Modern science in creationist thinking
As six-day creationists, can we know what God did when he created this vast universe? If we agree that God created the universe, and it was created in a form that is essentially like we observe today—a mature creation—very large, tens of billions of light-years across—very old in appearance, in terms of processes we observe—then we have two possibilities within the creationist worldview:
- God created everything 6,000 years ago and we cannot know how He did it in Creation Week but somehow we can see the whole visible universe, including “ … events which lie entirely beyond our limited understanding of nature”1; or,
- God created everything 6,000 years ago and we can (in principle) know how He did it in Creation Week as much as we are able to see the whole visible universe.
We can take the position that we cannot know how God did it because it was supernatural and beyond our understanding. However, we should not make untenable claims such as that supernovae (exploding stars) represent death and hence must have occurred after the Fall. (A supernova is a light show resulting from exploding gas. It cannot be construed as death in the biblical sense.2) Or even the claim that modern physics (that developed post-1905, starting with Einstein’s three papers published in Annalen der Physik, which dealt with the photoelectric effect (quantum theory), special relativity and Brownian motion) is all wrong. One idea that has developed is that modern quantum theory, modern special and general relativity and hence modern astrophysics and cosmology, which include both of the latter, are wrong. Some creationists even reject these modern ideas, preferring only classical physics, while others claim we cannot even know the physics of this universe.
Operational or historical science
But there is a big difference between repeatable, operational science and something that is extrapolated back into the unknown unobservable past, what has been called in creationist circles ‘historical science’. The science done in the lab, which includes modern-clock tests of special relativity, hence of modern physics, yields reliable repeatable results that are consistent with that theory. It was because of the very notion that the Bible promoted a consistent reliable creation, hence consistent laws of nature, that modern science developed in the first place. It is because those laws are stationary that we can know anything at all about the universe by our own observations.
If we are to make the assumption that we cannot know, or that the laws of nature we test in the laboratory are not the same as those we observe elsewhere in the cosmos (excluding the idea that what we do know is incomplete), then we have no basis to test any hypothesis about the universe. Taking that idea further, since we cannot travel to the nearest star, why not suppose that the laws of nature and the structure of the universe are such that all stars lie within a four-light-year radius of Earth? That idea could never be disproved because it is always possible to say the laws and structure of the universe are consistent with this notion. And we would not have a light-travel-time problem.3
At the 6th International Conference on Creationism in Pittsburgh, 2008, there were presentations revolving around the rejection of most of modern physics, e.g. trying to find a model for the simplest atomic species without quantum theory. This does not seem to be appropriate as it ignores the last one hundred years of research.
If position number 2) above is taken, a straight-forward reading of Genesis as true history, we would not need to say that everything in the universe must be 6,000 years old, as measured by processes in their own frame of reference. That is not contradictory of the creation timeline. But those processes measured by Earth clocks must have taken less than 6,000 years to happen. God’s creation is knowable and understandable (at least those aspects limited to the physics we know today) to us as humans. He made the universe in a way that is rational and reasonable, and the efforts since the development of modern science, say, over the last thousand years, have revealed a lot of truth. (Of course along the way we have had to throw out a lot of error.)
Modern science is reliable
Modern physics, by and large, is reliable; we can test relativity with GPS satellites and even with Earth-bound modern atomic clocks. Every time we use a device with a laser, we are using something developed from quantum theory. But that is not the same thing as understanding what happened in the cosmos, in the past, billions of years ago, based on the assumption of the constant speed of light and the size of the universe. It is not so clear, and we cannot interact with the universe like we can with our experiments in the lab.4 The former is not really repeatable science and hence it is very weak in its predictive power.
But position number 2) above is another way of saying that we can trust the Lord, we can trust modern science, where it is testable, and we can, in principle, know what God did. One of the reasons is that the laws of nature are God’s Laws; He created them. Although the idea of many biblical miracles is that they involve highly unusual rates of change (changing water into wine, calming a storm, etc.), these miracles are the exception, not the rule.
So this is not about the rejection of ‘millions or billions of years’ per se; it is really about the truthfulness of God’s Word. We really should not even use terms like ‘young-earth creationism’ (YEC) or ‘old-earth creationism’ (OEC); we could instead adopt ‘biblical creationism’, or to be clearer ‘straight-forward history in Genesis biblical creationism’ (SHGBC).5 Because surely it is about bringing people back to a clear understanding of the veracity of the Word of God, from Genesis all the way through. ‘Young earth’, meanwhile, implies its age is young compared to the supposed long geologic ages, which are contrary to the Genesis timeline. And so often arguments from the other side are a caricature of the creationist position, or a straw man argument, but some may have been once held by creationists. We should hold ourselves to a higher standard. We will never satisfy the sceptics who reject the idea that God’s Word can be relied upon, but we must challenge those who ‘put their heads in the sand’ over the last hundred years of modern science.
Starlight travel time problem
If we accept all observations about the universe, realizing they are tainted with certain assumptions, which may be wrong, then creationists have a starlight-travel-time problem. This is true if we believe only 6,000 years have passed since the creation of the most distant light sources, and that they were all created at that time, as measured by normal Earth clocks, and we hold to the convention that the timer was started when the star was created. But if the timer was started when the light first arrived on Earth, when someone first saw the event, then this is the Anisotropic Time Convention,6 and there is no light-travel-time problem. There is nothing to answer. Or if Earth clocks ran slow during Creation Week compared to all other clocks in the cosmos, there would be billions of years of process going on out there, and plenty of time for light to get here in the past 6,000 years. This is a relativistic effect and relates to both Humphreys’ model and mine.7,8 In all cases the universe is large, and normal, testable physics applies. It also allows for a certain starting point we could call ‘mature creation’, as the place where God started. The only difference is we do not know which is the correct model or time convention. Maybe none of them are, but we should keep looking within the realms of modern testable physics.
Related Articles
Further Reading
References
- Hartnett, J.G. and DeYoung, D.B., Mature creation and seeing distant starlight, J. Creation 25(1):46–47, 2011. Return to text.
- Death only applies to nephesh chayyāh, translated ‘living soul’ or ‘living creature’ with the breath of life; see Sarfati, J., The Fall: a cosmic catastrophe, 21 February 2005. Return to text.
- There are notions that the universe must be no more than 6,000 light-years in radius, to the most distant galaxy, because the universe is only 6,000 years old, and even that all stars must not be more than a few light-days away, because Adam was created only two days after the stars were, and he could see stars. The problem with these ideas is that we have a repeatable method of measuring parallax of about a thousand stars from the earth as it traverses the sun, and we can measure those distances by that method, which you could say is a direct method, based on what we know of reliable science on Earth. The ESA satellite Hipparcos mapped a hundred thousand stars in the galaxy, all of which were more distant than two light-days. Hipparcos also confirmed Einstein’s prediction of the effect of gravity on starlight. Return to text.
- Hartnett, J., ‘Cosmology is not even astrophysics’, 3 December 2008. Return to text.
- But doesn’t quite roll off the tongue like ‘YEC’ does. Return to text.
- Lisle, J.P., Anisotropic Synchrony Convention—A Solution to the Distant Starlight Problem, Answers Research Journal 2:191–207, 2010; answersingenesis.org/articles/arj/v3/n1/anisotropic-synchrony-convention. Return to text.
- Humphreys, D.R., Starlight and Time, Master Books, Colorado Springs, CO, 1994; Humphreys, D.R., New time dilation helps creation cosmology, J. Creation 22(3):84–92, 2008. Return to text.
- Hartnett, J.G., A new cosmology: solution to the starlight travel time problem, J. Creation 17(2):98–102, 2003; Hartnett, J.G., Starlight, Time and the New Physics, Creation Book Publishers, Brisbane, 2007; Hartnett, J.G., A 5D spherically symmetric expanding universe is young, J. Creation 21(1):69–74, 2006; I recommend the second edition of the book, where a misinterpretation of the type of time dilation the model involves has been corrected. Return to text.
Readers’ comments
A better more honest solution to the problem is that the six day creation in Genesis 1 is an ancient allegory which was sufficient for the day and the people when it was written. If God had told Moses, 'Well Moses, you know that sun up there, it is actually 2 million times the volume of the Earth, and the moon is is multiplied millions of times smaller than the sun. And those twinkling stars, there are some which are so huge that they make the sun a dwarf in comparison. And by the way, the Earth isn't flat with four corners as you think, but its actually a big round globe'. Back then, for what we now know as reality would seem ludicrous.
You also don't like to be known as Young Earth Creationists, yet there are multitudes of believers like myself who are staunchly creationists, but who accept the modern astronomical view that the Earth and universe are billions of years old. This makes us Old Earth Creationists. We view the Genesis creation story as allegorical or analogical rather than literal, as allegories appear throughout the Bible and Jesus Himself often spoke in allegories.
Concerning allegorical interpretations of Genesis 1, we’ve refuted them many times before. For a small selection, see:
And the notion that an allegorical interpretation is “more honest” than the historical week interpretation of Genesis 1 is as insulting as it is ludicrous. Most of the church throughout history “honestly” interpreted Genesis 1 as a historical week without help from the modern biblical creation movement. And it just so happens deep time interpretations surfaced just as deep time geology was becoming mainstream. Coincidence? I think not. Calling the allegorical interpretation “more honest” as well as “better” is well-poisoning. It goes beyond a statement about the merits of the interpretation to the motives of the interpreters. Let me be honest—we honestly believe that Genesis 1 honestly reports honest factual history.
We prefer the term ‘biblical creationists’ because it better reflects what we hold to. ‘Young-earth’ is a relative term, and it doesn’t explain why we hold the position we do. Even ‘old-earth creationists’ (OECs) would be ‘young-earthers’ to people who believed the Earth was a trillion years old. That the Bible presents a reliable chronology of the universe is our starting point, so the epithet ‘biblical’ better explains both the content and basis how we understand history. Who knows, perhaps a more helpful term for OECs would be ‘prehistory creationists’ because a defining premise about the past for OECs is that prehistory is real.
Finally, not all OECs believe Genesis 1 is allegorical. Various day-age and gap theories still attempt to understand Genesis 1 as factual history. They reject any correspondence between Genesis 1 and Jesus’ parables as much as we do.
Properly understood, our universe can be both young and old. God can be alpha and omega at the same time.
Dr. Einstein's theory of relativity is supported by experimental results. But unfortunately the theory has been used as the premise for unscientific moral and philosophical relativism.
Quantum theory on the other hand starts with philosophical presuppositions. These are coupled with hijacked science such as statics, wave equations, and probability to create the illusion that the philosophy of quantum mechanics has displaced God.
Some self-identified Christians are very comfortable with evolution. Some are very comfortable with a Big Bang, so long as God started it. And some are comfortable with quantum mechanics. Nonetheless, quantum mechanics is not compatible with biblical Christianity.
Christians dedicated to upholding the original manuscripts of the bible as God inspired and thus infallible, good for all instruction and edification, are working toward a good end. However, if they don't have the resources or inclination to support investigation into the truth claims of every topic, such as quantum mechanics, it seems to me that at least they shouldn't undermine the Christians who do investigate those topics.
Well, that was some thoughts... Thanks for keeping up the good work.
I like the thought that scientific discoveries could throw light on “How God did it”, so it’s OK to study science from that viewpoint.
…This is of course mere speculation, but perhaps an atypical kind of quantum physics could explain how the risen Christ seemed to be able to appear in two places at once?
Also, the fact that He could pass through the grave clothes leaving them undisturbed in situ, and later through locked doors, was due not to attenuation (He took pains to show the disciples that He was not a ghost), but because this new body was more “solid” or more “energetic” than the doors! Normal atoms are mostly empty space, and particles such as neutrinos can pass through matter as if it wasn’t there, so I think it makes sense as a possibility.
On what we know of His usual way of operating, it also seems more likely that the Lord would (as with the miracle of turning water into wine) simply “tweak” the laws of physics that He Himself had set in place, than do something totally against those laws.
If we believe that God created, from nothing, why is there an issue with starlight? Cannot God bring the light from these distance stars to earth using the same divine fiat that brought them into existence? All of creation week was supernatural; why try to find a natural explanation for the so-called starlight problem?
If we say the first 4 days were billions of years with a slow earth clock, then how do we then say the other days were normal 24 hour days of real minutes and real seconds (not slow time). Thus, the animals could have been created over millions of years (slow clock).
I admit to not being a scientist, nor even close to knowledgeable. If God used a slow clock on earth, then He didn't create everything in 6 days, but 6 periods of time. Slow clock has to be relative to something, and that something would be the "real" time it took; again not 6 real days.
I believe the plain reading of Genesis 1 is a literal 6 days. How He did it is beyond our comprehension. It is better to leave it there than to try to remove the problem (starlight or some other) by various methods of redefining "time".
There is no logical fault in saying Creation Week is beyond our ability to comprehend, but saying that comes with a reasonably large price: we are left unable to do anything with most astronomical data we have collected. The constancy of nature assumption we have to explain it with, and this need not contradict a miracle explanation. The way nature behaves may not have changed during Creation Week, but God may have manipulated the conditions (i.e. the arrangement of matter and energy) after the initial creation event in ways impossible for anyone else.
It's also a reasonable assumption. Nature's constancy reflects God's faithfulness (2 Timothy 2:13), so is there reason why God would keep nature's fundamental behaviour constant even during Creation Week. Genesis 1 is also understandable as a pattern of initial creation of the raw materials followed by the rearrangement of those materials over the following six days. God didn't have to create like this, but there are legitimate reasons for thinking He did.
Now, I assume that every Christian trusts God with his life and is confident that there is an after life with the Lord, because He said so.
But what He said about creation through the Bible is not so trust worthy?
And when somebody calls from the roof top:"God is wrong, God is wrong"! what does it do? We are trapped on this planet and within our time to live, after this we have no influence anymore.
I always feel somewhat wary when we, as Biblical Creationists, try to fathom the 'How did God...'. especially when it comes to trying to understand and explain the starlight problem. Why not try to explain and come up with a theory of how Jesus walked on water, or how did he turn the water into wine? I think if we did try to explain how Jesus did these things, that would be tantamount to the erudite asking Jesus for a sign (Matt12:8).
In Psalm 19:1 we read that the heavens declare/proclaim His Glory. Imagine if God sent an Angel to explain to a top physicist precisely how He did create the heavens, and he then in turn revealed all. Would that not somehow lessen the wonder and awe of looking at the constellations above?
As we know there are some 11 occasions in the Bible where the term 'stretched' occurs, and we haven't a clue what that means. As has been said before 'someone has monkeyed around with the physics'. God has allowed us build electron microscopes and the equipment to help us understand and examine things like the blood clotting cascade, the workings of the eukaryotic cell, and the design of birds etc, but just maybe understanding how the universe was put together has, and always will be, 'out of bounds' for everyone, so that it will always declare His Glory.
For instance, Hebrews is one sustained argument that the new covenant in Christ is superior to the old covenant. One reason given is that in Christ God revealed himself more fully than ever before (Hebrews 1). Christ's revelation of God brings us more knowledge about God, and brings more glory to God, than any other previous revelation did.
With regard to science, the same applies. One only need to quote Johannes Kepler: science is "thinking God's thoughts after him". In science we try to imitate God's thoughts, and (at our best) apply them as He would have us do. Knowledge of how God acted and how God acts in creation should inspire more awe at the His magnificent wisdom and power and so cause us to worship; not boast in our own knowledge. It all belongs to God and He alone gives us eyes to see, so He remains our only boast, no matter how much we understand.
None of this destroys the unfathomableness of God because science is not the study of God himself, but the study of God's sustaining work in creation. God remains mysterious and transcendent. For instance, the Trinity and the Incarnation remain deep mysteries.
Surely the timer started on the 1st day, otherwise how could God count the days?
Yet the stars were created on the 4th day.
Alternatively, the idea that the speed of light has been slowing (exponentially) since Creation, and was initially billions of times faster, answers the questions of 1. How can we see stars millions of light years away with the universe being only 6,000 years old [A: light travelled much, much faster initially], and 2. Why does radioactive dating give such long ages? [A: the rate of nuclear decay is tied to the speed of light] (Ref. Setterfield, Humphreys)
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