JAMES WEBB SPACE TELESCOPE PROVIDES EVIDENCE FOR BIBLICAL CREATION MODEL

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We have previously reported that observations of distant galaxies using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) are contrary to the predictions of the Big Bang but match predictions of biblical creation.  Now, new observations of the angular sizes of distant galaxies challenge one of the essential underlying assumptions of the Big Bang – that the “fabric” of space is expanding as galaxies recede. 

Without an expanding space, a big bang is impossible.  These observations support a new creation-based model of cosmology – the Doppler model – which makes specific quantitative predictions about future observations.

Predictions

The Doppler model allows us to make predictions regarding future JWST observations that differ from the predictions of the Big Bang based on the FLRW metric (The metric that describes an expanding or collapsing universe named after the four founding physicists: Friedmann-Lemaitre-Walker-Robertson). The median angular diameter of galaxies beyond a redshift of 20 should continue to be smaller than galaxies at low redshifts.  In particular, the Doppler model predicts the median diameter of galaxies beyond a redshift of 20 to be around 0.2 arcseconds.  This is roughly ten times smaller than the predictions based on the FLRW metric.  Furthermore, The Doppler model predicts that such galaxies will be fainter by more than one magnitude.  Time will tell which model is correct.

Note that these are specific, quantitative predictions.  Successful specific predictions are the hallmark of good science. Dr. James Lisle suggests that the Big Bang is not good science as it does not make specific successful predictions.  Furthermore, it is inconsistent with the latest JWST observations of galaxy sizes and brightnesses.  In addition, the Big Bang has difficulty accommodating the existence of galaxies at such high redshifts since they have had so little time to form according to secular assumptions. Lisle predicts that galaxies will continue to be discovered at higher redshifts, up to the detection limit of the JWST.

Conclusions

The angular sizes and apparent brightnesses of distant galaxies are consistent with the Doppler model and not with the Big Bang.  To be clear, the universe is indeed expanding because the average distance between galaxies increases with time as these galaxies move through space.  But the fabric of space is not expanding.  The FLRW metric is wrong.  This affects the estimated sizes of distant galaxies because the FLRW metric predicts a magnification effect that is simply not seen.  The implication is that distant galaxies are about the same size and brightness on average as nearby galaxies.  Thus, there is no evidence of galaxy evolution over the supposed billions of years.  Thus the Doppler model fits the natural expectation of a “recent” (thousands of years ago) supernaturally created universe.  The Doppler model is compatible with the ASC model that explains how distant starlight reaches Earth within the biblical timescale.

This creation-based Doppler model makes specific quantitative predictions about the angular diameters and brightnesses of galaxies that will be discovered in future JWST images.  Namely, these will have an average angular diameter of 0.2 arcseconds, roughly ten times smaller than the Big Bang model predicts.  And such galaxies will be fainter than Big Bang predictions by a little over 1 magnitude (2.5 times).

This is a very exciting time to be a biblical creationist.  All the observations coming from the JWST confirm biblical creation models, and none are supportive of a Big Bang.  In fact, these latest observations are absolutely devastating to Big Bang interpretations.  And since models like Doppler and ASC make specific predictions about future observations, creation scientists are now leading the way in cosmology research.

This article is an extract from an article by Dr Jason Lisle: New James Webb Space Telescope Observations Challenge the Big Bang | Aug 2, 2024 | Astronomy on http://www.biblicalscienceinstitute.com

NUCLEAR ENGINEER STAUNCHLY DEFENDS BIBLICAL CREATION

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Dr Jonathan Corrado (B.S., M.S., M.S. (hons.), M.Div., Th.M., Ph.D.) has degrees in science, engineering, and theology. His highest is a Ph.D. in Systems Engineering from Colorado State University and his Master of Theology is from Liberty University. He has extensive experience in systems engineering and nuclear science, including research, development, and management. Dr Corrado has authored both secular and creationist scientific papers, theological papers, and a book in his field and one on spiritual deception.

Dr Corrado currently works in both the defence and nuclear industries as a manager and engineer and is a senior officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve. He is married to Erin, who is a Christian singer-songwriter. They have four children.

Dr Corrado’s science beginnings

Dr C. says he has been interested since childhood: Even in preschool, I said that when I grew up, I wanted to be a scientist, because they looked impressive in a white lab coat! I enjoyed science classes because I enjoyed learning how things worked. I gained an appreciation from an early age of how integrated, complex, and well-designed the natural world is.

From his observations, he realized there must be an intelligent Creator. However, as Romans 1:18 says, such general revelation is enough to deny atheists any excuses but is insufficient for salvation. For salvation, we need special revelation: “When I was saved, the identity of this intelligent designer was made clear.”

Bible: true and self-consistent.

The Bible reveals the beginning of the Cosmos and its end. Man’s purpose and destiny is given. We are given answers to all of life’s pressing questions: why is there death and suffering and what God has done to redeem mankind. Fulfilled prophecy proves the Bible is the inspired Word of God. I have discovered that the Bible is a unified whole, the product of engineered design by a perfect Creator. The Bible, down to the smallest letter and part of a letter (Matthew 5:18), is there for our learning, discovery, and amazement. Truly, our God is an awesome God!

He found that many Bible difficulties disappear “if one simply recognizes the unity and integrity of the 66 books, composed by 40 authors over thousands of years (Proverbs 25:2).”

This deep study brought me to Christ and an understanding of salvation and its implications. Since I’ve been saved, I can’t stop studying the Bible and discovering the complexity and integrity of this perfect book. God never gave up on me through my years of disobedience, and now, I will not give up on Him.

Scientific support for the Bible

As a graduate of the Virginia Military Institute (VMI), one of his heroes is Matthew Fontaine Maury (1806–1873), a past VMI faculty member. Many plaques are dedicated to Maury as ‘Pathfinder of the Seas’, which arose from his devout Christianity and in reference to Psalm 8:8 (creation.com/maury).

“As a naval officer who has sailed the seas, Psalm 8:8 is undoubtedly true and gives credibility to the Bible’s scientific claims.” He also listed many other arguments for God’s existence (cf. creation.com/arguments-for-god.)

Long ages vs the Bible?

The Bible teaches that the world is a little over 6,000 years old (creation.com/6000-years). This is often called a ‘young’ earth creation model, but it’s young only in relation to the dogma of billions of years. In reality, 6,000 years is very old (creation.com/earth-how-old).

Dr C. agrees with CMI that one doesn’t need to believe in a ‘young’ earth to be saved (see creation.com/can-christians-believe-evolution.) However, there are still huge problems with trying to mix long ages with Scripture.

Dr Corrado points out that long-age views don’t come from the biblical text, but must be imposed from outside. This includes the day-age theory, theistic evolution, progressive creationism, and gap theory. However, this affects how one interprets the early chapters of Genesis and spills over into the rest of Scripture.

“If these obviously historical chapters are interpreted as symbolic and/or poetic, then the question becomes: when should Genesis (and really the Bible at large) no longer be interpreted this way? This becomes a subjective determination.”

Instead, he explains that the grammatical-historical method is the right way to understand Scripture. This method considers all figures of speech and literary forms in the text as the writer expressed it and how its original readers would have understood it.

When reading any work of literature, particularly the Bible, we must determine the author’s message, context, and intent, not our interpretation. God intended such exegesis, which is why He instructs us to handle the word of truth correctly (2 Tim 2:15). When the Lord Jesus quoted the Old Testament, He clearly held to a grammatical- historical interpretation [creation.com/nt].

For example, in Luke 4, when Satan tempted Jesus, He responded by quoting from the Old Testament. If God’s commands in Deut 8:3, 6:13, and 6:16 had not been literal, Jesus would not have used them, and they would not have had the power to stop Satan’s mouth, which they did. Additionally, the disciples followed Christ’s (Bible-based) directives.

The Bible, taken in the grammatical- historical sense, clearly indicates a young Earth. I also believe that unbiased scientific inquiry supports this claim.

Dr C. also pointed out a key problem with trying to mix long ages with the Bible:

God created everything ‘very good’ (Genesis 1:31), and there was initially no death. Death does not occur until Genesis 3 when Adam sinned. But evolution requires the death of countless creatures for today’s living world to have arisen. And even non-evolutionary long-age views must have death before sin because fossils of both humans and animals are ‘dated’ long before Adam.

Evidence for a ‘young’ earth

Dr C. thinks the best scientific evidence for a ‘young’ earth is its decaying magnetic field:

Historical measurements indicate that Earth’s magnetic field experiences a loss of approximately 50% of its energy every 1,400 years. Even if past reversals of the field are disregarded, which would have further depleted its energy, the maximum age of the Earth’s magnetic field is about 20,000 years. Any older, the electrical current needed for such a strong field would have been large enough to melt the whole earth.

But a decaying field is consistent with God creating the earth about 6,000 years ago, with an electrical current that generates magnetism. And this current decays exponentially as per standard electrical theory (see creation.com/magfield).

Evolutionary geophysicists must claim that Earth has maintained a magnetic field for billions of years. However, they lack a comprehensive understanding of how this could happen.

To sustain such a current, an electrical generator—a dynamo—operating within the interior of the Earth would be necessary. But how could such a generator spontaneously form? Despite a century of investigation, conventional scientists continue to be unable to develop a functional dynamo theory.1

Quantum mechanics and Christianity

Some Christians mistakenly think quantum mechanics (QM) is problematic for Christianity. I disagree (see creation.com/qm), but wanted Dr C.’s take on the issue as a nuclear scientist.

In reply, he quoted one of the world’s leading experts, physicist (and atheist) Richard Feynman (1918–1988). Feynman shared the 1965 Nobel Prize for physics for his discoveries in quantum electrodynamics. But he admitted, “I think I can safely say that nobody really understands quantum mechanics,” and Dr C. agrees that this still holds. He says:

QM’s inf luence on one’s perception of God is primarily determined by personal motivations—and one’s worldview— rather than physics. The scientific method has proven to be a highly effective approach for uncovering the mechanisms by which God achieved specific aspects of His creative endeavours. Acquiring knowledge about the universe’s physical systems does not alter the undeniable existence of the designer and creator who established them. In my opinion, quantum physics, similar to other scientific fields, is entirely consistent with God’s biblical teachings.

However, he points out that atheists have abused QM for their own ends. E.g., Lawrence Krauss (b. 1954), a theoretical physicist and cosmologist, as well as a vociferous antitheist, wrote the book A Universe from Nothing (2012—see creation.com/krauss). Here and elsewhere, Krauss asserts that the universe could come into existence out of nothing (without God).

However, his ‘nothing’ was not really nothing—but something. In particular, it was the quantum vacuum with properties, including energies and quantum fields. Even if our universe had come out of a quantum vacuum, one would still have to explain where the quantum vacuum came from.

Advice for Christians wanting a scientific career?

Science was founded on a biblical worldview, and most of its founders were biblical creationists (creation.com/name-game). So there is excellent precedent for young Christians wanting to become scientists (or engineers or doctors). Dr C. says to such people:

If you have an interest in science or engineering, pursue it! The scientific community needs more Christians in its ranks to counter secular theories (e.g., naturalism and evolution) with biblical truth, uplift God as the intelligent Designer and brilliant Creator that He is, and inject unbiased science back into the evolution/creation debate. The biblical worldview is sound, accurate, reasonable, and grounded in truth, and we need more scientists to defend this position.

HOW DISTANT STARLIGHT CAN REACH EARTH IN 6000 YEARS

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by Mark Harwood

Recent developments in creationist cosmology offer an elegant explanation of the distant starlight question which is consistent with the Genesis account of creation and is based on recent astronomical observations and Einstein’s General Relativity equations. Whilst a detailed explanation of this new cosmology is beyond the scope of this Feedback article, it is explained more fully in Harnett’s article “Has dark matter really been proven?” http://www.creation.com

This article provides a framework for understanding the answer to the distant starlight question. The key elements are time dilation, the recent observations showing that we live in a galactocentric universe, and the Scriptural references to God ‘stretching out the heavens’ on Day 4 of the Creation Week.

An experimentally verified prediction of Einstein’s General Relativity Theory is a phenomenon called gravitational time dilation. It has long been established that gravity affects the rate at which time flows in any particular location in the universe.

Another mechanism for time dilation is a rapid acceleration of the fabric of space in an expanding universe. This is explained more fully in Hartnett’s article referenced above.

We live in a galactocentric universe: Standard Big Bang theory has it that the universe has neither a centre nor an edge which is an assumption, called the Cosmological Principle, designed to avoid the earth being a special place. If the Earth was special in any way, it would imply design and thus a Designer which flies in the face of atheistic evolutionary belief. When Edwin Hubble discovered the redshift in the spectra of stars and galaxies and interpreted them as distance (known as the Hubble Law), he was horrified at the implication that the Earth could be in a special place. He wrote: ‘Such a condition [red shifts] would imply that we occupy a unique position in the universe … But the unwelcome supposition of a favoured location must be avoided at all costs … [and] is intolerable … moreover, it represents a discrepancy with the theory because the theory postulates homogeneity.’1

Recent surveys3,4 have measured the galactic redshift for around 250,000 galaxies and have revealed an over abundance of galaxies at certain redshifts in which the data departs from the expected theoretical distribution in a series of large spikes. A straightforward interpretation of this data is that the galaxies are distributed with a spherical shell-like symmetry with the Milky Way galaxy at or near the centre! Such a result is entirely consistent with the biblical picture but is at odds with standard big bang beliefs and is not consistent with the Cosmological Principle.

In at least 11 places, the Scriptures speak of God ‘stretching out the heavens’ (e.g. Job 9:8, Isaiah 40:22 and 42:5, Jeremiah 10:12, Zechariah 12:1) and in Genesis 1:15 the words ‘And it was so.’ are recorded in connection with the events of Day 4 of Creation Week, implying the completion of the events described on that Day. It is a reasonable conclusion to draw that God stretched out the heavens to the vast extent of the observable universe in just one 24 hour day and then ceased the action of ‘stretching out’. This is more rational than the inflation fudge of big bangers discussed above. That is, where the universe just happened to expand much faster than light, although there is no known physical cause for starting or stopping this superluminal expansion.

We should also note that God created the Earth first before the sun, moon and stars (and by inference the planets etc) so it would seem reasonable to assume the universe was stretched out with the Earth at or very near its centre. Furthermore, Psalm 147:4 and Isaiah 40:26 imply that there is a finite number of stars in the universe. So, the Bible seems to teach that we live in a finite universe that has, at the very least, our Milky Way galaxy at its centre.

We now have the keys to understanding how starlight can reach us from such vast distances in just a few thousand years of Earth time. The days of the Creation Week were recorded from the point of view of an observer on the earth so the time reference in Genesis is Earth time. On Day 4, as God commenced stretching out the heavens, the mass of the universe (presumably including the ‘waters above’ which were separated out on Day 2) would have been confined to a much smaller volume of space than is the case today. Assuming the Hartnett–Carmeli theory is correct, the Universe rapidly expanded with massive time dilation as a result of very rapid acceleration of the fabric of space on Day 4. By the end of Day 4, when God completed his work of creating the sun, moon and stars, and had stretched out the heavens to their vast extent, billions of years of cosmic time could have elapsed at the outer edges of the cosmos in just one 24 hour earth day. There would have been more than enough time for the light from distant stars to have reached the earth so that when Adam gazed at the night sky on that sixth night he would have seen much the same as what we see today.

6,000 years have passed since the Creation Week. If the models outlined above are correct, the light we see today from any star that is greater than 6,000 light years away from the earth will have originated on Day 4 itself. This would include most of the visible stars, all of which are part of the Milky Way galaxy. We are effectively looking at God’s creative activity on Day 4 as we gaze into the universe!

So what do we make of supernova 1987A? At 170,000 light years away we are looking at an event that occurred on Day 4 but whose light did not reach us until 1987.

Is an exploding star consistent with a perfect creation? God said that the stars were created to be for signs and seasons (Genesis 1:14) and God foreknew all that would happen right from the very beginning. What to us seems to be destruction is actually just a physical process which does not necessarily denote any lack of perfection in the original creation. Importantly, there is no loss of biblical life involved (the creatures affected by death brought about by the Fall were those the Bible calls נֶפֶשׁ חַיָּה (nephesh chayyāh)).6

Another excellent resource on the light travel dilemma is previewed in the video below.

EVANGELISE MORE EFFECTIVELY WITH CMI RESOURCES

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Creation Ministries International (CMI), including their flagship Creation magazine, exists to help readers worldwide love God with their minds and imitate Christ in logical thinking. In every issue, they interview good examples of that; in their latest issue Vol 45, Issue 2 it is geographer Dr. Sarah Buckland from Jamaica (pp. 18–21) and biologist Dr. KeeFui Kon from Singapore (pp. 36–39). They also show how biblical creation is logically illustrated by super designs, such as the golden plover (pp. 24–25) and even the air we breathe (pp. 50–52).

And he [Jesus] said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” Matthew 22:37

“In your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect, having a good conscience” 1 Peter 3:15

“​ Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.” 1 Corinthians 11:1

What else is in the latest edition? Proof of the flood of Noah’s day, which must logically be global (Genesis 6–8). With an intense process like the Flood, we don’t need millions of years. And millions of years are necessary (but not sufficient) for evolution from goo to you via the zoo. The Flood explains the spectacular ammolite (pp. 12–13) and the wide Nile valley (p. 56). But God rescued a remnant of people (such as Shem, pp. 46–48) and animals on a massive Ark (pp. 32–35). After the Flood, people and animals migrated around the world, such as rafting monkeys (pp. 14–17).

A team of scientists at Australia’s Monash University has “discovered a new universal rule of biological growth that explains surprising similarities in the shapes of sharp structures” across a vast array of living things.

Our universe is governed by many precise and universal physical-mathematical laws, reflecting its lawgiving Creator. Many medieval founders of science, such as Roger Bacon, Robert Grosseteste, and Thomas Bradwardine taught that the Creator upheld the creation in the language of mathematics. Centuries later, Galileo wrote that the universe is “written in mathematical language”. So the discovery that structures in living creatures follow a mathematical power law is fascinating, but not surprising.

This is just a small example of the valuable content of the Creation magazine. You need to subscribe. Go to http://www.creation.com to do so. I have at least 100 copies of back issues of Creation magazine if anyone wants some email me at ron@bakb.com.au.

SCIENCE AROSE OUT OF BELIEF IN THE GOD OF THE BIBLE

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This post is extracted from a great article – Christian theology and the rise of Newtonian science—imposed law and the divine will by Dominic Statham in Journal of Creation 32(2):103–109, August 2018

“At the heart of scientific enquiry is the faith that the world is orderly and behaves consistently from one day to the next.1 One might ask, however, how this belief arose. According to Peter Harrison, formerly Professor of Science and Religion at Oxford University, it was, in a large part, “the theologically informed assumption that there are laws of nature, promulgated by God and able to be discovered by human minds (emphasis added)”.2 Eminent Philosopher of Science Alfred North Whitehead would agree. He wrote: “My explanation is that the faith in the possibility of science, generated antecedently to the development of modern scientific theory, is an unconscious derivative from medieval theology.”3

Platonic thinking was antithetical to science because it detracted from the view that the world could be understood by learning from observations. In contrast, biblical thinking pointed to this as the only way of discovering reality. The Bible teaches that God is omnipotent and was in no way constrained to create according to any prescribed pattern.

The rejection of Greek thinking by the founders of modern science is exemplified in Roger Cotes’ preface to the second edition of Isaac Newton’s Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy):

“Without all doubt this World … could arise from nothing but the perfectly free will of God directing and presiding over all. From this fountain it is that those laws, which we call the laws of Nature, have flowed; in which there appear many traces indeed of the most wise contrivance, but not the least shadow of necessity. These therefore we must not seek from uncertain conjectures; but learn them from observations and experiments.”

Newton himself, in the very first sentence of his preface, wrote of how modern thinkers, having discarded “[soulish] substantial forms and occult qualities have endeavoured to subject the phenomena of nature to the laws of mathematics”. A committed biblical creationist, he also rejected the Greek view that God would have been constrained in His acts of creation in any way. He wrote of God:

“ … we admire him for his perfections; but we reverence and adore him on account of his dominion … and a God without dominion, providence, and final causes [i.e. design], is nothing else but Fate [i.e. necessity] and Nature.”20

Newton also wrote:

“This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being. … This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as Lord over all; and on account of his dominion he is wont to be called Lord God or Universal Ruler.”27

Plato taught that the cosmos created by the Demiurge was a living organism, that the world had a divine soul, and the stars and planets were gods. In a similar vein, Aristotle taught that stones fall to the ground because they have a yearning for the centre of the universe (which he believed to be the centre of the earth). Such thinking was an obstruction to science because it attributed causes of motion to motives and inner compulsions, rather than to impersonal, external forces.21

In contrast, the Bible clearly distinguishes between the Creator and the creature (i.e. that which was created). God is spirit (John 4:24) and is a being separate from the world.

The lawgiver

The God of the Bible is the lawgiver in both the moral and physical realms. He gave the 10 commandments to Moses (Exodus 20:3–17) and wrote the requirements of the law on the hearts of men so that they “by nature do what the law requires” (Romans 2:14–15). He is the one who gathered the waters together (Genesis 1:9) and “assigned to the sea its limit, so that the waters might not transgress his command” (Proverbs 8:29). He “made a decree for the rain and a way for the lightning of the thunder” (Job 28:26). He created the sun to govern the day and night (Genesis 1:16), “commanded the morning … and caused the dawn to know its place” (Job 38:12). He created the stars to mark the seasons (Genesis 1:14), knows “the ordinances of the heavens”, and established “their rule on the earth” (Job 38:33). He continually “upholds the universe by the word of his power” (Hebrews 1:3).

Picture of the father of mathematics Rene Descartes (1596-1650)

rene-descartes

He stated that “the rules of nature are identical with the rules of mechanics” and, in his Le Monde (The World), he asserted “that God is immutable, and that acting always in the same manner, He produces always the same effect”. These laws, he said, are not immanent but ‘imposed’ on nature by God.39 

The courses of the planets, the oceanic tides and the universe in general are regular and predictable because they are determined by the God of the Bible who is faithful and sure. Descartes’ contention that the natural world is governed by an unchanging God, and hence behaves consistently from one day to the next, was an essential step in scientific progress.

The belief that there are laws imposed upon a world by an orderly, faithful, and immutable God caused philosophers to see the universe as a designed mechanism, rather than an eternally existing organism. This, in turn, led to the belief that the workings of God’s creation could be investigated, understood, and described mathematically. All this hung on the Christian doctrine of creation, as articulated so clearly in the Nicene Creed: “We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of all things visible and invisible.”