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The Answers Book |
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Item # 0890511616 Price: $15.00
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Chapter 1: Does God Exist?
Is there objective evidence that God exists? What are the consequences
of atheism? Where did God come from? Can we know God personally?
Chapter 2: Did God Really Take Six Days?
Are the days of creation ordinary days? Could they be long periods of
time? Why six days? Does the length of the days really affect the
gospel? How can there be "days" without the sun on the first three
days? Does Genesis 2 contradict Genesis 1? How are we meant to
understand the Bible?
Chapter 3: What about the "Gap Theory"?
What is the "gap theory"? Where did it come from? Does it help? Is it biblical? What are its consequences?
Chapter 4: What about Carbon Dating?
How does the carbon "clock" work? Is it reliable? What does carbon
dating really show? What about other radiometric dating methods? Is
there evidence that the earth is young?
Chapter 5: How Can We See Distant Stars in a Young Universe?
If the universe is young and it takes millions of years for light to
get to us from many stars, how can we see them? Did God create light in
transit? Was the speed of light faster in the past? Does this have
anything to do with the "big bang"?
Chapter 6: How Did Bad Things Come About?
If God’s original creation was "very good," why is "nature red in tooth
and claw" now? Did God create animals with defense-attack structures?
Or were they redesigned after the Fall? Wouldn’t there be a population
explosion if animals did not eat each other?
Chapter 7: What about Arguments for Evolution?
Do similarities between creatures prove that they had a common ancestor
(evolved)? Is human and chimp DNA very similar? Do human embryos go
through animal stages as they develop? Do we have useless leftover bits
of animals in us? What about "ape-men"?
Chapter 8: Cain’s Wife — Who Was She?
It is not lawful to marry your sister, so who did Cain marry? Were
there other people on the earth? Who lived in the land of Nod? Does
this have any relevance to the gospel?
Chapter 9: Were the Nephilim Extraterrestrials?
Has earth been visited by extraterrestrials? Could life exist "out there"? What about UFOs and government cover-ups?
Chapter 10: Was Noah’s Flood Global?
Does it matter? Does the Bible say that Noah’s flood covered the whole
earth? Is there any evidence outside the Bible for such a flood?
Chapter 11: What about Continental Drift?
Have the continents really moved apart? How could this relate to the
Bible’s account of history? Could it have had something to do with the
Genesis flood?
Chapter 12: Noah’s Flood — What about All That Water?
Where did all the water come from for the flood? Was there a water
vapor canopy? How was Mount Everest covered with water? Where did the
water go after the flood? How could this have happened?
Chapter 13: How Did the Animals Fit on Noah’s Ark?
What animals went onto the ark? Where did they store 181all the food?
How could the ark be big enough? What about all the animal wastes?
Chapter 14: How Did Fish Survive the Flood?
How did saltwater fish survive dilution of the seawater with
freshwater, or how did freshwater types survive in saltwater? How did
plants survive?
Chapter 15: Where Are All the Human Fossils?
Why are human fossils not found with trilobites, for example? If humans
and dinosaurs lived at the same time, why aren’t their fossils found
together? How could the flood produce the order in the fossil record?
Chapter 16: What about the Ice Age?
How many ice ages were there? Where does an ice age fit into the
biblical account? How much of the earth was covered by ice? How long
did it last? What about the frozen mammoths? How were people affected?
Chapter 17: How Did Animals Get to Australia?
How did the animals get from remote countries to the ark? After the
flood, did kangaroos hop all the way to Australia? What did koalas eat
on the way?
Chapter 18: How Did All the Different "Races" Arise?
What is a "race"? How did different skin colors come about? What are
the consequences of false beliefs about "race"? Are black people the
result of a curse on Ham?
Chapter 19: What Happened to the Dinosaurs?
What does the Bible have to say about dinosaurs? Where did they come
from? When did they live? What did they eat? Where did the fossils come
from? What happened to them?
Chapter 20: What Can I Do?
Index
About the authors
Contact addresses
Chapter 5
How Can We See Distant Stars in a Young Universe?
If the universe is young and it takes millions of years for light to
get to us from many stars, how can we see them? Did God create light in
transit? Was the speed of light faster in the past? Does this have
anything to do with the "big bang"?
Some stars are many millions of light-years away. Since a light-year is
the distance traveled by light in one year, does this mean that the
universe is very old?
Despite all the biblical and scientific evidence for a young
earth/universe, this has long been a problem. However, any scientific
understanding of origins will always have opportunities for research —
problems that need to be solved. We can never have complete knowledge
and so there will always be things to learn.
One explanation used in the past was rather complex, involving light
traveling along Riemannian surfaces (an abstract mathematical form of
space). Apart from being hard to understand, it appears that such an
explanation is not valid, since it would mean that we should see
duplicates of everything.
Created Light?
Perhaps the most commonly used explanation is that God created the
light "on its way," so that Adam could see the stars immediately
without having to wait years for the light from even the closest ones
to reach the earth. While we should not limit the power of God, this
has some rather immense difficulties.
It would mean that whenever we look at the behavior of a very distant
object, what we see happening never happened at all. For instance, say
we see an object a million light-years away which appears to be
rotating; that is, the light we receive in our telescopes carries this
information "recording" this behavior. However, according to this
explanation, the light we are now receiving did not come from the star,
but was created "en route," so to speak.
This would mean that for a 10,000-year-old universe, that anything we
see happening beyond about 10,000 light-years away is actually part of
a gigantic picture show of things that have not actually happened,
showing us objects which may not even exist.
To explain this problem further, consider an exploding star (supernova)
at, say, an accurately measured 100,000 light-years away. Remember we
are using this explanation in a 10,000-year-old universe. As the
astronomer on earth watches this exploding star, he is not just
receiving a beam of light. If that were all, then it would be no
problem at all to say that God could have created a whole chain of
photons (light particles/waves) already on their way.
However, what the astronomer receives is also a particular, very
specific pattern of variation within the light, showing him/her the
changes that one would expect to accompany such an explosion — a
predictable sequence of events involving neutrinos, visible light,
X-rays and gamma-rays. The light carries information recording an
apparently real event. The astronomer is perfectly justified in
interpreting this "message" as representing an actual reality — that
there really was such an object, which exploded according to the laws
of physics, brightened, emitted X-rays, dimmed, and so on, all in
accord with those same physical laws.
Everything he sees is consistent with this, including the spectral
patterns in the light from the star giving us a "chemical signature" of
the elements contained in it. Yet the "light created en route"
explanation means that this recorded message of events, transmitted
through space, had to be contained within the light beam from the
moment of its creation, or planted into the light beam at a later date,
without ever having originated from that distant point. (If it had
started from the star — assuming that there really was such a star — it
would still be 90,000 light-years away from earth.)
To create such a detailed series of signals in light beams reaching
earth, signals which seem to have come from a series of real events but
in fact did not, has no conceivable purpose. Worse, it is like saying
that God created fossils in rocks to fool us, or even test our faith,
and that they don’t represent anything real (a real animal or plant
that lived and died in the past). This would be a strange deception.
Did Light Always Travel at the Same Speed?
An obvious solution would be a higher speed of light in the past,
allowing the light to cover the same distance more quickly. This seemed
at first glance a too-convenient ad hoc explanation. Then some years
ago, Australian Barry Setterfield raised the possibility to a high
profile by showing that there seemed to be a decreasing trend in the
historical observations of the speed of light (c) over the past 300
years or so. Setterfield (and his later co-author Trevor Norman)
produced much evidence in favor of the theory.1 They believed that it
would have affected radiometric dating results, and even have caused
the red-shifting of light from distant galaxies, although this idea was
later overturned, and other modifications were also made.
Much debate has raged to and fro among equally capable people within
creationist circles about whether the statistical evidence really
supports c decay ("cdk") or not.
The biggest difficulty, however, is with certain physical consequences
of the theory. If c has declined the way Setterfield proposed, these
consequences should still be discernible in the light from distant
galaxies but they are apparently not. In short, none of the theory’s
defenders have been able to answer all the problems raised.
A New Creationist Cosmology
Nevertheless, the c-decay theory stimulated much thinking about the
issues. Creationist physicist Dr. Russell Humphreys says that he spent
a year on and off trying to get the declining c theory to work, but
without success. However, in the process, he was inspired to develop a
new creationist cosmology which appears to solve the problem of the
apparent conflict with the Bible’s clear, authoritative teaching of a
recent creation.
This new cosmology is proposed as a creationist alternative to the "big
bang" theory. It passed peer review, by qualified reviewers, for the
1994 Pittsburgh International Conference on Creationism.2 Young-earth
creationists have been cautious about the model,3 which is not
surprising with such an apparently radical departure from orthodoxy,
but Humphreys has addressed the problems raised.4 Believers in an old
universe and the "big bang" have vigorously opposed the new cosmology
and claim to have found flaws in it.5 However, Humphreys has been able
to defend his model, as well as develop it further.6 The debate will no
doubt continue.
This sort of development, in which one creationist theory, c-decay, is
overtaken by another, is a healthy aspect of science. The basic
biblical framework is non-negotiable, as opposed to the changing views
and models of fallible people seeking to understand the data within
that framework (evolutionists also often change their ideas on exactly
how things have made themselves, but never whether they did).
A Clue
Let us briefly give a hint as to how the new cosmology seems to solve
the starlight problem before explaining some preliminary items in a
little more detail. Consider that the time taken for something to
travel a given distance is the distance divided by the speed it is
traveling. That is:
Time = Distance (divided by) Speed
When this is applied to light from distant stars, the time calculates
out to be millions of years. Some have sought to challenge the
distances, but this is a very unlikely answer.7
Astronomers use many different methods to measure the distances, and no
informed creationist astronomer would claim that any errors would be so
vast that billions of light-years could be reduced to thousands, for
example. There is good evidence that our own Milky Way galaxy is
100,000 light-years across!
If the speed of light (c) has not changed, the only thing left
untouched in the equation is time itself. In fact, Einstein’s
relativity theories have been telling the world for decades that time
is not a constant.
Two things are believed (with experimental support) to distort time in
relativity theory — one is speed and the other is gravity. Einstein’s
general theory of relativity, the best theory of gravity we have at
present, indicates that gravity distorts time.
This effect has been measured experimentally, many times. Clocks at the
top of tall buildings, where gravity is slightly less, run faster than
those at the bottom, just as predicted by the equations of general
relativity (GR).8
When the concentration of matter is very large or dense enough, the
gravitational distortion can be so immense that even light cannot
escape.9 The equations of GR show that at the invisible boundary
surrounding such a concentration of matter (called the event horizon,
the point at which light rays trying to escape the enormous pull of
gravity bend back on themselves), time literally stands still.
Using Different Assumptions . . .
Dr. Humphreys’ new creationist cosmology literally "falls out" of the
equations of GR, so long as one assumes that the universe has a
boundary. In other words, that it has a center and an edge — that if
you were to travel off into space, you would eventually come to a place
beyond which there was no more matter. In this cosmology, the earth is
near the center, as it appears to be as we look out into space.
This might sound like common sense, as indeed it is, but all modern
secular ("big bang") cosmologies deny this. That is, they make the
arbitrary assumption (without any scientific necessity) that the
universe has no boundaries — no edge and no center. In this assumed
universe, every galaxy would be surrounded by galaxies spread evenly in
all directions (on a large enough scale), and so, therefore, all the
net gravitational forces cancel out.
However, if the universe has boundaries, then there is a net
gravitational effect toward the center. Clocks at the edge would be
running at different rates to clocks on earth. In other words, it is no
longer enough to say God made the universe in six days. He certainly
did, but six days measured by which clock? (If we say "God’s time" we
miss the point that He created the flow of time as we now experience
it; He is outside of time, seeing the end from the beginning.)10
There appears to be observational evidence that the universe has
expanded in the past, supported by the many phrases God uses in the
Bible to tell us that at creation he "stretched out"11 (other verses
say "spread out") the heavens.
If the universe is not much bigger than we can observe, and if it was
only 50 times smaller in the past than it is now, then scientific
deduction based on GR means it has to have expanded out of a previous
state in which it was surrounded by an event horizon (a condition known
technically as a "white hole" — a black hole running in reverse,
something permitted by the equations of GR).
As matter passed out of this event horizon, the horizon itself had to
shrink — eventually to nothing. Therefore, at one point this horizon
would have been touching the earth. In that instant, time on the earth
(relative to a point far away from it) would have been virtually
frozen. An observer on earth would not in any way "feel different."
"Billions of years" would be available (in the frame of reference
within which it is traveling in deep space) for light to reach the
earth, for stars to age, etc. — while less than an ordinary day is
passing on earth. This massive gravitational time dilation would seem
to be a scientific inevitability if a bounded universe has expanded
significantly.
In one sense, if observers on earth at that particular time could have
looked out and "seen" the speed with which light was moving toward them
out in space, it would have appeared as if it were traveling many times
faster than c. (Galaxies would also appear to be rotating faster.)
However, if an observer in deep space was out there measuring the speed
of light, to him it would still only be traveling at c.
There is more detail of this new cosmology, at layman’s level, in the
book by Dr. Humphreys, Starlight and Time, which also includes reprints
of his technical papers showing the equations.12
It is fortunate that creationists did not invent such concepts as
gravitational time dilation, black and white holes, event horizons and
so on, or we would likely be accused of manipulating the data to solve
this problem. The interesting thing about this cosmology is that it is
based upon mathematics and physics totally accepted by all cosmologists
(general relativity), and it accepts (along with virtually all
physicists) that there has been expansion in the past (though not from
some imaginary tiny point). It requires no "massaging" — the results
"fall out" so long as one abandons the arbitrary starting point which
big bangers use (the unbounded cosmos idea, which could be called "what
the experts don’t tell you about the ‘big bang’ ").
This new cosmology seems to explain in one swoop all of the
observations used to support the "big bang," including progressive
red-shift and the cosmic microwave background radiation, without
compromising the data or the biblical record of a young earth.
Caution
While this is exciting news, all theories of fallible men, no matter
how well they seem to fit the data, are subject to revision or
abandonment in the light of future discoveries. What we can say is that
at this point a plausible mechanism has been demonstrated, with
considerable observational and theoretical support.
What if no one had ever thought of the possibility of gravitational
time dilation? Many might have felt forced to agree with those
scientists (including some Christians) that there was no possible
solution — the vast ages are fact, and the Bible must be
"reinterpreted" (massaged) or increasingly rejected. Many have in fact
been urging Christians to abandon the Bible’s clear teaching of a
recent creation because of these "undeniable facts." This
reinterpretation also means having to accept that there were billions
of years of death, disease, and bloodshed before Adam, thus eroding the
creation/Fall/restoration framework within which the gospel is
presented in the Bible.
However, even without this new idea, such an approach would still have
been wrong-headed. The authority of the Bible should never be
compromised by mankind’s "scientific" proposals. One little previously
unknown fact, or one change in a starting assumption, can drastically
alter the whole picture so that what was "fact" is no longer so.
This is worth remembering when dealing with those other areas of
difficulty which, despite the substantial evidence for Genesis
creation, still remain. Only God possesses infinite knowledge. By
basing our scientific research on the assumption that His Word is true
(instead of the assumption that it is wrong or irrelevant) our
scientific theories are much more likely, in the long run, to come to
accurately represent reality.
Endnotes
1 T.G. Norman and B. Setterfield, The Atomic Constants, Light and Time (privately published, 1990).
2 D.R. Humphreys, "Progress Toward a Young-earth Relativistic
Cosmology," Proceedings 3rd ICC, Pittsburgh, PA, 1994, p. 267–286.
3 J. Byl, "On Time Dilation in Cosmology," Creation Research Society Quarterly, 1997, 34(1):26–32.
4 D.R. Humphreys, "It’s Just a Matter of Time," Creation Research Society Quarterly, 1997, 34(1):32–34.
5 S.R. Conner and D.N. Page, "Starlight and Time Is the Big Bang," CEN Technical Journal, 1998, 12(2):174–194.
6 D.R. Humphreys, "New Vistas of Space-time Rebut the Critics," CEN Technical Journal, 1998, 12(2):195–212.
See further discussion in CEN Technical Journal, 1999, 13(1):49–62.
7 Many billions of stars exist, many just like our own sun, according
to the analysis of the light coming from them. Such numbers of stars
have to be distributed through a huge volume of space, otherwise we
would all be fried.
8 The demonstrable usefulness of GR in physics can be separated from
certain "philosophical baggage" that some have illegitimately attached
to it, and to which some Christians have objected.
9 Such an object is called a "black hole."
10 Genesis 1:1; Ecclesiastes 3:11; Isaiah 26:4; Romans 1:20; 1 Timothy
1:17; and Hebrews 11:3. Interestingly, according to GR, time does not
exist without matter, as was discussed in chapter 1.
11 For example, Isaiah 42:5; Jeremiah 10:12; Zecheriah 12:1.
13 D. Russell Humphreys, Starlight and Time (Green Forest, AR: Master Books, 1994).