The Age of the Universe Depends on WhereYou Are

My wife and I sometimes enjoy watching nature programs on cable television about life in the sea or life in Africa.  During the show, usually sometime close to the beginning of the program we will hear the narrator mention how many millions of years ago a species came into existence and what the species evolved from. There is never an explanation of the basis for the claim; it is simply stated as fact. This post is not an attempt to debate the controversy of humans evolving from lower animals. We will certainly blog about that at a later time. This post is to educate the reader about the methods devised to determine how old something is and the assumptions that are made to support these methods.

 According to secular scientist, it is settled that the universe is approximately 13.7 billion years old and the Earth is approximately 4.5 billion years old. A variety of “scientific” methods have been developed to support these claims. One thing we plan to do is to interview college students and ask their opinion as to the age of the Earth and ask them to explain how they arrived at their opinion. We will publish these results in a later blog.

Let us begin at the beginning and discuss the age of the universe. In the book, Starlight and Time, Dr. Russell Humphreys explains that the measure of time in the universe is not the same everywhere; in fact, time passes at different rates depending on factors including the magnitude of the force of gravity. The accepted theory of Black Holes in the universe is that any object or even light sucked into a Black Hole cannot escape because of the massive force of gravity. In other words, the velocity of light is not a constant. This understood theory means that light will travel at a much slower rate under the influence of massive amounts of gravity. Dr. Humphreys' theory is that the creation event took place in the vicinity of where the earth now resides and that the entire mass of the universe was centered here. As the universe rapidly expanded, time passed much faster away from the center of mass. As the universe expanded, time would pass faster as the mass increased its distance from the center of gravity. If you were able to be on the outside edge of this expansion, the rate of the passage of time would not seem unusual to you just as it would not seem unusual to someone left behind at the center of gravity. Both would experience time passing at a normal rate but there would be a vast comparative difference. In other words, one could experience 13.7 billion years while the other could experience only 6000 years. The math is complicated, but it has been worked out and it is in the realm of possibilities. This phenomenon is due to the fact that the rate of time passing is not a constant but varies depending on the value of gravity at a point in the universe.

What about the theory that we see light from galaxies that are 13.7 billion light years from earth? If the Earth is near the center of the universe, this would be the original point of the source of the light.

When astrophysicists measured the rate of the acceleration of the universe, they understood that there was not enough visible matter in the universe to explain the rate. Their solution was that the overwhelming type of matter in the universe was “dark matter”, the kind we cannot see.  As a counter to that theory, in the Proceedings ofthe National Academy of Science, two mathematicians, Blake Temple and Joel Smoller suggest a solution to the accelerating universe that doesn’t require conjuring up anything like “dark matter” — in fact, it doesn’t require conjuring up anything new at all. Their solution works with the current laws of physics we already have. Their solution? That the acceleration seen is due to an expanding shockwave that occurred after the Big Bang–a shockwave that would have originated very near the Earth. Did you catch that? A shockwave, plowing through the universe and spreading out the galaxies that originated near the Earth.

It is understood that this will not sit well with established science in that it flies in the face of The Copernican Principle that states that the Earth is not in a special place in the universe and has no special significance. Actually the only thing that Copernicus demonstrated was that the whole universe did not rotate around the Earth, but that the Earth rotated around the Sun. His discoveries were later expanded by scientist to claim that Earth was mediocre and not privileged in any way.

This blog post is not an attempt to claim that it is absolutely true that the earth is at or near the center of the universe, but an exercise in critical thinking so that we understand the concepts that are presented as scientific fact, are not necessarily the truth.

When you let your mind challenge scientific statements and start asking questions about the veracity of what you have been taught, you find that behind some claims is not the truth, but a desire to validate someone’s philosophy.  Then you will know the truth and the truth will set you free, John 8: 32 NIV.

A Universe Fine Tuned for Life

 

Last Christmas season, my wife and I were invited to a party at a friend’s home. We met several people including a young man that was a physics professor with a PhD in physics. I engaged him in conversation about the universe by asking him a series of questions. For example, I ask him “How do you think the universe came into existence?” His answer was predictable. He answered that it all started in the Big Bang about 14 billion years ago. Then I ask him “What was the cause of the Big Bang?” His answer was that he did not know and as far as he knew, no one did. When we started talking about evolution and I asked him “From what did protons, neutrons and electrons evolve”, he got a concerned look on his face and he changed the subject.

In the book The Privileged Planet, the authors show, by statistical analysis, that the universe is fine tuned for life and the odds that life exists in this universe is almost negligible. In other words, the conditions in the universe necessary for life to exist are very complex to the point that except for a Designer, we could not be here. A couple of examples of the conditions needed for life are the values of gravity and the electromagnetic force.  These are the only two forces in the universe except for the strong and weak nuclear forces-forces that we mere mortals cannot personally observe.

When I used to teach mechanical engineering at the University of Louisville in the 1980’s, the first thing I would always share with my class was the formula for the value of gravity- F=G x m1 x m2/r squared. I explained that the “F” stood for the force due to gravity and the “m1 & m2” represented two masses in the universe such as a human being and the earth and the “r” was the distance between the 2 masses. The only symbol that doesn’t represent anything tangible is the “G”. This is the fudge factor inserted into the equation to make everything work in the computation.  The value of “G” is 0.0000000000667384.  I then ask the class “Why is that the value?” Science did not decide the value; science observed the value. Who designed the value? A similar philosophical analysis can be made concerning the formula for the electromagnetic force between two electrically charged bodies and the constant “k”.

Getting back to the conditions necessary for life, if these constants were only slightly different values life would not be possible in the universe. In the book, The Privileged Planet, there are 20 other factors necessary for life detailed and discussed. The Truth is, science is not a participant in nature, it is only an observer and may I add a somewhat less than enlightened observer. It does take some intellect to observe God’s handiwork but it takes arrogance to try to eliminate Him from the formula.

I leave you with Psalm 19: 1-4

The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
 Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge.
 They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them.
 Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.

“Then you will know the Truth and the Truth will set you free.” John 8: 32.

Beginning in the Beginning

Something is eternal! This is a self-evident truth. Try to imagine the universe coming into existence without a cause. To believe that you would certainly deny all of science. Even secular science teaches without exception that everything and every event that we observe has a cause. Wait a minute; I miswrote. Secular science has accepted that the universe with all its complexity, sprung into existence without a cause anyone can discern. Whoops! One more thing. Secular science has no credible explanation for the cause of the origin of life. 

A thing came into existence at some point in time or it has always been here. Think about it. When I was in high school in the 60’s, we were taught that the universe(matter and space) was eternal; it had no beginning and will have no end. Now students are taught that the universe came into existence out of nothing and will end at some point. They are told that science has proven that the universe is expanding rapidly and had a beginning. The question is not “was there a beginning of the universe” but “how did the universe come into existence”. In this blog we will explore the evidence from true science. 

Many believers in the Bible say that we should not mix science and faith. True, the Bible is not a text book, but where it speaks about the earth and the universe, it is accurate. For example, science teaches that we live in a space, time and matter universe. You may ask what about energy; all energy comes from matter therefore they are the same. In first verse in the Bible, the writer described this scientific principal when he wrote “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” The beginning-Time. He created the heavens-Space and the Earth-matter. Genesis 1:1 described the scientific basis for our existence. 

Secular scientist have a story about how the first element was Hydrogen and all the other naturally occurring elements, 97 of them, were formed by fusion at very high temperatures. There is a serious problem with this story. All of the elements are made of sub-atomic particles such as protons, neutrons, electrons, quarks etcetera. We think we know that protons and neutrons are made of quarks, but no one seems to know what quarks are made of for that matter, where they came from. The chemical evolutionist has a major problem with the question “How did quarks evolve?” or “How did electrons evolve?”. When you go back to the beginning, evolutionary theory has no answers.  

It seems to me that we need to go where the evidence leads us. So the question remains, “What is eternal?”, matter or a Creator of matter.  Since secular science has decided that the universe had a beginning and that matter is not eternal, it seems logical that whoever created the matter is eternal.

When, As disclosed in the book, published in 1994 and the corresponding DVD, The Privileged Planet, it became obvious that the mathematical odds of life existing in the universe was so low that it was basically impossible, secular origin of life researchers were driven to a theory of an infinite number of parallel universes dubbed “The Multiverse”. This theory exists without a shred of scientific evidence therefore has become an article of “faith” by those scientist that believe that the admission that a Supreme Creator can possibly exist violates their “theology”. They certainly do not subscribe to Biblical theology but a theology nonetheless. 

To illustrate the lack of facts to support the “Multiverse” belief, Scientific American published an article about the concept. The article states:

        The notion of parallel universes leapt out of the pages of fiction into scientific journals in the 1990s. Many scientists claim that mega-millions of other universes, each with its own laws of physics, lie out there, beyond our visual horizon. They are collectively known as the multiverse.

The trouble is that no possible astronomical observations can ever see those other universes. The arguments are indirect at best. And even if the multiverse exists, it leaves the deep mysteries of nature unexplained.

The intro to the article also states, “Proof of parallel universes radically different from our own may still lie beyond the domain of science.” 

Back to the Privileged Planet. The authors have made a case that the mathematical odds for life existing, nether the less coming into being by pure chance, in our universe is somewhere between statistically negligible to downright impossible. Guillermo Gonzalez is an Assistant Professor of Astronomy at Iowa State University, received his Ph.D. in Astronomy in 1993 from the University of Washington and Jay W. Richards is Vice President and Senior Fellow of the Discovery Institute in Seattle. He received his Ph.D. with honors in philosophy and theology from Princeton Theological Seminary. As they pen in  the aforementioned book:

Elsewhere you might learn that Earth and its local environment provide a delicate, and probably exceedingly rare, cradle for complex life. But there's another, even more startling, fact, described in The Privileged Planet: those same rare conditions that produce a habitable planet-that allow for the existence of complex observers like ourselves-also provide the best overall place for observing. What does this mean? At the least, it turns our view of the universe inside out. The universe is not "pointless" (Steven Weinberg), Earth merely "a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark," (Carl Sagan) and human existence "just a more-or-less farcical outcome of a chain of accidents" (Steven Weinberg). On the contrary, the evidence we can uncover from our Earthly home points to a universe that is designed for life, and designed for discovery. 

By the way, the odds documented in the DVD of life existing in our universe is 1000 trillion to 1.

In conclusion, the beginning of time is well documented in Genesis 1, meanwhile science is still struggling with its version of the truth.  As we have stated previously, we will follow the evidence where it leads. The question that we ask in this particular blog is “What is supported by the facts that we know, a universe that sprung into existence by the power of an eternal God or by an eternal something that science has no clue about?” 

Please follow me in our journey to the truth.