Much Longer Than Six Thousand Years Ago, in Galaxies Far Far Away

[thoughtful (Valerie (non-scientist))]

@djkriese

Christ is the foundation.

Christ is the foundation of faith definitely.

I was trying to say that there are various things that lay the foundation of Christian doctrine, that will keep someone within orthodox Christianity if they follow them to their logical conclusion. Various pieces may matter more or less at certain times depending on the surrounding culture and worldview. Based on archaeology, we can see that knowing the earth was created before the sun probably mattered much more for orthodox belief and worship of Abraham’s God in his day than it does in the present day. But it is still important for Christians to know that today in order to know to reject certain scientific models. As another example, I recently had LDS missionaries come to my door. I have began studying their doctrine and had begun reading the Book of Mormon before that. From what I can tell there are only a few different foundational doctrines they have (for example, a different view of Genesis 3:5). But they end up following those things to their logical conclusion and have created a theological narrative and system that is very different and even opposed to Christ being the foundation of faith. They make agency and personal progress the foundation of their faith instead. Doctrinal foundations are important.

@Mercer

Yep, it’s all just subjective!

@RonSewell

The cosmos contains these structures, so whatever cosmology you end up with must accommodate the time required to account for them.

I am saying that if a mind exists outside of time, then time plus the laws of nature don’t have to account for all things. It would be similar to me telling you, “This art museum contains all these paintings and sculptures, please tell me how all the paint and clay came together on its own since the museum was first built.”

[quote=“RonSewell, post:16, topic:15883”]
Interacting galaxies do not just appear old, but display the effects of a process that would have been ongoing for millions of years. If you encounter a flaming wreckage on a highway, with vehicle parts strewn all over the road, you don’t jump to conclude this is a work of art with pieces carefully arranged. [/quote]
Twinning is common in our universe, so we can assume God enjoys the interaction of two things. How do these images below look like car wrecks? To me, one is nice and neat. The other looks abstract. Neither one looks like a wreckage to me. (Just found them in Wikipedia examples of galaxy collisions.)

Edit: Just reading through this

The Discovery of a Hot Neptune that Shouldn't Exist

My “artist” hypothesis also doesn’t have to account for why certain exoplanets still exist that shouldn’t - because again, not everything has to depend on time!

[T_aquaticus]

@thoughtful

Science is rarely settled, and I stated before JWST had any pictures that if it found evidence of galaxy formation in the early universe that could affect my views.

That’s doubtful. We find structures that require millions of years to form and that doesn’t budge your views.

If these aren’t evidence of long time periods, then what features are they missing that would evidence long time periods? Or is it just denial all the way down?

@thoughtful

I don’t find the science definitive enough to believe my interpretation of the Bible is wrong.

No amount of evidence would budge your views.

@thoughtful

As far as I can tell the scientific community interprets them that way because the only naturally unexplainable cause in the universe is before the Big Bang.

If we got rid of the Big Bang the evidence for age in these galactic structures would still be there. It has nothing to do with the Big Bang. Just the distance to these galaxies alone is evidence for long time periods, no Big Bang needed.

[Mercer (John Mercer)]

@thoughtful

@djkriese

Christ is the foundation.

Christ is the foundation of faith definitely.

That’s not what you’re saying elsewhere.

@thoughtful

I was trying to say that there are various things that lay the foundation of Christian doctrine, that will keep someone within orthodox Christianity if they follow them to their logical conclusion. Various pieces may matter more or less at certain times depending on the surrounding culture and worldview.

See, right there you’re saying that culture and worldview (quite the weasel word) are more foundational than Christ.

@thoughtful

Based on archaeology, we can see that knowing the earth was created before the sun probably mattered much more for orthodox belief and worship of Abraham’s God in his day than it does in the present day.

I’m all but certain that no one back then cared like you do today, based on my visiting a lot of famous ruins during the past year.

@thoughtful

But it is still important for Christians to know that today in order to know to reject certain scientific models.

That’s simply false. You are rejecting the scientific METHOD itself, including denying the very concept of empirical evidence. Full stop.

@thoughtful

I am saying that if a mind exists outside of time, then time plus the laws of nature don’t have to account for all things. It would be similar to me telling you, “This art museum contains all these paintings and sculptures, please tell me how all the paint and clay came together on its own since the museum was first built.”

I don’t see any analogy there.

[Rumraket (Mikkel R.)]

@thoughtful

I don’t find the science definitive enough to believe my interpretation of the Bible is wrong.

This looks too much like the “If you don’t know everything to an absolute certainty, then you don’t know any thing to any certainty” fallacy.

It’s not clear how settled you want things to be, but when it comes to deep time, that is as settled as the most settled things in all of science is. The universe isn’t even within six orders of magnitude of being 6000 years old, and that one you can take to the bank. Heck, the Earth is at least seven hundred and fifty thousand times older than all of YEC history.

@thoughtful

@RonSewell

The cosmos contains these structures, so whatever cosmology you end up with must accommodate the time required to account for them.

It would be similar to me telling you, “This art museum contains all these paintings and sculptures, please tell me how all the paint and clay came together on its own since the museum was first built.”

Mmm no. If there were no painters around, explaining paintings would be extremely difficult because there’s no known simple force intrinsically pulling clay into sculptures, or pigments on to a canvas in the same way gravity makes matter coalesce in space.

So we do know of forces that produce the structures we see in the universe and all around us in nature. Gravity. And it has enormous predictive power, even if we do not understand it in all it’s details. The general theory of relativity has allowed astronomers to predict the existence of various objects and associated phenomena long before the technology required to observe them was invented, such as black holes, gravitational lensing, gravitational waves, and so on.

So now we’re back to the deceiver God creating things to look like gravity did it. Light having been created 6000 years ago to look like it was lensed around a cluster of galaxies so far away the entire history of your mythology could have happened twenty thousand times over if the light had to travel the entire way.

[Rumraket (Mikkel R.)]

@thoughtful

My “artist” hypothesis also doesn’t have to account for why certain exoplanets still exist that shouldn’t - because again, not everything has to depend on time!

I agree, with ad-hoc rationalization that explain or predict nothing, you have no obligations to provide it. You can just invoke a desire for God to want that thing, and then viola! Creationist science is great.

[RonSewell (RonS)]

@thoughtful

How do these images below look like car wrecks?

Both interacting galaxies and car wrecks display dispersal, in accordance with the forces involved. Galaxies, in addition, show star formation and gas collision. Effect is linked with cause. You can play the tape backwards.

@thoughtful

To me, one is nice and neat. The other looks abstract.

You are appealing to an aesthetic. You are just attributing a divine motivation, but that can be applied to anything; sunsets, mountains, you name it. Supernovae light created in transit? The nebulae are a spectacular sight, so why not?

From CMI, Light created in transit? A modern Omphalos

Many creationists in the past have proposed a solution for the distant starlight problem: that God created not only the stars but also the light beams in transit. But this is reminiscent of Gosse’s Omphalos idea. It fails for the same reason: while neither Gosse nor these creationists intend this, it would make God into a deceiver, by showing ‘evidence’ of events that have not happened. That is, this light pattern would show events that under this theory have never happened.

For example, a supernova is an explosion of a massive star that temporarily outshines its entire galaxy. But in ‘core collapse’ supernovae, this explosion is preceded by a collapse of the outer layers. This results in huge amounts of fusion reactions that produce enormous numbers of neutrinos. These are ghostly particles that interact only by the ‘nuclear weak force’, so mostly pass straight through matter. Then this implosion ‘bounces’, creating the explosion that we see. But because neutrinos pass almost unimpeded through matter, while light doesn’t, we detect the neutrinos from a supernova several hours before the light.

But the ‘light-created-in-transit’ model would entail that a neutrino stream was created followed by a light stream, and just appear as if a supernova had exploded according to the laws of physics.

As I stated earlier, there is no way to distinguish apparent time from real time. That train runs in both directions, so there is no way to disprove interacting galaxies, with all the associated data across the EM spectrum, was instantaneously created with all the extraneous detail. Nor can it be disproved that dinosaur fossils were created because dinosaurs lived in the divine mind. And so on down the rabbit hole.

Besides all that, don’t you think it is fun to unravel out how it all happened? When you see these images that humanity was denied for millennia, are you not curious to explore the events that led up to it? Personally, I find a universe with a dynamic history, and unfolding in all its variety from such a parsimonious set of rules, to be a much more intriguing creation.

[structureoftruth (Matthew Dickau)]

@RonSewell

You are appealing to an aesthetic. You are just attributing a divine motivation, but that can be applied to anything; sunsets, mountains, you name it. Supernovae light created in transit? The nebulae are a spectacular sight, so why not?

To me, writing off all the evidence for real history by saying “God is an artist” greatly diminishes the grandeur of what God has done in creation. It casts him as merely imitating when he can create the real thing. An artist painting a picture of a mountain makes something beautiful, but part of its beauty is that it reflects something beautiful in reality. God makes the reality, not merely the image. And an unfolding history is part of that reality, and part of that grandeur.

[misterme987 (Andrew P.)]

It’s ironic, since in my experience, it’s the creationists who complain about how ‘objective truth’ is being lost in society nowadays (with some vague handwaving at the popular phrase “my truth”). Yet it is they who go and throw objective truth out the window when it conflicts with their worldview.

[thoughtful (Valerie (non-scientist))]

@misterme987

It’s ironic, since in my experience, it’s the creationists who complain about how ‘objective truth’ is being lost in society nowadays (with some vague handwaving at the popular phrase “my truth”). Yet it is they who go and throw objective truth out the window when it conflicts with their worldview.

What makes scientific findings objective truth? I’m not denying that they can be; I’m just wondering how you come to that conclusion.

@structureoftruth

To me, writing off all the evidence for real history by saying “God is an artist” greatly diminishes the grandeur of what God has done in creation. It casts him as merely imitating when he can create the real thing.

What is God imitating? I assume you believe nothing existed eternally except God. Remember we are made in God’s image. As artists we would be imitating him, except we cannot create matter and light out of nothing as He did.

I could also say something similar to you: Writing off the evidence of real history in the Bible diminishes the grandeur of what God has done in creation. It casts him as only setting up the laws of creation, rather than showing they are bend to and submit to His will.

When anyone talks about God and grandeur I will think of this poem. God's Grandeur by Gerard Manley Hopkins | Poetry Foundation

@RonSewell

Besides all that, don’t you think it is fun to unravel out how it all happened? When you see these images that humanity was denied for millennia, are you not curious to explore the events that led up to it? Personally, I find a universe with a dynamic history, and unfolding in all its variety from such a parsimonious set of rules, to be a much more intriguing creation.

Sure I think it is fun to unravel how it all happened. That’s why I began studying science and Genesis 1 more carefully. But thank you for being honest that you think current models are more intriguing than Genesis 1 read plainly.

[RonSewell (RonS)]

@thoughtful

Writing off the evidence of real history in the Bible diminishes the grandeur of what God has done in creation. It casts him as only setting up the laws of creation, rather than showing they are bend to and submit to His will.

When anyone talks about God and grandeur I will think of this poem. God’s Grandeur by Gerard Manley Hopkins | Poetry Foundation

That an acceptance of science can be compatible with faith and even inspirational of worship is captured in the Hillsong chorus, So Will I, which was both popular and controversial in the church.

All nature and science
Follow the sound of Your voice

And as You speak
A hundred billion creatures catch Your breath
Evolving in pursuit of what You said
if it all reveals Your nature so will I
I can see Your heart in everything You say
Every painted sky
A canvas of Your grace
If creation still obeys You so will I

The author, Joel Houston, was quite clear that he accepted the big bang, and that evolution was undeniable, although he also saw God as the source throughout the process.

If you lean more to a country twang, there is always the Judd’s Big Bang Boogie.