When the Bible first mentioned a round Earth, it was right and the secular experts of the day were wrong. When the Bible first mentioned the fact that Earth hangs in space, it was right and the secular experts of the day were wrong. The Bible teaches that the number of stars is a humanly uncountable number. Yet, most secular astronomers up until the 1600s believed that there were just over 1000 stars. The Bible was right and they were wrong. When the Bible first mentioned the stretching out of the heavens, it was right and the secularists of the day were wrong. Today, secular astronomers would have to admit that the Bible was right about all these astronomical facts. Have we learned the lesson of history?
The Bible teaches that God created the entire universe in 6-days, a few thousand years ago. However, most secular scientists today believe that the universe popped into existence in a big bang, 13.8 billion years ago, and that it took billions of years for the cosmos to evolve to its current state. Have the secularists finally shown God’s Word to be wrong? Of course, a thousand years from now, the year 2018 will be ancient history. Our present understanding of science will seem as antiquated a thousand years from now as we feel about the science from a thousand years ago. But God’s Word will still be true.
Even more indicting is the abundance of evidence from the field of astronomy available today that confirms the biblical timescale and which is inconsistent with the secular timescale. But how are we to evaluate scientific evidence with regard to age? Age indicates how far into the past something began. But science is predicated upon observation and experimentation in the present. We can neither observe the past nor experiment on the past because it is gone. About the best we can do scientifically, is make some assumptions about the initial state of the system whose age we want to know, and some assumptions about the rate of change of that system, and make an estimate based on our observations of the current state.
Of course, creationists and secularists have the same evidence available to them in the present. But they make different assumptions about the initial state and rates of change. And this causes them to draw radically different conclusions about age. For example, the secularist typically embraces naturalism (the assumption that there is no supernatural action from God) and uniformitarianism (the assumption that present rates and conditions are indicative of past rates and conditions). Conversely, the creationist accepts that the origin of the universe was a supernatural event, and that there have been one or more catastrophes unlike anything happening today (e.g. the global flood) that have shaped Earth’s features.
Since the different assumptions involve past events (supernatural creation vs natural origin, uniformitarianism vs. catastrophism) they cannot be directly tested by scientific means since the past cannot be experimented upon or observed. Does that mean that the creationist interpretation of the evidence and the secular interpretation are equally rational? No. We can see that the secular interpretation is irrational by performing an internal critique. This is where we assume for the sake of hypothesis the secular assumptions (naturalism and uniformitarianism) and show that they lead to a conclusion that is inconsistent with the secular timescale. In most cases, the estimates are an upper limit on the age of a system that is far less than the age required in the secular model. The only rational conclusion we can draw is that either the secular timescale is wrong, the secular assumptions it is based on are wrong, or both. Let’s look at some specific lines of evidence from the field of astronomy.
Recession of the Moon
The moon is receding from the Earth due to tidal forces. The gravity of the moon pulls on Earth’s oceans, inducing two tidal bulges on Earth – one on the moon-facing side, and one on the opposite side (as the Earth is pulled away from that ocean). The Earth rotates faster than the moon revolves around it. So, the tidal bulges are always a bit ahead of the moon and therefore pull forward on it. A forward force applied on an orbiting object increases the object’s energy, causing it to move outward in its orbit. So, the moon’s orbit gradually enlarges. We can measure the distance to the moon very precisely by bouncing laser beams off reflectors left on its surface during the Apollo missions. Science confirms that the moon moves about an inch and a half farther away from the Earth every year.
In the past, the moon would have been closer to the Earth, which means the tidal bulges would have been much larger, producing a much greater forward thrust on the moon, and the rate of recession would be faster. From first principles of physics, the rate of recession is inversely proportional to the sixth power of distance. The uniformitarian assumption here is that this would always have been the case. Using calculus, we can compute the maximum possible age of the Earth-moon system, by integrating lunar recession back to a time when the Earth and moon would have been in the same place at the same time. Obviously, this is an upper limit because they cannot be closer than that, but they could have started farther away. We find the answer is 1.45 billion years.
That may sound like a long time. But, remember that (1) it is based on the secular assumptions, and (2) the 1.45 billion years is an upper limit. It represents a maximum possible age because the Earth and moon cannot be closer than a distance of zero! But the secular age is supposedly 4.5 billion years, which is much greater than the maximum possible age. The secularists can avoid this devastating conclusion only by relinquishing their assumptions of uniformitarianism or naturalism. But apart from those assumptions, there would be no reason to believe in billions of years in the first place!
Earth’s Magnetic Field
For nearly two centuries, scientists have been able to measure the strength of Earth’s magnetic field and have kept records of their measurements. These records show that the Earth’s magnetic field has been gradually dropping over time. Actually, this isn’t surprising. We would expect it on the basis of physics principles. Magnetic fields are caused by electrical current in the Earth’s interior. But electrical current encounters resistance and decays over time, just as a battery gradually runs down. We would expect from first principles that this would be an exponential decay – the decrease was faster in the past and slows at a rate proportional to the current strength. Records of the magnetic field strength are consistent with this. The half-life appears to be approximately 1400 years, though some estimates are even less. This means that every 1400 years into the past, the Earth’s magnetic field strength doubles. It would have been twenty times greater at creation (~6000 years ago) assuming the half-life has always been 1400 years (the uniformitarian assumption).
But when we run the exponential decay back in time to a hypothetical 60,000 years ago, Earth’s magnetic field would have been greater than that of a neutron star, and life would be impossible. Again, this is not an indicator that the true age of the Earth is 60,000 years. Rather, it is an estimate of the maximum possible age – one that is wildly inconsistent with the standard secular beliefs.
Secular scientists have attempted to alleviate this problem by claiming that the Earth somehow recharges its magnetic field over time. They have claimed that a dynamo exists in Earth’s interior which causes the magnetic field to regularly reverse and recharge before again decaying and flipping back. They suppose it is similar to the process on the sun which causes the sun’s dipole magnetic field to reverse polarity every eleven years.
But there are two problems with this dynamo hypothesis. First, a dynamo requires differential rotation and a toroidal magnetic field (East-West) in addition to the dipole field (North-South). The sun has both. It is a ball of plasma and rotates differentially; the equator rotates significantly faster than the poles. And the sun has a toroidal field – an East-West oriented field that wraps around the sun like a belt; there is at least one toroidal field in each hemisphere of the sun. The Earth has neither of these. The Earth rotates as a solid body – meaning the angular velocity is the same everywhere. And there is no evidence that the Earth has a toroidal magnetic field, only a dipole (North-South) field. One exception might have occurred during the flood year; the continents were moving fast enough that they may indeed have caused something like a dynamo, and possibly rapid temporary reversals of the global magnetic field. But secularists reject the global flood because it is incompatible with their assumption of uniformitarianism.
Second, no one has really demonstrated that a dynamo like the solar one can actually recharge a magnetic field or allow it to persist over time. In fact, a dynamo might actually drain the magnetic energy even faster than a free decay. So a dynamo is unlikely to rescue deep time from evidence to the contrary.
Planetary Magnetic Fields
The Earth’s magnetic field is not the only one that is a problem for deep time. Many of the planets have magnetic fields consistent with the biblical age of about 6000 years. Magnetic fields just don’t last very long. Therefore, the abundance of strong magnetic fields in the solar system is very strong support for recent creation.
Basically, there are two factors that determine how long a planet can maintain a magnetic field: size and composition. Larger planets are like larger batteries – they take longer to run down. Unsurprisingly Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system, has the strongest magnetic field. Furthermore, conductive materials will maintain electrical current (and the resulting magnetic field) better than insulating materials. Hence, the tiny planet Mercury still has a weak magnetic field due to its iron core, but the slightly larger Mars does not. Mars does have remanent magnetism; the rocks have traces of magnetism although the dipole field of the planet is gone. Remanent magnetism indicates that the planet once had a global magnetic field, but in 6000 years it has decayed away. The moon also has remanent magnetism. The evidence is very consistent with the biblical timescale of about 6000 years.
In fact, creationists successfully predicted the magnetic fields of the planets Uranus and Neptune before these fields were measured by the Voyager II spacecraft. Dr. Russ Humphreys predicted the amount of decay based on a biblical age of 6000 years. His predictions were consistent with the measurements. The secular predictions were wrong.
Technology has now advanced to the point that we can detect some planets orbiting other stars. My prediction is that some of these planets will show evidence of strong magnetic field activity. This would be further confirmation of their biblical age of a few thousand years.
Internal Heat
Many planets also have internal heat. This means that the energy the planet radiates into space is greater than the energy it receives from the sun. So the planet was created with internal energy, which it is constantly dumping to space. Eventually, the planet would have to run out of such energy. And this is a problem for the secular view because given the rate at which the energy is lost, the planets should have lost all their internal energy long ago.
Jupiter, for example, gives off twice as much energy as it receives from the sun. Every second, Jupiter receives one unit of energy from the sun, and gives away two units of energy to space. It is constantly losing energy. Jupiter is a big planet: over ten times the size of Earth. So, it can store a great amount of internal energy. In six thousand years, it has not yet depleted its supply. But if the planet were really 4.5 billion years old as secularists believe, it should have run out of internal energy a very long time ago. The problem is even worse for Neptune which radiates over 2.6 times as much energy as it receives from the sun. And Neptune is less than half the diameter of Jupiter. Why do these planets still have such internal energy?
Of the four giant planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune), only Uranus lacks internal heat. Yet Uranus and Neptune are virtual twins, with nearly identical mass, size, and composition. But God chose to make the one that is farther from the sun have more internal energy. I sometimes think God does these things simply to show the absurdity of naturalism.
Left: Saturn’s moon Enceladus. Right: water geysers erupting from the surface of Enceladus
Even some of the moons of the outer planets show evidence of internal heat. Jupiter’s moon Io has so much internal heat that it is constantly erupting with sulfur volcanoes. But then again, tidal flexing between Jupiter and Europa might account for that. On the other hand, Saturn’s moon Enceladus also has such internal heat, so much so that occasionally water geysers erupt on its surface. There is no significant tidal flexing for Enceladus; its internal energy seems to be simply what is left from its creation about 6000 years ago. Enceladus is a small moon, only 300 miles across. So it simply cannot maintain internal energy for billions of years.
The geology of Pluto came as quite a shock to those who were expecting this tiny world to have run out of internal heat billions of years ago. And yet, mountain chains, and lack of substantial cratering show that Pluto has experienced recent geological activity which is driven by internal heat. If this activity had happened billions of years ago, it would all be covered by craters today. But it isn’t. Even Pluto’s moon Charon has chasms and ridges, geology indicative of recent internal heat. The surfaces appear geologically “young.”
By the way, the Earth also has internal heat, expelling more energy into space than it receives from the sun. But secular scientists believe that radioactive materials resupply such energy. Indeed, radioactive decay produces a small amount of heat. Whether there are sufficient radioactive sources to account for Earth’s internal heat is another question. But the point is that the outer planets and moons lack these radioactive elements. Our measurements show that the outer worlds of the solar system have low density, meaning they cannot possess significant radioactive elements which are very dense. Their internal energy suggests that they were created thousands, not billions of years ago.
Spiral Galaxies
A galaxy is a collection of millions, or billions, or in some cases trillions of stars. Most galaxies are either ellipsoidal or spiral in shape. The spiral galaxies have a central ellipsoidal bulge of stars, surrounded by a flattened disk. Our own galaxy, the Milky Way, is a spiral with over 100 billion stars, and our solar system is located in the disk. The disk of a spiral galaxy is not uniform, but has more stars concentrated into spiral arms, and fewer stars between these arms.
Spiral galaxies rotate differentially, meaning the inner parts rotate at a different angular velocity than the outer parts. So, stars closer to the core would take less time to complete a revolution than stars farther from the core. This means that any spiral structure will necessarily become tighter over time and will eventually become so twisted that any spiral structure would be lost. We know the rate at which the spiral structure is lost because we can measure their doppler shifts of the stars as they revolve. The result is that spiral structure would become unrecognizable after 100 million years or so.
According to the standard secular model of cosmology, most galaxies are around 10 billion years old, and some are even older. Yet, these galaxies still show a spiral structure. They have not become twisted beyond recognition, suggesting that they are not nearly as old as secularists presume. Even if these galaxies had started out with no spiral structure at all, after a hundred million years or so, they would be twisted so tightly that no spiral structure would remain. Secular astronomers refer to this as the spiral wrapping/winding problem.
Left: the Whirlpool Galaxy (M51) as it appears today. Right: M51 after 1 billion years of differential rotation.
Most secular astronomers posit that new spiral structure must somehow form as the original spiral would have been destroyed by wrapping long ago. Perhaps “density waves” propagate around the disk, triggering new star formation. What would cause those density waves? Who knows? Furthermore, spiral galaxies have a magnetic field that is aligned with the spiral arms. This is significant, because magnetic fields move with material, not density waves. So, if spiral arms had been recreated multiple times from density waves, we would not expect them to line up neatly with the magnetic field. On the other hand, if spiral galaxies were created as spiral galaxies, and have experienced only a few thousand years of rotation, then the observations match up perfectly.
Blue Stars
The color of a star is related to its surface temperature. Red stars are the coolest, with a meager surface temperature of 4000 Kelvins, yellow/white stars like the sun are around 6000 Kelvins. Blue stars can exceed 20,000 Kelvins. Blue stars also tend to be the brightest stars, mainly because of their higher temperature. They tend to be the most massive stars, which creates high pressure in the core, resulting in higher levels of energy production in the core. Some blue stars are thousands of times more luminous than the sun, meaning they expend their energy much more quickly than other types of stars. As the saying goes, “the candle that shines twice as bright lasts half as long.” Blue stars have the shortest possible lifespan of any star.
Stars are apparently powered by nuclear fusion: the conversion of hydrogen into helium in their core. Hydrogen is therefore the fuel that is spent as the star shines, radiating its energy into space. There are various methods by which we can measure the size and mass of stars, so we know how much fuel is available. And we know the rate at which the fuel is expended by measuring the amount of energy released by the star; that is simply related to its luminosity. Therefore, we can compute the maximum time that a star can shine before running out of fuel.
The small red stars use up their fuel very slowly, and can therefore potentially last many billions of years, exceeding the secular estimated age of the universe. Stars like the sun use up their fuel more quickly and can last perhaps 10 billion years. But the hottest blue stars have a maximum lifespan in the millions of years range. And yet blue stars are abundant, particularly in the arms of spiral galaxies. The stars of Orion’s belt, for example, are blue stars and cannot be billions of years old. Blue stars seem to indicate that the universe was created recently and is not millions and certainly not billions of years old.
The stars of Orion’s belt are blue and very luminous.
To my knowledge, no secular astronomer denies that blue stars are “young.” But they insist that the universe is old and therefore these blue stars have somehow formed from a collapsing cloud of gas and very recently. But this rescuing device has a number of problems. Gas resists compression. Everyday experience informs us that gas tends to expand and fill its container. In space, there is no container, and therefore the gas tends to expand indefinitely. Indeed, astronomers have never detected gas that is in the process of contracting.
Once a star is made, its own gravity will hold the gas together, preventing expansion. But for a giant cloud of gas in space, the inward force of gravity is very meager and is generally dwarfed by the outward force of gas pressure. Furthermore, if the gas cloud has even the slightest rotation, its own angular momentum will tend to prevent collapse. And magnetic pressure also resists collapse. So, the idea of stars forming spontaneously from collapsing clouds seems unlikely from a scientific perspective. I will not say it is impossible, but the conditions under which it could occur are very constrained. To make matters worse, these problems scale with mass. This means that the least likely star to result from a collapsing cloud would be a blue star – the very type that secularists require to form in abundance. Secularists must accept that it happens or else they would have to relinquish their belief in billions of years since blue stars simply cannot last that long. But for the moment, the formation of blue stars is not science, but merely wishful thinking.
Conclusions
The universe is precisely the age that the Bible indicates. It is not billions of years old. This fact goes against what the majority of scholars today believe. But that isn’t new. The Bible has long been contrary to the majority opinion of the day, only to be vindicated by later research. But we don’t have to wait a thousand years to see if the Bible is right about the age of the universe. Already there is abundant evidence from astronomy that makes no sense within the secular timescale. I recognize that secular astronomers have their rescuing devices for the above lines of evidence; but in most cases the escape entails relinquishing the assumption of uniformitarianism, the very assumption upon which deep-time is entirely based. The secularist is left either with a baseless belief, or a self-refuting belief. Conversely, the consistent Christian enjoys the support of Scripture and the confirmation of science.