@stcordova I see you are hanging in there. I prefer a young cosmos and I hope you are right in the end. However, an old one is beautiful and glorifies the creator just as well - with many less problems. But I admire your resilience.
Theological question. You are YEC so you should be fairly easy to engage on this topic. Concerning the lengths of the Genesis days of creation, do you agree that we (speaking from a YEC perspective) do not know the duration of days 1 and 7 ?
I donāt know. Iām trusting God will provide the data we need to resolve many questions, just as he did to help us resolve the GeoCentrism debate. Iām inclined to say approximately a 24 hour day, but weāll see, God willing.
Letās discuss day 1. Do we know its length was 24 hours? Perhaps we could be dogmatic about days 2 -6 but can we be the same for day 1. That is the question.
Near the top of day 1 light is created. Letās say it has a cosmic source since it does strike the earth and divides the planet around its girth into day/night.
The obvious question becomes ā Is the planet rotating in 24 hour periodic fashion by this early time?
You will reply āI donāt knowā so let me continue.
Letās say the planet is stationary. No life has yet been created so there really is no reason to assume that it is rotating at this point.
Letās say day 1 is in reality billions of years long by todayās standard of ordinal time/light speed, etc.
Who could argue that by the time the planet makes its first rotation, we are thereat, looking at the completion of creation day 1? Without the demand of ordinal time as we know it today in 24 hour periods, who could know how long day 1 really lasted other than sayingā¦wellā¦it was one day longā¦!
Now consider that God really did create the [complete] heavens and earth āin the beginningā - that is, at the top of day 1. That would include innumerable galaxies full of stars.
Question. Please answer this one if you can. As YEC, are you dogmatic about the idea that God created the galaxies on day 4 ?
I donāt know, Iām undecided, but what I know is the fossil record looks young to me, so does life, likely the solar system, thatās about all I can guess at. By way of extension it seems reasonable the rest is young. The eschatology of the signs in the heavens suggests fast transport of light. As to the rest of your question, I havenāt really thought about it, and I sense there is not agreement in the YEC/YCC community on the matter. But most lean on galaxies being created Day 4, and I do too. But Iām willing to change my mind.
That said, I would prefer to talk about the data and theory issues of cosmology right now.
Then I will leave you with this. The boxed in Hebrew below is āetā and can be translated āalong withā. That would mean that even YECās could not legitimately overturn the idea that the text there says
God created the moon to rule the night along with the stars [which were already created early on day 1]
Think it over. I believe you will realize that that single idea - if indeed it is fact - changes everything.
You think itās young cosmos, old earth, young life? Now thatās a unique blend I havenāt seen before.
@stcordova and @r_speir this is a fascinating conversation to observe, a conversation between a young life (old earth) and a young earth creationist. I really want to understand how you hash out your differences.
Everyone else, please donāt interfere with that exchange, though feel free to chime in helpful ways if you can.
Those were my sentiments about 10 years ago. Personally the grandeur of the universe seems on an intuitive level to accord with something ancient and almost eternal, like God. One physicist said the universe would reflect Godās immortality if the universe were immortal itself. That certainly resonated with me on some level. And so did evolutionary theory when I was an evolutionist. The idea of ever increasing good resonated with me ā that was more of Theistic evolutionary viewpoint for sure. One many levels I wish it were so.
But as Huxley said (and Iām not a Huxley fan at all, but he got this one right):
The great tragedy of Science ā the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.
So Evolutionary theory, Old Cosmos, looked very beautiful to me, even evidence of God. But then I began to get acquainted with ugly facts. Rather than evolving upward for the better, the world looks designed but also CURSED. I see wasting and deterioration and suffering. Technology has given us relief for a season, but I donāt think humanity is improving genetically. I fear diseases will increase. As the Lord said, āwars and rumors of wars, famines, pestilenceā¦ā
So my views slowly got chipped away. Then was the fossil record. It looked young. I couldnāt run away from that. Richard Milton, who is an agnostic and no creationist, came to a similar conclusion. So have other non creationists, and my own survey of the literature forced me to the same conclusions.
Then I looked at Solar system evolution. I read this book:
And ironically, at that point I rejected an evolutionary origin of the solar system. Every chapter of the book ended, āthis is a difficult unresolved problem.ā The author was trying to attack creationism, but because of his scientific integrity in giving a balanced view, I became a Young Solar System Creationist ā say around 2004.
By way of extension, I began entertaining Young Cosmos creationism. But, unlike my views of the fossil record, Young Cosmos is not very defensible, except to point out what a crisis the Big Bang theory is in.
So, all this to say, Iām not trying to be indifferent to trying understand the Genesis text. But for me, I began to form opinions on how to properly read it and how I should believe it as I surveyed the data.
The data we have available today hasnāt reassured my understanding of all the Genesis texts, but thatās not to say God might not give us more data another day. Iāve seen this in my own personal and professional research over the last 20 years. Data not available 20 years ago has clarified things for me, not to mention, I began to learn things that were in textbooks that I didnāt know 20 years ago.
I still think Galaxies and Stars were specially created. The issues is when. The āhowā is by miracle. As my professor of 15 years ago gave āThe Fiver Reasons Galaxies Canāt Exist.ā Those problems are still problems today. Witness the search for likely non-existent Dark Matter.
This has always been a curiosity to me. Why are you equating an evolving Universe with the evolution of Life? Am I mistaken or is that what you are doing?
Itās an odd one, but you actually have a model here already. It requires a miracle but it works. Why donāt you start with what you have and begin to ābuildā this in words back to us (with some physics mixed in).
Begin with your three statements above in their stark, unembellished form and bring them together into a Universal whole. Think of the āfirmamentā and what it must look like for your statements to be true.
I am prompting you. You do have a model here.
Edit: this will also show what Lisle was trying to do, but missed it.
Edit2: donāt mess with the speed of light like Lisle did. Force it to be constant. Now, what absolutely must happen for your statements to be true?
This has always been a curiosity to me. Why are you equating an evolving Universe with the evolution of Life? Am I mistaken or is that what you are doing?
I wasnāt intending to equate them. However, Old Cosmos is a necessary, but not sufficient condition for Abiogenesis Theory and Evolutionary Theory to work.
The word āevolutionaryā for Solar System is a term that is used for the mechanical/physical assembly of the Sun and planets from some sort of nebular-type material floating around. Itās not the same as evolutionary theory in the biological sense.
But it is typical for space scientists, astrophysicists, cosmologists to use the word āevolutionā to describe the origin of celestial bodies.
If the galaxies were part of the firmament then an Old Cosmos could work. I never thought of that muchā¦
The issue for me is the creation of the sun and solar system which I do think is miraculous after reading āSolar System Evolutionā by Stuart Ross Taylor. The vegetables were created on Day 3, and if the sun and Moon on Day 4, then even if weāre flexible on 24 hour days, it canāt be too long lest the vegetables die. It is one way God may be communicating something in the ball park of 24 hour days.
Anyway, as I pondered the data, a more literal reading became believable.
And to be honest, my ID and creationists views came first before having stronger reverence for the Bible. I know that may sound horrible, but well, thatās were I was in 2004.
So if we had a model of Old Firmament that contained distant galaxies, that isnāt the most natural reading, but I could live with it personally.
BUT, the issue we all forget is eschatology. How will we see the powers of the heavens shaken, including the stars if there isnāt a fast transport light mechanism. Of course this itself could be a miracle, and Iām open to that.
That is what I wanted to hear.
Question: do you - and other YECs - feel like you avoid an old cosmos in protest to abiogenesis and evolution theory? Do you think more YECs would accept an old cosmos if evolution were not part of the picture?
Thatās an interesting idea!
Is YEC really about rejecting evolution or about upholding Scripture?
You are too tangled in details and anomalous data. You need your own model to satisfy the 85 -90% of cosmology we do understand and observe. Then you can begin to test what you have against the outliers.
But the model you are proposing takes care of that.
I do not want to show you what you do not want. Do you want to discuss an idea that you could potentially develop into a serious YEC cosmology? It may fail, but we do not know until we discuss it.
Again, you need a model of your own.