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.
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.
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.
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.
He further notes that, at this moment, our solar system is located where that
degree of protection is close to “maximal.”
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.
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,
meaning that, at minimum, the object has been traveling for hundreds of
thousands of years.
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…
Radioisotope studies of lunar rocks and
meteorites also yield ancient radioisotope ages.
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.
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...
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.”
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.” Yet, they also admitted
that the samples they examined “have not experienced excessive heating.” 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. 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.
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.
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
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
