Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, and saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep; all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. (2nd Peter 3:3-4)
Notice the scoffer’s assumption — that “all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation” — yet that assumption is FALSE. Just as the embryology of a baby human is not representative of how a born human grows and develops, the origin of our cosmos, during Creation Week (which wonderful week of mighty miracles preceded Adam’s sin in Eden), was not then experiencing natural processes that are typical of (i.e., commonplace in) the cosmos we now live in. How fast did starlight travel before Adam sinned? The real answer is that we don’t know — yet we do know that the starlight that God made during Creation Week did accomplish His declared purposes for that starlight, which purposes required distant starlight to be promptly visible to mankind on Earth. (Of course, this is why we need an open Bible to know real truth!)
However, if some theorist imagines and assumes (with a closed Bible) that the original starlight was limited in its transmission velocity, to what we today call “the speed of light”, that theorist could easily (though wrongly) infer that visible starlight must be eons older than the humans on Earth who see that starlight, after it arrives, visually speaking. (But that “speed-of-light-is-always-constant” assumption is wrong when applied to Day 4 of Creation Week, just as uniformitarian assumptions also clash with many other miracles done by God during other days of Creation Week.)
So how old are the galaxies, and all of the stars in those galaxies? Since those stars (and galaxies) were formed on Day 4, during Creation Week, we cannot know how many years ago that was — unless and until God, the only Eye-witness, chooses to tell us. And, thankfully, God has done just that — He has told us about the chronology of His creation — in the book of Genesis.
Consequently, we stumble in the dark, about the true age of creation, only if we ignore the divine revelation that God has graciously given unto us: the Holy Bible. The Bible provides us with lots of valuable truth about many topics, including cosmogonical topics — so the real question is what will we do with God’s truth? Will we prioritize and rely upon it? Or will we effectively displace it by relying upon Einstein’s relativity postulates (by transmogrifying a modern cosmology theory into a jake-leg cosmogony “history”), when doing so is illogical? (Because there is no rational basis for assuming today’s speed-of-light “constant” was applicable, during Day 4 of Creation Week.)
If we assume–wrongly–that distant starlight is only allowed to travel as the current speed of light (which most physicists deem a constant velocity), even on Day 4 of Creation Week, we err by committing the Uniformitarian Fallacy. (This same fallacy would lead us to err in guessing the true age of Adam, at the end of Day 6 of Creation Week.)
Biblical creationists (especially creationist astrophysicists, who all-too-often confuse cosmology, an empirical science — with cosmogony, a forensic science) have no excuse for committing the Uniformitarian Fallacy — especially because that irrational fallacy was prophesied by the apostle Peter, who warned us that scoffers would assume that present processes are (supposedly) the key to knowing about unique events that occurred in the no-longer-observable past. [For more analysis of how distant starlight makes sense in a created-mature cosmos, see Don B. DeYoung, “Mature Creation and Seeing Distant Starlight”, JOURNAL OF CREATION, 24(3):54-59 (December 2010). For more analysis regarding the indispensable need for reliable eyewitness testimony, in forensic science, see James J. S. Johnson, “Genesis Critics Flunk Forensic Science 101”, ACTS & FACTS, 41(3):8-9 (March 2012), posted at http://www.icr.org/article/genesis-critics-flunk-forensic-science/ — and “What Good Are Experts?”, ACTS & FACTS, 41(3):8-9 (March 2012), posted at http://www.icr.org/article/7073 .]
Dr. James J. S. Johnson
Deists pegged Earth’s years in the millions
Many stretch that, today, to the billions —
Dismissing Day 4,
God’s Word they ignore,
Thus erring by margins of billions.
Assuming light’s speed stays the same,
The year-count’s a wild guessing-game;
But Day 4’s light-speed
Is what God decreed —
And not what it later became.
Light’s speed, now, is not “key to the past”,
Since, on Day 4, it sped super-fast;
It flashed then, in an instant —
Yet its speed, now, is constant;
Displaying God’s power, unsurpassed!
Real knowledge about the cosmos, and especially about it origins, can only be learned by starting with God’s gifts of revelation – both Scripture and Scripture-based science – if we are serious about learning the truth about the cosmos. (See Psalm 19; Hebrews 11:3; John 5:44-47.) But, in order to avoid the Uniformitarian Fallacy, we must carefully remember that it is holy Scripture (which provides us with true information from our infinite and perfect God) that informs our “science” (which is limited by our finite and imperfect knowledge-base).
Truly, the Heavens declare the glory of God” (Psalm 19:1a)!
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