Creationist cosmologies

Part of a series on
Creationism

History of creationism
Neo-creationism
Types of creationism

Young Earth creationism
Old Earth creationism
Gap creationism
Day-age creationism
Progressive creationism
Intelligent design
Mythology and theology

Creation myth
Genesis creation narrative
Framework interpretation
Genesis as an allegory
Omphalos hypothesis
Creation science

Baraminology
Flood geology
Creation geophysics
Creationist cosmologies
Intelligent design
Controversy

History
Public education
Teach the Controversy
Particular religious views

Deist · Hindu · Islamic · Jewish
Pandeist
Book · Category · Portal

Creationist cosmologies encompass a variety of theories of young Earth creationists that are designed to support the religious belief of a literal reading of Genesis and that the universe is only a few thousand years old. Creationist cosmologies are often concerned with solving the "starlight problem"; that light from galaxies which are billions of light-years away take billions of years to reach Earth, in contradiction to a universe age of thousands of years. Attempts to explain away the scientific evidence for the age of the universe of 13.7 billion years has also been incorporated. Young Earth creationists re-interpret phenomena such as galactic redshifts and the cosmic microwave background to fit into their beliefs, though there is no single creationist model which attempts to uphold the cosmic microwave background as interpreted by the Standard Model. Young Earth creationists, along with advocates of intelligent design, believe that the universe is "finely tuned" for life.

Creationist cosmologies are criticized for being pseudoscientific and rejected by the scientific community. The scientific consensus today is the Big Bang model, which was proposed in the 1920s and corroborated by Edwin Hubble's discovery of the Hubble Law in 1929, and later by the discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation by Arno Allan Penzias and Robert Woodrow Wilson in 1964. These observations falsified non-standard cosmologies. Other observational and theoretical inconsistencies were resolved by inflationary cosmology first described by Alan Guth in 1980 and it is now incorporated in the best-supported concordance model of cosmology.

Contents

Appearance of age (light created in transit)

Main article: Omphalos hypothesis

The Omphalos hypothesis was originally proposed in the context of geology, in the 1857 book Omphalos by Philip Gosse. The book sought to reconcile the long geological ages advocated by the leading geologist of the time Charles Lyell, with a recent creation.[1] Gosse claimed that universe has an appearance of age, but is actually very young. (Omphalos is Greek for navel/belly button. The theory suggests Adam and Eve did have navels, despite never having been born of human parents.) It was revived by creationists in the 20th century. Critics have parodied it as "Last Thursdayism", as in "the world might as well have been created last Thursday", with the physical world and even people's memories of earlier events being merely planted by God.

The Omphalos hypothesis, as applied to cosmology, attempts to answer the "starlight problem" by positing that light which appears to source from distant galaxies was actually created by God en-route, conveniently avoiding long light travel times.

c decay

The concept of c-decay was first proposed by Barry Setterfield in 1981 in an article for the Australian creationist magazine, Ex Nihilo, as an alternative to physical cosmology. Setterfield's proposal was that the speed of light (c), was infinite in the past, but has slowed substantially over time. Setterfield argues that this resolves the so-called "starlight problem", since light may have traveled fast enough in the past to reach Earth in thousands of years, despite being billions of light years away.

Setterfield selected a number of historical measurements of c starting with the original measurement by Ole Rømer in 1667, and proceeding through a series of more recent experiments, culminating in measurements taken in the 1960s. These showed a decreasing speed over time, which Setterfield claimed was in fact an exponential decay series that implied an infinite speed in the not distant past.[2] He later expanded his claim to cover a supposed decay in several other physical constants.[3]

Setterfield's proposal has received criticism in the scientific community, including that his data is too noisy to show any strong correlation, and his argument is based on cherry picking outlying points in order to fit his model.[4]

Setterfield's argument is highly dependent on Rømer's original measurement, which he copied from an issue of Sky and Telescope. This value was "301,300 plus or minus 200 km/sec", about 0.5% above the current value. However, the article was actually an excerpt from The Astronomical Journal,[5] which disagrees completely, writing "The best fit occurs at zero where the light travel time is identical to the currently accepted value."[6] In his analysis, Setterfield also left out a number of famous experiments measuring the speed of light, as well as a number of measurements in his quoted experiments. When these points are added back into the set, there is no apparent decay. More recent versions of Setterfield's paper include these figures, using adjusted mathematics to rebuild the curve. These mathematics have been the object of ridicule.[4]

White hole cosmology

Russell Humphreys, an American physicist and creationist author, proposed in 1994 that the Earth is located near the center of a finite and bounded universe and that the entire universe expanded out of a white hole. He claims that relativistic time dilation explains how billions of years elapsed in the distant universe while only a few days or weeks passed on Earth. Humphreys claims that his model explains cosmological redshifts and the cosmic microwave background radiation.[7][8]

Humphreys' cosmology has been criticized by several creationists, and is rejected by the scientific community.[9][10]

According to Alex Williams, Humphreys' proposal grows out of the addition of three assumptions to Einstein's equations: the universe has expanded from a previously denser state, the universe is bounded in space, and the earth is located at or near the center of the universe.[11][12] The first assumption is supported by big bang cosmology, but according to Williams, the final two are rejected by the scientific community.

Physicist and philosopher of science J. Brian Pitts states that the result of Humphreys' proposal "is simply a modest variant of Big Bang cosmology that provides no help for young-earth creationists' light transit time problem".[13]

Criticism of the Big Bang theory

Proponents of creationism have attempted to discredit the standard Big bang cosmological theory on several grounds. One of the most common creationist criticisms of the Big Bang concerns the horizon problem and supposed problems with the inflationary theory of the early universe.[14] Creationists have claimed that dark matter and dark energy are doubtful concepts invented by Big Bang theorists in order to uphold the theory.[15][16][17][18] Creationists also claim that the big bang should have produced equal amounts of matter and antimatter.[19]

Stellar and planetary formation

Creationists typically reject standard accounts of stellar evolution, and observational evidence of recent star formation.[20] In particular, creationists dispute the widely accepted nebular hypothesis for star formation.[21][22][23]

See also

References

  1. ^ Philip H. Gosse, Omphalos: An Attempt to Untie the Geological Knot. London: John Van Voorst, 1857
  2. ^ Setterfield, "The Velocity of Light and the Age of the Universe". Creation Ex Nihilo 4:1 (March 1981), p38–48
  3. ^ The Atomic Constants, Light, and Time
  4. ^ a b The Decay of c-decay
  5. ^ On the Velocity of Light Three Centuries Ago
  6. ^ Roemer, navigation, and the speed of light, American Journal of Physics, July 1986, Volume 54, Issue 7, p. 583
  7. ^ Russell Humphreys (1994), Starlight and time, Master Books 
  8. ^ Russell Humphreys, Seven Years of Starlight and Time, Institute for Creation Research (ICR), http://www.icr.org/index.php?module=articles&action=view&ID=446, retrieved 2010-03-30 
  9. ^ E.D. Fackerell; C.B.G. McIntosh. "Errors in Humphreys’ cosmological model". http://www.trueorigin.org/rh_fackmcin1.pdf. 
  10. ^ D. Russell Humphreys (January 1, 1999). "Starlight Wars: Starlight and Time Withstands Attacks". http://www.icr.org/news/44/. 
  11. ^ Alex Williams; John Hartnett (2005). Dismantling the Big Bang: God's Universe Rediscovered. New Leaf Publishing Group. pp. 178. ISBN 9780890514375. http://books.google.com/books?id=FR7basoxkSwC. 
  12. ^ D. Russel Humphreys (August 2001). "Seven Years of Starlight and Time". Impact (338). http://www.icr.org/i/pdf/imp/imp-338.pdf. 
  13. ^ Pitts, J. Brian (March 2009). "Nonexistence of Humphreys’ "Volume Cooling" for Terrestrial Heat Disposal by Cosmic Expansion". Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 61 (1): 23–28. http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/2009/PSCF3-09Pitts.pdf. Retrieved 2011-05-29. 
  14. ^ eg. Robert Newton (2003), Light-travel time: a problem for the big bang, Creation Ministries International, http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v25/i4/lighttravel.asp, retrieved 2010-03-30 
  15. ^ John Hartnett, Has 'dark matter' really been proven?, Creation Ministries International, http://creation.com/has-dark-matter-really-been-proven, retrieved 2010-03-30 
  16. ^ Michael Oard, Astronomical problems, Creation Ministries International, http://www.answersingenesis.org/tj/v9/i1/astronomy.asp 
  17. ^ Werner Gitt, What about the big bang?, Answers in Genesis, http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/cm/v20/n3/big-bang 
  18. ^ Michael Oard & Jonathan Sarfati (1999), No dark matter found in the Milky Way Galaxy, http://creation.com/no-dark-matter-found-in-the-milky-way-galaxy, retrieved 2010-03-31 
  19. ^ Michael Oard, Missing antimatter challenges the 'big bang' theory, Answers in Genesis, http://www.answersingenesis.org/tj/v12/i3/antimatter.asp, retrieved 2010-03-30 
  20. ^ Wayne Spencer (2008), Star Formation and Creation, Answers in Genesis, http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/aid/v3/n1/star-formation-and-creation, retrieved 2010-03-31 
  21. ^ Jason Lisle (2007), The Stars of Heaven Confirm Biblical Creation, Answers in Genesis, http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/am/v2/n4/stars-of-heaven-confirm, retrieved 2010-03-31 
  22. ^ T. Parsons and J. Mackay (1980), Pièrre Simon Laplace: The nebular hypothesis, Answers in Genesis, http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v3/i3/ideas.asp, retrieved 2010-03-31 
  23. ^ Wayne R. Spencer (2001), "The existence and origin of extrasolar planets", Journal of Creation (Answers in Genesis), http://www.answersingenesis.org/tj/v15/i1/extrasolar.asp, retrieved 2010-03-31 

Further reading

External links