These assumptions cannot be proved in a final metaphysical sense, but they are confirmed through repeated observation and practical success. Without them, modern technology would collapse.

And yet, occasionally those assumptions appear to be violated: a bridge collapses, a plane crashes, a car malfunctions. But even in the face of these failures, no one concludes that the underlying assumptions of physics or engineering are invalid. We recognize that accidents happen due to design flaws, human error, or unforeseen variables, not because the laws of aerodynamics or material strength suddenly ceased to exist. YECs themselves continue to fly, cross bridges, and ride in cars without hesitation, despite these occasional breakdowns. The inconsistency is outstanding: they accept the reliability of scientific assumptions in every area of daily life, but reject them only when those same assumptions support radiometric dating and an ancient earth.

Radiometric dating makes the same kind of assumptions as engineering and medicine: that decay rates are constant, that isotopes behave in predictable ways, and that contamination can be detected and accounted for. These assumptions are no different in kind from those underlying the technologies YECs rely on every day. If they dismiss radiometric dating because of its assumptions, they must also dismiss the airplanes they fly in, the bridges they drive across, and the phones they use daily. Since they do not, their critique collapses under its own weight.

The real issue is not whether science uses assumptions, it always does. The issue is whether we apply those assumptions consistently. YECs accept them when they support everyday life but reject them when they challenge their interpretation of Genesis. That double standard reveals that the objection is not scientific but theological. Science rests on assumptions, but those assumptions are the bedrock of every technology we trust. If we reject them selectively, we undermine not just radiometric dating but the very foundations of modern life.

[END]

A few days previously, on November 29th, I had mused the following.

Old earthers believe in

1) the doppler shift is real

2) the red shift is real

3) the universe is expanding

4) the laws of physics are constant over the life of the universe.

5) singularities exist and the universe may have been designed before the big bang (and maybe during?)

Young earthers believe all the above violates their definition of scripture and are wrong.

I wonder:
What does the evidence say?

Can we extrapolate truth from what we see, or is it all deception?

Today, on Dec 3, 2025, I am thinking the issue is EXTRAPOLATION. On a known set of data in current time where the data is bounded this subject is called INTERPOLATION. In other words, predicting a value y=f(x) where x is an independent but unmeasured value and we are looking to guess (or interpolate) a value for the dependent variable y.

If we are looking for values outside our observational purview, for example the distant past or the distant future this becomes EXTRAPOLATION. So what young earthers are saying is “we cannot validly extrapolate laws based on physics. But why not? Theology! That is the reason. They essentially say “theology trumps physics because we say it does.” This is not based on inductive logic. Science itself is based (at least in part) on inductive logic – making observations within the purview of humans. That has to do with epistemology, ie, our purview, which is an observable domain of knowledge.

Christianity is also based on our human purview, an observable domain of knowledge, because of eyewitness testimony provided by history. Please note history here is defined as records of events observed by humans. But ORIGINS is an extrapolation because no humans were present to observe the alleged events.

Science offers an extrapolation of origins known as the Big Bang based on the idea that we can assume physical constants are constant across all time. This is temporal invariance. This is an extrapolation of our purview which old-earthers accept.

Another such extrapolation is evolution. Young earthers reject both extrapolations.