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Distant starlight and the days of Genesis 1

NASA/JPL-Caltech

How should we approach the distant starlight travel time issue? How do we argue against day-age theory? CMI’s Shaun Doyle examines these questions in today’s feedback from William L. from Australia.

Dear William,

Thank you for your email and your kind words. As a general point, I recommend our search function and our Q and A pages, by which you can find articles that answer all these questions.

NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA); Acknowledgment: J. Gallagher (University of Wisconsin), M. Mountain (STScI), and P. Puxley (National Science Foundation)

We don’t have to reconcile the two because we do not currently advocate any sort of idea that postulates a faster speed of light in the past to explain distant starlight, nor does Dr Humphreys. Please see How can we see distant stars in a young Universe?

This is what Dr Sarfati says:

“When modified by a cardinal number (for example, one, two, three …) or ordinal number (for example, first, second, third …) as used 359 times in the OT [Old Testament] outside Genesis 1, yôm always means a literal day of about 24 hours, or the light portion of the day-night cycle. This is true in narrative, legal writings, prophecy, wisdom literature, and even poetry. So there must be extraordinary reasons to justify an extraordinary exception, if Genesis 1 is indeed an exception.”¹

He of course goes on to demonstrate that Genesis 1 is no exception to this unanimous usage, and not just by appealing to this pattern (he cites other evidence in favour of his interpretation). But this argument is inductive—he is establishing a general pattern from specific examples. He is saying that in every actual example of the ‘yôm + number’ construction in the Old Testament yôm always refers either to a 24-hour day or the daylight hours of a 24-hour day. Instead, your question misconstrued Dr Sarfati’s argument as deductive—explaining a particular example by a general rule; i.e. that there is an inviolable rule in Hebrew grammar that says: “yôm +number can only refer to a 24-hour ‘day’”. There is of course no such inviolable rule. But this doesn’t matter for Dr Sarfati’s argument because his argument is inductive, not deductive.

Concerning 2 Peter 3:8 (also covered in Refuting Compromise), note the second half of the verse: “and a thousand years are like a day”. And note 2 Peter 3:9: “The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.” Peter is expanding on Psalm 90:4 to show that some people’s idea of ‘slow’ is wrong. God’s promise will be fulfilled in due time, and the so-called ‘slowness’ doesn’t demonstrate the falsehood of the promise, but demonstrates God’s patience. In all this, understanding the point of 2 Peter 3:8 still depends on understanding ‘day’ as a typical 24-hour day. Note also that these verses have nothing to do with the days of Genesis 1.

Please see 2 Peter 3:8—‘one day is like a thousand years’, Did God really take six days?, The meaning of yôm in Genesis 1:1–2:4, and The days of Creation: A semantic approach.

Genesis 1:1–2 was not before the first day, but describes the starting conditions of the cosmos on the first day. Referring to the Sabbath, Exodus 31:17 says: “It is a sign forever between me and the people of Israel that in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested and was refreshed.” Everything was made in those first six days of history, including the initial state of the universe from nothing (that was actually the beginning of the first day). Please see ‘Soft’ gap sophistry.

What matters for Dr Humphreys’ cosmology (and others like it) is that only one day passed on earth while billions of years’ worth of physical processes occurred on the outer reaches of the universe. In a relativistic sense we could say that the universe is both 6000 years old (as measured on Earth) and billions of years old (as measured at the edge of the universe). However, the Bible counts time from an earth-bound reference frame, so it speaks of the universe being about 6,000 years old. Please see How can we see distant stars in a young Universe?

Note that all creationist cosmologies seek to do is try to understand how distant starlight got to Earth in a single Earth day. They are not seeking to discern whether that happened. That question is easily settled—it happened. That God is omnipotent clearly means God can do it, and Genesis 1:14–19 clearly implies that it happened. We just don’t know how it happened. But we don’t need to know how distant starlight got to Earth in a single Earth day to know that it did.

Nevertheless, it is good to try and figure out how it happened, or at least develop plausible theories on how it could have happened given the observational data we have. It shows we think Genesis 1 occurred in the real space-time-matter world, and is not some ‘religious’ idea that has nothing to do with the real world. It also shows that the observational evidence really is consistent with Genesis 1. And it shows we’re not against science per se. Please see Modern science in creationist thinking.

Kind regards,

Shaun Doyle
Creation Ministries International

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