Star Formation vs Star Creation

SlimJim reviewed a book by R.J. Rushdoony, The Word of Flux, so I searched to see if Rushdoony believed in a six-day creation as reported in Genesis 1. Not only did he support it (see The Mythology of Science), but he clarified what was at stake. God performed a creative act in Genesis 1. What He did NOT do was participate in a creative process involving natural laws.

If God were merely guiding some natural processes, what were those processes? There is no point in claiming, as Alvin Plantinga has done, that God guided natural processes, if those natural processes do not exist.

In the video from Answers In Genesis below Dr. Terry Mortenson brings home the point that the problem with star formation is that there are no natural processes that permit star formation. In particular at (20:00), he quotes Neil deGrasse Tyson:

The scary part is that if none of us knew in advance that stars exist, frontline research would offer plenty of convincing reasons for why stars could never form. (Neil deGrasse Tyson, Death by Black Hole and Other Cosmic Quandaries, New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2007, p. 187)

On the other hand, the origins of stars as a creative act of God, as Rushdoony would put it, is not a problem. An act of creation (when God does it) does not require a natural process to explain it. All it requires, which is more than any atheist and even some Christians can tolerate, is accepting a Creator Who can do what He says He did in Genesis 1.

Some people I know are attracted to the creative process (rather than creative act) views of Hugh Ross. They like to think they are being “rational”. Dr. Mortenson puts a special focus on Ross (starting about 3:30) showing how he exaggerates what naturalists themselves claim they know to justify his own handwaving. If one takes being rational seriously, one would no longer trust anything someone had to say who is willing to exaggerate.

Bottom Line

If you want to accept the atheist fairy tales, the handwaving stories, that naturalists and Ross want you to believe, then you might as well give up on Christianity as many have already done as a result of such philosophical diversions.

Why? Because Jesus said “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female.” (Mark 10:6 and other verses).

If the fairy tales are right then Jesus got that wrong, because the beginning of Ross-style process creation happened a god-awful number of years prior to the appearance of men and women.

Now continue that deductive chain to see what else it entails.

• If Jesus got something wrong, then He is not God.
• If Jesus is not God, then the Trinity is false.
• If the Trinity is false, then the death of Jesus could not have been the sacrifice that Christianity has made it out to be.

So, who are you going to believe?

If you are at all tempted to believe atheists because they like to portray themselves as “scientists” (more accurately, pseudo-scientists which is all one is when someone abandons operational science) consider that the earliest “historical date of any real certainty” goes back no further than 5000 years which falls in line with a global flood of about 5300 years ago.

If you are tempted to doubt that a global flood occurred, consider the signs of a global catastrophic water event: glaciers, continent wide sedimentary strata, catastrophic plate tectonics, planation surfaces.

If you are still tempted to think that naturalistic processes can pop a universe into existence, then which natural process gets us something from nothing? And which natural process takes us from pond scum to human beings before the observable natural process of genetic entropy drives humanity to extinction?

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And if you are still tempted after that, remind the devil (for me) that he’s a doofus and soon it will all be over.