Afterthought
Puritan Board Senior
Some people believe mature creation is a deceptive solution to the starlight problem in a young universe. I disagree, but Dr. Byl presents a workaround solution to the deception objection: all that we observe happened, but at an accelerated rate in a miraculous manner. The creation of stars and galaxies was miraculously, rapidly matured, like the plant God grew for Jonah. The last objection to mature creation is then answered: there is no deception because it did all happen. This is actually a solution I had thought about previously some years ago, so I am glad to see someone with standing write it up.
https://bylogos.blogspot.com/2017/05/is-mature-creation-deceptive_18.html
The comments are useful, as are the comments and follow-up post here: http://bylogos.blogspot.com/2018/08/cosmology-at-creationism-conference.html
For my own thoughts on the post,
An astronomer could make (and an astronomer friend of mine has made) an objection that if this were true, we would see a blue-shift. The comments also point out other issues, e.g., a huge energy flux on Earth as light arrived. However, I would point out that these are miraculous processes, so we cannot simply use our present laws of physics to rule it out (as Dr. Byl himself starts to argue in the comments in the follow-up post). Nevertheless, if one is really that concerned about energy fluxes, he notes that the accelerated processes could be assumed to vary with distance from the earth in just the right manner.
Can this solution be proven to be correct? No. It is not an hypothesis without precedent in the Scriptures, but it cannot be proven. However, because it is a possibility, it shows the limitations of scientific objections to the Creation account based on starlight: science cannot rule out the miraculous since it does not and cannot study it. Scientific objections to the Creation account are thus philosophically nullified by this theoretical possibility.
It is not as though a believer who holds to YEC needs to find an answer, of course: it suffices to say, God says it occurred that way, he is wise and powerful enough to accomplish it, knowledgeable and truthful enough to trust what he says, and so therefore it must have occurred that way, despite the objections of our scientific reasonings. The possibility is merely useful for helping one see how our scientific reasonings might have gone wrong and for providing an extra philosophical hypothesis (so it cannot be objected that every other possibility has been ruled out, therefore the science must be correct).
https://bylogos.blogspot.com/2017/05/is-mature-creation-deceptive_18.html
The comments are useful, as are the comments and follow-up post here: http://bylogos.blogspot.com/2018/08/cosmology-at-creationism-conference.html
For my own thoughts on the post,
An astronomer could make (and an astronomer friend of mine has made) an objection that if this were true, we would see a blue-shift. The comments also point out other issues, e.g., a huge energy flux on Earth as light arrived. However, I would point out that these are miraculous processes, so we cannot simply use our present laws of physics to rule it out (as Dr. Byl himself starts to argue in the comments in the follow-up post). Nevertheless, if one is really that concerned about energy fluxes, he notes that the accelerated processes could be assumed to vary with distance from the earth in just the right manner.
Can this solution be proven to be correct? No. It is not an hypothesis without precedent in the Scriptures, but it cannot be proven. However, because it is a possibility, it shows the limitations of scientific objections to the Creation account based on starlight: science cannot rule out the miraculous since it does not and cannot study it. Scientific objections to the Creation account are thus philosophically nullified by this theoretical possibility.
It is not as though a believer who holds to YEC needs to find an answer, of course: it suffices to say, God says it occurred that way, he is wise and powerful enough to accomplish it, knowledgeable and truthful enough to trust what he says, and so therefore it must have occurred that way, despite the objections of our scientific reasonings. The possibility is merely useful for helping one see how our scientific reasonings might have gone wrong and for providing an extra philosophical hypothesis (so it cannot be objected that every other possibility has been ruled out, therefore the science must be correct).