VII.
THE STARS AND PLANETS
Until
recently, a creationist model for the origin of the universe has been one of the
most difficult areas to address. Evolutionists ask the question, "If the
universe is young, created at the same time God created the earth, how could
starlight from galaxies millions of light years away be visible to us?"
For years, I have not had an answer that totally satisfied me, and the same
held true with many other creationists.
For
a long time, I speculated that the creation of the cosmos took place long ago
in the ancient past, and it was part of the world in which God dwells
throughout the ages of eternity. I believed that the creation of the sun, moon
and stars on the fourth day of creation in the Bible was actually a revealing
of these heavenly bodies, not an actual creation out of nothing. After all, God
created light on the first day; how could we have light, with an evening and
morning, if there were no sun? I guessed that a cloud cover embraced the earth
in the first three days, and then the skies parted on the fourth day to reveal
the grandeur of the heavens. There is further indication from the Hebrew
wording of the scriptures that this may be what took place. Gorman Gray[1],
John Sailhamer[2], Leander
Pimentia[3],
and Ariel Roth[4] are among
those who consider this idea.
This
idea may have some merit because it takes comparatively little scripture
juggling to believe this interpretation in comparison to the scriptural
problems that result from believing in an ancient 4.5 billion-year old earth.
The young creation - ancient cosmos theory is held by a number of creationists,
and I see it as a viable position to consider. However, almost in every case,
these writers attempt to solve too many problems this way by trying to explain
radiometric dates as being remnants from ancient material from which the earth
was created. In that, they create more problems than they solve, for rocks
containing fossils are often found underneath this presumably ancient material,
and this complicates a six-day creation of life on earth.
There are
other creation scientists are developing cosmogonies that answer the question
of distant starlight and the speed of light from a young-universe perspective.
For those who are not locked into a mechanistic world-view that requires them
to depend upon millions of years of evolution, these are exciting times.
An
Instantaneous Origin of Life
Most
Evolutionists prefer the big-bang theory because it gives them all of the time
that they need in order for life to originate from random chance events, or so
they think. They believe that it took about a billion years for the first cell
to appear in the primordial soup of chemicals. This is why so much time and energy
is devoted to experiments in chemical evolution attempting to create life from
non-life. The problem is that
non-living systems do not evolve; instead, as time passes, they break down and
become simpler. Advocates of abiogenesis, or life spontaneously arising from
chemicals, ignore the fact that life itself is a series of processes, not the
chemicals themselves. The dynamic
systems that make up life are like an enormous computer program that is as
complex for the simple cell as they are for a man. The fact that this marvelous
machine is microminiaturized makes it even more amazing.
The
origin of life from non-life is not a process that could have taken millions or
billions of years; it is like a toggle switch. Either something is living or it
is dead. That being the case, there had to be an instant in time where lifeless
chemicals suddenly were jump-started much like pulling the cord on a Briggs and
Stratton engine. If this occurred in the past, scientists should be able to
easily duplicate this event. There is sufficient motivation for them to do so;
after all this would go a long way toward falsifying the creationist position.
But even the most brilliant of chemists cannot claim to have done this. The law
of biogenesis still holds true: life only comes from life. Nobody has ever
created any living system from dead, off the shelf chemicals. Viruses do not
count: their existence and replication depends upon a host cell, therefore you
must explain the host cell before you explain a virus.
To
answer this, evolutionists continue to hold onto their security blanket hiding
the problem of abiogenesis behind millions of years. In recent times, it has
become more and more common for evolutionists to try to dissociate biological
evolution from abiogenesis, thereby marginalizing or ignoring abiogenesis. They
are also able to create an illusion that they have solved this problem through
experiments with test tube babies, cloning, and genetics. But to completely
discount the creationist position, they must demonstrate that life originated
from non-life as part of a natural matter of course, and that original form of
life sustained itself throughout eons of time and millions of generations,
utilizing enough food and energy to evolve from "simple" to complex.
At this task, evolutionists have failed miserably, very much in line with
creationist predictions. It might be noted as well, that Even if they should
succeed to somehow assemble a living system, it would not be at all what was
needed to show that these chemicals could do the same thing spontaneously, without
their help.
Assumptions
of Ancient Cosmogonies
|
He stretcheth out the north over the
empty place, and hangeth the earth upon nothing (Job 26:7). It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in (Isaiah 40:22). |
In
comparison with other ancient literature and the traditions of men, the Bible is
accurate when describing the heavens. The two verses above clearly describe the
round earth that hangs on nothing. But Anaximenes believed that the earth was
shaped like a table, Leucippus thought it was like a drum, Pindar thought the
earth rested on pillars, other ancient writers thought it rested on the back of
a huge tortoise or elephant. Nowhere does the Bible teach a flat earth.
Revelation 7:1 speaks about the four "corners" of the earth, but this
word is translated from the Greek word zonia, elsewhere rendered as quarters
or four directions, not referring to a flat, square earth as some critics
allege.
Pharnaces
believed that the moon was "wholly a mixture of air and wild fire"
and Alarchus held that the face in the moon is a reflection of the ocean upon
our earth. Some of the Stoics believed the moon was larger than the earth, and
Anaximander believed that it was filled with fire like the sun. But no such
inaccurate information is contained in the Bible, although the Bible writers
were certainly aware of these pagan false ideas and could have included them.[5]
Similarly, there are three
naturalistic models for the origin of the moon:
·
The Fission or
Break-Away Theory
·
The Capture
Theory
·
The Nebular
Condensation Theory
The Fission Theory would require a
very rapid full rotation of the earth in less than 2.6 hours, causing the
earth's crust to become unstable, break apart, and cast off the moon. This
causes more problems than it solves, however.
Why would the earth rotate that fast?
If it started out rotating that fast, how did it stick together at
all? If it did not start out rotating
that fast, what caused it to speed up?
And if the moon was literally thrown out of the earth, why does it have
a nearly circular orbit now?
The Moon Capture Theory has similar
problems. It does not answer the question about the origin of the moon; it
merely moves the problem somewhere else. But in order for the moon to be
captured it would have to enter the solar system on the same plane as the rest
of the planets and travel less than 40 meters per second, otherwise it would
break up into particles or be deflected into a new heliocentric orbit. And
again, if the moon were a captured object, we would not expect a circular
orbit, but an elliptical one.
The Nebular Collapse Theory faces a
problem with scale. The gravitational force that would collapse a gas cloud
into a star would be much less in the earth-moon system. This theory would
require that dust particles would clump to form the earth and moon separately.
However, we have a working model of this in the asteroids, and there does not
appear to be any tendency for asteroids to do this. There are many more
problems with this model. There is a common assumption in the three above
theories: the moon came about by accident
and by purely natural causes. This is
in direct contradiction to the revealed truth in Genesis. The commitment to both accident and natural
causes requires evolutionists to completely ignore the possibility of
supernatural, intelligent origin of the moon or anything else. And yet, apart from their commitment to
naturalism, there is no agreement on the possible origin of the moon. Donald DeYoung and John Whitcomb point this
out in their in their book: The Moon: It's Creation, Form, and Significance.[6]
They deal much more fully with these theories and the problems they see with
them than is possible here.
Space
Dust
When
scientists were preparing for the mission to the moon, they had to deal with
the prospect that the dust on the moon might overwhelm their spacecraft when it
landed. So, on the lunar module, they designed long spindly legs with pie pan
feet to cope with that possibility. Their concern came from several studies of
the influx of space dust by measuring the accumulation at the top of the mountains.
The assumption of these studies was that at the top of these mountains, most of
the dust accumulated there would not be from terrestrial sources. One scientist
predicted that the dust would be hundreds of feet thick, another, Isaac Asimov,
believed the dust would be dozens of feet thick.
When Neil
Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin finally ventured out on the moon, they found
something quite different. The amount of dust was just about enough to leave
footprints, but that was about it.
For years,
creationists used this as evidence that the moon was relatively young, based
upon this rate of influx. It has been since shown that the rates previously
predicted by evolutionists were in error, since satellites generally have not
measured as much dust influx predicted by the mountaintop experiments, in fact
the amount of dust fluctuates widely. Although the data still is consistent
with the idea that the moon is young, this argument against an old moon is not
as strong as it once was.
But there is
one feature of the earth-moon system that I consider to be the signature of
God: the earth, moon and sun appear to be just the right size according to
their position in the sky to allow a total solar eclipse and a total lunar
eclipse. The earth’s shadow fits neatly over the moon, and the moon appears in
the sky to be the same size as the sun, blocking the light totally in an
eclipse. There is no other planetary moon system in the solar system where that
is the case. On the fourth day of creation, God created the earth and moon to
be for “signs, and for seasons, and for days, and for years” (Genesis 1:14).
Perhaps this is one of the “signs” that God specifically designed for us to
notice.
For the
creationist, there is no philosophical need for an old universe. Even if a
person wants to believe that the cosmos pre-existed the creation of the earth,
there is nothing that might stop him from considering a creation of the universe
a million years, 100,000 years, 10,000 years, or even 100 years before the
creation of the earth. But there are some scientists who are developing
cosmogonies consistent with a young universe created at the same time as the
earth. Dr. D. Russell Humphreys is one example of a cosmologist who believes in
a straightforward reading of the Bible as God's word.
|
Cosmology: The study of the nature of the universe and the use of tools and
technology to describe aspects of the observable and physical universe. Cosmogony: Ideas and speculations concerning the origin of the universe. |
Dr.
Humphreys' model, introduced a few years ago in his book, Starlight and Time,
has caused a flurry of excitement and controversy in the creationist world.[7]
His model, often referred to as "White Hole Cosmogony," explains the
puzzle of distant starlight by placing the earth at or near the center of a
tremendous expansion of the universe at creation, which is different from what
is commonly assumed with Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. This change
in assumptions places the earth at the bottom of a massive time warp which
makes the stars billions of years old according to "earth standard
time," although created at the same moment as the earth. The key to this
effect is in what happens, or appears to happen, at what is called the ‘event
horizon’ that surrounds a black or theoretic white hole. This concept is difficult for most people to
grasp, yet is consistent with our understanding of physics and what we know
about relativity, if you start with different assumptions.
The
Speed of Light May Not Be a Constant
Starting with
Galileo, men have been interested in measuring the speed of light. Because measurements for about three hundred
years seemed to be showing a one-way trend downward, towards a slower speed,
this subject was the focus of a number of articles in standard science journals
for the first forty years of the twentieth century. The discussion was stopped in 1941 when the speed of light and
other atomic constants were declared to be constant and there were to be no
more arguments about it. Instantly all
articles dealing with it stopped being published.
But
in the early 1980’s the subject had caught the eye of Barry Setterfield. His research into this subject resulted in
an invited white paper for Stanford Research Institute International which he
co-wrote with Trevor Norman and which was eventually published by Flinders
University in Australia, where the two men live.[8] The paper dealt with the three hundred years
of measurements of the speed of light and indicated some consequences. It caused an uproar, for if the speed of
light were faster in the past, then so was radioactive decay, for radioactive
decay rate equations are associated with the speed of light. If radiometric dating were questionable,
then the standard old age dating of the earth and the entire the universe would
be thrown into question as well. That
was not to be allowed, and Setterfield was promptly declared a crank. Critics of Setterfield's hypothesis pointed
to the fact that recent measurements of the speed of light have shown no
change. Setterfield pointed out that this apparent consistency is due to the
fact the same atomic processes which have reflected the change in the speed of
light through time are being used to measure it, so there could not possibly be
any change noted using that technique.
His
work and research continued. By the mid
1990’s it was also becoming apparent that there were some ‘problems’ with the
red shift of light from distant stars as it was being interpreted by mainstream
science. The standard explanation for
the red shift was that it was due to a rapidly expanding universe. But the work of Tifft, an astronomer from
Arizona, as well as a number of others showed that the red shift measurements
were quantized, or showing up as groups instead of as a smooth function. Setterfield’s recent work is exploring this
idea, with particular emphasis on its relation to the speed of light changes.[9] At the same time, the mainstream circles in
science have renewed their interest in the evidence that the speed of light has
not always been constant. So the topic
is “hot” right now.
Both
Setterfield and Humphreys continue work on their respective models. Neither has answered all the questions that
need to be answered. This is true of
all current cosmogony models from every quarter. Of the two creation theories, Setterfield’s theory is the only
one that has a mechanism for explaining a truly young universe. The theory
proposed by Humphreys appears to be an old-universe theory with a time-dilation
twist.
The
Moon-Spencer Theory
Another assumption of models that currently are
popular is that light travels in straight lines. Scientists admit that they do
not understand the geometry of the universe, knowing that certain physical
forces such as gravitation and a change in medium density can bend light. Moon
and Spencer in 1953 proposed that the universe behaves in a manner consistent
with Reimannian geometry, which is based upon the surface of a sphere. In this
scenario, stars appear more distant because the light coming from them is bent,
and some stars might be multiple images of the same light source. This
would cause distortions in the measurement of distance. For a number of
reasons, the Moon-Spencer theory has fallen out of favor with most creationists
in recent years, and is rarely used as an argument.
Creation
with the Appearance of Age
Henry
M. Morris in his classic works argued that when God created the universe, He
created it with the appearance of age, much like He created Adam as an adult.
His argument is that the characteristics that evolutionists associate with age
were part of the original six-day creation. Variations on this idea include
that of an infinite light velocity at the creation of the universe, or light
created in transit.
Light
is an electromagnetic disturbance. If God created mature electromagnetic fields
the same time he created the stars, He could have created the light from the
distant stars in route at the instant of creation. Therefore the light from
stars millions of light years away may have been created only a few thousand
years ago. Critics of this idea point to supernovas and other transitory events
that would not have occurred under this scenario. This idea then would appear
like God was orchestrating an illusion, and for most creationists, this is
unacceptable. For the most part, the Moon-Spencer theory and the "apparent
age" theories have gone by the wayside.
Limits
to the Measurement of Distance
How
do we know that these heavenly bodies are billions of light years away? Do we
have a yardstick that long? How would we calibrate it if we did? The
evolutionist's argument about starlight and the speed of light are dependent
upon the assumption that their conclusion about the vast distance of stars is
correct. One way to measure the distance of a star is through parallax. Parallax is a surveyor's trick of the trade
that measures the distance of an object through triangulation. An object is
observed through a scope against a fixed reference point in the background, and
then observed again from another point. The surveyor uses the distance the
object shifts in the line of sight to calculate how far away it is. The bigger
the baseline between the observation points, the further away he can measure.
Astronomers use the orbit of the earth around the sun as a baseline to measure
the distance of nearby stars. The limit of this method within 1% error is
somewhere around 160 light years; beyond that accuracy decreases dramatically.
The parallax principle cannot be used in regard to further distances. Beyond
500 light years, only vague estimates are possible.
When
the parallax method breaks down, astronomers use color differences of Cepheid
variable stars, sizes of gas clouds, and other estimates based upon the
brightness of stars, star clusters, and galaxies. A creationist astronomer,
Danny Faulkner, believes that though the accuracy of the methods decrease as
the distance increases, the scale is sufficient to cause him to believe that
the vast distances of stars are real, and we must take that in account. That is
why the white hole and c-decay cosmogonies are increasing in their popularity
and importance.
Pioneers
such as Humphreys and Setterfield are providing creationists tools to face the
issue of the origin of the universe. Before 1981, the answers provided by early
creationists were less than satisfying. Though these theories are quite
speculative and much further research is needed, this has become a very
promising area of investigation.
The
Creation of Planetary Magnetic Fields
In
1984, D. Russell Humphreys proposed a theory that fits the known data
concerning the magnetic fields of the planets, and predicted the strength of
the magnetic fields of Uranus and Neptune, which were unknown until the Voyager
probe visited those planets.[10]
He says in the abstract of his article:
God could have started magnetic fields in the solar system in a very
simple way: by creating the original atoms of the planets with many of their
nuclear spins pointing in the same direction. The small magnetic fields of so
many atomic nuclei add up to fields large enough to account for the magnetism
of the planets. Within seconds after creation, ordinary physical events would
convert the alignment of nuclei into a large electric current circulating
within each planet, maintaining the magnetic field. The currents and fields
would decay steadily over thousands of years, as Barnes has pointed out. The present
magnetic field strengths of the Earth, Sun, Moon, and planets agree very well
with the values produced by this theory and a 6000-year age for the solar
system. This theory is consistent with all the known data and explains many
facts that have puzzled evolutionists.
Humphreys' predictions were
based upon the size and composition of the planets and the assumption of a
free-fall magnetic field decay from the original creation 6,000 years ago. Some
planets, like Mercury, were not expected to have a magnetic field, since it is
assumed that the planet's core is rocky, yet a weak one still exists. Dr. Thomas G. Barnes earlier had prepared a
technical monograph[11]
describing the earth's magnetic field in detail, and measurement of its
strength over the last 130 years. According to Dr. Barnes, these measurements
show that the magnetic field of the earth is decaying in intensity and strength
at a measurable rate.
The graph of
this decay shows that the half-life of the earth's magnetic moment is 1400
years, which is very short on a historical point of view. One interesting
aspect of this observation is that we can extrapolate the strength of the
magnetic field backward along that curve. His calculations show that if the
earth were more than 10,000 years old, it would have had enough magnetic energy
to be a star.
If the
earth's magnetic field were much stronger in the past, it would have reduced
the production of carbon-14 in the atmosphere. Carbon-14 dating is based upon
the assumption that the rate of carbon-14 production in the atmosphere has been
constant. The net effect would be that dates previously thought to be old would
be greatly reduced in age.
A high
magnetic field could have provided a protective effect as part of the
environment before the flood, shielding the earth from cosmic radiation.
Researchers conducted experiments where they kept mice in an environment with a
high magnetic field surrounding them. These mice lived much longer, were
fatter, larger, and healthier than the control mice. If the magnetic field of
the earth was stronger before the flood, this could perhaps help to explain the
long ages of the patriarchs, and the abundance of large animals in the fossil
record.
Evolutionists
believe that a series of magnetic field reversals took place and that the
Earth's core acts as a dynamo to fuel the energy for the magnetic field. Dr.
Barnes shows that the evidence for this idea is weak because the data does not
give conclusive evidence of reversals. He points out that Cowling proved that
it is not possible for fluid motions to generate a magnetic field with axial
symmetry (such as the dipole field of the Earth).
Stellar
Evolution
Astronomers
have an elaborate theory regarding the origin of the stars that establishes the
age of each star according to its size and chemical makeup. According to this
theory, the star undergoes changes from its initial contraction from
interstellar gas, through stages of intermediate sizes, expansion to gigantism,
finally to collapse, becoming a white dwarf. Each stage is supposed to take
millions of years, and astronomers categorize these stars on a chart called the
HR diagram.
A problem
with the stellar evolution theory is binary star systems containing stars of
different evolutionary ages. Most of the binary star systems involve two or
more stars of different stellar "ages" revolving around each other.
This does not make sense, because the physics involved in one star capturing
another would have to involve a third star perturbing one of them. If two
bodies encounter one another, their orbits follow hyperbolic paths, not
elliptical, unless a third heavenly body changes its orbit. Such encounters
would be extremely rare. The same dynamics would catapult them out of orbit as
well.
The most
likely situation is that the stars in a binary star system would have formed
simultaneously. Since there are an abundance of binary star systems, it is
easier to believe that the stellar "ages" were the result of the
star's original gas content than to believe that they were formed by star
capture.
It is
possible to come up with many theories and explanations for the origin of the
solar system and universe. One is limited only by his imagination and
intellectual capacity. We must keep in mind, however, that we are searching for
truth, and examine our motivation for seeking out origins. If a person makes
the assumption that God did not create the universe, naturally he will arrive
at the same conclusion when he finishes his theory. Can we call the big bang
theory, stellar evolution, the steady state theory and all the rest science, or
is it a religion? In contrast, creation is a simple explanation of origins by
comparison. It is consistent with the laws of cause and effect, thermodynamics,
and other observed physical laws.
SCRIPTURE
REFERENCES
|
Genesis 1:6-8 |
Isaiah 40:22 |
|
Genesis 1:14-19 |
Psalm 8 |
|
Job 26:7 |
|
QUESTIONS
FOR STUDY
1. List three theories that creationists propose
to solve the problem of distant stars and the speed of light.
2. What does the decay of the magnetic field of
the earth and planets say about the age of the solar system?
3. What are some of the indicators of the age of
any of the celestial bodies?
4. Which of this evidence points to a young age
for the universe?
[1] Gray, Gorman. The Age of the Universe: What are the Biblical Limits? Morningstar Publications, Washougal, WA. 2000
[2] Sailhamer, John. Genesis Unbound. Multnomah Books, Sisters OR. 1996
[3] Pimentia, Leander R. Before the First Day. Creation Books, PO Box 17, Chichester, West Suffix, England. 1998
[4] Roth, Ariel. Origins: Linking Science and Scripture. Review and Herald. Hagerstown MD 1998
[5] Townsend, L. T. The Bible and the Nineteenth Century, Chatauqua Press, 1889
[6] Whitcomb, John C. and DeYoung, Donald B., The Moon: Its Creation, Form and Significance, BMH Books, Winona Lake, IN, 1978, pp. 35-45
[7] Humphreys, D. Russell. Starlight and Time. Master Books, Green Forest, AR. 1994
[8] PLEASE SUPPLY REFERENCE HERE
[9] PLEASE SUPPLY REFERENCE HERE
[10] Humphreys, D. Russell. “The Creation of Planetary Magnetic Fields.” Creation Research Society Quarterly. December 1984.
[11] Barnes, Thomas G. The Origin and Destiny of the Earth’s Magnetic Field. Creation-Life Publishers, San Diego CA. 1973.
