And welcome to Generations Friends, Kevin Swanson here with you, Executive Director for Krishnom Educators, also a pastor. But the reason I'm here, I'm father of five, and we look at the world through the eyes of a biblical worldview on this program. We're talking about worldview, we're talking about a construct by which we interpret the facts. Now you've got facts, and you've got the interpretation of the facts. Everybody's got a worldview, and folks interpret the facts differently. It's not as if you look at facts and everybody comes to the same conclusions. It doesn't happen. Let me give you an example. Fossils. Fossils are facts. Okay, there they are. You see them. They're just there. You see them everywhere. We were up at Jeff McKinney's place a couple of weeks ago in Castle Rock and George and I were just talking out in front. And we were talking about fossils. And George reached down, a kid you and I, reached down, grabbed a rock, turned it over. It was a fossil of a shell. At 7,000 feet, we had a fossil of a shell. Okay, so that's a fact. It was the facts of the fossil in Castle Rock, Colorado. Now, they're all over the world. You can find these facts everywhere. The problem, though, is the interpretation of the facts. You see, we always take our worldview to the interpretation of the facts. Our worldview works like glasses, and it filters the facts, colors the facts, interprets the facts for us. But not all worldviews are created equally, and not all interpretations are equally credible. See, some interpretations are better than others. Let me give you an example here. Let's take the fossil again. Which sounds like a better interpretation of the facts to you? Here they are. Three interpretations of the shell fossil in my hand up in Castle Rock, Colorado. Okay, three possible interpretations of the fact of the fossil. A. Billions of fossils created by layers of sediments formed gradually over billions of years. That's A. B. Billions of fossils created by tens of thousands of local catastrophes over billions of years while conveniently avoiding to fossilize transitional forms. Alright, now C. Billions of fossils are created by one worldwide flood that forms the geologic layers quickly over a few weeks, where you don't need transitional forms because the world is relatively young and we did not see the species develop by gradualism. Alright, so there you got it. You've got three options. Now, why would I pick a worldwide flood? Why would I think the worldwide flood is a part of the worldview by which I interpret the fossil fact? Well, if you're a Christian, the metaphysic of the flood is very significant. If there really was a catastrophe of the size of the worldwide flood, you would have to consider that in your study of canyons, fossils, petrified forests, and everything else on the earth. If there really was a worldwide flood, it would be a very, very, very significant play in your study of geology. Now, if you're not a Christian, and you rejected the Bible and all other cultural traditions of worldwide floods, then you would have to come up with another explanation. And personally, I think the other explanations are really stupid. Okay? So again, that's the way I interpret the fact of the fossils. But, now let's talk about other issues in creationism. Creationists still have a problem called starlight and time. You see, here's the problem. Let me explain it to you very simply. If light travels at 186,000 miles per second, and that has been constant since the beginning of time, how could God have created the world some 6,000 years ago? Okay? If light travels at 186,000 miles per second, it has been constant since the beginning of time. Then how could God have created the world 6,000 years ago when you know that there are lights coming from stars further away than 6,000 years? As in 10,000 years or a million years or 10,000 billion years? How could God have created the world 6,000 years ago? Well, enter Russ Humphreys. Russ Humphreys produced an interesting theory that is supposed to be explaining this particular problem. What Humphrey's taught was that Einstein's general theory of relativity, the best theory of gravity we have at present, indicates that gravity distorts time. This effect has been measured experimentally a lot of times. In fact, there are clocks at the top of tall towers, where gravity is slightly less, that run faster than those at the bottom of towers. In fact, Boulder's atomic clock out here in Boulder, at some 6,000 feet above sea level, ticks faster than the Greenwich clock. and these clocks have to be aligned from time to time. Time is much faster at the edges of the universe also. Time is slower here on Earth because we are at the center of the universe where the force of gravity is the strongest. Again Humphreys is assuming that the Earth is roughly at the center of the universe, therefore time runs much slower here on Earth. When the concentration of matter is very large or dense enough, the gravitational distortion can be so immense that even light cannot escape. The equations of general relativity show that an invisible boundary surrounding such a concentration of matter called the event horizon, or a white hole, time literally stands still at that point. If the universe has boundaries, then there is a net gravitational effect towards the center. And clocks at the edge would be running at different rates to clocks on the earth. In other words, it's no longer enough to say that God made the universe in six days. He did, but six days by which clock? The assumption is that the universe was very much contracted into an event horizon towards the beginning, and time virtually stood still on the earth, while at the edge of the expanding universe, time was going on much quicker. Now here's one way to understand it. If observers were on earth at that particular time, had looked out and seen the speed with which light was traveling toward them out in space, it would have appeared as if it was traveling much, much, much faster than 186,000 miles per second. and galaxies would also appear to be rotating faster. However, if an observer is deep in space out there measuring the speed of light to him, they would still be only traveling at 186,000 miles per second. Okay, so that's Humphrey's theory. Now, in just a moment we're going to talk to Dr. Jason Lyle from Answers in Genesis, and he's going to talk to us about this theory that Humphrey's moved forward, and whether or not this is satisfying to the others out there, and whether or not we need an explanation. and whether that explanation needs to be credible in order for us to maintain a Young Earth perspective or a Young Universe perspective. Ladies and gentlemen, in just a moment, Dr. Jason Lyle. 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Also, be sure to check out their bookstore on the south side of Denver on Parker Road Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to Generations. This is Kevin Swanson with you today. We're looking at the starlight and time issue, a critical issue in the creation and evolution debate. And with me is Dr. Jason Lyle. He has a PhD from the University of Colorado at Boulder, which is just down the road from us. So welcome, Dr. Lyle, to Generations. Well, thanks for having me on. Yeah, let's talk a little bit about the age of the universe. A lot of controversy on this one. I assume you would assume the age of the universe is relatively young. Well, that's right. I mean, the Bible makes it very clear that God created in six days, and it's clear from those genealogies that you love to read before you go to bed, and so and so to get so and so. You add up those ages, and it's clear that God made the entire universe thousands of years ago. And even though that flies in the face of what we're taught in secular schools and so on, hey, God knows what he's talking about, and he makes it very clear. Do you look for scientific evidence for a young earth, Dr. Lyle? Or are you resting more on biblical revelation for that? Well, our ultimate authority is the Word of God, because God is on mission. He knows everything. He's my infallible source, my infallible authority. By the way, everyone has an infallible authority. If you don't put it in the Bible, you're going to put it in something else. And so we feel it makes a lot of sense to make the omniscient God in whom is all truth our ultimate authority. That being said, because God created the universe as well, and because he knows how it works, I would expect that when I looked out into the universe, I would expect to have evidence that confirms what the Bible already says. And of course, that's what we do find in the universe. We do find a lot of evidence of youth out there. You know, initially I think the creation arguments looked at the fossil records, looked at the strata, looked at the absence of transitional forms, and we said, hey, it looks like a worldwide flood. Billions of dead things buried in rock layers all over the earth. Sounds to me like a worldwide flood to me. And that was the primary argument. Then we got into the starlight and time issue. Has the starlight and time issue weakened our apologetic in any way? Well, no, first of all, even if we didn't have an explanation for how God got the light from those distant galaxies to earth in a few thousand years, even if we had no explanation for it, does that mean that God is wrong because we don't understand how he did something? I mean, that's not a logical argument. And of course, Christians take a lot of things on faith because they're written in the scriptures. We take it on faith that God really did resurrect Christ from the dead. And I can't give you the scientific details on how God did that, but I trust that he did it because it's written in his word. I do believe there is evidence to support that, namely historical testimony and so on. It's the same way with the universe. Even if I couldn't give you any explanation whatsoever for how God got the light from those stars to the earth in thousands of years, that doesn't mean that God doesn't know how he did it, and that doesn't mean that it's impossible. Of course, there are lots of different possibilities, but ultimately we can trust that God knows what He is talking about. I don't think it weakens our position to be honest and say, we don't know how God did certain things. In fact, if we knew how God did everything He did, He wouldn't be God, because our God is infinite. and he knows an infinite number of things that we don't know because we're finite. It seems to me, Dr. Lyle, that at some point in the creation-evolution debate, we wind up talking about the definition of science. Now, in the field of astronomy, is there some point at which you cross over from science to more of a reconstruction of the past? You know, we know that happens as we look at fossils X number of thousands of years after they were laid down. We're reconstructing what happened. At what point in astronomy does that happen? Well, basically anytime someone is talking to you about something that would take a long period of time, something that is not observed to be happening today. Something that would take a long time, something that supposedly happened before human history allegedly millions of years ago. Anytime people talk about that sort of thing, they are doing exactly what you said. They are reconstructing a past. I would disagree with them because I accept recorded history, the recorded history in the Bible. A lot of people reject that recorded history and instead have made up their own, what I would call a pseudo-history of the universe. That is really when they have crossed the line from science into really reconstructing a history. A lot of people don't stop and think about that. You know, stellar evolution and star formation and those kinds of things are along the same lines as operational science, but really they are not. Really they are stories about the past. And that's not to say that we can't... I'm not saying it's wrong to construct a story about the past, because creationists do that too. But we have to be very careful to make sure that our view of history is actually a correct view of history. And therefore we need to start with God's Word. You've heard the old universe argument that we're looking at an event four billion years ago when that light from distant stars meets the human eye on July 18, 2007. What is your take on that? Are we looking at what happened four billion years ago? Well, not really because it turns out that there are actually a lot of assumptions that go into those sorts of calculations. In fact, any time when people talk about what happened in the past, they're actually making some assumptions about history. In this case, one of the assumptions would be, for example, that the speed of light has always been the same. I happen to think that it probably has been, but that is simply one assumption. There are lots of others as well. They have made assumptions about how time flows in space. Einstein tells us that time can actually flow at different rates and in different environments, so time itself may not be constant as that light travels across the universe. I am sort of over-summarizing here, but you get the basic idea. There are lots of assumptions that people make. There are assumptions of synchrony conventions, and that is basically how do you know that read the same time at the same time. For example, I'm in a different time zone than you're at. So even though it's a particular time out in Colorado, it's a different time here in Kentucky because there are time zones. You can do the same thing out in space and that's called an alternate synchrony convention method. So that's another possibility for how God got the light from those galaxies to earth in thousands of years. But there are several different ways potentially that he could have done it and the fact that we don't know for sure which way I don't think in any way weakens our position. How do you think Russ Humphrey's explanation has helped us in this, where he's looking at the effect of gravity on time in an expanding universe? Does this play at all? Do you think it is convincing anybody? Well, I think that Dr. Humphrey's explanation is brilliant. Now, he hasn't worked out a lot of the details with rigor, and that's something that he's working on right now, actually. The premise is certainly sound, and the idea that time can flow at different rates and in different environments, that is not some crazy creationist idea. That is something that Einstein came up with, and it is something that has been well tested by experiments. We know, for example, that clocks at sea level tick a little bit slower than clocks on a mountaintop, and that's due to the gravitational field of the Earth. They're in a deeper gravitational potential. That doesn't mean the gravity is necessarily stronger there. It just means it would require energy to pull a clock from sea level up to the top of a mountain. And so it is with the universe. It could be, for example, that the Earth is near the center. That is, our solar system is sort of near the center of a finite distribution of galaxies. In other words, imagine that the galaxies go out so far into space and they stop, and there just aren't any more galaxies beyond that distance. If that's the case, then clocks near the edge of the universe would be like clocks on a mountaintop. They would tick faster than clocks on Earth, and so time could actually flow more slowly. here on Earth than it does out in space, and that's what Dr. Humphreys has proposed as a solution for the distant starlight problem, because light can trickle in at its own rate, but from Earth's point of view, it'll only be a few thousand years, and it really is a very brilliant hypothesis, and it'll be interesting to see if the details of that get worked out, but it's certainly a possibility. What are the Old Earth guys saying about this theory? Is there a lot of skepticism towards it? Most of them that I've known, unfortunately, they seem to dismiss it out of hand, and I think that's very unfortunate. because of naturalistic, Big Bang-type thinking. A lot of Christians, unfortunately, have bought into Big Bang-type thinking without realizing perhaps its atheistic underpinnings. The Big Bang is designed to explain how the universe and all the things within it can come about naturalistically, that is, without the hand of any sort of God who is beyond the universe. Now, don't get me wrong. A lot of people would say, well, God started the Big Bang. But you see, that's not what the Bible teaches. The Bible teaches that God was acting during the creation week in a different way than He acts today. See, I believe the hand of God is in everything. That God is sovereign. And we might even call the laws of nature the way in which God accomplishes His will today. And they're logical and orderly because God is logical and orderly. And He upholds the universe in a consistent fashion. But during the creation week, God was acting in a different way than he acts today, and the Bible tells us that because it tells us that by the seventh day God ended his work of creation. So whatever God was doing during the creation week, he's not doing it now. He's doing something different now. Now the Big Bang assumes that the universe came about naturalistically, and a lot of Old Earth creationists latch onto that idea without realizing that it really is very unbiblical. And so I think it's unfortunate that many Old Earth creationists have sort of summarily dismissed Humphrey's idea simply because it goes against their philosophy, but their philosophy really is naturalistic. And so we need to get back to biblical philosophy, back to thinking about things according to the way that God teaches in His Word. You know, it's interesting. I think discussions with these Old Earth creationists or the evolutionists seem to always bring up issues of epistemology, one's basic commitment in terms of authority and truth. And as I interviewed one particular Old Earth guy, he was talking about the universe being some 14.6 billion years old. And I asked him the question, is it possible you could be wrong? He said, as possible as it would be, I'd be wrong about the flatness of the Earth. Okay, now, try to be, I guess, objective with the science of astronomy as they put together, as they construct the Big Bang Theory for a moment. And is he being rational when he answers in that way? Do you know as certain that the Earth is round as we know that the Big Bang occurred some 14.6 billion years ago? Well, in one sense you'd say, well no, because of course the Big Bang is more of a reconstruction of past events, whereas the notion that the Earth is round, that's something that is directly testable in the present. We can construct experiments and demonstrate that today. It belongs under operational science, whereas the notion of how things were in the past. That's not something that's accessible to operational science. So it really kind of irritates me when people say that. Now, on the other hand, he might be consistent in the sense of he's basing his ultimate authority that what the majority of scientists say, that's the ultimate authority. And you'd be surprised how many people make that their ultimate authority, even though on the one hand they would say, oh yeah, what the majority of scientists say, they say the universe is 13.7 billion years old and that's the way it's got to be. That's our infallible source. Then when scientists change their mind, well, the new answer, that's what it's out to be. On the one hand, they believe that the majority of scientists are infallible, and yet on the other hand, when they change their mind on something, they are perfectly willing to go along with the new answer, thereby confirming that the original answer was actually fallible. If he makes that as an infallible source, then in a sense he is being logically valid, but not necessarily logically sound. That is, his conclusion follows from his premise, but his premise doesn't make any sense. Ultimately, science comes out of a Biblical worldview anyway. The fact that science is possible is because the Bible is true. Science relies on certain assumptions, like the fact that the universe is logical, orderly, and obeys God. these nice, neat little equations like E equals MC squared and F equals MA. I mean, that's kind of convenient, isn't it? And scientists assume that that's true, but why would they if the universe was just an accidental byproduct of the Big Bang? Why would it obey any sort of rational laws, any laws at all for that matter? See, it makes sense from a biblical worldview that there's a God who created a logical, orderly universe and who upholds that universe in a more or less uniform fashion. That's actually one of the assumptions of science. So in other words, science comes out of a biblical worldview. So in a third sense, our friend who holds man's opinion as the ultimate authority is being inconsistent because ultimately the science comes out of a biblical worldview that comes out of the Bible being our ultimate authority. I'm wondering if we're watering down science, if we're equating the science of looking at a rock and trying to interpret what happened some four billion years ago, to the same kind of science as dropping something a hundred times and concluding with 99% probability that gravitational pulls exist to the tune of gm1m2 over r-squared. I just wonder if we're equating these forms of science and in the process really weakening what true science really is. Or at the very least, I think people are taking one to be the other. Yes, it is very common. I find this often among evolutionists. They think that evolution is just very scientific and so on, but they really haven't understood the difference between operational science and origin science. Operational science is the kind of science that puts men on the moon, that makes your television work, that makes this phone interview possible. This is science that is repeatable and testable in the present. Yet that is not really what happens when we talk about evolution, when we talk about millions of years ago. Then we are talking about a reconstruction of history. How would you test that? It is very difficult to construct experiments pertaining to the past. The best you can do is say, if the past happened this way we would expect something about the world today. You can look and see if it is there, but that never demonstrates that your history is true. It is very difficult. to perform experiments in the past because the past is gone and we don't have access to it anymore. That is why operational science will always be more powerful in terms of being able to test it and in terms of its reliability than reconstructions of the past. Secondarily, of course, when people reconstruct the past, what they already believe about the past is certainly going to influence their reconstruction very heavily. For me, it's very important to accept the recorded history in the Bible. I use that as the basis for reconstructing the past. I use the Infallible Word of God. It makes sense. But on the other hand, a lot of people reject the recorded history of the Word of God. So how far can we trust their reconstructions of the past when they've rejected history? Dr. Lyle, one last question before I let you go today. You know there's an appearance of age issue that a lot of folks bring up. Why would Jesus fool the empirical wine tasters at Cana, etc., etc.? Is it possible that God could have created the world with an appearance of age? Is that argument useful to believers, to unbelievers? Do you reject it out of hand? Well, I would say it a little bit different. I would say that God never creates with an appearance of age because things don't look old or young. That tells you more about your assumptions than it does anything about the object you're looking at. But God did create the universe mature. He created it functioning. Here is the way to look at it. Think about it in terms of Adam. God created Adam. He didn't create him to look 30 years old. He created him as an adult. Now if we assumed that Adam came about by the same way that people come about today, namely they are born and they grow up to become an adult and so on. then we would incorrectly conclude that Adam is much older than his true age. And lo and behold, when people do that with the universe, guess what? They get the same inflated ages, because they assume, contrary to God's word, that the universe came about through naturalistic processes, the way things come about today. They reject the notion that God created it supernaturally in six days, as he says he did, and therefore these people come up with an age that's very inflated. So it is true that God creates things functional, He creates them often supernaturally, at least he did in the beginning. When people fail to recognize the supernatural aspect of creation, they tend to come up with ages that are much, much older than the true age. Very nicely put. Thank you so much, Dr. Lyle, for elucidating some rather technical points on our program, Generations, today. Thank you very much for joining us. Thanks for having me on. I appreciate it. You bet. God bless you. You too. Well, there you have it, folks. An apologetic for a young earth on the starlight and time issue. It's critical that we give our children a proper worldview and we have one ourselves so that we can create a proper apologetic. And folks, as far as I'm concerned, the Christian worldview is unassailable. Once you assume that God exists and God is the source of truth, Then you have what it takes to establish origins, ethics, a concept of truth, a concept of logic, and all the rest. Without the Word of God, without the truth of God's existence and His revelation, we cannot establish a decent apologetic. And folks, let me encourage you to give your children a proper worldview and prepare them with a proper apologetic so they can stand when they enter the college classroom or anywhere else God may call them into the world to hopefully be the salt, yeast, and light He wants them to be. You can interact with our program by emailing me at hostofkevinswanson.com. You can hear the program anytime anywhere in the world at kevinswanson.com. This is Kevin Swanson inviting you back again next time as we lay down a vision for the next generation. Bye.