I recently finished reading the book, “The Created Cosmos: What the Bible Reveals About Astronomy,” by Dr. Danny Faulkner. Faulkner is a professor with degrees in Physics and Astronomy. He is a young earth creationist.
What led me to read this book was a video on YouTube in which he discussed the light-travel-time problem. He did not take the view that was theorized by Dr. D. Russell Humphreys, a view that I have held to for about 30 years in explaining how we can see starlight from stars more than 6000 light years from earth—believing the earth/ universe is around 6000 years old (though maybe up to 10,000 years old).
There's the additional problem of the timing of seeing something like a supernova in a young universe. The simple explanation of God creating the universe mature would seem deceptive with respect to a supernova, because that would mean the star didn't really exist, just the supernova of the star placed at some point to appear thousands of years later.
Humphreys got his PH.D. in Physics and worked in things like nuclear physics and geophysics. I read his book many years ago, titled, “Starlight and Time: Solving the Puzzle of distant Starlight in a Young Universe.”
I don't know if I fully understood Humphreys' view, but it presented a theory of how God created the earth and universe that made it possible to see star light on earth from the beginning from stars more than 6000 light years from earth.
How I understood it was that the processes at work on earth relative to the processes at work in the universe were like one day (on earth) to billions of years (in the universe). Humphreys theory as to how this worked was that God created through using a white hole, which is a black hole running in reverse. But you would have to read his book to understand what that all means.
Faulkner did not agree with Humphreys' white hole cosmology in explaining the star-light-time problem in connection with a young earth. He also said that Humphreys abandoned his view for a view closer to his own. This surprised me, and it's why I got Faulkner's book.
Faulkner's view is that God did not simply create a mature universe, but that he matured the universe so that Adam could see star light from the very beginning. The difference is between mature and matured. It seems similar to what I said earlier about the processes at work, but I think Faulkner is saying it was just God directly speeding up the process to get the universe to the point that the stars would serve their purpose to be seen on earth (like watching those time-lapse films of a plant growing, from seed to mature plant in seconds), as opposed to making it immediately mature or using some mechanical means like Humphreys' white hole cosmology.
I'm sure many are not concerned in understanding these things, but I do see a problem--if you take a young earth view--with explaining something like a supernova being seen in recent times from a star more than 6000 light years away. Did the star really ever exist?
Besides all that stuff, Faulkner's book discusses some interesting topics like Astrology, extraterrestrial life, flat-earth cosmology, the gospel in the stars (constellations) claim, unusual astronomical events in the Bible (as in the manipulated days of Joshua and Hezekiah, and the Christmas star of the Magi), and astronomical aspects of Good Friday, Resurrection Sunday and prophetic literature and the end times.
Faulkner writes that the heavens and the stars do not give us special revelation in order to know God, but it gives us general revelation about God.
Faulkner quotes Romans 1:20 (see below) and says that there are two things that general revelation tells us, “his eternal power and Godhead.” “That is, God exists and is very powerful.” “Romans 1 also tells us that men are without excuse for their condition, but there is nothing in general revelation that tells us that God sent his Son into the world to pay that penalty for our sins. To learn these and other things related to salvation, we must turn to special revelation, the Bible. In other words, general revelation can lead us to conclude that there is a Creator and what at least some of His attributes are, but general revelation alone is insufficient to lead us to Christ. Furthermore, this proscription from Romans 1:20 would seem to rule out the entire gospel message being found in the stars and constellations (general revelation) as supporters of the gospel in the stars require.”
“For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse,” Romans 1:20
No comments:
Post a Comment