Light, stars, and creationism

[otseng]

If the stars were created on the fourth day, where did the light on the first day come from?

How can we see stars that are billions of light years away if creationism says the earth is less than 20,000 years old?

[trei]

If the stars were created on the fourth day, where did the light on the first day come from?

It occurred to me that shortly after the big bang, all that was, was radiation. ie. Light.
There was 'light' before 'matter'.
I don't know if this is day #1 light, but its a thought.

[adherent]

We should come back to the fact that a day for god could be months or years to us. likewise, a day for us could be a month or year for god.

[BoatRocker]

There are a lot of good links on the creation/evolution debate here:

http://home.woh.rr.com/fourfethers/BibleLinks.htm

You can search by keyword for things such as dating methods, geology, DNA, cosmology, etc. There's even one on the credentials of creation scientists. Those who resort to ad hominem attacks on creation scientists only do so because they can't refute the creationists' arguments.

[Quarkhead]

There are a lot of good links on the creation/evolution debate here:

http://home.woh.rr.com/fourfethers/BibleLinks.htm

You can search by keyword for things such as dating methods, geology, DNA, cosmology, etc. There's even one on the credentials of creation scientists. Those who resort to ad hominem attacks on creation scientists only do so because they can't refute the creationists' arguments.

Actually, there really aren't good links on the debate there. All you will find is links to Creationist sites like ICR.

Furthermore, it is the creationists' arguments which are precisely what is addressed by most evolutionary biologists. Of course, there have been a cadre of prominent 'creation scientists' whose credentials were debunked - but that was because they were presenting themselves as 'scientists,' when they held mail-order or honorary degrees (ie: Carl Baugh, Richard Bliss, and perhaps most prominently, Kent Hovind).

Duane Gish, the most prominent of the ICR folks, is a good debater, but it is his arguments which have indeed been refuted time and again. Here's a good overview: http://mypage.direct.ca/w/writer/gish.html

[BoatRocker]

Actually, there really aren't good links on the debate there. All you will find is links to Creationist sites like ICR.

There isn't any debate if only one side is allowed to be heard, so I present the unheard side. There's plenty of bombardment by the evolutionist propaganda machines of media, education, entertainment, etc. so fair representation of the other view is needed.

Let me quote you some prominent evolutionists and you can decide whether to debunk them:

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**We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. (R. Lewontin, biologist, ‘Billions and Billions of Demons,’ New York Review, January 9, 1997) **
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Most people think that ‘science’ follows the evidence wherever it leads. But it is impossible to avoid letting our world view color our interpretation of the facts. Creationists are honest about the philosophical basis behind their interpretation, whereas naturalists often pretend that they don’t operate from any philosophical bias. The late atheist Stephen Jay Gould, unlike many of his peers, was candid about this bias:

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**Our ways of learning about the world are strongly influenced by the social preconceptions and biased modes of thinking that each scientist must apply to any problem. The stereotype of a fully rational and objective ‘scientific method,’ with individual scientists as logical (and interchangeable) robots is self-serving mythology. (S.J. Gould, Natural History 103 (2):14, 1994.) **
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The philosopher of science David Hull had earlier noted:

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**… science is not as empirical as many scientists seem to think it is. Unobserved and even unobservable entities play an important part in it. Science is not just the making of observations: it is the making of inferences on the basis of observations within the framework of a theory. (D. Hull, ‘The Effect of Essentialism on Taxonomy — Two Thousand Years of Stasis (II),’ British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 16 (61):1–18, 1965)**
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Dr. Scott Todd, an immunologist at Kansas State University, was candid about how certain conclusions would be avoided at all costs, regardless of the evidence:

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Even if all the data point to an intelligent designer, such an hypothesis is excluded from science because it is not naturalistic. (S.C. Todd, correspondence to Nature 410 (6752):423, September 30, 1999) **
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It is vitally important that words such as ‘evolution’ be used accurately and consistently. The theory of ‘evolution’ that the evolutionists are really promoting, and which creationists oppose, is the idea that particles turned into people over time, without any need for an intelligent designer. The evolutionist Kerkut accurately defined this ‘general theory of evolution’ (GTE) as:

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**‘the theory that all the living forms in the world have arisen from a single source which itself came from an inorganic form.’ He continued: ‘The evidence which supports this is not sufficiently strong to allow us to consider it as anything more than a working hypothesis.’ (G.A. Kerkut, Implications of Evolution (Oxford, UK: Pergamon, 1960), p. 157) **
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However, many evolutionary propagandists are guilty of the deceitful practice of equivocation , that is, switching the meaning of a single word (evolution) part way through an argument. A common tactic, ‘bait-and-switch,’ is simply to produce examples of change over time, call this ‘evolution,’ then imply that the GTE is thereby proven or even essential, and creation disproved.

‘Information theory,’ as it is called, is a whole new branch of science that has effectively destroyed the last underpinnings of evolution — explained fully in the monumental work In the Beginning Was Information by Dr Werner Gitt, professor and head of the Department of Information Technology at the German Federal Institute of Physics and Technology. The second episode of the PBS Evolution series, titled ‘Great Transformations,’ faced this problem when it tried to prove the ‘big picture’ of evolution, i.e., the ‘general theory of evolution.’ Of course, it could offer no experimental evidence, only inference. Its only experimental ‘evidence’ for ‘evolution’ was a bunch of examples of biological change that don’t increase information content, and so actually these examples have nothing to do with the ‘big picture.’

The PBS program did make a revealing comment about the real nature of the ‘evidence’ for evolution: ‘The evidence for evolution is all around us, if we choose to look for it.’ The comment is revealing, not because the evidence really supports evolution, but because the narrator inadvertently makes an important point. That is, creationists and evolutionists have the same evidence (facts), but we interpret it differently because of our different axioms (starting assumptions).

The PBS narrator blindly asserts that all living organisms come from a single source and that we can now trace branches and roots. Yet the series utterly fails to explain one of the most vexing problems with evolution: how non-living chemicals could form a living cell by time and chance, despite the insuperable chemical hurdles. (see C.B. Thaxton, W.L. Bradley, and R.L. Olsen, The Mystery of Life’s Origin (New York, NY: Philosophical Library Inc., 1984).

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**There are open questions and controversies, and the fights can be fierce. Just a few of them: The origin of life. There is no consensus at all here — lots of theories, little science. That’s one of the reasons we didn’t cover it in the (PBS) series. The evidence wasn’t very good. (discuss.washingtonpost.co...92601.htm, last downloaded September 1, 2002 ) **
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Evolutionists gloss over their complete lack of evidence for so-called ‘macroevolution.’ Their supposed ‘evidence’ doesn’t speak for itself; it must be interpreted . As John Rennie admitted in Scientific American , this evidence is interpreted within a materialistic framework. Ironically, materialists turn around and proclaim evolution as a major evidence for materialism, even though their materialistic framework was responsible for this viewpoint in the first place! Circular reasoning at its finest.

One of the most absurd, self-serving criteria that evolutionists give for a good scientific theory is that most published scientists accept the theory as valid. There is clear proof of censorship by Scientific American , Science, and Australasian Science , where they have even denied creationists the normal courtesy of the right of reply. So why would scientists bother to waste their time? They know that their papers will be rejected, no matter how good the research, which explains why creationist scientists have, years ago, commenced their own peer-reviewed journals. Scientific American acknowledges the credentials of some creationists, but not the fanatical censorship that they face.

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**Some anti-evolution authors have published papers in serious journals. Those papers, however, rarely attack evolution directly or advance creationist arguments; at best, they identify certain evolutionary problems as unsolved and difficult (which no one disputes). **
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Another quote from Scientific American:
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**Evolutionary biologists passionately debate diverse topics: how speciation happens, the rates of evolutionary change, the ancestral relationships of birds and dinosaurs, whether Neandertals were a species apart from modern humans, and much more. These disputes are like those found in all other branches of science. Acceptance of evolution as a factual occurrence and a guiding principle is nonetheless universal in biology. [ SA 81] **
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Modern evolutionary theory is all about providing a plausible mechanism for explaining life’s complexity without God. If the disputes undermine all the favored mechanisms for evolution, then the whole materialist apologetic crumbles. When the supporters of various evolutionary camps score mortal blows against the mechanisms proposed by their rival camps, it’s perfectly reasonable for creationists to point this out.

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**In fact, evolution became in a sense a scientific religion; almost all scientists have accepted it and many are prepared to bend their observations to fit in with it. (H. S. Lipson, professor of physics, University of Manchester, UK)**
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**Belief in the theory of evolution is exactly parallel to belief in special creation-- both are concepts which believers know to be true but neither, up to the present, has been capable of proof. (L. Harrison Matthews, FRS, Introduction to Darwin's The Origin of Species) **
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Facts do not speak for themselves; they are read in the light of theory. Creative thought, in science as much as in the arts, is the motor of changing opinion. Science is a quintessentially human activity, not a mechanized, robot-like accumulation of objective information, leading by laws of logic to inescapable interpretation. (Stephen Jay Gould)**
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[Shild]

I am a big fan of going straight to the source, so let's see that passage (Gen. 1:14-19)

The God said, "Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs and seasons, and for days and years; and let them be for lights in the firmament of the heavens to give light on the earth"; and it was so. Then God made two great lights: the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night. He made the stars also. God set them in the firmament of the heavens to give light on the earth, and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. So the evening and the morning were the fourth day.

This passage indicates that the basic human measures of time ("seasons... days and years") did not exist until the fourth day. This means that the first three days could be representations of any length of time by our scale.

[BoatRocker]

I am a big fan of going straight to the source... This passage indicates that the basic human measures of time ("seasons... days and years") did not exist until the fourth day. This means that the first three days could be representations of any length of time by our scale.

But then there's that pesky phrase "evening and morning, the nth day" which occurse for all 6 days, not just the ones on day 4 and beyond. Calling the first 3 days 'days' is meaningless if they are different from the other 'days'. There is nothing in the text to justify a different meaning for 'day' for the first three as opposed to the others.

[Guy Trudel]

Either life began in the universe because of an accident or by design. If by accident, then we are no better than a mosquito doing what is necessary to survive and propogate.

If by design, however, we are left with believing we exist by some Supreme Powerful being thinking up matter and thinking up life - not by propogation.

All life forms come from similar life forms - mosquitos parent mosquitos and elephants elephants.

Who are we told is the Designer - other than God?

We therefore are the result of an Immortal God creating mortal life.

It defies logic to accept that an Immortal Being would want to give birth to mortals. We mortals would not want to have mosquito children, so why would God? What benefit would there be in creating beings with less attributes than the parent?

What parent would want a child born with less than the parent?

Perhaps there is another explanation - one we have never considered?

Guy

John 3:5-6 “Verily I say unto thee, except a man be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the Kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit.”

[BoatRocker]

It defies logic to accept that an Immortal Being would want to give birth to mortals. We mortals would not want to have mosquito children, so why would God? What benefit would there be in creating beings with less attributes than the parent?

Does God need a reason to create lesser beings? Yet he considers us much more than mosquitos:

Matthew 10:29,31
Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father... So don't be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.

John 15:15
I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.


Love could hardly be considered logical, so perhaps that is the "other explanation" you are looking for:

John 3:16
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

[Guy Trudel]

It defies logic to accept that an Immortal Being would want to give birth to mortals. We mortals would not want to have mosquito children, so why would God? What benefit would there be in creating beings with less attributes than the parent?

Does God need a reason to create lesser beings? Yet he considers us much more than mosquitos:

Matthew 10:29,31
Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father... So don't be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.

John 15:15
I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.


Love could hardly be considered logical, so perhaps that is the "other explanation" you are looking for:

John 3:16
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

Let me ask you this, boatrocker:

Would you want to give birth to a child with less intelligence, less strength and live fewer years than you?

Would you as a mother condemn your child to death - and his children's children - all because he disobeyed you?

Would you as a mother blame your child for becoming contaminated when you created him corruptible, even though you are incorruptible?

Is giving your child corruptibility considered a loving thing to do - or is giving your child the incorruptibility you have loving?

Would you decide that the best solution to the problem you created (but blame others) is to destroy your beloved children in the flood?

And when this failed, choose to crucify another child - as a demonstration of your love?

And when this failed, decide the best solution is to annihilate all mankind except 144,00 virgin men undefiled by women?

Doesn't it seem strange to you that God's solutions doen't seem to work out too well? How is that?

A god of love does not destroy - just as a mother does not destroy, no matter what their children have done.

I know only a God of love and forgiveness.

Matt 5:38-39 “Ye have heard it said, ‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth; but I say unto you, resist not him that is evil; but whosoever smiteth thee on the right cheek, turn to him the other also."

Does God do this? Apparently not, yet asks us to do what He cannot do?

Do you believe God can go against His own commandment "Thou shalt not kill?"

In my book, Love only gives all, never withholds.

What is that "truth" that sets us free?

Guy

Matt 24:40 “I tell you the Truth. Whatever you do to the least of your brothers, you do to me.”