Re: [asa] New interp of distant starlight

RE: [asa] New interp of distant starlightYes, it's interesting that he's taking a "point of view" approach to try to vindicate what he thinks is a literal reading of Genesis - though at the end he wants to argue that God's point of view (i.e., the way Newton/Lisle reads the Bible) is really the correct one. It's a bit like the way in which a geocentrist can appeal - correctly - to general relativity to support the use of an earth-centered coordinate system but then go on - incorrectly - to claim that the earth is "really" stationary.

He isn't really appealing to time dilation. The only thing he's concerned with is the events of the 4th Day (i.e., those supposedly observed on the 4th Day). & he doesn't try to pack 14 billion years into 24 hours. What supposedly happens on the 4th Day is just the arrival of the light from various distances that would (according to the conventional view) have been omitted at retarded times in the past that would make it reach the earth on that day.

& though he thinks he's avoided some of the strange features of apparent age like the 1983 supernova not really having happened, what he has is a very slightly modified version of apparent age. I.e., the star that exploded as that supernova came into being about 180,000 years ago (in the conventional view) as a star in the last stages of stellar evolution even though it never went through those stages. & closer to home, the white dwarf companion of Sirius came into being about 9 years before the creation week _as a white dwarf_, without going through the earlier stages of hydrogen burning &c.

So when all is said & done it really is just a peculiar version of apparent age.

Shalom
George
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
  ----- Original Message -----
  From: Duff,Robert Joel
  To: jack syme ; Don Nield ; George Murphy
  Cc: Rich Blinne ; asa@calvin.edu
  Sent: Thursday, July 06, 2006 1:49 PM
  Subject: RE: [asa] New interp of distant starlight

  Thanks for the interesting feedback. I just read Newtons/Lisle's article again and I guess I really don't fully grasp what he is saying but my interest was less so the validity of his science (I do understand enough having just finished Greene's books The Elegant Universe and the Fabric of the Cosmos to see the problems that would arise from Newton's logic - an ironic pen name given his interest in Einsteinian relativity) than the implications of Lisle's approach to Genesis 1 might be on the creation science movement.

  Maybe its just me but the more I see them probe some of these difficult questions the more I see them stretched into considering alternative interpretations of Genesis. It seems to me that at some point they will manipulated the text to the point that it should built dscontent within the movement. I agree with George that I not sure yet if this is some sort of weird variation of apparent age but what Lisle seems to be doing to me is bringing the quesiton of point of view to the text. He might not have intended his aricle to read this way, but what I read into what he is saying is that from the perspective of man the actions of the 6 days "appear to occur in 6 days" when from God's perspective they may have been put into motion across long periods of time (of course he is trying to dialate time through relatively but his caculated time is yet another truth in the data, I think, and not just an appearnce). But does man's perspective matter?? If man wans't created until the the 6th day why is God concerned about communicating to us what man would have seen had he been around on the fouth day?

  Here is the quote that intrigues me most:
  "But how can a star be created before the beginning? We must remember that the Bible's statement 'In the beginning' (Genesis 1:1) is a measure of time, and therefore must be the 'beginning' as measured according to observed time. So although the beginning of the universe occurs simultaneously everywhere on Day 1 according to observed time, the beginning of the universe (just as with the stars) occurs at different calculated times depending on the distance from Earth. Day 1 occurs much earlier for places in the universe that are more distant from Earth than nearby places."

  This is such a twisted version of a straightforward reading of Genesis that creation scientist claim to take. So the beginning is really stretched out over billions of years and yet contained in an ordinary day? I'm surprised he didn't start quoting verses about how for God a day is as a 1000 years at this point.

  I like the point about his apparent geocentric assumption but I don't think that would really matter. If the earth were really off to one side of the universe then he could claim that God simply started his creative work on the other side of the universe first because the light from that side would have had to been in transit the longest.

  If we follow his logic why couldn't have God evolve some animals on the other side of th planet and had them migrate to a place where man would see them appear on the horizon (as if from the ground) on the 6th day.

  It boggles the mind that creation scientist can call their interpretations the simple straightforward reading of the Scriptures and claim that academics and seminary professors are having to manipulate the text to get it to say what they want it to say.

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Received on Thu Jul 6 15:17:26 2006