Origins, Part 1
Ground Rules
Arguably, the greatest debate between "science" and the Bible is that of origins. I don't say "evolution" here, because evolution is only one aspect of origins and we need to be very clear in our overview of the greater topic. I say "overview", because countless books have been written on every aspect of this whole subject and I could never hope to address everything in a few articles. But before we jump into any detailed discussion of scientific topics, there are a few things we need to address.
First, we must make a distinction between assertions, facts, and truth. A fact is a provable assertion, whereas truth is about accurate meaning. Let me illustrate. Let's say that one man shoots and kills another. That is an assertion. Let's say that there is video of the event, the shooter admits it, there are eye-witnesses, and a bullet found in the victim matches the gun fired by the shooter. Assuming there is no great conspiracy, the assertion is provable and moves from being an assertion to a fact. Thus, the truth would be that the shooter is a murderer.
But deriving truth from facts is a tricky thing. Facts do not have meaning in, and of, themselves. They must be taken in context with other relevant facts before you can arrive at the truth. Using our previous example, let's say that it is also a fact that the "victim" was pointing a rifle at the shooter. Taking those facts together, we can determine that the truth is that the shooter acted in self-defense. But let's say another fact is that the shooter had broken into the home of the victim at night. Now the truth is that the victim was acting in self-defense and the shooter is a trespasser and murderer. But let's say another fact is that the victim was a terrorist that was holding people hostage and the shooter was a law-enforcement officer there to rescue them. The truth changes yet again. So we need to include all relevant facts before the truth can be determined. Irrelevant facts (such as the color of the socks being worn by the hostages) by necessity need to be left out. But being selective about which relevant and irrelevant facts are used to derive a biased "truth" is how political pundits and social warriors practice deceit. Thus, facts are not equivalent to the truth, and do not always lead to the truth. Sometimes people emphasize this point by calling isolated facts "factoids." But even having many facts at your command does not mean that you understand the truth - you need all the relevant facts.
Secondly, no matter what side of any origins debate you are on, it is important to realize that both sides have assumptions and a world view that they use to interpret facts. It is dangerous to come to science or Scripture with assumptions. But, we humans do it all the time. As a result, reasonable people can look at the same evidence (or fact) and interpret it differently. Honest people on either side can admit that there are problems with their interpretation but still believe that, on the whole, their interpretation is the "correct" one. Attacking the character of one's opponents, while common, is hardly conducive to useful debate and discussion. It certainly has no place among those who claim to follow Jesus.
Third, I think that there is often a false choice given in these debates. Broadly, one side takes a mechanistic view - that is, "natural" causes explain everything. The other side takes the spiritual view - that is, supernatural causes to explain what we see. The problem is that these views are not necessarily always mutual exclusive. For instance, God's works in the Bible are almost entirely done through the agency of angels, men, and/or natural events. He rarely acts directly. When he wanted to punish the Canaanites, he sent the Israelites in. When he killed the firstborn of Egypt, He sent an angel to do the work. When he killed Korah and his rebels, He had the earth open up and swallow them. He could have snapped His fingers (metaphorically speaking) and just made them disappear, but He didn't. Other than the initial creation, the resurrection, and regeneration of the Holy Spirit in believers, He seems to intervene only indirectly.
This makes perfect sense if you understand that 1) God exists outside of time, and 2) He created everything. The consequence of these facts is that He doesn't need to directly intervene. He knew before Korah rebelled that there would be a rebellion (or more properly, he knows because past, present, and future are all present to Him). So, knowing what would happen, He arranged the fault systems on the planet to happen to trigger at the exact location and time necessary to accomplish His will. Some would think that it takes away from the power and glory of God to assume He didn't directly intervene in time to carry out His will in the matter. But I consider it more to His glory for Him to have made everything at the instant of creation such that the spin of every quark, the velocity of every atom, and the location of every photon would end up creating the answer to prayers as yet unasked (from our perspective). At the same time, He does direct angels to do things, and prophets to speak His messages, at space/time coordinates that make sense to these beings, who are subject to space and time. But the point I'm making is that just because you can find a naturalistic explanation of something doesn't mean that God was not the ultimate origin of that given phenomenon. A mechanistic view of the universe, therefore, does not exclude God as the Prime mover. The only God they could exclude would be a small one of their own imagination. Excluding God from the initial creation is inherently unprovable.
While this makes sense to me and is not contrary to the scriptures (as far as I can tell), it doesn't mean that I'm correct. We are delving into the works of a God that is beyond our understanding. Perhaps things work entirely different than I postulate. Maybe God does directly intervene sometimes. Neither those that disagree nor agree with me on these details are morally right or wrong. This isn't essential doctrine. But I think all Christians with even a modicum of scriptural knowledge can agree that God does often act through the agency of the natural world, the free will of mankind, and angelic beings. Thus, I think all believers can agree that any given naturalistic explanation to God's actions does not inherently exclude Him.
Einstein once said, "There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle". Though I don't believe he was making a theological statement, he is nonetheless in accord with what I am saying here: you can adopt a mechanistic view of the universe the excludes God completely or you can recognize that all of creation is a miracle of God. The problem with the mechanistic view (from the perspective of those holding to it) is that it cannot exclude a God Who works through the agency of natural phenomena - and Who even planned how that phenomena would result in His will being done at every point throughout history, despite the actions of beings with free will. So, any attempt to exclude God because of a naturalistic viewpoint is doomed to failure. The best they can do is try to contradict specifics of the Bible and, thus, generate doubt.
Fourth, the science of origins is what I referred to as "forensic science" in a previous article. That is, we can try to puzzle out what happened in the past based on our observations of the present, but we cannot know that we have it right for sure. One cannot prove any theory of origins no matter what evidence we have in the present. Some creationists use this as a reason to dismiss things like evolution, but even if you consider the Bible to be 100% accurate, it is only history - not science. We cannot perform experiments to potentially falsify the claims of Genesis. Though some people have elevated science to a religion, the foregoing demonstrates the limitations of science. So, no matter what viewpoint you have on origins, you have to take it on faith. One can argue that evidence and logical reasoning supports one view over another, and that is a valid discussion. In fact, we will consider such things as we continue this discussion. But since no humans were around at the origin of the Earth, the universe, life, or just before humans came into existence, there were no humans to observe and record the events. And that means that no one can offer scientific proof of any specific origin. The fact that a lot of people believe something doesn't make it either true or false. It might be true, or false, but it is unprovable either way.
Finally, the near-worship of science has led to the hero status of scientific "experts". I've seen people check their brain at the door during the expostulations of experts. If you dare to disagree - and are not accepted as an expert yourself - you are dismissed. Granted, experts tend to be much more knowledgeable than the average person. I certainly wouldn't want an amateur to perform brain surgery on me. However, I don't need to be a medical doctor myself to understand that chopping my foot off with an axe will probably result in my bleeding to death. If an expert tells me otherwise, I will cry foul. I don't have to abdicate my own critical thinking skills and what little I do know because of unquestioning faith in an expert. It is the responsibility of an expert to explain their reasoning if they present something that is contrary to common sense (and there are things, especially in physics, that are contrary to common sense). In general, if someone dismisses an argument with an accusation of ignorance rather than explaining things, that indicates to me that the person doesn't feel very secure in their beliefs. I don't have to be doctor to understand basic physiology; I don't have to be a seminary-trained pastor to understand the basics of the Bible; I don't have to be a world-class pianist to recognize mistakes made by someone playing a well-know piano concerto. What it does mean is that I should listen to what experts say that may correct any misunderstanding, but not at the cost of critical thought of my own.
Untangling Origins
The subject of origins has four basic issues which are related, but should not be equated. They are:
- Age of the universe
- Age of the earth
- Origin of life
- Evolution
Most people lump all of these under the banner of "evolution". And because the subject is polarizing, we've ended up with two camps which I'd summarize as "evolution of life from non-life to current species with an old earth and an even older universe" versus "young universe, young earth, creation of life in one day, with no evolution".
Though these issues are related, they are not the same. An old earth requires an old universe, but an old universe does not require an old earth. Evolution requires an old universe, but an old universe does not require that there be evolution, and so forth. So we need to examine each of these individually as well as how they relate to each other.
Age of the Universe
Since we weren't there at the beginning, we have to derive the age of the universe from current evidence. First, let me do a brief overview of how distances are measured in the cosmos. Scientifically speaking, the age of the universe is derived from special characteristics of visible light, and a special kind of star. The Earth's orbit is about 93 million miles in diameter. This can serve as the base line of a triangle. The other sides of the triangle (opposite each other) are formed by lines from the earth at those points to a given star. A phenomena known as "parallax" means that the angle of a line from the earth to the star, relative to the base line is different. Using simple trigonometry, the length of those lines (and thus the distance to the star) is easily determined. This allows us to precisely determine the distance to any star within 1,000 light years of Earth, although some claim that it is accurate out to 10,000 light years. Like any measurements, the closer we get to the limits of our ability to measure, the less accurate the measure. I'd have to guesstimate that we are only 100% sure of parallax measurements out to about 5,000-6,000 light years.
Because we know the precise speed of light, light from a star that is 6,000 light years away takes 6,000 light years to reach us. We are actually seeing what the star looked like 6,000 light years ago. But we cannot use parallax for stars that are further away. This is where a special kind of star is useful to us. Cepheid variable stars are a type of star that varies in brightness (and spectrum) with a predictable regular cycle. There are several types of Cepheid stars, but within a given type, the cycle is same between all stars. Using the known distance to Cepheid variable stars within 6,000 light years and their brightness/spectrum, we can observe Cepheid variable stars that are further away, even in neighboring galaxies, and calculate their distance. Given that we know their absolute magnitude (actual brightness) and can measure their apparent magnitude (how bright they look from Earth), we can use the inverse square law (more math!) to determine how far away they are from us. The most distant being some 60 million light years distant. We can also calculate distances for normal stars that are between 6 thousand and 60 million light years using the known relation between a star's light spectrum and its brightness.
I've mentioned the light spectrum, which indicates the range of wavelengths of light that are visible to the human eye. Actually, the spectrum includes more wavelengths that we cannot see than those we can. The spectrum of visible light can be seen when white light is split with a prism. This also happens naturally with rainbows. The lowest visible wavelength is red light, and the highest visible wavelength is violet. An odd thing happens, however, when a light-emitting body (such as a star), moves away from (or toward) us at high speed. If it moves away, the light shifts to the red, and if it moves toward us, it shifts toward the violet. But how do we know if the light is shifted or the star simply emits a spectrum that is more red, or more violet? Here is where another interesting effect of light comes into play. When certain atoms (such as hydrogen, which is most of what makes up most of most stars) are heated to high temperature, they emit patterns of spectral lines. These show up as bright spots in the light spectrum. Because these patterns and their positions within the spectrum are known from laboratory experiments, we can find them even if they appear in a different place in the spectrum. Wait! Didn't I just say that they show up in a specific place in the spectrum? Yes, in a non-moving light source this is true. So, if we see them shifted in the spectrum, we know that the light has been shifted and, thus, the source is moving toward or away from us. Further, the amount of the shift indicates the speed that the object is moving, relative to us. If it is shifted toward the red, this is called red shift, and it means that the object is moving rapidly away from us.
Another aspect of the light spectrum is that when the light passes through dust or cold gas, some specific wavelengths can be absorbed, creating a pattern of absorption lines in the spectrum. These are the opposite of emission lines, appearing as black lines in the spectrum. This can then be used to determine if the apparent brightness is due to distance or intervening dust/gas. We might not be able to tell how much dust or gas is between us and the star, but there are plenty of stars in the "clear" (no absorption lines) that we can use to determine distances of nearby galaxies and the size of our own galaxy with confidence.
Observations of red shift indicate that the space is expanding, causing things to move apart, because we see that the farther away a galaxy is, the faster it is moving away. The force of gravity is sufficient to keep solar systems, galaxies, and even groups of galaxies together. But galaxies that are far away have a red shift. How do we know that one distant galaxy is further away than another galaxy, other than red-shift? Admittedly, we must make some educated assumptions based on apparent brightness, size, gravitational effects of any satellite galaxies, etc. But it appears that space itself is expanding, moving everything away from everything else, with only gravity holding solar systems, galaxies, and local groups of galaxies together.
Since things are moving away from each other due to the expansion of space, they must have been closer to each other in the past. If we calculate distance and speed, and then "run the calculation backwards", we find that everything in the universe would have been in a single point about 13.8 billion years ago. Thus, the idea of the Big Bang was born - the idea that the universe sprang from a single point at that time and the galaxies and stars formed and spread away from each other until we got to the point we have today.
In terms of an initial springing forth of matter and energy from nothing, this coincides well with the first part of the book of Genesis. However, we must also recognize that the Big Bang theory is a speculation that cannot be proven. There are enough questions in modern physics to give us pause about what we think we know. Perhaps some other phenomena accounts for the red shift. For instance, if the rest of the universe were rotating around us, we might get similar red shift. However, there is no point of such gravity near us that would be sufficient to hold all of those galaxies in an orbit. But there might be other explanations we haven't even considered. What if the universe didn't explode from a single point 13.6 billion years ago, but from a larger conglomeration of matter/energy, say some 7 billion years ago? We simply don't know. There are problems with the Big Bang theory, including the need for "inflation" - a period of expansion faster than the speed of light (which is impossible) at some point in the past. Further, older galaxies should be relatively shapeless in the distant past, but if we look at the most distant galaxies (and thus are looking back in time) we see fully-formed galaxies. This cannot be, given the Big Bang theory. Or else there is something wrong with our calculations based on red shift. Or both. The fact is, the current universe doesn't seem to match the Big Bang or the young universe models. But if you assume one or the other, that affects how you will view the other aspects of origins. Note that an assumption isn't necessarily wrong - sometimes we assume the right thing. In any case, we couldn't function without countless assumptions every day. We assume we won't be in a fatal car accident (or else we wouldn't be in a car). We assume there won't be a major earthquake today, and so on. It is simply impossible for us to account for every possibility in life and so assumptions serve as a useful shortcut for our brains. But we have to admit where we are making assumptions and have the humility that comes from that. And the Big Bang is based on a host of assumptions. In fact, there are secular physicists that don't believe in the Big Bang because of the problems I mentioned (in addition to several I haven't). Some believe in a "steady state" universe that has existed far longer than 13.8 billion years - possibly even "forever". The consensus is currently in favor of the Big Bang. But we also know that consensus is not always correct.
For the sake of argument, let's say we can dismiss the measurements of things more than 60 million light years away. Are there assumptions in the use of Cepheid variable stars? Yes - there are assumptions in everything. In this case, the primary assumptions are 1) the laws of physics that we see nearby also apply to what is at a distance, and therefore 2) Cepheid variable stars work the same in nearby galaxies as they do near us. I think these are perfectly logical assumptions. In fact, for them to be wrong, we'd have to be very wrong about the way physics work. Granted, there is much about physics that we have yet to figure out, but to dismiss these assumptions would require a logical (and major) alternative - of which there are currently none.
The assumptions about stellar parallax are even more solid - that of direct observation and of mathematical principles which have been shown to be true for hundreds of years. Again, one would have to assume some alternate explanation that I cannot comprehend. The further out our measurements, the more assumptions we have to make, and the more problematic are those assumptions. But I cannot conceive of how we would be wrong in regard, at least, to stars within 6,000 light years of us. And any stars beyond that would, therefore, be more than 6,000 light years distant.
Many fine Christians believe in the Big Bang. However, young universe creationists consider that the universe was created at the same time as the earth, as described in Genesis 1, with a creation date about 6,000 years ago. The fact that we have direct observation of light sources that are at least 6,000 light years away with even more distant objects, and we know that the light we see from these distant object must be from more than 6,000 years ago, I cannot see how a 6,000 year old universe works. However, the earth and the universe are not the same age, nor do I think a literal interpretation of the Bible requires the viewpoint that they are. I think this is an example of conflating two different origin issues. But we will address the age of the earth in the next article.
My personal belief is that we don't know how old the universe is, and may not ever be able to tell from a forensic approach. It seems likely that the age of the galaxy (and thus the universe) is more than 6,000 years - likely more than 60 million years - and I don't have a problem with some number of billions of years, though the Big Bang theory has sufficient problems that I have severe doubts about it, specifically. Now, some young earth creationists (who also believe in a young universe), say that things only appear that old because God created the universe with photons of light already in place between the Earth and distant stars and, therefore, that light has not been traveling for any more than 6,000 years. Could God have done this? Of course! He can do anything He wants! The question is, did He? I don't think so because it implies that God is actively trying to deceive us. Though I believe He hides things for us to search out, I don't think He practices deceit. Another possibility is that we so completely misunderstand the nature of physical laws that we have misinterpreted what we see. Could this be? Well, I wouldn't be shocked to find it out, but I would be surprised. You want me to disbelieve what we see? Offer me a reasonable alternate theory. The only other option I can imagine is that there is a huge conspiracy between all astronomers (some of whom are Christians) to deceive us all into believing something that they have made up. In this case they have lied about distances, doctored actual photos, fooled every scientist, and somehow suppressed all alternative explanations. I'm sorry, but I cannot swallow that.
My purposes here were to 1) explain the basis for old universe theories. You cannot discuss this without a basic understanding of the underpinnings of the theory. 2) Express my viewpoint on it. I can believe in an old universe without having to buy into the Big Bang, Evolution, etc. Though evolution requires an old universe, an old universe does not prove evolution. We shouldn't conflate the different issues of origins. Nor do I see any disagreement with the Bible and an old universe. More on this in the next article. But I also must admit that there are believers on both sides of the argument who disagree with me. Because God often acts through agency, I see no problem with the concept that He created the universe in its current state through some naturalistic means - not including the initial moment of creation. To say "God created it, I believe it, and that settles it" is to leave investigation into His ways to those who don't even believe in Him! We impoverish ourselves by ignoring His wonderful ways of doing things through His creation. Finally, 3) I wanted to demonstrate how every theory has assumptions. We must all be able to see and admit to our assumptions if we want to be honest with ourselves and with others.