Answering Genesis: "A Sky Full of Ghosts"

Yay! Finally caught up with the Cosmos series! And the latest episode was great for a simple reason: It presented a pretty simple and obvious reason why the universe cannot be only 6000 years old, as predicted by biblical creationists, giving Cosmos its first direct attack on young earth Creationists. And boy, did it get Answers in Genesis mad.

The episode itself was pretty interesting, though I'd hoped it had talked more about relativity. Relativity is pretty awesome, but the stuff about black holes was also pretty interesting, though I'd hoped it would talk about Hawking radiation a bit too. But oh well. One of the slightly disappointing things about the new Cosmos series is that the episodes themselves are only 45 minutes long without ads, while the original series had hour long episodes. So there's a wee bit that needs to be trimmed and it does show sometimes.

But that's beside the point. Let's talk about creationists!

William Herschel, the father of stellar astronomy—a devout Christian who saw the hand of our Creator in his stellar handiwork (Psalm 19:1)—is credited with realizing that some stars seen from earth may, because it takes time for starlight to travel great distances, be only “ghosts” of dead, burned out stars. After saying that due to the time it takes light to cross the vast distances in space, light from distant objects must reach us long after it was produced, Tyson indicates telescopes are a sort of time machine.

Commenting on the virtual time travel qualities of the telescope, Answers in Genesis astronomer Dr. Danny Faulkner says:

It’s become very fashionable to refer to telescopes as time machines, but that’s a bit lame—we have no control over the time that we “visit,” and it only works in the past, not the future. That’s just a clever way of saying that there is a finite time for light to travel to us. Most of the solutions to the light travel time problem attempt to explain how not nearly as much time has elapsed as usually thought.

William Herschel

Well, you're kinda right there. It's not a very good time machine, or one in the traditional sense, but as Bill Nye pointed out in his recent debate with Ken Ham, in astronomy, all we ever do is look at the past. (Though, Answers in Genesis disagrees for reasons I'll point out why when they elaborate on the last sentence of Faulkner's quote there)

There's another common argument of Answers in Genesis hiding in their too, when they point out Herschel was a Christian. Well, yes, but lots of scientists are. Doesn't make them creationists.

Asking how light from faraway could reach earth within the roughly 6,000 year age of the earth and the universe documented in God’s Word the Bible, Cosmos host Neil deGrasse Tyson says:

The Crab Nebula is about 6,500 light years from earth.
According to some beliefs that’s the age of the whole universe, but if the universe were only 6500 years old, how could we see the light from anything more distant than the Crab Nebula? We couldn’t. There wouldn’t have been enough time for light to get to earth from anywhere farther away than 6500 light years in any direction. That’s just enough time for light to travel through a tiny portion of our Milky Way galaxy. To believe in a universe as young as six or seven thousand years old is to extinguish the light from most of the galaxy not to mention the light from all the 100 billion other galaxies in the observable universe.

Dr. Faulkner, on seeing the program, commented:

When Tyson made that statement, I wondered why he picked the figure of 6,000-7.000 years. Why not some other figure? Obviously, without explicitly mentioning biblical creationists, he clearly was aiming for us. Some have hailed this as a total refutation of recent creation, but Tyson's a bit late here, for that problem was pointed out long before he was even born. And just as those who believe in the big bang have offered a solution to their light travel time problem, we've offered possible solutions to our light travel time problem.

What Tyson, of course, does not address in the program is that young earth creation scientists do offer biblically consistent models to explain how we see faraway objects in space without attempting to tamper with the laws of physics. One such model is the anisotropic synchrony convention which is based on the fact—as Einstein recognized—that it is impossible to objectively measure the one-way speed of light. We instead must measure the round-trip speed of light and simply agree that the one-way speed must be half of the total. Read more about how this explanation would answer the question of how light from distant stars could reach earth within the time allowed in biblical history in “Distant Starlight” and, for the more technically minded readers, “Anisotropic Synchrony Convention—A Solution to the Distant Starlight Problem.”

Yeah, he's pretty obviously making a dig at you guys there. But! Let's look at their proposal. It's a wee bit technical, but the basics of it is this.

You can't directly measure the speed of light in one direction. The best you can do is measure how long light takes to make a round trip. For example, if you have a mirror 1 light second away, light takes 2 seconds to go to the mirror, come back and hit you again. The general belief is that light travels that same speed going there and back, so after 1 second, the light hits the mirror, then after another second, it hits you. We can't actually test that though. It's just the way we define things because it's easiest for us like that.

The proposal by Dr Lisle says that light travels at half of what we consider to be light-speed going away from us, and instantly going back. So, after 2 seconds, light hits the mirror, then instantly comes back to us.

This is a valid hypothesis. There's nothing in physics that says this can't be possible. The end result is, if the universe is 6000 years old, the universe can be as big as it wants, and God could have made the stars in day 4, and their light would have reached us instantly, not requiring the billions of years that science predicts.

This, in itself, doesn't actually say the universe must be young or old. It just kinda handwaves away the distant starlight problem. I say handwaves because the idea isn't testable. It could be true, but we'd have no real way of knowing.

This isn't the only solution to the distant starlight problem, but it's the one that Answers in Genesis seems to favour. But, for the sake of completeness, I'll cover a few of the most common others.

1: Our measurements of distance are wrong.

This is a pretty weak argument really, and we have observable evidence against it. Cosmologists are pretty smart people, and they know what they're doing. The distancing methods used by them have withstood plenty of scrutiny, and they all work pretty well.

But the best evidence against it comes from SN 1987a, the supernova I mentioned in an earlier post. We know it's 100,000 light years away. Why? When it exploded, there was a ring of gas around it. The gas took 8 months to light up from the light of the supernova. From that, we can directly measure how far the rings are from the supernova, and then, using simple trigonometry, we can calculate how far the supernova was. The only way it can be less than 100,000 light years away, is if trigonometry is wrong. And it really, really isn't.

2: God made the light from the stars in transit.

This is another common one, but it also falls apart for similar reasons. The idea is that, God made the trees, along with Adam and Eve fully grown, so therefore, he made the stars with their light in passage because they'd be useless if Adam had to wait 4 years for the light from the nearest star to reach him. One of the main objections to this is that it kinda implies God is deceiving us by making stars that appear to be old but aren't. The second is that SN 1987a exploded nearly 100,000 years before God could have created it. Why? That makes no logical sense.

3: Light began faster, but has slowed down.

I hear this one a bit, but again, SN 1987a refutes it for slightly more technical reasons, but it follows from the trigonometry above. If light was faster when SN 1987a exploded, the light would've reached the outer ring much faster, therefore, the outer ring is further away and the resulting maths winds up extremely contradictory.

The other reason why comes from the nature of light itself. Light is an electromagnetic wave, and it follows from a few properties of electromagnetism. To be kinda brief, the speed of light is 1/√ε₀μ₀, where ε₀ is what's called the permittivity of free space, and μ₀ is the permeability of free space. These aren't arbitrary numbers, they're fundamental physical properties of nature and determine how strong the electromagnetic force is. If the speed of light was different, one of those two numbers must be different and that would radically change the electromagnetic force that binds all of matter together.

4: Effects based on General Relativity caused light to speed up.

This one simply doesn't match the observations.

So, you might be asking. Why does Dr Lisle's proposal fail? Well, like I said, it isn't testable, but it also doesn't prove a young earth. It's merely a possible justification, though I'll admit, it's the best I've seen. But the other evidence still supports an older universe. We've got a pretty good idea of how long stellar processes take, not to mention the mountains upon mountains of radiometric dating evidence that still easily demonstrates an old earth. And, remember what I said in an earlier entry about how, if the big bang theory were true, we'd expect to see only hydrogen, helium and maybe trace amounts of lithium in the most distant parts of the universe, as if those parts are the oldest? Well, that's what we see. Dr Lisle's proposal can't really explain that. The universe still looks older as we go further out. He does kinda try to explain it by passing out some old, outdated reasons why the universe looks young, such as the argument that spiral galaxies should have spun themselves out by now (Which, as one article points out, kinda implies that God doesn't know what he's doing if the universe should've worn itself out after only a few thousand years), which has been debunked by the fact that spiral galaxies fit perfectly well with modelling showing how galaxies should form. In fact, Carl Sagan demonstrates this with some computer models in the original Cosmos series.

But as I said, this is an interesting idea and it's not one that I've really heard much of before. To AiG's credit, they're doing a decent enough job of coming up with new creationist ideas (Though they still have yet to come up with any valid scientific ones, and they still rehash old, long-debunked ones). So, if you're curious about more criticisms of this argument, I'll leave this last article here, based on a 2013 speech by Dr Lisle.

Dr. Danny Faulkner points out that God created the stars to enable humans—from Adam onward—to measure times and seasons (Genesis 1:14–16). Dr. Faulker in “A Proposal for a New Solution to the Light Travel Time Problem” offers an elegant solution which likewise refrains from any tampering with the laws of physics. In his biblically sound proposal, Dr. Faulkner explains how Adam would have been able to see faraway stars on the day he was created and

. . . invokes similarity between creative acts of Day Four and other days of the Creation Week, but especially Day Three. The Day Three account suggests unusually fast growth for plants. In similar fashion, this possible new solution suggests unusually fast propagation of light on Day Four, probably by rapid expansion of space.

This is a pretty weak argument in my opinion. It pretty much amounts to "we don't know, therefore, magic!" This is what Dr Tyson was saying, when he says that blindly saying "God did it" is a closed door that doesn't lead to answers. Yes, it's fairly biblically accurate but it has absolutely no scientific merit and is an unbelievable cop-out.

Update (2014-04-08): After some consideration, Faulkner's proposal also fails what I'm calling the Supernova Test. It cannot explain SN1987a either, because even if God sped up light so that the light from the star that exploded to cause that supernova on Day Four, it still exploded several hundreds of thousands of years before Day Four. Sorry Faulkner, your idea does not stand up to scrutiny. So far, Lisle's is the only that can pass the Supernova Test, but it still fails to explain old stars and other predictions of the Big Bang Theory.

Moreover, not only do young earth creationists have answers to offer to these complex questions, evolutionary astronomers who accept the big bang have their own light travel time problem. While Tyson talks frequently in the program about the illusory nature of the “horizon” we see at the edge of our sky, he never adequately addresses the big bang’s “horizon problem.”
But the big bang does have a big problem. Dr. Faulkner comments:

The big bang model has a light travel time problem too. The fact that cosmologists have proposed cosmic inflation is proof of that, because one normally doesn’t offer a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist. Inflation supposedly solves their light travel time problem, as well as other problems, which is why there was much excitement over the March 17 announcement of alleged discovery of evidence of inflation. I say “alleged,” because I suspect that the announcement is a bit premature and I am skeptical.

Be sure to read more about this highly publicized announcement in “Has Cosmic Inflation Been Proved?”

Polarisation in the CMB demonstrates inflation

I love how defensive Answers in Genesis is getting with the recent announcement that the inflation part of the big bang theory has basically been proven. While being sceptical is a perfectly good position, and I'm personally also being sceptical until more data can be shown, he's not being sceptical because he doubts the scientific model, he's being sceptical because he forgot that the number one rule of science is "question everything" and he's refusing to question his interpretation of the bible. The article basically amounts to "but it might not be inflation!" without providing any counter-proposals. It's another cop-out by Answers in Genesis.

This isn't the first evidence for inflation either. Like I said regarding the Oort cloud earlier, scientists don't just pull models and ideas out of their butts. Ideas should have reason to be believed, and we had pretty good reason to predict inflation. It fit the data pretty well and explains more than a few problems.

Regardless though, even if the evidence winds up being misinterpreted and the data is not evidence of inflation, that doesn't disprove the big bang theory which has mountains of evidence on its own. We know the universe is expanding. We know that expansion is accelerating. We know that it expanded in the past. We know that it was incredibly small about 13.8 billion years ago. We're still ironing out kinks in the theory, but no theory is every completely 100% absolutely definitely complete and true.

While tying the distant objects in space to the evolutionary events supposedly happening on earth at the time the light from those objects presumably originated, Tyson attempts to build a cohesive evolutionary view of the universe and the life in it, yet evolutionary biology is unable to offer a shred of evidence that life evolved from non-living elements through natural processes.

Adenine formed in Oró's experiments

The research of men such as Miller, Urey, Oró and others disagrees that we're unable to offer a "shred" of evidence. We don't have all the evidence yet, no, but to say we have no evidence is completely false. In fact, given that a lot of the experiments have given us a pretty diverse range of organic chemicals, including amino acids and adenine, one of the four nucleotide bases of DNA, and how quickly life arose on earth, only a few hundred million years or so, it really seems quite plausible that life is pretty likely to occur naturally. Carl Sagan certainly advocated that viewpoint in the original Cosmos series.

This statement is a bit of a non-sequitor though. It has nothing to do with what's happening in the show, I think they just realised they hadn't mentioned abiogenesis yet so had to shoehorn it into this article for no reason. While doing this, they failed to demonstrate that creationist have yet to offer a shred of evidence that suggests the tuatara migrated from Mt Ararat after Noah's flood to New Zealand, and only in New Zealand, without being killed by the number of predators that threaten it today. (See what I did there?)

Tyson reviews several of the concepts Einstein elucidated, such as the fact that no matter can reach or exceed the speed of light. Such fundamental laws of nature, biblical creationists understand, were put in place by our Creator when He created the universe about 6,000 years ago. We have no frame of reference that would allow us to know the age of the universe or how those fundamental laws of physics came to be other than God’ eyewitness testimony in His Word. 

This is another non-sequitor, really. One of Answers in Genesis's key positions is that the laws of nature cannot exist without God (Without explaining why exactly that is), so they just kinda felt like throwing that statement in there I guess. I disagree with the last part though. One can easily accept that God created the universe with the fundamental laws of physics in place without accepting all the other baggage of young-earth creationism.

The rest of the show is about black holes and so on, and the next two paragraphs are just Answers in Genesis summarising the show some more, so there's no bad science for me to debunk there.
After the discussion of the observable science surrounding black holes, there is plenty of fodder for science fiction fantasy in the closing portion of this Cosmos episode. From God’s Word, we have an eyewitness account of the truth that should constrain all actual scientific explanations of the history of our universe’s origins. God did not tell us everything about science in His Word, but He is our Creator and as a holy God that loves us He can be relied upon to tell us the truth. Therefore, any truth about our origins—whether biological or cosmological—will necessarily fall within biblical parameters.

And again, this is pretty much them just stating their opinions without backing it up. Also, the linked articles are to the previous Cosmos episode, and the article they linked half a bajillion times in that episode, so I won't go over them again. 

There's some neat speculation in this episode of Cosmos, and if you're interested in black holes, I really highly recommend watching it (Though, I really highly recommend watching the whole series). Dr Tyson explains that, inside a black hole, conditions are very similar to the start of our universe and it could well be that our universe is simply the black hole inside another universe and repeated ad infinitum. It's probably a kinda optimistic view of what black holes are actually like, but hey, Cosmos is supposed to be optimistic. But if you want something considerably more horrific, check this story out.

For a more extensive discussion of the plain application of physics to this topic, I urge our readers to check out Dr. Danny Faulkner’s DVD Things That Go Bump In The Night. In this DVD the physics that applies to black holes and dark matter are clearly explained and illustrated. Answers in Genesis astronomer Dr. Danny Faulkner has devoted much of his professional career to researching binary systems to learn more about the universe God created. His engaging and well-illustrated presentation shows viewers how we can know that black holes are real and shows us much that we can learn from the relationship of black holes to binary stars and to galaxies.

This paragraph is really just an appeal to authority. Yes, Dr Faulkner is a published astrophysicist, but that doesn't mean that all of his opinions on astrophysics must be correct. But I'm genuinely kinda curious (But not curious enough to ever give Answers in Genesis money for a DVD) why they have no problem with black holes. They're the remnants of dead stars and to me, that seems opposed to their belief that stellar evolution doesn't happen. I'm assuming it's because they're clearly observational science by anyone's definition, even theirs, so denying them would be even more blatantly dishonest, but it still seems like something that should go against creationist beliefs.

The heavens do indeed declare the glory of our Creator.

I don't think any Christian doubts this. But to me, it seems that a creator who can set a 14 billion year universe into motion and watch it grow and prosper, like a flower garden growing and being tended by a gardener, is much more glorious than one who throws it all together one lazy Thursday in an inherently deceitful way.