How does a believer respond to the age of the universe posited by the naturalist which states that the ovservable universe is 13.7 billion years old because light, which is the fastest thing existing, took that long to reach us?

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Andrew DeShazo
Husband of Kathryn
Father of Phillip-Giles B. DeShazo
Deacon
Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church, Memphis, TN
"From out of the depth of unbroken Infinfity arose the Question, "Who am I?" And to that Question there is the answer, "I am God!" -Meher Baba, died 1969.

"I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." Christ, died 33 AD, ressurected three days later.

Adam and Eve were created with the appearance of age. So were the plants, animals and the earth. Andrew, you can check out Answers in Genesis website, it is wonderful for creation apologetics.

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Sean Caouette
Independent Presbyterian Church (PCA)
Memphis, Tennessee

Part of the difficulty with a statement such as that is that it is fraught with assumptions. When one says the universe is 13.7 billion years old because that's how long it too light to get from point A to point B, the problem is that the figure of 13.7 billion light years (the distance assumed for the farthest things) is based on a model that relates recession rate of those bodies (measured by the well-supported Doppler shift of light) to a distance scale. This relationship has a GREAT deal of underlying assumptions and deductions based on those assumptions, and further deductions sitting on those prior deductions plus a bit more experimental data.

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Todd K. Pedlar
member, First Congregational Church, (CCCC) Cresco, IA
http://inprincipiodeus.solideogloria.com
http://puritanwisdom.blogspot.com

"As God did not at first choose you because you were high, He will not now forsake you because you are low."
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... but the naturalist unbeliever most likely will not accept any explanation as valid because it will not fit their presuppositional beliefs. Not that you shouldn't give them a good answer, but don't .

The speed of light, as far as I know, has not always been constant. Furthermore, as Todd noted, it's based on unfounded assumptions. Can God not create an already mature earth with light already there? Yeah.

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It is God that multiplies our sorrows.... God, as a righteous Judge, does it, which ought to silence us under all our sorrows; as many as they are, we have deserved them all, and more: nay, God, as a tender Father, does it for our necessary correction, that we may be humbled for sin, and weaned from the world by all our sorrows; and the good we get by them, with the comfort we have under them, will abundantly balance our sorrows, how greatly soever they are multiplied. - Matthew Henry

I respond by saying that it is possible the universe actually is 13.7 billion years old.

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Daniel
PCA
Memphis, TN

Can't find that in the text.

This was a good book:

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Denton Elliott
Husband of one wife, father of three
Deacon - Christ Community Church
Monroe, GA
Student: Whitefield Theological Seminary M.Div program

Not that this is the way I'd necessarily resolve the issue, but God did say "let there be light" - he didn't say what it would be doing when it was created.

As for the speed of light constancy issue, I really think that's a poor resolution for the issue. The implications of a changing speed of light are really quite problematic from a physical point of view - and it's not a necessary explanation.

Simple question: Says who? I don't know of any man who has lived 13.7 billion years to observe the truth of the statement, therefore it is not scientifically verifiable. It's speculation. Naturalists simply assume it has taken that long, because that is the way light behaves now. They don't know the starting point. And really, they don't know if it will change sometime in the future either. Remember, they believe in evolution and chance, so it's possible that light may evolve in coming years and change it's speed or properties yet again...

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Patrick
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'Amen, brother?'

As a Humphreyite, I agree that parts of the universe are that old. Some are younger, some are older, depending upon how close they are to the earth; owing to relativity, time flowed faster for them than it did on Earth during creation week, so they actually did age billions of years.

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Jonathan
Audio Engineer
Reformed Anabaptist
Ohio

Moroni's magical glasses of proper interpretation:

Wasn't really trying to resolve the issue, as I find it all speculative anyway. I know the origins of the earth, man, sin, etc., because the Bible tells me so.

The problem with the "created light" idea is the 1970A supernova. If this hypothesis were true, the star that was observed to explode actually never did--the image of its explosion was created in transit, and behind it was a supernova remnant the whole time. In other words, we saw an event that never happened. I personally don't think God would create a deception like that; it seems inconsistent with His nature.

My response is usually something like, "well, sure, it looks that way." And then shrug.

Lots of things "look that way" but aren't. I don't spend a lot of time trying to come up with fantastic alternative theories because that ends up playing the game on the empiricist's turf.

I remember a decade or so ago when some creation science people were trying to prove that the moon couldn't be so old because the level of dust on the surface was not something like 10 feet deep. Turned out that their assumptions were off by several orders of magnitude.

Ooops. So much for using empirical speculation to disprove empirical speculation.

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Raymond Victor Bottomly
Providence Reformed Baptist Church, Tacoma, WA

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Come on, let's not add confusing misinterpretations of physics to the question of the age of the universe... the suggestion of relativistic time dilation as a solution fails on the face of it. The age determination of 13.7 billion years does not arise from anything that would be impacted by relativistic effects.

I understand your concern, but that doesn't rule out the fact that God did that. And certainly I wouldn't dream of classifying his ability or right to do such a thing as a deception. It seems as if you dismiss the ability (or probability) of God to create the universe with the appearance of age out of hand, as it doesn't support the supposed evidence interpreted by secular scientists, whose presuppositions are to eliminate or deny the supernatural.

I would say, you find me some dark energy or some dark matter and then we can discuss further the scientific case for 13.7 billion or so years.

CT

-----Added 6/26/2009 at 12:23:26 EST-----

Just so you know the most advanced current creationist interpretation of cosmology can be found here: https://store.creation.com/us/produc...p?sku=10-3-505

I think the cleanest way to describe it, is that it takes Humphrey's work and fixes a lot of stuff (the author actually has a serious amount of experience in cosmology) and basically shows that if you do not assume dark matter and dark energy, you can make sense of the data and be consistent with a young universe.

CT

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Hermonta Godwin
Christ The King PCA
Raleigh, NC

On a related note, though . . . and I'm not talking 13.7 Billion . . . it does appear, from geological/paleontological records and such, that the earth is very old. And since creation is revelation, does a young earth theory necessarily imply that God's revelation is deceptive? Just a question. It's an issue I'm only recently dealing with. So, instead of flaming me, help me 'see the light' (bad pun intended).

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Clark Brooking
Pastor
Living Hope Presbyterian Church (OPC)
Clarksville, MD

Todd,

I defer to your knowledge here. What is wrong with the Russ Humphrey gravitational time dilation ("white hole") explanation (in layman's terms)?

Claiming 13.7 billion years presents problems for the old earthers too. "Observed" distances in the universe exceed the 13.7/13.8 billion number. The horizon problem is a difficulty for big bangers as well. (Granted there are proposed solutions by them to the problem. I'm just indicating that it is not all cut and dried).

Incidentally, if memory serves me, my high school physics class was claiming closer to 20 billion years. It is interesting how the "assured" results of science change over time. Again, it has a lot to do with the interpretive framework in which the "facts" and observations are put.

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Dennis E. McFadden, Ex Mainline Baptist (in Remission)
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I think the first thing is to first understand that there are many assumptions that go into determining the age of things. If those assumptions break down, then so do the conclusions.

Things that take x billions years under the current forces at work today, may take much less time under various extraordinary circumstances.

CT

... and these assumptions we have to agree with to agree that the universe is that old is forcing us to play on their home field. I like to play at my home field.

Did God connect the earth and the stars with light without making that light travel from the stars to the earth?

Did God make the light appear on the earth without causing the light to travel?

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Curt Hayashida
member, Community Bible Church (Non-denominational)
Vallejo, CA

1. No, it doesn't rule out that fact. It does make it, imho, very, very unlikely.

2. Appearance of age isn't what bothers me. It's being shown something that doesn't exist. I don't have a problem with a mature creation. What the 1970A supernova would be, though, is not simply a mature creation, but a star that never existed.

3. I'm not sure I follow, Todd. How does relativistic time dilation "fail on the face of it"?

-----Added 6/26/2009 at 01:12:29 EST-----

Did God dispense with the laws of physics he created?

Couple of things:
1) if God created the universe with apparent age, it really would be 13.7 billion years old, even if time has not existed that long.
2) While I know the 144 hour creation theory would have problems with this, there are plenty of theories for interpretation of Gen 1 that do not require 144 hours.

Of the two, anyone could use the former. For the 144 hour creationist, the first should be fine. God could have created Adam with a navel, with a scar on his right arm that looked for all the world like a shark bite, and as a 25-year-old man.

For the second, it would present problems for those that hold to a YE, 144 hour creation. But it is consistent with a non-literal view of the Gen 1 creation account (like Augustine's) and certainly does no damage to the rest of scripture.

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Brian Withnell
Deacon, OPC
Leesburg, Virginia

You cannot train for war in the midst of a battle. Prepare before the battle starts; if the battle is long and hard, you will wish you had.

My answer is that God did dispense with the "normal" course of how creation now functions as He was creating. I am not saying that no star existed in your supernova example, but I am saying that the idea of millions/billions of years does not exhaust the possibilities available to God. Remember what was said in Job 9:1-10 (esp. 8-10). "He stretched out the heavens."

Then Job answered and said:

2 “Truly I know that it is so:
But how can a man be in the right before God?
3 If one wished to a contend with him,
one could not answer him once in a thousand times.
4 He is wise in heart and mighty in strength
—who has hardened himself against him, and succeeded?—
5 he who removes mountains, and they know it not,
when he overturns them in his anger,
6 who shakes the earth out of its place,
and its pillars tremble;
7 who commands the sun, and it does not rise;
who seals up the stars;
8 who alone stretched out the heavens
and trampled the waves of the sea;
9 who made the Bear and Orion,
the Pleiades and the chambers of the south;
10 who does great things beyond searching out,
and marvelous things beyond number.

My problem with this is very simply put. If my son put together evidence of something that never happened, didn't actually say that the event that he made to appear to have happened, what would you call it? Duplicity? Deception? Certainly a violation of the 9th commandment. Do we really want to attribute to God what we would call lying in our own children?

At what point do we begin reading Genesis "literally?" There are many who would take that line of reasoning past Genesis 1.

-----Added 6/26/2009 at 01:30:49 EST-----

I didn't say God deceived. I am making the point the star could have very well exploded, then God "stretched out the heavens." Eisegetical interpretation into God's natural creation is problem for Christians as much as is eisegetical interpretation of the Scriptures. The problem is you have to continually change with the interpretations of unbelieving scientists. And you are at the mercy of believing they always tell the truth about the things they report. Scientists have been know to lie, just look at the history of the supposed "missing links."

The main problem here is it's not your created son we are talking about. You are measuring God against a human interpretation of a standard of morality. How is it certainly a violation of the 9th commandment? If God created a mature tree, and then said, "I created this mature tree," there is no lie.

Now if God created a mature universe and said, "I created this in the space of six days" and he leaves it at that, how can that be called a lie?

It hardly fits that by finding evidence of a mature universe we are in a position to attribute deception to God.

On the first part, the idea of a figurative interpretation of Gen 1 goes back at least to Augustine ... long before OE science was born. It isn't looking at science that causes people to think that there is reason for a figurative interpretation of Gen 1. As to what those that don't hold the scripture as inerrant, what difference does their sin make to me? None.

On the second part, while it is possible to come up with a conjecture about the laws of physics and time, and the nature of the universe that would mean that we really do have, again, what I would call duplicity in my son, it is not being forthright and honest. It is making something appear one way, when it really isn't that way. Having to come up with pure conjecture is a problem that really isn't needed if one finds an unifying interpretation of both natural and special revelation. And finding a unifying interpretation of both also would give us more confidence in having the correct interpretation (that is, that our sinful and stubborn nature had not deceived us).

Amen. Let God be true thought every one were a liar.

I'm not familiar with the argument - but the problem with any description that suggests some sort of dilation of time in some part (all?) of the universe that is moving relative to us - or a gravitational time dilation effect, which is a general relativistic, rather than special relativistic, effect - is that I dont' see how such an explanation can cause us to misread the distance scales involved. We don't "see" age, it is inferred from the red-shift vs. distance relationship (and then the distance is related to age by d = ct, where c is the speed of light). So any kind of time dilation that causes "clocks" that move relative to us to "run slow" (so that in the "moving" part of the universe, lots of time has passed whereas in our part of the universe less time has passed) would not impact the measurements we make from which we infer age.

Now if Humphrey is not actually making a gravitational time dilation statement, but a gravitational redshift statement, that's a different story (but there will still be problems with it also, as not all high redshift stars are big, but have a range of sizes).

I believe that change (From 20-ish to 14-ish) is a matter of differences in the "Hubble constant" that relates red shift value to distance... it changes based on the fits to the immense amount of data that has been collected. Again, though, the underlying premises are assumptions that the means of relating red shift to distance are correct.

Brian,
Simple question: Did God deceive when he created Adam and Eve and the rest of creation appear to be mature, even though they were a nanosecond old when he created them?

Todd,

If you ever get any spare time, I would love to hear your take on Russ Humphrey's book already cited above (post #8). He includes some math to back up his arguments. However, I'm just a dumb bureaucrat who runs an old folks home. What do I know about them high-falutin arguments?

The issue is the evidence of things that did not happen. We do not judge God, but we judge the interpretation that would require deception on God's part. If the interpretation would require duplicity, then it is wrong. You are correct that I hold a standard up to judge my son ... that standard is the nature of God revealed in his word. Duplicity is not a part of God's nature, and so I have a hard time believing he would create evidence of something that not only didn't happen, but that never existed in the first place. It isn't that God would do that, but if our interpretation of scripture would put that upon God, then our interpretation of scripture is just plain wrong. I'm not judging God, I'm judging what I believe is a wrong interpretation of scripture through the logical argument of reductio ad absurdum. The idea of a literal 24 day in the six days of creation would make God be a liar in natural revelation. That makes the 144 hour interpretation wrong, as it is impossible for God to lie.

While it is barely plausible that a 144 hour creation is correct ... it would require what anyone would call duplicity if the exact circumstances and entities were removed from the telling ... it is not necessary to the text, it is not necessary to keep a consistent view of scripture, it is not necessary for any theology of the faith touching either the nature of God or salvation.

Figurative interpretation of the six days is not novel, it does not come from synergism of secular science and the Bible, and is a result of carefully looking at the passage in context of the whole of scripture. I see no compelling reason to hold to a 144 hour interpretation, and many reasons to reject it. I know I am in a minority position on this, but I see no viable options.

You are saying, if I'm not mistaken, that the universe (all of it, moving relative to us?) is in fact 13.7 billion years old, whereas we measure creation as 6000 years ago or so. Those parts of the universe are moving relative to us, so time dilation, you seem to have said, can explain the difference. A moving clock runs slow (this is well accepted and experimentally proven) and therefore in the part moving relative to us, 13.7 billion years can have passed, while on earth, only 6000. I think I've understood your explanation properly, but correct me if I'm wrong.

However, the problem with this is at least twofold.

1) We don't measure the age of the universe by looking at some kind of clock. We infer the age from the relationship that is accepted between distance scale and speed of recession of stars (which itself is inferred from the red shift of spectral lines in the light emitted by stars). The age is then given by solving the equation Distance = time interval * speed of light for the time interval. So the problem is that if the part of the universe is receding (and you say it ages 13.7 billion years while in our part only 6000 years has passed) the same relationship still applies between red shift and distance. The time interval passing on those receding stars is irrelevant because we haven't actually measured it.

Now even if the above were wrong, then you'd still have the second problem:

2) The recession speeds are far too slow to cause time dilation of the magnitude proposed. The ratio between the dilated time interval and our interval is 13.7 billion / 6000, or 2.28 million. This requires, then a speed of recession that differs from the speed of light by only one part in 10 billion. Recession speeds of galaxies that have a red shift of 6 (those that are of order 14 billion light years away according to Hubble) are more like 0.96. If the speed of recession required for the time dilation factor you speak of was the actual speed of the farthest galaxies, we'd be talking red shifts of 5 MILLION. Biggest redshifts are 6-7. No dice.

Well, like I said I'd be happy to look at it if I could get a hold of a copy - but I have my doubts either in terms of gravitational time dilation (which I think can't hold any water) or in terms of gravitational red shift (which probably can't either).

UGH, MY BRAIN!

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Todd,

What books would you recommendo n the subject? I'm interested in it and I think there are some problems that I don't really have the scientific background at the moment to fathom.

I think "Creation and Change" by Doug Kelly answers a lot of these questions Andrew...

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Benjamin P. Glaser, M. Div, Licentiate, Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church
Member Fairmount ARP Church
Pittsburgh, PA

Deo Vindice

To figure how far away the distant galaxies are and the light that comes from them aren't they noting how far it has traveled in a certain amount of time then calculating it back to when it would have all been together, (big bang), then seeing how long it would take for it to be where it is now?
If it did not start all the way back as one glob but closer to where it is now wouldn't that it look like it was older than it was? Mathematically?

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Erick Bohndorf, Redeemer Presbyterian PCA
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