Jason Lisle – Poetry, Short Prose and Walking

Does Starlight Take Billions of Years To Reach Earth?

I posted the following as a comment on this video:

This is the clearest presentation of the distant starlight (non)problem that I have heard to date. We cannot use distant starlight to tell us how old the universe is given relativity physics. So, we will have to find other evidence to estimate the age of the universe. Radioactive decay might be one, but those rates aren’t reliable based on conflicting erosion rates, the discovery of soft tissue in fossils and the rates of dispersion of decay particles from zircon crystals. What we are left with is historical evidence, but that takes us back only about 5000 years which is surprisingly close to the time of the flood in the Septuagint chronology.

The video is almost two hours long, but John Hartnett does a good job of describing three rejected solutions to the distant starlight problem to arrive at the anisotropic synchrony convention proposed by Jason Lisle.

Light Speed and Biblical Chronology

John Hartnett reviewed Jason Lisle’s Anisotropic Synchrony Convention (ASC) model in 2011. Hartnett’s own solution of the light travel time problem (LTTP) used time dilation and the Einstein Synchrony Convention (ESC) which can be explored in more detail in Starlight Time and the New Physics.

Hartnett’s review helped me better understand what was going on with these creationist solutions to the LTTP. The rest of this post goes into the details of some explorations I’ve made.

What is the LTTP?

In the 1670s Ole Roemer first found that the speed of light was finite. In the 1830s Thomas Henderson first measured the distance to a star, Alpha Centauri, at about one parsec, over three light years away. Those two measurements, in the context of the absolute space and time of Newtonian physics, are all that was needed to challenge the truth of Genesis.

Since we can see the light from Alpha Centauri the universe should be as old as the time it takes for light to travel from that star to us. With the speed of light being finite and this star being very distant, Adam could not have seen it on the 6th day.

The LTTP is the conflict between the biblical age of the universe and the amount of time light needs to reach the earth from distant stars. In the 19th century deep time became a misleading scientific fact. This encouraged two unfortunate responses to the Bible: 1) reject it entirely or 2) turn its historical content into allegory.

Relativity Theory

Relativity theory gave creationists two ways to resolve the LTTP. They could either use a synchrony convention as Lisle had done or they could use a time dilation approach as Hartnett (and others) had done.

Einstein’s resolution of the conflict between Maxwell’s electromagnetic theory and Newton’s gravitational theory put the finite speed of light as a limiting speed and all observers regardless of their relative velocities would measure the speed of light as the same value. Since velocity is distance (space) divided by time, the trade-off for making a specific velocity absolute meant that space and time no longer were. Different observers might measure times or distances differently. In particular, what clocks read are dependent on the reference frame the clock is in.

This allowed time dilation solutions to the LTTP.

When one measures the speed of light one is measuring a two-way speed. This avoids having two clocks which cannot be trusted to remain synchronized in relativity theory when one clock is moved away from the other.

This allows one a choice of synchrony convention where the speed of light in one direction could be different from the return speed. The only requirement is that the round-trip speed be constant.

For example, if an object 13 billion light years away became visible on earth the age of the universe could be, by picking the appropriate synchrony convention, anywhere from 0 years old to 13 * 2 = 26 billion years old since the round-trip distance going to that object and back again is 26 billion light years. It no longer had to be 13 billion years.

By the way, we know the universe is more than 0 years old because secular historical records go back around 5000 years, but we do not know that from relativity theory itself.

This allowed synchrony convention solutions to the LTTP.

An objection to the ASC model

Those using the ASC model choose a synchrony convention where the light leaving the observer is half the two-way speed of light. This allows the return trip of the light to be nearly instantaneous.

An objection one might make against Lisle’s ASC model is that it is based solely on a choice of synchrony convention. Someone else could make a different choice and construct a different model conflicting with Genesis. That’s true, but that there is now a choice solves the LTTP.

This left creationists with the challenge to provide evidence that the entire universe is actually young, not just that it could be viewed as young from a specific synchrony convention. However, much of that work had already been done.

Mature creation and natural processes

Genesis 1:1 tells us that the earth is special: God spoke it into existence on the 1st day. Genesis 1:16 tells us where stars came from: God spoke them into existence on the 4th day. All of these creations were mature creations. They were not the result of lengthy natural processes because they all happened within a single day. Indeed, for much of God’s creative work, such as, matter itself, stars, planets, and the first plants, first fish, first birds, first beasts and first human beings there are no natural processes available that could bring them into existence no matter how much time is available.

Those who only put their trust in natural processes want nothing to do with creation, mature or otherwise. By relying on natural processes they hope to discover laws that explain the existence of the universe without God’s creative work. One of the beliefs they’ve come up with is the hope that universes can randomly pop themselves into existence. Another belief is that there are infinitely many of these popped universes one of which would be the one we are living in.

No one ever popped a universe into existence. They have to assume it is possible for something like that to happen. If that were not possible, then they would have to give God credit for his mature creative work, something they do not wish to do.

Although they are aware that the above is an assumption (or, rather, a theory), they’ve made another assumption that they are likely unaware of. They believe that the orderliness of natural laws governing the natural processes they observe are somehow independent of God. However, if natural law is “the normal way God upholds the universe today”, as Hartnett notes on page 60, then there would be no natural processes whatsoever without God.

What could falsify the ASC model?

Most creationists reject using the idea of mature creation as an explanation if it would imply deceptiveness on God’s part. For example, they reject the instantaneous creation of light in transit as a solution to the LTTP. Such light would not have originated from the star although it would have appeared to have. That would have been deception.

Hartnett challenged Lisle to come up with ways to falsify his model. At what point would one have to give up on the ASC model and go to Hartnett’s time dilation approach?

Given the rejection of deceptive mature creation all one would need to reject the ASC model is to find an ongoing process that would take longer than the biblical age of the universe to reach the state it is in. Light travelling over long distances was such a process that the ASC model eliminated. Are there any others?

An example of such a process might come from the expanding remnant clouds of unobserved supernovas. If their rates of expansion from their neutron stars implied that they had been expanding longer than the biblical age of the universe, then this would be a deceptive mature creation that would falsify Lisle’s model. Lisle did not believe that any such example had so far been found.

What is the biblical age of the universe?

Chris Hardy and Robert Carter calculated a minimum and maximum age of the earth that could be identified as biblical because some collection of biblical manuscripts supported it. Although the discrepancies in these manuscripts are small, the numbers found in different manuscript versions of the genealogies of Genesis 5 and 11, for example, can lead one to compute rather different ages.

Accounting for all presently known relevant details and assuming the Babylonian Captivity began in 587 or 586 BC, we can say with confidence that the Bible places limits on the year of creation between 5665 and 3822 BC. The uncertainty within this range is mainly driven by textual considerations. The Masoretic/LXX debate creates a 1,326-year dichotomy, the Long vs. Short Sojourn positions differ by 215 years, and various interpretations of the lists of the kings of Judah and Israel equates to around 54 years of additional uncertainty.
– Chris Hardy, Robert Carter, The biblical minimum and maximum age of the earth, Journal of Creation 28(2):89–96, August 2014

Taking the Masoretic/LXX debate, the Long vs Short Sojourn and the list of kings of Judah and Israel into account results in an overall difference of 1843 years. Within that range one can identify two major, conflicting creationist positions. The older position puts the date of creation at about 5500 BC (with the age of the earth about 7500 years) while the younger position puts it about 4000 BC (with the age of the earth about 6000 years).

Since both Lisle and Hartnett refer to a 6000 year age of the earth rather than, say, a less than 8000 year age, I assume they are committed to the younger creationist position.

Both of these creationist positions depend on the global catastrophe of Genesis 6-9 to explain why the earth looks the way it does today with mountains, glaciers and planation regions. Hence, it is worth identifying when that occurred.

Hardy and Carter give maximum and minimum years for the flood as 3386 BC and 2256 BC with a difference of over a thousand years. The older creationist position puts the date of the flood around 3300 BC (about 5300 years ago) while the younger dates it around 2350 BC (about 4400 years ago).

In terms of falsifying Lisle’s theory, if he insists on the younger creationist position, processes that began after creation can take no longer than about 6000 years. If a process is found that takes less than 7500 years but more than 6000 years he could maintain his ASC model but reject the younger creationist position for the older one. Only if the process required more than 7500 years (specifically, 7688 = 5665 + 2024 – 1 years using Hardy and Carter’s data and today’s year 2024) would Hartnett’s time dilation model be needed.

Unreliable clocks

There are people who will say things are old using a radioactive decay clock. Their dates have to survive the challenge that radioactive decay rates may have changed in the past leading to the clock they are using being unreliable. One way to verify that their clocks are reliable would be to require that the dates they offer are confirmed by another clock whether those clocks are based on radioactive decay, erosion or biological decay. If the other clocks don’t agree, then the date has been falsified.

Here are three examples of unreliable clocks.

Radioactive falsification
If one claims that a landform is over 123,000,000 years old, but a beryllium-10 decay clock shows it is only 1,900 years old, then that date has been falsified by a radioactive clock.
Erosion falsification
If one claims that a fossil is 500,000,000 years old, but the entire landform where the fossil was found would have been eroded into the sea in less than 50,000,000 years, then that date has been falsified by erosion rates used as a clock.
Biological falsification
If one claims that a fossil is 65,000,000 years old, but it still contains soft tissue, then that date has been falsified by biological rates of decay used as a clock.

Reverse challenges to deep time

Don Batten’s 101 evidences for a young age of the earth are 101 challenges for those believing in deep time, challenges which have not been met. Batten writes:

When the evolutionists throw up some new challenge to the Bible’s timeline, don’t fret over it. Sooner or later that supposed evidence will be turned on its head and will even be added to this list of evidences for a young age of the earth.

The correct response in the 19th century prior to relativity theory would have been to accept the self-attesting authority of the Bible rather than bend a knee to the views of man. Does that sound like too strong of a commitment to the Bible? The Bible is, after all, the word of God. Only a fool would not have a strong commitment to it.

By contrast, it’s a wonder that anyone (in his right mind) would be so committed to big bang fairy tales that he would prefer to sprinkle his eyes with dark matter—dark pixie dust that no one can find—rather than face the truth that his atheology has been falsified long ago.

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The Speed of Light, Simultaneity and Genesis

Jason Lisle made some amazing predictions about the data that would come back from the James Webb Space Telescope.

On January 21, 2022, he made his predictions less than a month after the mission launched on December 25, 2021. In July the results began coming in. On September 9, 2022, he announced that his predictions were confirmed.

Essentially, he predicted that there would be more galaxies at further redshifts than anticipated. He predicted that the composition of the stars would contain heavier elements than expected. He also predicted that scientists would claim that stellar evolution went further into the past than they previously thought.

Lisle’s predictions were not randomly contrary to what many scientists expected to see. They were grounded on Hans Reichenbach’s conventionality of simultaneity thesis for relativity theory and Genesis 1.

Reichenbach’s thesis claimed that the constant speed of light posited by relativity theory was best represented by the two-way speed of light, not its one-way speed. No one can measure the one-way speed of light given relativity since two clocks can’t be kept synchronized when one of them moves away from the other. However, the two-way, round-trip speed of light could be measured with a single clock and a mirror.

It is that round-trip speed, the only measurable speed, that is the constant called the speed of light. That means that the speed of light going to the mirror does not have to be the speed of light coming back. So, for example, the speed of light going from the earth to a galaxy 13.8 billion round-trip light years away from the earth could go at half the round-trip speed on the way out taking 27.6 billion years to get there, but come back almost instantly on the return trip. The total distance traveled would be the distance to the galaxy (13.8 billion light years taking 27.6 billion years) plus the distance back (13.8 billion light years taking 0 years) for a total of 27.6 billion light years travelled in 27.6 billion years.

Because of Reichenbach’s thesis what we see in those space telescopes may be happening right now, not billions of years ago. From relativity theory alone, properly using the round-trip speed of light, one cannot tell.

If light from those distant galaxies arrived on Earth almost instantaneously then what we would be seeing would be how those galaxies actually look today. Such galaxies would not be expected to show any hypothesized stellar evolution and, indeed, they don’t. Their light shows heavier elements than lithium, significantly oxygen which with hydrogen are the elements of the water molecule (see Genesis 1:2, 6-8). Their size is too large and orderly. They are too close to that God-surrogate, the big bang.

But if the speed of light incoming from space were nearly instantaneous that would mean that the Earth is very, very, very, very special.

I have wondered if one could save the big bang by acknowledging as nearly instantaneous the speed of the incoming light to the earth. All of that hypothesized stellar evolution would no longer have to be there. However, that would likely be too much for secularists (or even Christians trapped by the charm of the big bang’s unbiblical beginning) to pay. They would no longer be able to assert how old the universe was. They would no longer be able to say that the Earth is just some insignificant blue dot lost in space. Rather they would be admitting that such light were specifically aimed toward the earth. And although it might save the big bang in the eyes of its followers it would demote it to an unfalsifiable, pseudo-scientific myth. So, I guess that wouldn’t save it after all.

Jason Lisle could make his predictions with confidence not only because he accepted Reichenbach’s conventionality of simultaneity thesis, but also because Genesis 1:14-19 told him that the heavens were set there “to give light upon the earth”. And, as soon as God spoke the heavens into existence, “it was so”. When the heavenly lights reached the earth, they did what they were told to do that very day, that very moment, nearly instantaneously.

Genesis 1:14-19 KJV
14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:
15 And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.
16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: [he made] the stars also.
17 And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,
18 And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that [it was] good.
19 And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.

Genesis 1:2, 6-8 KJV
2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness [was] upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
…
6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which [were] under the firmament from the waters which [were] above the firmament: and it was so.
8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

Wrap – Six Sentence Story

Steve looked at the sunrise letting his mind wrap his preconceptions around what he saw. He was no longer a pagan rationalizing this burning ball of hydrogen as a pantheistic spiritual entity. Nor was he ever an atheist seeing naturalistic stellar evolution in play rather than the greater light created by God to rule the day.

Taking Einstein’s relativity seriously he stipulated that the one-way speed of light from the sun to him was instantaneous. This forced the one-way speed back to the sun to be half the speed some might want it to be who preferred their own preconceptions to help them get lost in the addiction of deep time.

With that taken care of Steve watched the birds originally created on the fifth day watch the sun rise over the catastrophic flood waters that drained off over five millennia ago to become the Atlantic Ocean.

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Denise offers the prompt word “wrap” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories.

If the story makes no sense, I’ve been reading Jason Lisle’s 2010 presentation of the anisotropic synchrony convention and a 2018 modification of it by Tenev, et al.

Sunday Walk 53 – Idolatry and the Distant Starlight Problem

You see you have to remember that idolatry is giving credit to some power other than God for what God has done.
Pastor Clifford Allcorn, Days of Creation Part 2 (about 1:30)

An idol does not have to be an entity like Gaia or Satan. It could be a mythopoetic explanation for the way things are such as Evolution or the Big Bang that gives “credit to some power other than God for what God has done” .

Explanations help us understand the world we live in. The Big Bang would be one explanation. The Creation account in Genesis would be another. How do they compare?

If we consider the Creation account of the universe by God over a period of six days in a mature state about 6000 years ago the universe would look then much the way it does today since only a few thousand years have elapsed. Those who object to this presuppose either that there is no God who could have created a universe or that God did not create the universe as the Bible claimed. They either deny God or they deny the biblical account.

Those denying the biblical account have raised a specific doubt that has led some Christians to agree with them. According to Genesis on the fourth day the stars became visible. How did that happen if the light came from stars billions of light years away? The speed of the light coming from those stars to an observer on earth would have to be arbitrarily large. This is called the distant starlight problem.

Is such an arbitrarily large speed of light possible in relativity physics? It is if the Bible is using what Jason Lisle calls the anisotropic synchrony convention (ASC). I have often heard that the speed of light is a constant of nature given relativity, but as Lisle explained what is actually constant is the round trip or two-way speed of light with there being no way for anyone to know the one-way speed.

By convention we could set the speed of light coming to the observer on earth as instantaneous, that is, having an arbitrarily large speed, and set the speed of light leaving earth as the two-way speed of light divided by two. If we did that then the speed of the round trip would average out to be the constant two-way speed of light as required. That is what the ASC convention does. It defines simultaneous events as what we see at any moment from our position on earth.

This answers the objection of those denying the biblical account. On the fourth day of Creation the light coming from all of the stars in the universe reached earth as Genesis reported using the ASC convention.

The other common convention used is the Einstein synchrony convention (ESC) where we assume, or stipulate, that the one-way speed of light is the same in all directions. The laws of physics work no matter which convention we select. As Lisle pointed out it is like choosing to use inches over centimeters. No falsifiable prediction can be made from either the ASC or the ESC convention alone.

However, if we take the ASC convention and add to it the Creation account of the mature universe with the 6000 year time frame of the Bible, we can come up with falsifiable predictions. Lisle calls this the ASC model. That model would be falsified if there existed evidence showing that the universe had to be more than a few thousand years old.

By contrast the Big Bang model claims that the universe is over 13 billion years old. It needs all of that time for physical processes starting from a random event to form the universe we live in without resorting to a designing agent of any sort. That model would be falsified if there existed evidence that the universe could not be that old.

As Lisle pointed out our observations of spiral galaxies or blue stars provide falsifying evidence for the Big Bang. We should not see them in such an old universe. That means the universe is too young for the deep time predictions of the Big Bang model. The Institute for Creation Research provides further details on this and additional evidence that the universe and our earth are young, too young for deep time explanations to be true.

Bottom line: If we want randomness rather than God as our Creator, we need a lot of time, more time than evidence shows was available.

Given that here is what Pastor Allcorn has to say about idolatry.

The 1689 Second London Baptist Confession of Faith, Days of Creation Part 2

Merging the Big Bang or Evolution with Christianity is a form of syncretism which introduces idolatry. For what it’s worth, I was one of those who used to believe in deep time speculations, but now I see the error in that. I would even go so far as to agree with Pastor Allcorn that my former views were idolatrous.

Weekly Bible Reading: 1 Kings (Audio), 2 Kings (Audio), 1 Chronicles (Audio), 2 Chronicles (Audio)
Commentary: David Pawson, 1 and 2 Kings, Part 2 of 2, 1 and 2 Chronicles, Part 1 of 1, Unlocking the Bible

Sunday Walk 34 – Easter Coming Soon

ει τα επιγεια ειπον υμιν και ου πιστευετε πως εαν ειπω υμιν τα επουρανια πιστευσετε
John 3:12 Textus Receptus with various translations

Jason Lisle is an astronomer who argues for biblical creationism and a young earth. I think he’s right. However, I suspect many Christians would not agree. They accept the deep time of evolution perhaps because they’ve been taught that’s just the way things are. To keep religion relevant, they add onto this a God who guides the mythical process of evolution. I know some Christians believe this kind of theistic evolution, because I’ve been there, done that and wish now I hadn’t.

The problem with theistic evolution is that no connection exists between that guiding God and Elohim (Yahweh) after theistic evolution trashes Genesis 1-11. If one doesn’t accept Genesis as an historical document, how can one make sense out of Easter except as one more myth? Don’t forget what’s at stake: 1 Corinthians 15:14.

There is plenty of scientific justification for a biblical young earth. Indeed, what is lacking is scientific evidence for the belief that deep time could ever be deep enough to make evolution work or that a big bang could randomly pop any ordered reality, let alone an orderly universe, out of a disordered quantum vacuum no matter how often it tries.

Here are a few sites I have found useful should you wish to explore this.

And here are some specific sources.

Walt Brown provides a survey of arguments for creationism along with his hydroplate theory of what happened during the flood in his book, In the Beginning.
The Young Earth Creation channel hosts a graphic presentation of the flood events based on the fossil record found in wide ranging sedimentation layers.
John Hartnett describes the Anisotropic Synchrony Convention that Jason Lisle uses to solve the starlight travel time problem which answers the question how light from stars billions of light years away could reach the earth instantly on the fourth day of creation.

Easter is upon us. Many proclaim the resurrection of Jesus as historical fact. That’s the core of what matters.

Asserting the resurrection of Jesus as historical fact takes me back to creation as presented in Genesis also as historical fact. If it is weren’t for Adam and Eve there would be no need for the death and resurrection of Jesus. From that beginning I go to the end times that prophecies assert will also be, some day, historical fact.

Here is a song I found on The Marshall Report appropriate for those last days which may be coming soon.