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Joseph Stalin

2011-12-27T19:17:00Z

Uxbridge: Accuracy. Stalin rejected Darwinian evolution in favor of Lamarckian. Lamarckian evolution, obviously, is wrong and this caused several major famines.

{{Dictator bio
| image =[[Image:Stalin-140508 27880t.jpg|260px]]
| name =Joseph Stalin
| birth =December 18, 1878 Gori, Tiflis Governorate ([[Republic of Georgia|Georgia]]), Russian Empire
| parents =Vissarion Dzhugashvili Catherine Dzhugashvili
| religion =Georgian Orthodoxy (rejected) [[Atheism]]
| education =Tiflis Theological Seminary, Georgia
| spouse =Ekaterina Svanidze (d. 1907) Nadezhda Alliluyeva (d. 1937)
| children =Yakov Dzhugashvili Vasily Dzhugashvili Svetlana Alliluyeva
| death =March 5, 1953 Kuntsevo Dacha, Moscow
| deathmanner =Complications of a stroke
| burial =Near the Kremlin Wall, Moscow, Russia
| country =[[Soviet Union]]
| military =n/a
| rank =n/a
| polbeliefs =Communism
| party =Communist Party of the Soviet Union
| dictatordate =By 1929
| war =[[Great Purge of the Soviet Union]] [[World War II]] (as [[Hitler]]'s ally)
| deathnumber =33,000,000+
}}
'''Joseph Stalin''' (born '''Joseph Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili '''; (Russian: Ио́сиф Виссарио́нович Джугашви́ли) (1878 - 1953) was the dictator of the Soviet Union and General Secretary of the [[Communist Party]] of the [[Soviet Union]] ([[CPSU]]) from 1922 until his death. Joseph Stalin, who was a brutal proponent of [[atheism|atheistic]] [[communism]], was greatly influenced by the work of the [[evolution|neo-Lamarckian]] [[Trofim Lysenko]] as were other communist leaders.<ref>http://creation.com/the-darwinian-foundation-of-communism</ref><ref>http://creation.com/stalins-ape-man-superwarriors</ref><ref>http://creation.com/a-tale-of-four-countries</ref><ref>http://creation.com/darwin-trotsky-connection</ref> During 1942 - 1943 Stalin reinstated the Russian Orthodox Church in order to boost morale while Russia was at war with Nazi Germany.<ref>http://faroutliers.blogspot.com/2008/08/stalin-reinstates-church-1942-43.html</ref><ref>http://www.orthodoxinfo.com/ecumenism/frroman1.aspx</ref>

The son of a poor Georgian cobbler, Stalin was a former seminary student who joined the Communist Party when Georgia was still under the rule of the Russian Tsar. He became one of [[Lenin|Lenin's]] closest allies when the Kerensky regime was overthrown by Lenin's faction in 1917. During the [[Russian Civil War]] Stalin, who chose his name from the Russian word for steel, held the city of Tsaritsen on the Volga from counter-revolutionary forces. Stalin later re-named Tsaritsen [[Stalingrad]] in honor of his victory; Stalingrad would be the site of [[Germany]]'s massive defeat in [[World War II]].

==Rise to Power==

Stain was tapped by the Okhrana, the Tsarist secret police, as a low-level informer shortly after he was expelled from the Tiflis seminary in 1899. Stalin then began to systematically inform on revolutionary comrades in party organizations in Tiflis, Baku, and Batum over the next few years. He acquired a highly unsavory reputation among the [[Social Democrats]] of these cities and was finally arrested for cover purposes in 1902 when suspicions about him were about to boil over. It was the Okhrana that furnished the invisible means of support for the family he acquired after 1904.

In 1917, the Commissariat of Nationalities was formed with Stalin as its Commissar (Minister). The Commissariat addressed the question of the nationalities of the Russian Empire, and helped integrate them into the [[Soviet Union]]. From 1919-1922 he was also the People's Commissar of the Workers' and Peasants' Inspection (Rabkrin, from the Russian), which was founded to be a check on the burgeoning Soviet bureaucracy.

In 1922, Lenin named Stalin General Secretary of the CPSU. In 1924 Stalin in turn created the "Secret Department," a unit of 94 of his personal functionaries that maintained special privileges as the ''[[nomenklatura]]'', or a list of trusted individuals. He also appointed regional party secretaries who all, of course, supported Stalin. Through the Secret Department Stalin gained control of the [[Red Army]] after removing [[Leon Trotsky|Lev Trotsky]] in 1925 and the OGPU (later, [[KGB]]) when its leader [[Felix Dzerzhinsky]] died in 1926. Lenin had foreseen all of this and had warned in his last testament that Stalin should be removed from General Secretary because the position's power was unlimited.
[[Image:Stalin-Lenin.jpg|right|thumb|[[Lenin]] left, Stalin right]]
Stalin, however, did not allow this to happen. His most powerful rival, Lev Trotsky, who was the commander of the Red Army, was painted as a danger to the Revolution, because he continued to push the idea of international revolution; the "left opposition." Other Soviet leaders, like [[Zinoviev]], leader of the [[Comintern]], and [[Kaminev]], the head of the Communist Party in Moscow, were painted with the same brush because they supported Trotsky and did not wish to expel him from the CPSU in 1927. Later, he accused his ally [[Bukharin]] of being a member of the "right opposition," i.e. he was in favor of a more capitalistic economic system, as seen under the [[New Economic Policy]] (NEP) of the early 1920s. Trotsky was murdered in Mexico in 1940 by [[Ramón Mercader]] in an extensive conspiracy that included underground operatives from the [[Communist Party of the United States]] (CPUSA). Zinoviev, Kaminev, and Bukharin were the center of the famous "[[Great Purge|show trials]]" of the 1930s. All were put to death.

==Objectives of the Comintern==

In 1932, [[Sergei Ivanovich Gussev]], who had served as [[Comintern]] agent and Stalin's personal representative in the United States, "commanded the [[Communist Party of the United States|Communists in the United States]] to take up four tasks. Two of them were the defence of the Soviet Union and the furtherance of Red conquest of [[China]]." In 1933 the notorious [[Gerhart Eisler]] "was secretly sent into the United States by Moscow to make sure these orders were carried out." <ref>[[Louis F. Budenz]], ''The Techniques of Communism'', (Chicago: Henry Regnery and Company, 1954), pp. 162-163.</ref> [[Edgar Snow]] wrote in his 1937 book, ''Red Star Over China,'' "The political ideology, tactical line and theoretical leadership of the [[Chinese Communists]] have been under the close guidance, if not positive direction, of the Communist International, which during the last decade has become virtually a bureau of the [[Russian Communist Party]]. In the final analysis this means that for better or worse, the policies of the Chinese Communists, like the Communists in every other country, have had to fall in line with, and usually subordinate themselves to, the broad strategic requirements of [[Soviet Russia]], under the dictatorship of Stalin."<ref>''Red Star Over China'' by Edgar Snow, New York, 1937, pg. 374.</ref>

==Catch and Overtake==
In 1928 Stalin decided that the Soviet Union was not properly industrialized to enjoy a communist future, so he initiated the First Five Year Plan and the campaign to collectivize agriculture in order to "build socialism," and to "catch and overtake" the capitalist world. Stalin fanned the fires of collectivization, claiming that peasants had been hording grain and that they needed to be controlled. Under this program, rich peasants (kulaks), were exiled or killed for being enemies of the people, and peasants' land was taken in order to introduce collective farming to expedite grain appropriations. Many were called kulaks by jealous neighbors, while the peasants who remained were often the laziest and most ill suited to producing enough grain. Collectivization caused massive famine in Russia, particularly in [[Ukraine]] (see [[Holodomor]]), where Stalin ordered the Red Army to blockade certain regions and take grain by force. It is estimated that the famine of 1931-33 killed 6-7 million people, while 20 million starved.

The First Five Year Plan was a program of crash-industrialization. After [[World War I]] and the Russian Civil War Russia had an industrial capacity equal to that of its 1861 capacity. The only way for Russia to be able to break the "capitalist encirclement," Stalin declared, was to industrialize. Brigades of shock workers were formed to work faster and harder than the world had ever seen. Most of this, however, was pure propaganda, although the shock workers did set the record for concrete poured in a single shift. Compared to the capitalist world which was experiencing the Great Depression, Soviet growth was impressive. Between 1929 and 1937, 8,000 factories were constructed, average GDP growth was around 10%, and the official unemployment statistics, which included gulag detainees, was 0. In 1936, after the Second Five Year Plan, Stalin declared socialism "built." Nevertheless, the capitalist world lived better than the Soviet Union, despite the Great Depression. [[John Scott]], an American CPUSA member and Comintern operative who was living in the Soviet Union during the Five Year Plans, notes this in his memoirs of that period "Behind the Urals." The legacy of the Five Year Plans (most of which Stalin declared "completed" in 4 years) injured the Soviet's production models, because the encouraged quantity and speed over quality. However, the planning of the 1930s enabled the Russians to defeat the Nazis in the 1940s. <ref>Suvorov, Viktor. ''Icebreaker: Who Started the Second World War?// (Viking Press/Hamish Hamilton; 1990) ISBN 0241126223.</ref>

==Stalin's Terror==
Between 1936 and 1938, [[Joseph Stalin]] launched his purges to rid the Soviet Union of "fifth columnists," or spies who were loyal to the [[capitalist]] world. During the Terror 3 million people were arrested on various and often made-up charges, while 750,000 were executed. Due to the interrogation techniques of the NKVD (later, KGB), which often were torturous, most of those arrested confessed and were sent to work camps, called the [[Gulag]] for 10 years and sometimes even 25. Here, prisoners were forced to labor in mines, to log forests, or to do construction. Few lived through their sentences.

In early 1937, a senior officer of the OGPU (KGB) stumbled upon a highly classified file in the old archives of the Tsarist secret police, the Okhrana. It detailed the work of one J. V. Djugashvili as an informant and agent provocateur for the Okhrana inside the Bolshevik Party before the Russian Revolution. The OGPU officer, Stein, was shocked. Djugashvili was the true name of Stalin who was now purging the Old Bolsheviks on charges of being foreign spies and counter-revolutionaries.

Stein took the file to a close friend, the head of the OGPU in the Ukraine, who went over it carefully with his trusted deputy, Zinovy Katsnelson, a cousin and close friend of Alexander Orlov. Convinced of its authenticity, they shared it with Jonah Yakir, commander of the Red Army in the Ukraine, and Stanislav Kossior, secretary of the Communist Party in the Ukraine. Alarmed by the file’s revelations, Yakir flew to Moscow and revealed its contents to [[Mikhail Tukhachevsky]], Supreme Commander of the Red Army. They brought his deputy, Yan Gamarnik, into their confidence and decided to overthrow Stalin in a coup d’etat, denounce him and execute him.

As the coup plan was being developed, Katsnelson traveled to Paris and informed Orlov. The plot was foiled and Orlov’s fate was sealed.

The infamous show trials of former leaders of the Soviet Union occurred during this period, where they were accused of working with Trotsky or sabotaging the Soviet Union. Stalin also eviscerated the high command of the Red Army, killing 90% of the leadership. The minions of oppression were not spared either; of the NKVD's 809 officials, 43 lived through the purges. The leadership of the communist party was persecuted as well. For example, in 1934 130 members of the 139-member Central Committee were arrested. The Terror forever made Russians afraid to speak out against the government, and also made sure that no one but Stalin could ever rule the Soviet Union as effectively.

==Famine of 1933==
{{main|Holodomor}}
* "This famine was deliberately engineered by the regime of [[Josef Stalin]] {{years since|1933}} years ago claimed millions of lives, mostly in [[Ukraine]] but also in some other parts of the [[Soviet Union]]. It is today considered one of the worst [[atrocities]] of the Soviet regime and a terrifying act of [[genocide]]. Even so, the famine of 1933 is relatively unknown. ... Estimates of how many people died in Stalin's engineered [[famine]] of 1933 vary. But they are staggering in their scale -- between seven and 11 million people."<ref>[http://www.ukemonde.com/news/rferl.html Stalin's Starvation of Ukraine – Seventy Years Later, World Still Largely Unaware Of Tragedy], By Askold Krushelnycky, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Prague, 8 April 2003.</ref>

==World War II==
To avoid war with [[Germany]], Stalin ordered the Foreign Minister of the Soviet Union, [[Molotov]], to sign a non-aggression pact with [[Adolf Hitler]], named the [[Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact]], on August 19, 1939. The treaty detailed the agreement to split up [[Poland]] between Germany and the Soviet Union, give Stalin the Baltic Republics of [[Latvia]], [[Lithuania]], and [[Estonia]], and to allow the Soviets to wage war on [[Finland]], a war that ended in a humiliating Soviet defeat. Both sides, however, knew that they would eventually engage in hostilities.

It seems that Stalin anticipated this less than Hitler, who, in June of 1941 invaded the Soviet Union with the largest land army ever assembled. It consisted of 170 divisions, or 3.5 million troops. Stalin was caught off guard, and the [[Nazis]] blazed a path through the Ukraine and European Russia. Reaching [[Moscow]] in October 1941, the Nazis threatened Stalin and the entire Soviet Union with defeat. In only 6 months, the Nazis controlled one third of the Soviet economy, a total of 5% of the Earth's surface. Hitler's troops were defeated at Moscow during the winter of 1941-42 after Stalin appointed [[Yorky Zhukov]] as commander of the Red Army. A spy in the German embassy in Tokyo, [[Richard Sorge]], informed Stalin that Japan was not going to attack [[Siberia]], freeing thousands of winter ski-troops to move to Moscow to defeat the Nazis. It was during this time that Stalin famously invoked the name of [[God]] and allowed religious services to be conducted after 20 plus years of repression. Also, 1500 factories were evacuated and restored in Siberia and 12-15 million workers were moved east of the [[Urals]], where Soviet production was higher than Germany's in 1942, despite Germany holding some 50% of Soviet industry.

The Red Army went on the offensive after the defense of Moscow, but soon the Nazis gained the advantage and pushed to Stalingrad. More than one million troops fought on each side in urban combat. Hitler refused to allow surrender, and eventually the Nazis were encircled and routed. After turning the tide of war in Stalingrad, the 1943 [[Kursk]] tank battle was decisive in pushing the Nazis from European Russia. In two years, the Red Army pushed the Nazis all the way back to [[Berlin]]. Stalin used his control of Eastern Europe to extract concessions from [[President Roosevelt]] at Allied conferences, including control over the region. [[Winston Churchill]] warned against this very control, for he greatly feared Soviet hegemony in Europe. Victorious, Stalin named himself Generalissimo and became more popular than ever in the Soviet Union and more dangerous than ever to the capitalist world.

Over the course of World War II, around 25 million Russians died. Twenty million were in the armed services. The total number of 25 million reflects half of the worldwide losses of human life during World War II. The population did not recover until 1956. Many Soviet POWs, like famous writer [[Alexander Solzhenitsyn]], were sent to the Gulag after the war because they had fallen into German hands, and were accused of being spies. This swelled the prison camps by the thousands.

==Post-War Period and Death==
Similar to the 1930s, Stalin undertook a harsh campaign of industrialization, which hurt the Soviets as much as it helped them rebuild. Money was devalued to one-tenth of its previous value, 2 million German and Japanese POWs were forced to stay in the Soviet Union and rebuild the country, and 10% of investment from 1945-46 was from looted machinery. The crops produced by household plots were collected by the government to sell, and a famine in 1947 caused by drought and Soviet single-crop farming killed 2 million. The recovery was built on the Soviet subjects.
[[Image:Stalinfuneral.jpg|250px|right|thumb|''Right to left:'' Lavrenti Beria, Georgi Malenkov, Vassily Stalin, V.M. Molotov, Nikolai Bulganin]]
After World War II, Stalin's [[cult of personality]] emerged as the dominant force of Soviet life. He was credited as the savior of the Soviet Union and the architect of victory, though it was really General Zhukov who was responsible for most of this. The communist youth group, the [[Komsomol]], devoted songs to "the Father of All Nations" or "the Driver of the Locomotive of History." Party membership increased by one million people between 1945 and 1953. Books quoted Stalin as an expert in communism, while he was often photographed surrounded by children to make him seem friendlier. This all served to form a deep, personal connection with Stalin for many Soviets. Indeed, he was loved by the Soviets. When he died in 1953 an anxious mob at his viewing crushed and trampled some mourners to death. Dissidents like Sakharov, the man forced in a prison to build the Soviet atom bomb, cried upon hearing that Stalin had died, despite their intense hatred of him. Despite his terror, he had convinced millions that he was their father.

Following a stroke on March 1, 1953, Stalin died on March 5 after a period of declining performance. Between 1949 and 1952 Stalin increasingly took vacations and met with the [[Politburo]] less and less. When he died a short power struggle ensued, one which led to the execution of KGB head [[Beria]] as a spy. Eventually [[Khrushchev]] became the General Secretary of the CPSU and denounced Stalin's repressive tactics, his purges, gulags, and his cult of personality in the [[Secret Speech]] at the 20th Party Congress of 1956. Gulags were dismantled and the political climate was slightly less tense, but Soviet oppression still continued. The period following Stalin's rule is called the "thaw," the start of life again after a long winter.

==Quotes==
"The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic." ~ to Churchill, 1945.

==References==
<references/>
Though this isn't footnoted, it is culled from the following sources:

Hosking, Geoffrey. The First Socialist Society: A History of the Soviet Union from Within. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992.

Kotkin, Stephen. Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as Civilization. Berkley, CA: University of California Press, 1995.

Scott, John. ''Behind the Urals: An American Worker in Russia’s City of Steel''. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1989.

Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr Isaevich, ''The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956''; an experiment in literary investigation'', Translated from the Russian by Thomas P. Whitney, Publisher New York, Harper & Row (1974-78), 1st Edition, pg. 67n.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Stalin, Joseph}}
[[category:communists]]
[[Category:Mass Murderers]]
[[Category:Dictators]]
[[Category:Totalitarianism]]
[[Category:Cold War]]
[[Category:New Deal]]
[[Category:Soviet Union]]
[[Category:Russian History]]
[[Category:Marxism]]

Counterexamples to an Old Earth

2011-12-27T19:00:33Z

Uxbridge: Undo revision 948706 by ScottDG (talk)The claim is NOT CORRECT and shouldn't be in article. Don't revert again without evidence.

[[Image:The Great Deluge - Gustave Dore.jpg|thumb|220px|Common cultural “myths” speak of recent separation of peoples around the world and a young earth.<ref>[http://creation.com/age-of-the-earth Age of the earth]</ref> An example of this is the frequency of stories of an [http://creation.com/noahs-flood-questions-and-answers earth-destroying flood.] ]]
It takes only one "counterexample" to disprove the theory of an [[Old Earth]]. Most of the "evidence" for an [[Old Earth]] is based on claims that lack testability, as in [[radiometric dating]], and hence would not even satisfy minimum requirements for admissibility in a court of law. As with any logical proposition, one contradiction disproves the proposed rule. If each of 38 counterexamples has merely a 10% chance of being valid -- an underestimate -- then the probability that the Earth is billions of years old is less than 3.8%. In other words, '''the Earth must be young with a likelihood of greater than 96%'''.<ref>The same analysis can be applied to the [[Young Earth]] theory, but no valid counterexamples have been found in centuries of atheist attempts. In addition, there are over 100 evidences of a young [[earth]] and [[universe]] (Please see: [http://creation.com/age-of-the-earth ''Age of the earth: 101 evidences for a young age of the earth and the universe'']).</ref>
<ref>The same analysis can be applied to the [[Young Earth]] theory, but no valid counterexamples have been found in centuries of atheist attempts. In addition, there are over 100 evidences of a young [[earth]] and [[universe]] (Please see: [http://en.wikipedia.org/user:tmtoluose''Age of the earth: 101 evidences for a young age of the earth and the universe'']).</ref>

The motivation for [[atheist]]s to insist on falsely teaching that the Earth is old is to pull students away from [[God]]'s immediate presence, and to turn them away from [[Jesus Christ]]. Also, atheists are motivated, and biased, by the fact that their [[evolutionism|evolutionist]] theories require the world to be an implausible billions of years old.

== Counterexamples ==
The growing list of counterexamples to the theory of an [[Old Earth]] includes:

=== Astronomy ===
[[File:Moon2.jpg|thumbnail|200px|right|"Tidal friction causes the moon to recede from the earth at 4 cm per year. It would have been greater in the past when the moon and earth were closer together. The moon and earth would have been in catastrophic proximity (Roche limit) at less than a quarter of their supposed age."<ref>[http://creation.com/age-of-the-earth Age of the earth]</ref> see: [http://creation.com/the-moon-the-light-that-rules-the-night Recession of the moon from the earth] ]]
# The [[moon|Moon's]] orbit is a very strong counterexample: the moon is receding from the [[Earth]] at a rate<ref>[http://creation.com/the-moon-the-light-that-rules-the-night Recession of the moon from the earth]</ref><ref>"Measurements show that the Moon is receding from Earth at a rate of about 3.8 centimeters per year." [http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEhelp/ApolloLaser.html Measuring the Moon's Distance] ''Apollo Laser Ranging Experiments Yield Results'' by Fred Espenak, GSFC Planetary Systems Laboratory (LPI Bulletin, No. 72, August, 1994).</ref> that would have placed it too close to the Earth merely four billion years ago, causing instability in its orbit, tidal catastrophes on Earth, and other problems that would have prevented the Earth and the Moon being as they are today. Additionally, the [[moon]]'s orbit is becoming increasingly and unexpectedly eccentric, suggesting a lack of long-term stability,<ref>http://arxiv.org/abs/1102.0212</ref> which further disproves the theory of an [[Old Earth]].
# [[Spiral galaxies]] appear to be young, and only implausible proposals of the existence of [[dark matter]] can reconcile the spirals with a belief in an old universe.
# The expansion of the universe is accelerating, which would not occur if the [[Big Bang]] were billions of years ago; the acceleration suggests that the Big Bang (or creation) was recent.<ref>Some insist there is hokey, unseen "[[dark energy]]" and "[[dark matter]]" to try to explain the acceleration.</ref>
# The planetary orbits in the Solar System - including Earth's - are unstable and unsustainable over the long periods claimed by Old Earth believers.<ref>[http://www.newsweek.com/id/201582 Newsweek: "An embarrassing little secret of astronomy ...."]. (Newsweek has inexplicably taken down its article, but it is quoted by Google and other links)</ref><ref>[http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v459/n7248/full/nature08096.html Existence of collisional trajectories of Mercury, Mars and Venus with the Earth] by J. Laskar & M. Gastineau, ''Nature'' 459, 817-819 (11 June 2009). Believers in an Old Earth speculate that the instability would not result in problems in a billion years, but other computer simulations could be developed to demonstrate multi-body instability for the solar system far more recent than that.</ref>
# At least one [[spiral galaxy]] spins in the direction opposite to the spin of its tail, suggesting an age too young to have generated the tail and contradicting the theory that the tails of spiral galaxies were formed over a long period of time.<ref>[http://www.unisci.com/stories/20021/0207023.htm "Hubble Shows Galaxy Rotating In The Wrong Direction"]</ref>
# The primary reaction in the [[Sun]] is the fusing of [[hydrogen]] to make [[helium]], but the ratio of these is too high for the Sun to have been burning for millions of years.

=== Biology ===
# "[http://creation.com/bugs-in-brine DNA in “ancient” fossils]. DNA extracted from bacteria that are supposed to be 425 million years old brings into question that age, because DNA could not last more than thousands of years."<ref>[http://creation.com/age-of-the-earth Age of the earth]</ref>
# The intelligence of humans is rapidly declining, whether measured by SAT scores,<ref>''See, e.g.'', David G. Savage, "The Long Decline in SAT Scores," Educational Leadership 290 (Jan. 1978). [http://www.ascd.org/ASCD/pdf/journals/ed_lead/el_197801_savage.pdf]</ref> music, personal letters,<ref>E.g., Civil War letters.</ref> quality of political debates,<ref>E.g., contrast the Lincoln-Douglas debates with debates today.</ref> the quality of news articles,<ref>''The Federalist'' was written for the newspaper audience in the late 1780s, but is far too intellectual for newspapers today.</ref> and many other measures. This means that if one goes back far enough, intelligence would measure at ridiculous heights, if humans were even tens of thousands of years old.
# The age of onset of [[puberty|sexual maturity]] is rapidly changing, suggesting that life is in a short-term rather than long-term equilibrium.<ref>For evidence of a rapidly changing age for sexual maturity in fish, see http://icesjms.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/46/3/235</ref>
[[Image:Jellyfish.jpg|right|thumb|"[http://creation.com/fossils-questions-and-answers Living fossils] — [[jellyfish]], graptolites, coelacanth, stromatolites, Wollemi pine and hundreds more. That many hundreds of species could remain so unchanged, for even up to billions of years in the case of stromatolites, speaks against the millions and billions of years being real."<ref>[http://creation.com/age-of-the-earth Age of the earth]</ref>]]
# The high observed rate of [[extinctions of species]]<ref>[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-26/animals-face-extinction-threat-as-conservation-efforts-slow-report-says.html One in five species are at risk of extinction]</ref> and harmful [[genetic mutation]]s suggest a relatively short period for the existence of life rather than a long one.
# "[http://creation.com/fossils-questions-and-answers Living fossils] — [[jellyfish]], graptolites, coelacanth, stromatolites, Wollemi pine and hundreds more. That many hundreds of species could remain so unchanged, for even up to billions of years in the case of stromatolites, speaks against the millions and billions of years being real."<ref>[http://creation.com/age-of-the-earth Age of the earth]</ref>
# The age of onset of graying of hair or balding is rapidly decreasing, with many teenagers now experiencing baldness or premature graying ([[CNN]]'s [[Anderson Cooper]] began graying as a teenager and was fully gray long before age 40);<ref name="Graying">http://articles.sfgate.com/2006-06-18/living/17299704_1_hair-taylor-hicks-american-idol</ref> many celebrities (such as [[American Idol]] winner Taylor Hicks graying in his 20s)<ref name="Graying"/> and athletes (such as Cal Ripken, Jr. graying and balding in his mid-30s)<ref>"There's a man, close-cropped gray hair, looks older than 35": Sports Illustrated's description of Cal Ripken at 35. [http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1163438/index.htm#ixzz12ONbgydd] By age 50 he was bald too.</ref> increasingly experience premature graying or balding.
# The age of onset of [[cancer]] is markedly decreasing,<ref>http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/109865519/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0</ref> suggesting rapid changes inconsistent with an alleged long existence to life.
# The number of natural, pure-bred bred dogs declines over time as dogs naturally crossbreed; a short period of time is suggested by the fact that there are over 100 different natural, pure breeds of dog thriving today.
# Lack of genetic diversity among the ''Homo sapiens'' species. Were evolution and the old earth true, the human population would show a much larger genetic variance.<ref>http://www.godandscience.org/evolution/descent.html#rpafAHIwKHS7</ref> Some scientists have calculated that a troop of 55 chimpanzees contains more genetic diversity than the entire human race; this demonstrates that chimpanzees descended from a large initial population while humans descend from a much smaller one, which indeed we know to have been two people.
# Frequent occurrences of numerous deaths of birds and fish, which if extrapolated over millions of years would result in little or no such life today.<ref>http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=news/technology&id=7884786</ref>
# The separation between salt and freshwater fish, coupled with their inability to survive in the opposing environment, shows a lack of millions of years of evolution to enable them to spread to the opposing environment.
# Furthermore, the separation of land and aquatic life and a similar inability for the organisms to survive in the other environment shows a lack of millions of years of evolution to enable them to spread to the opposing environment.
# Biodiversity on Earth is declining too rapidly to be consistent with a long-term (Old Earth) equilibrium, with the Living Planet Index (LPI) showing "a global decline of 27% between 1970 and 2005. The terrestrial index declined by 25%, freshwater by 29% (this index is calculated to 2003 due to the lack of data available for latter years), and marine by 28%."<ref>http://www.zsl.org/science/research-projects/lpi,1162,AR.html</ref>
# The [[Bible]] makes references to the [[dinosaurs]]. There is no explanation for this if dinosaurs supposedly lived hundreds of millions of years ago. <ref>http://www.christiancourier.com/articles/93-dinosaurs-and-the-bible</ref>

=== Geology ===

Geological counterexamples to an Old Earth include:
[[Image:Roth-01.gif|right|thumb|250px|"[[Paraconformity|Paraconformities]] — where one rock stratum sits on top of another rock stratum but with supposedly millions of years of geological time missing, yet the contact plane lacks any significant erosion; that is, it is a “flat gap”. E.g. Coconino sandstone / Hermit shale in the [[Grand Canyon]] (supposedly a 10 million year gap in time)."<ref>[http://creation.com/age-of-the-earth Age of the earth]</ref>. See: [http://creation.com/age-of-the-earth Age of the earth] ]]
# [[Paraconformity|Paraconformities]] — where one rock stratum sits on top of another rock stratum but with supposedly millions of years of geological time missing, yet the contact plane lacks any significant erosion; that is, it is a “flat gap”. E.g. Coconino sandstone / Hermit shale in the [[Grand Canyon]] (supposedly a 10 million year gap in time).<ref>[http://creation.com/age-of-the-earth Age of the earth]</ref>. See: [http://creation.com/age-of-the-earth Age of the earth]

# The continued existence of fragile natural arches without having collapsed a short time period for erosion and stresses on them.<ref>http://www.naturalarches.org/big9.htm</ref>{{fact}}
# An extrapolation of time between the collapse of weaker arches<ref>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/11/AR2008081102290.html</ref> with still-standing stronger arches supports a young earth age.
# The massive [[Great Lakes]] and freshwater lakes near the equator could not exist for millions of years, and several of these lakes are rapidly receding in volume; the third largest saltwater lake, Oroumieh Lake, could completely evaporate within the next five years.<ref>http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110525/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_iran_environmental_disaster</ref>
# The existence of inland saltwater lakes at high altitudes, such as [[Mono Lake]] and the [[Great Salt Lake]], suggest a recent global [[flood]].
# The relative purity of underground well water, which should be a muddy slurry had millions of years of erosion taken place.
# The plentiful supply of high concentrations of underground well water, which would be expected based on familiar principles of [[entropy]] to dissipate over a long period of time.
# Earthquakes alter the Earth's rotation several times each century;<ref>http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/2010872/japan_quake_changed_earths_rotation/</ref> extrapolating by orders of magnitude in time would have resulted in the occurrence of much larger earthquakes that would have destabilized the rotation<ref>A similar analysis may be performed for the likelihood of devastating collisions with meteors as time is extrapolated by orders of magnitude.</ref>
# The lack of erosion between rock layers.<ref>http://www.amazon.com/review/R1WTZL8GG4H9K0</ref><ref>http://www.knowthebible.net/id115.html</ref>
# Levels of contamination in water are rising, as water proceeds through the [[water cycle]] it becomes progressively more contaminated. If earth (and life) had existed for billions of years, a limit would have long been reached where water (essential to life) was too contaminated for life to continue.
# All [[carbon dating]] of water supplies, even the most ancient and the deepest underground reservoirs, result in relatively young ages,<ref>http://www.betalabservices.com/PDF/Geyh.pdf</ref> and no water has been found suggesting an Old Earth.
# The ratio of strontium isotopes in seawater, which should change due to long-term erosion, has varied by only 0.35% throughout history. In fact, its value today is exactly the same as in the oldest samples, which are claimed to be from 500 million years ago.
# The interior of the earth is heated by decay of radioactive isotopes, which could not possibly still be persisting in sufficient quantities after 5 billion, or even half a billion, years.
# The relatively recent separation of the still-moving continents from one land mass -- denied for 100 years by [[atheist]]s before they accepted it -- suggest a young earth or at least a relatively recent cataclysmic event.
# Fresh tracks of motion by stationary rocks are still visible in some areas, which have baffled Old Earth scientists for more than 60 years; Old Earth magazines refer to them as "self-moving rocks."<ref>http://www.usnews.com/science/articles/2011/02/18/rafting-for-rocks?s_cid=rss:rafting-for-rocks</ref>
# Beaches have long been eroding far too quickly for the Old Earth theory; "between 80 and 90 percent of the sandy beaches along America’s coastlines have been eroding for decades," sometimes by as much as 50 feet per year.<ref>http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=what-causes-beach-erosion</ref>
# Land is sinking into the oceans at a rate of at least 7 inches per century,<ref>http://www.app.com/article/20110319/NJNEWS/103190327/Global-warming-rising-seas-threaten-New-Jersey-expert-says</ref> which would have rendered most of the United States under water if the Earth were not young.
# The flow of water in the [[Colorado River]] has been declining since the early 20th century, even after usage is considered, and the man-made Lake Mead is at risk of drying up on the next decade.<ref>http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/13/us/13mead.html</ref>

[[Image:516XZRGNCKL AA240 .jpg|right|300px]]
[[William R. Corliss]] also provides scores of anomalies which challenge the [[Old Earth]] [[paradigm]].<ref>[http://www.science-frontiers.com/sourcebk.htm#Geology Geological Catalogs] (Science Frontiers)</ref> An accomplished author,<ref name="sf">[http://www.science-frontiers.com/ Science Frontiers] (Corliss' web-site)</ref>
Corliss has written 13 books for the [[National Aeronautics and Space Administration]] (NASA), a dozen educational booklets for the [[Atomic Energy Commission]] (AEC), and a dozen articles for the [[National Science Foundation]] (NSF).<ref>Corliss, 2002</ref> The science magazine ''[[New Scientist]]'' had an article which focused on the career of William Corliss.<ref>Adrian Hope, ''Finding a Home for Stray Fact'', New Scientist, July 14, 1977, p. 83</ref> ''New Scientist'' wrote regarding Corliss's work: "All I can say to Corliss is carry on cataloging."<ref>Quoted on the [http://www.science-frontiers.com/sourcebk.htm Science Frontiers web-site]</ref> [[Arthur C. Clarke]] described Corliss as "[[Charles Fort|Fort]]'s latter-day - and much more scientific - successor."<ref>Clarke, Arthur C. (1990) ''Astounding Days: A Science Fictional Autobiography''. Gollancz. Page 110</ref>

=== Science & Discovery ===
# A stalemate of significant and valid discoveries in the last several decades.<ref>Though there has been some progress in this timeframe, many of the "discoveries" are liberal propaganda, or are scientifically weak.</ref>

=== Biblical testimony ===

The Bible contains multiples pieces of evidence showing its authenticity including [[Bible history]], [[Biblical archaeology|Bible archaeology]] and [[Bible prophecy]]. Competent and honest [[Bible exegesis]] indicates the earth is approximately 6,000 years old.<ref>[http://creation.com/should-genesis-be-taken-literally Should Genesis be taken literally?]</ref>

''See also:'' [http://creation.com/history-questions-and-answers How reliable is biblical chronology?]

== Recommended books ==

*[[William R. Corliss]], Anomalies in Geology: Physical, Chemical, Biological (A Catalog of Geological Anomalies), 1989. ISBN 915554-23-2
*William R. Corliss Neglected Geological Anomalies, 1990. ISBN 915554-24-0
*William R. CorlissInner Earth: A Search for Anomalies (A Catalog of Geological Anomalies), 1991. ISBN 915554-25-9
*William R. Corliss, Carolina Bays, Mima Mounds, Submarine Canyons (A Catalog of Geological Anomalies), 1988. ISBN 915554-22-4

== External links ==
*[http://creation.com/age-of-the-earth Age of the earth -101 evidences for a young earth and universe] by [[Creation Ministries International]]
*[http://creation.com/refuting-evolution-chapter-8-how-old-is-the-earth How old is the earth?] - ''Refuting evolution'' - Chapter 8 by Dr. [[Jonathan Sarfati]] at [[Creation Ministries International]]
*[http://www.preteristcentral.com/Debunking%20Old%20Earth%20Creationism%20&%20a%20Regional%20Flood.html Debunking the Old Earth Theory]

== Footnotes ==

<references/>

== See also ==

*[[Counterexamples to Evolution]]
*[[Counterexamples to the Bible]]
*[[Counterexamples to Relativity]]
*[[Counterexamples to Global Warming]]
*[[Radiometric dating]]
[[Category:Counterexamples]]
[[Category:geology]]

Enigma

2011-12-26T19:39:11Z

Uxbridge: /* Operational Procedures */

[[Image:Nsa-enigma.jpg|right|thumb|200px|A German-built Enigma machine.]]
The '''Enigma''' was a portable [[cipher]] machine, roughly the size of a typewriter, which could [[encryption|encrypt]] and [[decryption|decrypt]] secret messages. It used electro-mechanical rotors to convert a message to a secret [[code]], and then another machine could decode that same message and print out the original message. This machine was commercially available beginning in the early 1920s. The [[Nazi]] German military version generated codes widely thought to be unbreakable.

The Enigma machine was an electromechanical device, equipped with a 26-letter [[keyboard]], with one light per letter of the alphabet. Inside the machine was a set of wired drums for scrambling the input. To encipher or encrypt a letter, the operator pushed the relevant key and observed which of the lights lit. The communication between two operators required that each had an Enigma machine set up in the same way as each other. The large number of possibilities for setting the rotors (and a plugboard that could swap letters) made for an astronomical number of possible configurations, each producing a different cipher. The [[German]]s changed the settings daily, such that the machine had to be rebroken each day in order to decrypt the messages.

Decryption required an understanding of how Enigma functioned, the wiring of the rotors and the daily settings (both rotors and plugboard).

__TOC__

Nazi Germany used the Enigma before and during [[World War II]] to send messages about its military maneuvers. But in 1932 a 27-year-old [[Polish]] [[mathematician]] ([[cryptologist]]) named [[Marian Rejewski]] had used advanced [[mathematics]] ([[permutation]] theory with some [[group theory]]) to secretly break ("crack") the Enigma codes. He then helped design working "doubles" of the Enigmas that could find the keys necessary for decryption. By 1938 the Poles were decrypting most of the German messages. However, the Poles were forced to share their codebreaking techniques with [[Great Britain]] and [[France]] after the Germans brought in a new variant on Enigma that made it harder to decipher.

Following the German invasion of Poland work on breaking the Enigma codes moved to France and Great Britain. French efforts were ended by the [[Fall of France]] in 1940, but in Great Britain Enigma was finally cryptographically broken thanks to the work done by code-breaking experts in the secret [[Bletchley Park]] facility, where some of the earliest and crudest [[computer]]s were built to work on the millions of code combinations used by Enigma.

== Use of the Enigma by Nazi Germany in World War II ==

Enigma machines were heavily used by the various military services of Nazi Germany. This usage, and the successful breaking of the code by the British intelligence service at Bletchley Park, are a fascinating story.

=== How the System Worked ===

The Enigma machine used electromechanical "rotors", or disks, to scramble the letters typed on the keyboard. The rotors were randomly designed, but they were all manufactured from the same design, so every Enigma machine behaved identically.

Since the rotors scrambled the letters, any given rotor position just performed a "substitution cipher". If the rotor had never moved, this would have been the same sort of thing as the cryptograms in popular puzzle magazines and children's books. These can typically be solved by pencil and paper in a few minutes; modern computers can solve them in microseconds. What made the Enigma machine effective was that the rotors moved. After each letter, the rotors advanced to a new position. This was somewhat like the action of an automobile odometer, but more complicated—the pawls and ratchets on the rotors were randomly placed.

So the setup of the Enigma machine consisted of setting the rotors' initial position. This constituted the "key" of the code, which was changed daily according to a very secret protocol. The machine had some other features to increase the complexity: There was a plugboard to further scramble the letters, and the machine came equipped with half a dozen or so rotors, of which 3 (later 4) were inserted at any one time. So the daily setup instructions, or daily key, might be something like:
*Insert rotors 5, 2, and 4 into the rotor slots, from left to right.
*Set those rotors to initial positions K, T, and F.
*Connect Y to H, J to R, and F to B on the plugboard.
All Enigma machines used by a given military service were built the same way, so any machine set up by the above instructions would encrypt and decrypt messages the same way. Also, the transformation was reversible. If any particular setting of the rotors encoded ENIGMA as YPPFRH, the same setting would convert YPPFRH to ENIGMA. Military headquarters, and all other stations (submarines, for example) set up their machines the same way on a given day (the "code book"; see below), and everyone could communicate. (What the Nazis didn't know was that this included the British.)

=== Operational Procedures ===

Sophisticated hardware is only one part of a secure cryptographic system. The manner in which it is used is crucial. The Nazis made some serious mistakes.

The most secure way of handling keys is the "one-time-pad", commonly used in low traffic systems such as espionage. In this system, each submarine would have been given a different list of keys, randomly generated in advance, with headquarter keeping a copy. Each key would be used only once. That is, the code book would effectively say "For the 43rd message you send, use key XYZ; for the 44rd message, use key FUO, ..." After every message is sent, that key is crossed off the list.

This one-time-pad system is too unwieldy for a large operation such as general military communication, so a common daily key was used instead. Each submarine had a copy of the list, giving the key for each day; headquarters had that list also. This had two weaknesses:
*It was essential that the key list never be stolen. They were written with special ink on special paper, so that they could be destroyed instantly in the event of capture.
*It was essential that the keys never be able to be solved. Once a key was solved, that entire day's messages, throughout the fleet, could be decoded.

There are other things that one must do. One must avoid using stereotyped language. If every message starts with "Today's orders are to go to location XYZ and patrol for surface shipping", it becomes easier to decrypt. The people at Bletchley were quite good at guessing the German's writing style, and could make guesses (called "cribs") of what they might be talking about. A common way to avoid intentional or unintentional use of stereotyped language is to start each message with a nonsense sentence. This is similar to what at present is called "word salad" by email spammers to evade spam filters.

The Nazis used word salad, but they also made a costly mistake. They routinely ended each message with "HH", for "Heil Hitler". This foolish bit of vanity was helpful to the British.

There is another problem. The movement of the rotors meant that simple letter frequency analysis, which plays an important part in solving cryptograms in magazines ("This message has a lot of m's; let's guess that m corresponds to e.") won't work.

An early weakness was identified in German army and air force (but not navy) procedures. Instead of just setting the rotors and plugboard according to that day's instructions in the code book, the procedure was this:
*Insert the rotors, and set them and the plugboard according to today's key.
*Make up a random 3-letter sequence, say, KES. (This is called a "session key", and is routinely used in modern internet security.)
*Type that message twice (KESKES) into the Enigma, getting say, HRMPLB.
*Set the rotors to KES, and encrypt the rest of the message.
*Transmit HRMPLB followed by the encrypted message.
When Bletchley Park became aware of this they realised that because they had the same three-letter group encoded twice but with a three-space difference in the position of the fastest moving rotor, it was often possible to work out which rotors were fitted and in which order. However the Germans stopped using this procedure in May 1940, apparently realising that it was dangerous. Various systems were later developed by each service to determine rotor start positions.

=== The 4th Rotor ===

Later in the war, the Nazis inceased security by upgrading the machines to use a 4th rotor, but they committed an incredible blunder. It took some time to equip the entire fleet with the new machines, since individual submarines had to be given one the next time they were in port. During this transition period, the operational instructions were for those submarines with the new machine to leave the 4th rotor in position zero. This made it compatible with the older 3-rotor machines. On one occasion, a submarine operator accidentally sent a message with the 4th rotor in a non-zero position. When the he realized the mistake, he set the rotor back to zero and ''sent the exact same message again''.

The British knew that a 4th rotor was coming, but did not know how it was wired. This would have been an extremely serious problem, and might have shut down their decryption efforts for some time. But, when they were engaged in their routine breaking of that day's traffic, they noticed that a message was gibberish. They also noticed that it was of exactly the same length as the following message. They correctly guessed what had happened, and, by comparing the messages, were able to deduce how the 4th rotor was wired.

=== Breaking the Code ===

Breaking this code began before the war, in Poland. Mathematician Marian Rejewski was able to figure out how the initial three rotors (I, II and III) were wired, apparently just by analyzing encrypted messages. The Polish intelligence service was later able to steal a machine from Germany and "reverse engineer" it in detail. After Poland was overrun by Nazi Germany in the early stages of the war, the decrypting effort moved to England.

Breaking this code was a life-or-death matter for the British. They gathered the brightest mathematicians and puzzle solvers, including, famously, [[Alan Turing]] and Gordon Welchman, into a facility at Bletchley Park. They built the most sophisticated computing devices that were available at the time, which were electromechanical. Completely electronic computers would have been enormously faster, but the technology at the time could not provide electronic computers that would have worked reliably enough to do the job. The computers were called "bombes", and were basically devices to spin Enigma rotors as fast as possible, trying out different keys while working on "cribs".

At the height of the operation, they were routinely solving keys, generally by about noon each day. They then retroactively decoded that morning's messages, and continued decoding through the day. They sent huge amounts of data to the war department each day. The Nazis apparently never realized that this was happening.

The breakthrough enabled the Allies to anticipate German military maneuvers, although sometimes the Allies would allow an attack to occur successfully in order to avoid signaling to the Germans that their code had been broken. The [[Allied]] code-breaking effort was known as "Ultra", as in "ultra-secret".

At the end of the war, Allied General [[Dwight Eisenhower]] said that Ultra was "decisive" to the Allied victory over Germany. British [[Prime Minister]] [[Winston Churchill]] also declared, "It was thanks to Ultra that we won the war." The breaking of the German codes prevented it from completely blockading Britain with U-boats and enabled the Allied forces to make key strategic decisions throughout the war.

== Further reading ==

* Hodges, Andrew. ''Alan Turing: The Enigma'' (1992). ISBN 0099116413
* Gordon Welchman. ''The Hut Six Story: Breaking the Enigma Codes'' (1982). ISBN 0947712348

[[category:Technology]][[Category:War]][[Category:Computer Science]]

Enigma

2011-12-26T19:35:07Z

Uxbridge: /* Breaking the Code */

[[Image:Nsa-enigma.jpg|right|thumb|200px|A German-built Enigma machine.]]
The '''Enigma''' was a portable [[cipher]] machine, roughly the size of a typewriter, which could [[encryption|encrypt]] and [[decryption|decrypt]] secret messages. It used electro-mechanical rotors to convert a message to a secret [[code]], and then another machine could decode that same message and print out the original message. This machine was commercially available beginning in the early 1920s. The [[Nazi]] German military version generated codes widely thought to be unbreakable.

The Enigma machine was an electromechanical device, equipped with a 26-letter [[keyboard]], with one light per letter of the alphabet. Inside the machine was a set of wired drums for scrambling the input. To encipher or encrypt a letter, the operator pushed the relevant key and observed which of the lights lit. The communication between two operators required that each had an Enigma machine set up in the same way as each other. The large number of possibilities for setting the rotors (and a plugboard that could swap letters) made for an astronomical number of possible configurations, each producing a different cipher. The [[German]]s changed the settings daily, such that the machine had to be rebroken each day in order to decrypt the messages.

Decryption required an understanding of how Enigma functioned, the wiring of the rotors and the daily settings (both rotors and plugboard).

__TOC__

Nazi Germany used the Enigma before and during [[World War II]] to send messages about its military maneuvers. But in 1932 a 27-year-old [[Polish]] [[mathematician]] ([[cryptologist]]) named [[Marian Rejewski]] had used advanced [[mathematics]] ([[permutation]] theory with some [[group theory]]) to secretly break ("crack") the Enigma codes. He then helped design working "doubles" of the Enigmas that could find the keys necessary for decryption. By 1938 the Poles were decrypting most of the German messages. However, the Poles were forced to share their codebreaking techniques with [[Great Britain]] and [[France]] after the Germans brought in a new variant on Enigma that made it harder to decipher.

Following the German invasion of Poland work on breaking the Enigma codes moved to France and Great Britain. French efforts were ended by the [[Fall of France]] in 1940, but in Great Britain Enigma was finally cryptographically broken thanks to the work done by code-breaking experts in the secret [[Bletchley Park]] facility, where some of the earliest and crudest [[computer]]s were built to work on the millions of code combinations used by Enigma.

== Use of the Enigma by Nazi Germany in World War II ==

Enigma machines were heavily used by the various military services of Nazi Germany. This usage, and the successful breaking of the code by the British intelligence service at Bletchley Park, are a fascinating story.

=== How the System Worked ===

The Enigma machine used electromechanical "rotors", or disks, to scramble the letters typed on the keyboard. The rotors were randomly designed, but they were all manufactured from the same design, so every Enigma machine behaved identically.

Since the rotors scrambled the letters, any given rotor position just performed a "substitution cipher". If the rotor had never moved, this would have been the same sort of thing as the cryptograms in popular puzzle magazines and children's books. These can typically be solved by pencil and paper in a few minutes; modern computers can solve them in microseconds. What made the Enigma machine effective was that the rotors moved. After each letter, the rotors advanced to a new position. This was somewhat like the action of an automobile odometer, but more complicated—the pawls and ratchets on the rotors were randomly placed.

So the setup of the Enigma machine consisted of setting the rotors' initial position. This constituted the "key" of the code, which was changed daily according to a very secret protocol. The machine had some other features to increase the complexity: There was a plugboard to further scramble the letters, and the machine came equipped with half a dozen or so rotors, of which 3 (later 4) were inserted at any one time. So the daily setup instructions, or daily key, might be something like:
*Insert rotors 5, 2, and 4 into the rotor slots, from left to right.
*Set those rotors to initial positions K, T, and F.
*Connect Y to H, J to R, and F to B on the plugboard.
All Enigma machines used by a given military service were built the same way, so any machine set up by the above instructions would encrypt and decrypt messages the same way. Also, the transformation was reversible. If any particular setting of the rotors encoded ENIGMA as YPPFRH, the same setting would convert YPPFRH to ENIGMA. Military headquarters, and all other stations (submarines, for example) set up their machines the same way on a given day (the "code book"; see below), and everyone could communicate. (What the Nazis didn't know was that this included the British.)

=== Operational Procedures ===

Sophisticated hardware is only one part of a secure cryptographic system. The manner in which it is used is crucial. The Nazis made some serious mistakes.

The most secure way of handling keys is the "one-time-pad", commonly used in low traffic systems such as espionage. In this system, each submarine would have been given a different list of keys, randomly generated in advance, with headquarter keeping a copy. Each key would be used only once. That is, the code book would effectively say "For the 43rd message you send, use key XYZ; for the 44rd message, use key FUO, ..." After every message is sent, that key is crossed off the list.

This one-time-pad system is too unwieldy for a large operation such as general military communication, so a common daily key was used instead. Each submarine had a copy of the list, giving the key for each day; headquarters had that list also. This had two weaknesses:
*It was essential that the key list never be stolen. They were written with special ink on special paper, so that they could be destroyed instantly in the event of capture.
*It was essential that the keys never be able to be solved. Once a key was solved, that entire day's messages, throughout the fleet, could be decoded.

There are other things that one must do. One must avoid using stereotyped language. If every message starts with "Today's orders are to go to location XYZ and patrol for surface shipping", it becomes easier to decrypt. The people at Bletchley were quite good at guessing the German's writing style, and could make guesses (called "cribs") of what they might be talking about. A common way to avoid intentional or unintentional use of stereotyped language is to start each message with a nonsense sentence. This is similar to what at present is called "word salad" by email spammers to evade spam filters.

The Nazis used word salad, but they also made a costly mistake. They routinely ended each message with "HH", for "Heil Hitler". This foolish bit of vanity was helpful to the British.

There is another problem. The movement of the rotors meant that simple letter frequency analysis, which plays an important part in solving cryptograms in magazines ("This message has a lot of m's; let's guess that m corresponds to e.") won't work.

To avoid this weakness, an extra trick was developed. Instead of just setting the rotors and plugboard according to that day's instructions in the code book, the procedure was this:
*Insert the rotors, and set them and the plugboard according to today's key.
*Make up a random 3-letter sequence, say, KES. (This is called a "session key", and is routinely used in modern internet security.)
*Type that message twice (KESKES) into the Enigma, getting say, HRMPLB.
*Set the rotors to KES, and encrypt the rest of the message.
*Transmit HRMPLB followed by the encrypted message.
Now the part of the message that is encrypted the same way by all submarines is only 6 letters long; too short for frequency analysis.

At the receiving end, one sets the rotors as per the daily key, types in the first 6 letters of the received message, HRMPLB, and gets back KESKES. After noting that the same 3 letters are repeated (the reason for sending it twice is for extra reliability; a mistake here would make the whole message unreadable) set the rotors to KES and decrypt the rest of the message.

=== The 4th Rotor ===

Later in the war, the Nazis inceased security by upgrading the machines to use a 4th rotor, but they committed an incredible blunder. It took some time to equip the entire fleet with the new machines, since individual submarines had to be given one the next time they were in port. During this transition period, the operational instructions were for those submarines with the new machine to leave the 4th rotor in position zero. This made it compatible with the older 3-rotor machines. On one occasion, a submarine operator accidentally sent a message with the 4th rotor in a non-zero position. When the he realized the mistake, he set the rotor back to zero and ''sent the exact same message again''.

The British knew that a 4th rotor was coming, but did not know how it was wired. This would have been an extremely serious problem, and might have shut down their decryption efforts for some time. But, when they were engaged in their routine breaking of that day's traffic, they noticed that a message was gibberish. They also noticed that it was of exactly the same length as the following message. They correctly guessed what had happened, and, by comparing the messages, were able to deduce how the 4th rotor was wired.

=== Breaking the Code ===

Breaking this code began before the war, in Poland. Mathematician Marian Rejewski was able to figure out how the initial three rotors (I, II and III) were wired, apparently just by analyzing encrypted messages. The Polish intelligence service was later able to steal a machine from Germany and "reverse engineer" it in detail. After Poland was overrun by Nazi Germany in the early stages of the war, the decrypting effort moved to England.

Breaking this code was a life-or-death matter for the British. They gathered the brightest mathematicians and puzzle solvers, including, famously, [[Alan Turing]] and Gordon Welchman, into a facility at Bletchley Park. They built the most sophisticated computing devices that were available at the time, which were electromechanical. Completely electronic computers would have been enormously faster, but the technology at the time could not provide electronic computers that would have worked reliably enough to do the job. The computers were called "bombes", and were basically devices to spin Enigma rotors as fast as possible, trying out different keys while working on "cribs".

At the height of the operation, they were routinely solving keys, generally by about noon each day. They then retroactively decoded that morning's messages, and continued decoding through the day. They sent huge amounts of data to the war department each day. The Nazis apparently never realized that this was happening.

The breakthrough enabled the Allies to anticipate German military maneuvers, although sometimes the Allies would allow an attack to occur successfully in order to avoid signaling to the Germans that their code had been broken. The [[Allied]] code-breaking effort was known as "Ultra", as in "ultra-secret".

At the end of the war, Allied General [[Dwight Eisenhower]] said that Ultra was "decisive" to the Allied victory over Germany. British [[Prime Minister]] [[Winston Churchill]] also declared, "It was thanks to Ultra that we won the war." The breaking of the German codes prevented it from completely blockading Britain with U-boats and enabled the Allied forces to make key strategic decisions throughout the war.

== Further reading ==

* Hodges, Andrew. ''Alan Turing: The Enigma'' (1992). ISBN 0099116413
* Gordon Welchman. ''The Hut Six Story: Breaking the Enigma Codes'' (1982). ISBN 0947712348

[[category:Technology]][[Category:War]][[Category:Computer Science]]

Enigma

2011-12-26T19:33:13Z

Uxbridge: /* Operational Procedures */ Not true. The wheel start position for each message was unique, chosen by the operator.

[[Image:Nsa-enigma.jpg|right|thumb|200px|A German-built Enigma machine.]]
The '''Enigma''' was a portable [[cipher]] machine, roughly the size of a typewriter, which could [[encryption|encrypt]] and [[decryption|decrypt]] secret messages. It used electro-mechanical rotors to convert a message to a secret [[code]], and then another machine could decode that same message and print out the original message. This machine was commercially available beginning in the early 1920s. The [[Nazi]] German military version generated codes widely thought to be unbreakable.

The Enigma machine was an electromechanical device, equipped with a 26-letter [[keyboard]], with one light per letter of the alphabet. Inside the machine was a set of wired drums for scrambling the input. To encipher or encrypt a letter, the operator pushed the relevant key and observed which of the lights lit. The communication between two operators required that each had an Enigma machine set up in the same way as each other. The large number of possibilities for setting the rotors (and a plugboard that could swap letters) made for an astronomical number of possible configurations, each producing a different cipher. The [[German]]s changed the settings daily, such that the machine had to be rebroken each day in order to decrypt the messages.

Decryption required an understanding of how Enigma functioned, the wiring of the rotors and the daily settings (both rotors and plugboard).

__TOC__

Nazi Germany used the Enigma before and during [[World War II]] to send messages about its military maneuvers. But in 1932 a 27-year-old [[Polish]] [[mathematician]] ([[cryptologist]]) named [[Marian Rejewski]] had used advanced [[mathematics]] ([[permutation]] theory with some [[group theory]]) to secretly break ("crack") the Enigma codes. He then helped design working "doubles" of the Enigmas that could find the keys necessary for decryption. By 1938 the Poles were decrypting most of the German messages. However, the Poles were forced to share their codebreaking techniques with [[Great Britain]] and [[France]] after the Germans brought in a new variant on Enigma that made it harder to decipher.

Following the German invasion of Poland work on breaking the Enigma codes moved to France and Great Britain. French efforts were ended by the [[Fall of France]] in 1940, but in Great Britain Enigma was finally cryptographically broken thanks to the work done by code-breaking experts in the secret [[Bletchley Park]] facility, where some of the earliest and crudest [[computer]]s were built to work on the millions of code combinations used by Enigma.

== Use of the Enigma by Nazi Germany in World War II ==

Enigma machines were heavily used by the various military services of Nazi Germany. This usage, and the successful breaking of the code by the British intelligence service at Bletchley Park, are a fascinating story.

=== How the System Worked ===

The Enigma machine used electromechanical "rotors", or disks, to scramble the letters typed on the keyboard. The rotors were randomly designed, but they were all manufactured from the same design, so every Enigma machine behaved identically.

Since the rotors scrambled the letters, any given rotor position just performed a "substitution cipher". If the rotor had never moved, this would have been the same sort of thing as the cryptograms in popular puzzle magazines and children's books. These can typically be solved by pencil and paper in a few minutes; modern computers can solve them in microseconds. What made the Enigma machine effective was that the rotors moved. After each letter, the rotors advanced to a new position. This was somewhat like the action of an automobile odometer, but more complicated—the pawls and ratchets on the rotors were randomly placed.

So the setup of the Enigma machine consisted of setting the rotors' initial position. This constituted the "key" of the code, which was changed daily according to a very secret protocol. The machine had some other features to increase the complexity: There was a plugboard to further scramble the letters, and the machine came equipped with half a dozen or so rotors, of which 3 (later 4) were inserted at any one time. So the daily setup instructions, or daily key, might be something like:
*Insert rotors 5, 2, and 4 into the rotor slots, from left to right.
*Set those rotors to initial positions K, T, and F.
*Connect Y to H, J to R, and F to B on the plugboard.
All Enigma machines used by a given military service were built the same way, so any machine set up by the above instructions would encrypt and decrypt messages the same way. Also, the transformation was reversible. If any particular setting of the rotors encoded ENIGMA as YPPFRH, the same setting would convert YPPFRH to ENIGMA. Military headquarters, and all other stations (submarines, for example) set up their machines the same way on a given day (the "code book"; see below), and everyone could communicate. (What the Nazis didn't know was that this included the British.)

=== Operational Procedures ===

Sophisticated hardware is only one part of a secure cryptographic system. The manner in which it is used is crucial. The Nazis made some serious mistakes.

The most secure way of handling keys is the "one-time-pad", commonly used in low traffic systems such as espionage. In this system, each submarine would have been given a different list of keys, randomly generated in advance, with headquarter keeping a copy. Each key would be used only once. That is, the code book would effectively say "For the 43rd message you send, use key XYZ; for the 44rd message, use key FUO, ..." After every message is sent, that key is crossed off the list.

This one-time-pad system is too unwieldy for a large operation such as general military communication, so a common daily key was used instead. Each submarine had a copy of the list, giving the key for each day; headquarters had that list also. This had two weaknesses:
*It was essential that the key list never be stolen. They were written with special ink on special paper, so that they could be destroyed instantly in the event of capture.
*It was essential that the keys never be able to be solved. Once a key was solved, that entire day's messages, throughout the fleet, could be decoded.

There are other things that one must do. One must avoid using stereotyped language. If every message starts with "Today's orders are to go to location XYZ and patrol for surface shipping", it becomes easier to decrypt. The people at Bletchley were quite good at guessing the German's writing style, and could make guesses (called "cribs") of what they might be talking about. A common way to avoid intentional or unintentional use of stereotyped language is to start each message with a nonsense sentence. This is similar to what at present is called "word salad" by email spammers to evade spam filters.

The Nazis used word salad, but they also made a costly mistake. They routinely ended each message with "HH", for "Heil Hitler". This foolish bit of vanity was helpful to the British.

There is another problem. The movement of the rotors meant that simple letter frequency analysis, which plays an important part in solving cryptograms in magazines ("This message has a lot of m's; let's guess that m corresponds to e.") won't work.

To avoid this weakness, an extra trick was developed. Instead of just setting the rotors and plugboard according to that day's instructions in the code book, the procedure was this:
*Insert the rotors, and set them and the plugboard according to today's key.
*Make up a random 3-letter sequence, say, KES. (This is called a "session key", and is routinely used in modern internet security.)
*Type that message twice (KESKES) into the Enigma, getting say, HRMPLB.
*Set the rotors to KES, and encrypt the rest of the message.
*Transmit HRMPLB followed by the encrypted message.
Now the part of the message that is encrypted the same way by all submarines is only 6 letters long; too short for frequency analysis.

At the receiving end, one sets the rotors as per the daily key, types in the first 6 letters of the received message, HRMPLB, and gets back KESKES. After noting that the same 3 letters are repeated (the reason for sending it twice is for extra reliability; a mistake here would make the whole message unreadable) set the rotors to KES and decrypt the rest of the message.

=== The 4th Rotor ===

Later in the war, the Nazis inceased security by upgrading the machines to use a 4th rotor, but they committed an incredible blunder. It took some time to equip the entire fleet with the new machines, since individual submarines had to be given one the next time they were in port. During this transition period, the operational instructions were for those submarines with the new machine to leave the 4th rotor in position zero. This made it compatible with the older 3-rotor machines. On one occasion, a submarine operator accidentally sent a message with the 4th rotor in a non-zero position. When the he realized the mistake, he set the rotor back to zero and ''sent the exact same message again''.

The British knew that a 4th rotor was coming, but did not know how it was wired. This would have been an extremely serious problem, and might have shut down their decryption efforts for some time. But, when they were engaged in their routine breaking of that day's traffic, they noticed that a message was gibberish. They also noticed that it was of exactly the same length as the following message. They correctly guessed what had happened, and, by comparing the messages, were able to deduce how the 4th rotor was wired.

=== Breaking the Code ===

Breaking this code began before the war, in Poland. Mathematician Marian Rejewski was able to figure out how the rotors were wired, apparently just by analyzing encrypted messages. The Polish intelligence service was later able to steal a machine from Germany and "reverse engineer" it in detail. After Poland was overrun by Nazi Germany in the early stages of the war, the decrypting effort moved to England.

Breaking this code was a life-or-death matter for the British. They gathered the brightest mathematicians and puzzle solvers, including, famously, [[Alan Turing]] and Gordon Welchman, into a facility at Bletchley Park. They built the most sophisticated computing devices that were available at the time, which were electromechanical. Completely electronic computers would have been enormously faster, but the technology at the time could not provide electronic computers that would have worked reliably enough to do the job. The computers were called "bombes", and were basically devices to spin Enigma rotors as fast as possible, trying out different keys while working on "cribs".

At the height of the operation, they were routinely solving keys, generally by about noon each day. They then retroactively decoded that morning's messages, and continued decoding through the day. They sent huge amounts of data to the war department each day. The Nazis apparently never realized that this was happening.

The breakthrough enabled the Allies to anticipate German military maneuvers, although sometimes the Allies would allow an attack to occur successfully in order to avoid signaling to the Germans that their code had been broken. The [[Allied]] code-breaking effort was known as "Ultra", as in "ultra-secret".

At the end of the war, Allied General [[Dwight Eisenhower]] said that Ultra was "decisive" to the Allied victory over Germany. British [[Prime Minister]] [[Winston Churchill]] also declared, "It was thanks to Ultra that we won the war." The breaking of the German codes prevented it from completely blockading Britain with U-boats and enabled the Allied forces to make key strategic decisions throughout the war.

== Further reading ==

* Hodges, Andrew. ''Alan Turing: The Enigma'' (1992). ISBN 0099116413
* Gordon Welchman. ''The Hut Six Story: Breaking the Enigma Codes'' (1982). ISBN 0947712348

[[category:Technology]][[Category:War]][[Category:Computer Science]]

Counterexamples to an Old Earth

2011-12-26T19:00:48Z

Uxbridge: Undo revision 948436 by ScottDG (talk)What is his expertise in geology?

Talk:Counterexamples to an Old Earth

2011-12-26T18:49:09Z

Uxbridge: /* Conclusion */

'''''For older discussions, see the archives: [[Talk:Counterexamples to an Old Earth/Archive Index|Archive Index]].'''''

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__TOC__
==Page moved==
Archive index also created.
[[User:JonM|JonM]] 00:49, 22 December 2011 (EST)

== Major earthquakes are doubling every 40 years? ==

This claim should come out because it's false. Proof that it's false can be found here:[http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/nndc/struts/form?t=101650&s=1&d=1]. For example between 1900 and 1909 there were 120 major earthquakes; between 2000 and 2009 there were 99. 100 years and no doubling - in fact, a 20% decrease. It doesn't help our case to make arguments that can be demonstrated to be false in 5 minutes. --[[User:MandyC|MandyC]] 18:57, 23 October 2011 (EDT)

:That database appears to depend in part on the amount of property damage, which would distort the results beyond recognition.

:Large earthquakes increased by 20% over the past decade, which fits almost perfectly the estimate of doubling every 40 years.--[[User:Aschlafly|Andy Schlafly]] 19:03, 23 October 2011 (EDT)

::They've doubled every 40 years if you only go back 40 years. If you go back 110 years they've stayed constant or decreased slightly. That database includes ALL major earthquakes; property damage is just one of the criteria you can search on. --[[User:MandyC|MandyC]] 19:10, 23 October 2011 (EDT)
::Actually I'm wrong. They've increased by 80% in the last 30 years. They've only increased by 20% in the last 40 years. They've stayed constant over the last 110 years. Numbers fluctuate but is always about 100, +/-30, per decade. There is NO INCREASE in major earthquakes and we shouldn't be claiming there is, because we can easily be proven wrong. --[[User:MandyC|MandyC]] 19:14, 23 October 2011 (EDT)

::: The table in the cited reference shows an increase factor of 1.5-4 every 38 years, and recent trends confirm a substantial increase over the past few decades. The statement seems well-supported by the table and recent data.--[[User:Aschlafly|Andy Schlafly]] 19:56, 23 October 2011 (EDT)

::::Yes, but the cited reference contradicts its own cited reference, which is the USGS earthquake data (found in the NOAA database.) There has been a substantial increase per decade since 1980, a MINOR increase per decade since 1970 and no increase whatsoever since 1900. The 1970s had exceptionally low earthquake activity and the increase since then is a statistical phenomena known as regression to the mean; it's the same numbers trick that makes it appear that speed cameras placed at accident blackspots reduce accidents. Anyone can cherry-pick figures to prove anything, but the long-term increase simply isn't there. There were more severe earthquakes between 1900 and 1910 than between 2000 and 2010. --[[User:MandyC|MandyC]] 20:13, 23 October 2011 (EDT)

Today the study ''[http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/12/12/1118525109.abstract Global risk of big earthquakes has not recently increased]'' was published: the authors show that the earthquakes of the last hundred years fit well into the model of a homogeneous Poisson process, i.e., there is no increase of the number of big quakes. ''Together these facts suggest that the global risk of large earthquakes is no higher today than it has been in the past. '' [[User:AugustO|AugustO]] 17:50, 20 December 2011 (EST)
:AugustO pulls out the heavy artillery: The Poisson distribution! The material on multiple regression and the Poisson distribution were my favorite parts of the last statistics course I took. :) [[User:Conservative|Conservative]] 22:08, 20 December 2011 (EST)

::AugustO, the article states, "The global rate of M≥8 earthquakes has been at a record high roughly since 2004." Its conclusion that earthquakes have not been increasing based on its view that "no plausible physical mechanism predicts real changes in the underlying global rate of large events." They need to spend more time studying and learning from [[Counterexamples to an Old Earth]]. Of course there is a plausible mechanism: increased disorder affects the Earth just as it affects everything else.--[[User:Aschlafly|Andy Schlafly]] 00:08, 21 December 2011 (EST)
:::Mr. Schlafly (Andy? What's the etiquette when user name = real name?), respectfully, I believe your short quotations from the abstract of the paper distort the context in which they were made. Here's the surrounding context:
{{cquote|We examine the timing of large (magnitude M ≥ 7) earthquakes from 1900 to the present, after removing local clustering related to aftershocks '''The global rate of M ≥ 8 earthquakes has been at a record high roughly since 2004''', but rates have been almost as high before, and the rate of smaller earthquakes is close to its historical average. Some features of the global catalog are improbable in retrospect, but so are some features of most random sequences—if the features are selected after looking at the data. For a variety of magnitude cutoffs and three statistical tests, the global catalog, with local clusters removed, is not distinguishable from a homogeneous Poisson process. Moreover, '''no plausible physical mechanism predicts real changes in the underlying global rate of large events.''' Together these facts suggest that the global risk of large earthquakes is no higher today than it has been in the past.}}
:::(your quotations emphasized). I believe their point is that it isn't enough to simply note that there have been more large earthquakes now than previously. In any random sequence there will always be some strange results, but we can't look at those anomalies in isolation. For example, if we flip a coin a thousand times and it's overall about 50-50, but the last 10 flips are all heads, we shouldn't immediately assume that the coin has recently become biased. Instead, we should consider the likelihood that chance alone could generate such a streak. I don't know enough about the math to evaluate their conclusion, but I think their premise is sound and I think you've mischaracterized it.--[[User:JustinD|JustinD]] 01:04, 21 December 2011 (EST)

:@Conservative: just take another course on statistics and you may find out the distinction between the Poisson distribution and a Poisson process.
:@Aschlafly: ''increased disorder affects the Earth just as it affects everything else'' that's not a ''plausible physical mechanism'', that's a philosophical statement.
:[[User:AugustO|AugustO]] 02:08, 21 December 2011 (EST)

::Entropy is physics, not philosophy. If you don't think increased disorder affects the [[Earth]], then please explain your view on whether [[perpetual motion machines]] are possible.--[[User:Aschlafly|Andy Schlafly]] 23:30, 21 December 2011 (EST)
:::It also relates to the second law of Thermodynamics, which states that Entropy in a system must always increase. [[User:NickP|NickP]] 00:17, 22 December 2011 (EST)
::::Actually no; it states that entropy in a CLOSED system cannot DECREASE. It doesn't have to increase; it can remain constant. --[[User:HarryPagett|HarryPagett]] 17:13, 22 December 2011 (EST)

*If I ask you: ''"How does a grandfather clock work?"'' and you answer with ''"gravity"'', you are somewhat right. But your answer isn't helpful, as you aren't describing a mechanism, you only invoke a general principle. That's not enough, a ''plausible physical mechanism'' has to be described in a little more detail. The same holds for answering the question: ''"What is the reason for earthquakes to occur?"'' with ''"entropy"''.
*Even though the the laws of thermodynamics hold, you can observe places on Earth where the entropy locally decreases - even without the help of an intelligent agent: Look a sky - do you see clouds? They show that water isn't distributed uniformly throughout the atmosphere. And even though there is the tendency to get to such a uniform distribution, we don't get rid of clouds. Why? Because new clouds are created. How do these abnormalities arise? Because there is an energy gradient, provided by the Sun, powering the water cycle.
*The same is true for processes in the Earth: here, an energy gradient is given by the radioactive elements.
*without these effects, the increasing entropy wouldn't result in more and bigger quakes, but in less and smaller, as disequilibria would be resolved over time.
[[User:AugustO|AugustO]] 10:09, 22 December 2011 (EST)

:Are you saying that earthquakes are partly caused by radioactive decay? That's interesting. I thought convection currents were the main factor.--[[User:CPalmer|CPalmer]] 10:24, 22 December 2011 (EST)
::Indeed. But what creates the convection currents? The heat from within the Earth, mainly caused by radioactive decay. [[User:AugustO|AugustO]] 10:31, 22 December 2011 (EST)

:::August, increasing disorder affects all processes. I didn't see a response by you to my [[perpetual motion machine]] question. Earthquakes, regardless of their mechanism, reflect the truth that perpetual motion machines are impossible. The corollary is that earthquakes must be increasing, just as disorder does for an attempt at a perpetual motion machine.--[[User:Aschlafly|Andy Schlafly]] 11:55, 22 December 2011 (EST)
:::::But earthquakes AREN'T increasing. They fluctuate from year to year but there just isn't a long-term increase. The trend is stable. --[[User:HarryPagett|HarryPagett]] 14:02, 22 December 2011 (EST)
::::::Exactly. It doesn't seem very helpful to discuss ''how'' or ''why'' earthquakes are increasing in frequency before we determine ''whether'' or ''if'' they're increasing. And the paper cited by AugustO claims that there is no increase, despite recent appearances. So before we talk about radioactive decay or tectonics, we should decide if the study is to be trusted. If it is, there's little benefit to discussing mechanics. --[[User:JustinD|JustinD]] 16:34, 22 December 2011 (EST)
::::In addition, the other examples August listed were not closed systems; tectonics is a closed system. [[User:NickP|NickP]] 12:13, 22 December 2011 (EST)
:::::No, it's not. --[[User:FrederickT3|FrederickT3]] 12:44, 22 December 2011 (EST)
:::::Let me clarify: We have a heat source at the center of the Earth, resulting mainly from decay of radioactive nuclei. We also have a heat sink at the surface (dissipation of energy due to earthquakes, volcano eruptions, a bit of radiation, etc.). Tectonics is caused by the temperature gradient inbetween, an open system. --[[User:FrederickT3|FrederickT3]] 15:39, 22 December 2011 (EST)

*''August, increasing disorder affects all processes.'' As does gravity. This is a general principle, to get a ''physical mechanism'' you need to fill in some details.
*''I didn't see a response by you to my [[perpetual motion machine]] question.'' I thought my remarks on entropy were clear enough. But let's get back to your question: '''If you don't think increased disorder affects the [[Earth]], then please explain your view on whether [[perpetual motion machines]] are possible.''' Of course, increasing disorder affects the Earth, just not the way you imagine it. [[Perpetual motion machine]]s aren't possible. But an isolated system doesn't become more violent over time, it becomes more boring :-) All the models of things which were thought to be perpetual mobiles by their creators slowly grind to an halt, they don't disrupt themselves in quakes.
*''The corollary is that earthquakes must be increasing, just as disorder does for an attempt at a perpetual motion machine.'' '''That's not a corollary, that is just wrong, and won't become true just by repeating it like a mantra.''' For an earthquake to happen, you have first to built up tension in a place - and that means lowering the entropy locally, using energy. When the earthquake happens, the energy stored is freed, entropy rises again.
[[User:AugustO|AugustO]] 16:48, 22 December 2011 (EST)

===Conclusion===
*There is no evidence for a doubling of earthquakes every 40 years.
*In fact, there is evidence that the rate of major earthquakes hasn't changed over the last hundred years.
*Aschlafly's proposed ''"mechanism"'' (increasing entropy) wouldn't result in an increase of major earthquakes, so even from this ''"model"'' we wouldn't expect to see such an increase.

I alerted Aschlafly to these points (in my answer above) at his talk-page and he [http://conservapedia.com/index.php?title=User_talk%3AAschlafly&action=historysubmit&diff=947978&oldid=947963 is aware of this comment] ;-)

Now, I'll outcomment this ''"counterexample"''. Please keep in mind that deleting ''false'' information is not an act of censorship!

[[User:AugustO|AugustO]] 10:00, 26 December 2011 (EST)

[[User:ScottDG]] reverted my edit, stating: ''Open your mind, August. Aschlafly says so, that's good enough for me.'' I don't think that this is enough to justify the reversion of a well-substantiated edit. [[User:AugustO|AugustO]] 12:08, 26 December 2011 (EST)
:Is it just me or do "Open your mind" and "Aschlafly says so, that's good enough for me" seem to be a bit on the contradictory side? In any case well done for getting that incorrect claim out of the article, and let's hope it stays out. --[[User:Uxbridge|Uxbridge]] 13:49, 26 December 2011 (EST)

Walt Brown

2011-12-25T02:01:19Z

Uxbridge:

[[Image:Waltbrown.gif‎|right|thumb|200px|Dr. Walt Brown]]
Dr. '''Walt Brown''' is the Director of the [[Center for Scientific Creation]] and works full time in research, writing, and speaking on origins.<ref name="book">http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/</ref> Dr. Brown obtained his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from [[Massachusetts Institute of Technology]] (MIT) where he was a [[National Science Foundation]] fellow.<ref name="book" />

For much of his life, Dr. Brown was an [[Theory of evolution|evolutionist]] but later became convinced of the validity of [[young earth creationism]] and the reality of the [[Great Flood]].

Dr. Brown is the subject of a chapter of ''Christian Men of Science: Eleven Men Who Changed the World'' by George Mulfinger and Julia Mulfinger Orozco.<ref name="book" />

Glenn Morton, an [[Old Earth Creationist]] who holds a BS in engineering from the University of Oklahoma claims, using [[differential equation]]s, that, according to his understanding of Brown's conceptions of the events leading to the Great Flood, the Earth would have had to be perfectly smooth, directly contradicting biblical references to mountains.<ref>http://home.entouch.net/dmd/hydroplate.htm</ref>

==Debate Challenge==

In early December 2011 Dr. Brown accepted a debate challenge from an evolutionist, Fergus Mason, who refused to accept Dr. Brown's [[hydroplate theory]]. When he realised the amount of evidence supporting the theory Mason immediately backed out of the debate.<ref>http://www.conservativenewsandviews.com/2011/12/19/creation/hydroplate-theory-debate-reality-check/#comment-5222</ref>

== Publications ==
*''In the Beginning:Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood'' by Dr. Walt Brown. ISBN 1878026089

== External Links ==
[http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/ Center for Scientific Creation]

==References==
<references/>

{{DEFAULTSORT: Brown, Walt}}

[[Category:Young Earth Creationists]]

Walt Brown

2011-12-25T01:45:06Z

Uxbridge:

[[Image:Waltbrown.gif‎|right|thumb|200px|Dr. Walt Brown]]
Dr. '''Walt Brown''' is the Director of the [[Center for Scientific Creation]] and works full time in research, writing, and speaking on origins.<ref name="book">http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/</ref> Dr. Brown obtained his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from [[Massachusetts Institute of Technology]] (MIT) where he was a [[National Science Foundation]] fellow.<ref name="book" />

For much of his life, Dr. Brown was an [[Theory of evolution|evolutionist]] but later became convinced of the validity of [[young earth creationism]] and the reality of the [[Great Flood]].

Dr. Brown is the subject of a chapter of ''Christian Men of Science: Eleven Men Who Changed the World'' by George Mulfinger and Julia Mulfinger Orozco.<ref name="book" />

Glenn Morton, an [[Old Earth Creationist]] who holds a BS in engineering from the University of Oklahoma claims, using [[differential equation]]s, that, according to his understanding of Brown's conceptions of the events leading to the Great Flood, the Earth would have had to be perfectly smooth, directly contradicting biblical references to mountains.<ref>http://home.entouch.net/dmd/hydroplate.htm</ref>

==Debate Challenge==

In early December 2011 Dr. Brown accepted a debate challenge from an evolutionist, Fergus Mason, who refused to accept the hydroplate theory. When he realised the amount of evidence supporting the theory Mason immediately backed out of the debate.<ref>http://www.conservativenewsandviews.com/2011/12/19/creation/hydroplate-theory-debate-reality-check/#comment-5222</ref>

== Publications ==
*''In the Beginning:Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood'' by Dr. Walt Brown. ISBN 1878026089

== External Links ==
[http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/ Center for Scientific Creation]

==References==
<references/>

{{DEFAULTSORT: Brown, Walt}}

[[Category:Young Earth Creationists]]