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Feedback 2012
When skeptics ask
Big bang blowups and the moon age mystery
Published: 7 January 2012 (GMT+10)
Illustrated by Caleb Salisbury
We often get requests to deal with anti-creation arguments that our supporters are
often faced with from their skeptic friends. One important lesson from the questions
addressed below by CMI’s Dr Don Batten
and Shaun Doyle is that skeptics don’t
deserve the benefit of the doubt—the Bible does.
A skeptic wrote to a friend of CMI,
“The latest that I hear from AIG and CMI is that they are now invoking total
and absolute sci-fi hocus-pocus like White Holes in a downright vain attempt to
force creationist cosmology to make some kind of, any kind of sense. To force it
to fit into a model of the 6000 year old, 6-day created cosmos.
“The scientific community is laughing at them because they couldn’t
even get a basic fact like that even if white holes did exist (and there is nil
evidence for them to date) then so time in the universe outside of one would dramatically
slow down instead of speed up like the creation scientists are arguing in order
to make sense of the fact that we are looking at 13 billion year old galaxies”
CMI’s Dr Don Batten replies:
It is clear that skeptic ‘Steve’ did not get his information about what
we are supposedly saying from researching CMI’s website (or AiG’s view
from AiG’s website for that matter) himself, but second hand, probably from
some infidel website, because what he wrote does not accurately reflect CMI’s
or AiG’s views.
Anyone who understands even the basics of cosmology will not laugh at other models
of how the universe could have formed because when it boils down to it, there is
no scientific way of knowing with any degree of confidence.
For a start, AiG is taking a quite different approach to CMI, not the same. AiG’s
staff cosmologist (he has a PhD in astrophysics), Dr Jason Lisle, has a model that
is quite different to either of the main ones given an airing by CMI. It involves
time conventions and I frankly don’t pretend to understand it (but then I
am not an astrophysicist).
Within CMI, there are two models: Dr Russell Humphreys’ gravitational time
dilation model (which is different to the earlier ‘white hole’ concept,
which Steve’s sources have misconstrued anyway) and Dr John Hartnett’s
model. The latter applies a Carmelian cosmology, involving special relativistic
effects connected with the speed of the stretching of the ‘fabric of space’,
to a bounded universe with a centre (Carmeli was a prominent secular Israeli cosmologist,
recently deceased, who assumed the usual atheistic unbounded universe assumption—see
later).
Dr Humphreys is a nuclear physicist (retired from Sandia National Laboratories)
and is no slouch when it comes to understanding cosmological models in detail. Dr
Hartnett is a full professor of physics at the University of Western Australia and
his specialty is the measurement of time. He has published many papers in secular
journals on various aspects of time, cosmology and astronomy. I can assure you that
the scientific community is not laughing at Dr Hartnett. In fact his (creationist)
ideas make sense of various conundrums in cosmology—such as explaining the
structure of galaxies without dark matter (another fudge demanded by the big bang
for which there is
no evidence). Dr Humphreys recently pointed out that the creationist approach
to cosmology also solves the conundrum of the ‘Pioneer
anomaly’. Steve seems to be confusing the atheist community with the
scientific community. The former like to think that they are rational and scientific,
but this is far from reality—for example, see
Evolution preposterous and Who created
God?
I wonder if Steve understands that the standard big bang cosmology itself has a
light/time travel problem, the “the horizon problem”. See
Light-travel time: a problem for the big bang. Big bang cosmologists invented
“inflation” to account for this, whereby for a very short time very
soon after the ‘bang’, the primordial universe expanded at many orders
of magnitude faster than the speed of light. What caused this? They have
no idea. How could anything expand faster than the speed of light? No idea. What
stopped it? No idea. Hey presto—a ‘miracle’ to save the favoured
model, but with no miracle worker to affect the miracle. Other secular cosmologists
have even suggested that the speed of light might have been much greater in the
past for an extended period (when a creationist suggested this possibility 20 years
ago to accommodate distant starlight in the Genesis time-frame he was scoffed at,
of course).
For the papers on starlight and time, see
How can we see light from stars millions of light years away? Note particularly
that Russ Humphreys’ model has been developed further, with more explanatory
power and it no longer entails a white hole. See:
New time dilation helps creation cosmology (included in the above section).
That is the nature of these things; ideas are always developing (so much for the
caricature that creation science stifles science because it is just dogma).
Anyone who understands even the basics of cosmology will not laugh at other models
of how the universe could have formed because when it boils down to it, there is
no scientific way of knowing with any degree of confidence (what experiments
can be done on the origin of the universe?). As one commentator said some time ago,
“You have to understand that first there is speculation, then there is wild
speculation, and then there is cosmology.” (Martin Harris, Stephen Hawking;
genius or pretender? in Focus on Science, Weekend Australian, July 4–5,
1992.)
Anyone who bases their rejection of the Bible’s account of creation on modern
cosmology is basing their life’s decisions on a ‘mess of porridge’.
See: ‘Cosmology
is not even astrophysics’.
Cosmological models are actually driven by philosophy (religion), not evidence.
George Ellis, a respected South African cosmologist said:
“People need to be aware that there is a range of models that could explain
the observations,” Ellis argues. “For instance, I can construct you
a spherically symmetrical universe with Earth at its center, and you cannot disprove
it based on observations.” Ellis has published a paper on this. “You
can only exclude it on philosophical grounds. In my view there is absolutely nothing
wrong in that. What I want to bring into the open is the fact that we are using
philosophical criteria in choosing our models. A lot of cosmology tries to hide
that.” —Gibbs, W. Wayt, 1995. Profile: George F. R. Ellis; Thinking
Globally, Acting Universally. Scientific American 273(4):28,
29.
Ellis here refers to the fundamental philosophical assumption of the big bang, that
the universe has no centre and no boundary (there is no edge). No one can even imagine
such a thing, but it ‘must be’ because the alternative has to have Earth
in a special place, and no, we can’t have that because that sounds like …
divine creation. In fact, various astronomical observations challenge the
atheistic assumption that the universe has no centre: See papers under:
Where is the centre of the universe?
Of course any model has to match reality (observations in today’s universe).
Here the big bang model has failed again and again. See:
What are some of the problems with the ‘big bang’ hypothesis?
The acceptable models on the big stage are those that are compatible with atheism;
pure and simple. And of course atheists will laugh at anything that confronts
their unbelief. But laughter and derision are no substitute for logic and scientific
reasoning and discourse.
Don Batten
Justin L. from Australia writes:
I have a skeptic facebook friend who I recommended the creation.com site to, but
has a problem with the moon receding article.
He says “As an example, the article about the recession of the moon makes
one very basic but fundamental mistake. The moon is accelerating away from the earth,
not slowing in its motion away from the earth. This single mistake invalidated the
whole article, and doesn’t give me much confidence in the rest of their ‘science’.”
He goes on to say
“Creation.com’s calculations are wrong. They’re based on the idea
that the moon was moving away from the earth faster in the past, an idea which geological
evidence does not support.”
I’m not sure what to say other than the secular science is based evolutionary
timescales, and they are assuming it was slower and only now accelerating to fit
billions of years of evolution.
what does creation.com think?
Justin
CMI’s Shaun Doyle responds:
Dear Justin
Thank you for your email.
Such a continental arrangement is so contrived and unlikely that it looks ‘intelligently
designed’ to give an age of 4.55 billion years!
Your friend is unaware that creationist calculations of the theoretical maximum
age for the moon are consistent with secular findings (please see
The moon’s recession and age). Even skeptics acknowledge that physics
and maths used to get the ages is solid.1
However, the secular scientists disagree on the boundary conditions assumed in the
calculations. They propose that the continents were arranged in such a way that
allows for the theory to be reconciled with the ‘fact’ of a 4.55-billion-year-old
Earth. The problem is that such a continental arrangement is so contrived and unlikely
that it looks ‘intelligently designed’ to give an age of 4.55 billion
years!2
The “geological evidence” your friend relies on to reconcile the moon
recession data with the 4.55 Ga age of the Earth-moon system is actually a long-age
interpretation of the geological evidence that we don’t grant—that
tidal cycles are seen in thinly-laminated rocks called rhythmites. There is plenty
of sedimentological evidence to suggest that laminations can be laid down in one
event in a flood setting (please see
Mud experiments overturn long-held geological beliefs and
How can many fine layers of rock be formed very quickly?). Just the
presence of beautifully-preserved fish fossils in these layers is sufficient to
overturn the idea that the layers were deposited, one thin (< 1 mm thick) layer
at a time, year-by-year over many years. Of course, if the deposition of the ‘tidal
rhythmites’ has nothing to do with tidal processes in the first place (from
which they draw inferences about the moon), then their use as ‘empirical data’
to ‘calibrate’ models of the recession history of the Moon is fallacious.
In summary, the ‘solution’ to the age of the moon problem (for long
age beliefs) is to use dubious interpretations of layered rocks to overturn ‘rock
solid’ physics.
For more information, please see
our forum on the Green River Formation. This presents two different creationist
perspectives on perhaps the most well-known ‘rhythmite’ formation in
the world. Though the authors disagree on when the Green River Formation formed,
they both agree that the formation couldn’t have formed over millions of years.
I hope this helps
Shaun Doyle
Writer and Editor
Creation Ministries International
Readers’ commentsHans G., Australia, 13 January 2012
Distant galaxies: God invented the time, He uses it as He needs it and everything has to go along with it. Yes, I know, it can be hurtful not to be in control.
Bob S., United States, 15 January 2012
Science is hammered out within the domain of science, not within popular sources aimed at the general public like CMI.
I’ll happily change my mind about the age of the earth or evolution once the scientific consensus changes. So that’s the area CMI should focus on–changing the scientific consensus.
Don Batten responds:
Ah such ‘faith’ in ‘science’! Your approach is one of the games people play to suppress unwelcome ideas (Games some people play). Science has a chequered history of suppressing ideas, even where experiments could test things. ‘Canonical phase locking’ is a common phenomenon, recognized by philosophers of science. This is where a paradigm—a prevailing way of thinking—gains ascendency and is no longer questioned. All further work has to conform to this paradigm or not be accepted/published, thus further reinforcing the false paradigm. When it comes to history, such as the age of the earth or the evolution of life on earth, experimental testing is not possible, so science is poorly equipped to definitively answer the questions and is strongly driven by philosophical biases (“cannot allow a divine foot in the door” as Richard Lewontin said). See ‘It’s not science’. BTW, CMI also publishes the peer-reviewed journal, Journal of Creation, which is not “aimed at the general public”.
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Related articles
Further reading
References
- Thompson, T., The Recession of the Moon and the Age of the
Earth-Moon System, 2000, www.talkorigins.org/faqs/moonrec.html; accessed 6 October
2011. Return to text.
- Bowden, M., The Moon is Still Young, 2000, www.trueorigin.org/moonmb.asp,
accessed 6 October 2011. Return to text.
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