Monday, November 23, 2020

The Creation Controversy, Part Eighteen: Some Considerations from Science


Also in this series:


Thus far, I’ve been looking at the creation controversy in light of what we can learn from scripture rather than from science, as scripture is the most important aspect of the debate for believers. That said, however, as I have already discussed, our understanding of scripture is to at least some degree informed by our understanding of the natural world.

God has created us to live in this world and to interact with it, which necessitates that we have the capacity to understand it. I do not claim that scientists don’t make mistakes or that humanity will ever attain a perfect understanding of nature on this side of the kingdom, but scripture itself bears out the fact that humanity is not a race of imbeciles. The technological achievements of this age demonstrate that we are quite capable when it comes to analyzing the creation, discovering the mechanisms that drive it, and applying what we learn to various useful applications. The impact of modern science has been nothing short of a revolution in human affairs.

While I have had an avid interest in science all of my life—astronomy in particular—I am not a scientist. I do not have the academic background and technical expertise required to evaluate scientific literature or experimental methods and findings in any real depth. Even speaking as a layman, however, I do have a sufficient understanding of scientific theories and discoveries to offer some informed observations that may be of interest to other laymen observing this debate in the church. To that end, I present a few of what I feel are perhaps the most compelling evidences for an old cosmos, followed by a look at one prominent young-earth scientific project and the results it produced.

A Waste of Space?

The renowned astronomer Carl Sagan once remarked: “The universe is a pretty big place. If it’s just us, seems like an awful waste of space.” Were he alive today, Sagan might very well recant this statement. As our knowledge of the universe has expanded, we’ve learned that its fundamental structure, including the amount of mass it contains, is in fact critical for life. The matter-energy ratio of the universe is perfectly balanced with its expansion rate within a remarkably narrow range. This state of affairs has resulted in the right materials being available in the right proportions over the right amount of time to assemble atoms, light and heavy elements, stars, planets, and galaxies.[1]

Simply put, there is no waste of space here. The universe must exist as it does—and must have existed for as long as it has—in order for us to exist as we do. Evidence such as this has allowed Christian apologists to appeal to the element of fine-tuning in making the case for theism.

As I discussed in chapter four, the implications of Big Bang cosmology have proven disquieting for atheists, to the point where they are seeking proof of alternative theories such as the Multiverse Hypothesis in order to circumvent the need for a beginning and to downplay the significance of fine-tuning. The universe gives every appearance of having been “programmed,” as it were, from the very beginning, to produce the conditions we find in it over a time period that exactly corresponds to its observed age.

In a young-earth paradigm, however, I would expect things to be quite different. With all of the elements necessary to life and living already present from the very beginning, the great mass of the universe would not be necessary to produce or maintain anything. Indeed, why should anything beyond about 6-10,000 light years even exist in a young cosmos brought to full maturity in six calendar days? Not only should we not expect to find evidence of great age in the universe, it seems that we ought to find ourselves in a relatively small and static universe, one in which the laws of nature are designed around station-keeping. Why should the vast bulk of the universe even exist in that paradigm? What purpose would it serve? Very few objects beyond our own Local Group of galaxies are even visible from earth or distinguishable as anything more than star-like or cloud-like objects without a telescope.

It may be answered here that “The heavens declare the glory of God,” and this is reason enough for us to find ourselves in an enormous universe full of stars and galaxies: so that we might appreciate the majesty of the Creator. It is certainly true that the wonders of the universe do cause us to stand in awe of its Creator; however, I remind the reader that this scripture was written during a time when men could see only naked-eye objects and the majority of the universe lay unknown and unknowable. Even the magnificent details of nearby objects like the Orion Nebula were lost for the lack of instruments with which to observe them properly. But then why should the Orion Nebula even exist? Why should any gas or dust clouds exist? They’re not needed to produce stars, after all, since God supposedly created everything in place and in a mature state of being. They do make for lovely images, if you have the technology with which to observe them, but mankind didn’t have this technology for most of its history.

As of this writing, astronomers have confirmed the discovery of 4,306 exoplanets—that is to say, planets that orbit other stars.[2] Yet, why should exoplanets even exist in a young-earth, six-calendar-day creation? What benefit do they provide? They do not give light on the earth, nor do they serve for signs or seasons, to put things in the language of creation Day Four. In fact, they are only detectable with extremely sensitive equipment. They make perfect sense in an old universe defined by Big Bang cosmology: a universe in which God took the time to carefully craft humanity’s home and countless stars have formed, generating their own solar systems in the process. In the young-earth paradigm, however, they make no apparent sense at all. Nor do black holes, magnetars, quasars, pulsars, neutron stars, or even asteroids and comets (essentially space debris) or dwarf planets within our own solar system. None of these objects have any apparent function or explanation in a young-earth, six-calendar-day, fully mature creation scenario.[3]

Stellar Z-Axis Motion

Just as the moon orbits the earth and the earth orbits the sun, so the sun is orbiting the center of our galaxy. If you want to get an idea of what this entails, imagine the Milky Way Galaxy, which is a medium-sized spiral galaxy, oriented in such a way that you can see it edge on (you can find such images of spiral galaxies with a simple search online). Seen edge on, our galaxy has a classic flying saucer shape: more or less a pancake with a bulge in the center. Now imagine a horizontal line drawn through the middle of the saucer so that it splits the galaxy evenly in half. This line is what you might call the galactic plane or equator. The sun follows this course in its orbit around the center of the galaxy, as do the other stars that comprise the Milky Way.

The sun does not follow this orbit in a perfectly straight line, however. Instead, it dips slightly above and below the galactic equator. This type of movement is what we call the sun’s “z-axis motion.” As a result of this motion, the bulk of the galaxy lies between our solar system and the center of the galaxy, thus shielding us from harmful radiation emitted by occasional supernova explosions and the energetic core of the galaxy, which lies about 26,000 light years away.

In his book Improbable Planet: How Earth Became Humanity’s Home, Dr. Hugh Ross observes that our sun, unlike many other stars, does not wander very far either above or below the galactic equator, at least as compared with most other stars. This means that, in comparison with other star systems, our solar system enjoys ideal protection from radiation hazards.[4] He further notes that, at this moment, our solar system is located where that degree of protection is close to “maximal.”[5]

All of this is marvelous evidence of God’s provision for our little world, but it only makes sense within an old-earth paradigm. The fact that the sun does not wander far from the galactic equator only protects us in a long-term scenario because the wandering process takes millions of years. If the earth were only 6-10,000 years old, the sun could have a relatively wild z-axis motion and it wouldn’t matter to life on earth because we would not have been around long enough for the sun to carry the solar system into a zone where it would be at risk. The fact that the sun has just the right z-axis motion to protect the solar system over a period of tens of millions of years strongly indicates that those timescales are real.

Colliding Galaxies

When we look out into the universe, we find galaxies that are actively colliding with one another and others that appear to have collided at some point in the past. Many of these galaxies are misshapen, and we sometimes see trails of stars, gas, and dust linking them to one another. When we consider how far apart these galaxies are (those not currently interacting, that is) and how quickly they are moving with respect to one another, it’s immediately apparent that a great amount of time has passed—at the very least, hundreds of thousands of years. In this sense, colliding galaxies are a type of universal timepiece and strong evidence for an old universe.

An Interstellar Visitor

In October of 2017, astronomer Robert Weryk at the Haleakalā Observatory in Hawaii spotted an unusual object now known as ‘Oumuamua. While scientists have not been able to determine exactly what ‘Oumuamua is, the object’s speed and trajectory reveal that it originated in another solar system.[6] In fact, ‘Oumuamua is the first object astronomers have spotted that they’ve since confirmed to be from another solar system. This realization led the International Astronomical Union to create a new naming categorization: “I,” for “interstellar.” ‘Oumuamua is designated 1I—the first object of confirmed interstellar origin.

‘Oumuamua entered our solar system traveling approximately 58,000 miles per hour. By comparison, the fastest space probe ever launched—the New Horizons probe that imaged Pluto in 2016—is traveling at 52,000 miles per hour. At this speed, New Horizons took over nine years to reach Pluto, which was three billion miles from the sun at the time of their rendezvous. At this same speed, New Horizons would take approximately 54,000 years to reach Proxima Centauri, the closest star to our sun, which lies 4.22 light years, or about 25 trillion miles, away. Scientists have already determined that ‘Oumuamua could not have traveled to our solar system from any of the closest twelve star systems,[7] meaning that, at minimum, the object has been traveling for hundreds of thousands of years.[8]

Here again we have an object that, given a young-earth paradigm, really should not exist, but is perfectly in line with modern cosmological observations, theories, and predictions. Young-earth creationists have speculated as to various ways distant starlight might have arrived on earth in a 6,000-year timeframe, but ‘Oumuamua is a physical object with a known velocity. There are no stars close enough to us to get it here within 6,000 years.

Unless one wants to argue that God created miscellaneous debris to drift between the stars for some reason, we really have no choice but to conclude that ‘Oumuamua really has been traveling the cosmic night for far longer than young-earth creationism allows.

Thousands…Not Billions?

In the early 2000s, the Institute for Creation Research (ICR) commissioned a group of scientists known as the RATE team (RATE - Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth) to re-evaluate radiometric dating results for various rock samples in an effort to produce hard evidence for its belief that the earth is only around 6,000 years old. The results of the RATE study were eventually published in a book entitled Thousands…Not Billions.

Oddly enough, and quite obviously contrary to ICR’s intent, Thousands...Not Billions helped to finally cement my conversion from young-earth to old-earth creationism. By the time I read the book, I was already convinced that the biblical text did not require a young-earth interpretation, but I was still hung up on a few questions. For that reason, when a representative from Answers in Genesis stopped by our church one Sunday in 2006, I picked this book up from his table and quickly got into it.

I don’t know that I have ever been more simultaneously disillusioned and enlightened than I was while reading this book. In short, Thousands…Not Billions is a capsule look at the young-earth community’s approach to science in general, and is worth showcasing here for that reason.

RATE collected and tested various rock samples from sites that had been dated previously using conventional radiometric dating methods, the validity of which young-earth organizations consistently and vociferously dispute. This seemed like a sound enough approach to me. After all, if conventional dating methods were reliable, they should hold up under repeated testing—and hold up they did. While the samples studied by RATE sometimes returned dates that were in fact different than those of previously published studies (even markedly different), I was impressed by the fact that they still consistently added up to many millions of years. The differences found were nowhere near the orders of magnitude necessary to bring the dates down to a young-earth timeframe. The RATE team had to admit that eons worth of radioactive decay actually appear to have taken place on the earth and in the local universe as well.

 

The history of radioactive decay is amply demonstrated by accumulated daughter decay products in close association with their parent isotopes in many earth materials. There are also vast numbers of defects caused by nuclear decay in crystalline rocks, including radiohalos and fission tracks. We assume that the earth was not created with an appearance of age at this microscopic level of detail…[9]

 

Radioisotope studies of lunar rocks and meteorites also yield ancient radioisotope ages.[10]

Faced with results confirming that long ages worth of radioactive decay was indeed indicated by study samples, the RATE team postulated that periods of accelerated nuclear decay must have taken place in the distant past:

 

If the earth’s age truly is only thousands of years instead of multi-billions, then nuclear decay was greatly increased, in some cases a billion-fold or more.[11]

 

In the conventional timescale, the Paleozoic and Mesozoic eras alone span more than four hundred million years. The RATE research concludes that accelerated nuclear decay on this scale occurred during the single year of the Flood...[12]

This proposal—vastly accelerated nuclear decay, “in some cases a billion-fold or more”—is the only possible way in which the scientific data can be reconciled with young-earth theological interpretations outside of the classic “appearance of age” argument. In fact, given that extraterrestrial materials such as moon rocks also evidence great age, RATE suggests that “the concept of accelerated nuclear decay needs to be extended to include the solar system and space beyond. Indeed, half-life alteration appears to be a cosmic or universe-wide phenomenon.”[13]

The idea of accelerated nuclear decay may sound like an attractive solution at first, but it is fraught with difficulty, as the team itself admitted. For instance, the team observed that the heat released by accelerated nuclear decay on the level their speculation requires “could melt or even vaporize the earth.”[14] Yet, they also admitted that the samples they examined “have not experienced excessive heating.”[15] In other words, while there is abundant evidence that millions of years of nuclear decay have taken place in the earth (and on the moon and elsewhere as well), there is no corresponding evidence that this decay took place in the dramatically accelerated manner required to reconcile scientific findings with a young earth.

So, what happened to all of that heat—heat sufficient to “melt or even vaporize the earth”—and more than sufficient to kill every living thing on the Noah’s ark during the flood? The RATE team speculates that “cosmological or volume cooling, the rapid result of an expansion of space” may have occurred during times of accelerated nuclear decay in order to dissipate the heat.[16] As for the ark, they speculate that “The water barrier between the ark and the earth’s rock layers could have played a major role along with divine intervention” in safeguarding the ark’s cargo.[17]

Thus, the RATE team was forced to concede that the physical evidence (including the testing of materials recovered from bodies outside of the earth) is solidly on the side of an ancient universe, right down to the microscopic level. This must have been a difficult admission for them to make given the expectations associated with their project, their mistrust of mainstream scientific methods, and their confidence in the accuracy of their biblical interpretations. It must also have made them rather uncomfortable to so confidently assert that God must have accelerated nuclear decay rates in the past when they were unable to offer any suggestions as to why he might have done so. This issue is included with what they term “basic unanswered questions” on page 180 of the book.

Could God potentially do such a thing: produce accelerated nuclear decay while leaving no trace of it in the earth’s crust? Yes, of course; but, again, why would he do it? RATE has no answers for us here; yet they affirm that he must have done so because their interpretation of scripture leaves them with no choice but to conclude this. They have a theory to offer, but they can offer no reason for its necessity and no actual evidence of its occurrence. They do argue that they feel there is too much helium in zircons for the minerals to have existed for any more than 6,000 years +/- 2,000 years, given known, consistent nuclear decay rates, but I am not aware of even a single scientist outside of the young-earth camp who either concurs with their methodology and findings in this matter or even considers the issue doubtful.[18]

Furthermore, consider the plausibility of RATE’s take on accelerated nuclear decay during the flood. They argue that the waters of the flood and the earth’s own rock formations could have protected Noah and his family, but if the heat released by exponentially accelerated nuclear decay has the potential to melt or vaporize the planet itself, how was a relatively thin layer of water supposed to offer any real protection?

Additionally, if God’s intent in sending the flood was simply to kill everything living on the surface of the earth with water, why would he need to accelerate nuclear decay rates in the first place? The end result was merely to make the earth appear older than it is—for no evident reason, and with no trace of its occurrence; and why would he also accelerate nuclear decay rates on bodies beyond the earth, where there was no flood?

As I finished reading Thousands…Not Billions, I could find no reason why God would have accelerated nuclear decay rates except to deliberately make the universe look older than it is, right down to the microscopic level, as the RATE team itself observed. There was no halfway compelling reason to accept the RATE team’s theories that didn’t boil down to maintaining a particular interpretation of scripture, which I had already realized wasn’t necessary. I closed the book thinking that these well-meaning young-earthers had not only failed to produce evidence in their favor but had actually ended up lending more credibility to the old-earth position.

Conclusion

While I have only just scratched the surface of the scientific aspect of the creation controversy in this chapter, the evidences offered here are strongly compelling indicators that we live in a truly old universe. The physics of the universe, observed conditions within it, and scientifically-tested dating methodologies all correspond exactly as they should. The only alternative is to believe that God has somehow deliberately engineered the universe with an appearance of age at every level, and in some cases (such as with the sun’s z-axis motion and colliding galaxies) did so long before mankind had developed the technology to investigate such matters. This is rather like a father writing a contradictory poem on the day his child is born, and leaving it in a place where the child will find it decades later only to be utterly bewildered and misled by it. What would a rational mind gain from mounting such a production? The young-earth approach to science is inherently tied to the perceived need to defend a particular interpretation of scripture. Young-earth teachers routinely decry “man’s flawed methods,” but they selectively confine such flaws to the realm of science and to theological opinions that differ from their own. Quixotically, the scientists they criticize as being apostles of deception have produced the most compelling evidences available to support the biblical claim that we live in a universe that had a definite beginning and is uniquely fine-tuned to support life forms just like us.

 

Next in this series: Conclusion 


[1] For a lay-friendly secular source on cosmic fine-tuning, see: Ethan Siegel, “The Universe Really Is Fine-Tuned, And Our Existence Is the Proof,” Forbes, December 19, 2019.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2019/12/19/the-universe-really-is-fine-tuned-and-our-existence-is-the-proof/

For a Christian perspective, see: Hugh Ross, Improbable Planet: How Earth Became Humanity’s Home (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2016). This book by Dr. Ross is probably the best creation resource I have ever found, as it explains in great detail the pain-staking process through which our planet was made suitable for life, using mainstream scientific resources.

[2] https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/discovery/exoplanet-catalog/

[3] See chapter six for a thorough discussion of the effects of the Fall of Man.

[4] Hugh Ross, Improbable Planet, pp. 40-41.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Elizabeth Landau, “What We Know—And Don’t Know—About ‘Oumuamua,” NASA.gov., June 27, 2018.

https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/news/473/what-we-knowand-dont-knowabout-oumuamua/

[7] Eric Mamajek, “Kinematics of the Interstellar Vagabond 1I/’Oumuamua (A/2017 U1),” Cornell University, Last revised November 20, 2017.

https://arxiv.org/abs/1710.11364

[8] The twelfth-closest star to our sun (counting Proxima, Alpha, and Beta Centauri as one system, and including brown dwarf Luhman 16) is Ross 128, a red dwarf star located a little over 11 light years from earth.

[9] Don DeYoung, Thousands…Not Billions: Challenging an Icon of Evolution. Questioning the Age of the Earth (Portland, OR: Master Books, 2005), p. 175. Fission tracks are a type of damage left in materials by the nuclear decay process.

[10] Ibid, p. 180.

[11] Ibid, pp. 142-143.

[12] Ibid, p. 151.

[13] Ibid, p. 180.

[14] Ibid. p. 151.

[15] Ibid. p. 180.

[16] Ibid. p. 180.

[17] Ibid. p. 151.

[18] For a lay-friendly look at the problems with RATE’s conclusions about helium in zircons, see Dr. Gary Loechelt, “Helium Diffusion in Zircon: Flaws in a Young-Earth Argument,” Reasons.org (in two parts).

 

https://reasons.org/explore/publications/tnrtb/read/tnrtb/2008/09/09/helium-diffusion-in-zircon-flaws-in-a-young-earth-argument-part-1-of-2

 

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