Young Galaxies imply a Young Cosmos
[Introductory Creation Science]
Although the existence of single young galaxy does not in and of itself prove a specially created Young Cosmos, if all the galaxies are shown to be young, even the ones which secular scientists argue are the earliest since the beginning of time, then the most natural interpretation is that the universe is young. The inference is almost inescapable.
Let’s first consider the problems of the Big Bang cosmology creating galaxies. A former professor of mine, James Trefil (no friend of ID and had debated William Dembski in 2005), had this to say about galaxies:
Five Reasons Why Galaxies Can’t Exist
The problem of explaining the existence of galaxies has proved to be one of the thorniest in cosmology. By all rights, they just shouldn’t be there, yet there they sit. It’s hard to convey the depth of frustration that this simple fact induces among scientists.
Trefil, The Dark Side of the Universe, p. 55.
There are numerous problems getting and explosion to create things. We know that from experience, and that is certainly the case with the Big Bang making galaxies. Part of Trefil’s solution to some of the problems of galaxy formation is the invocation of so-called Dark Matter.
Trefil was one of the early pioneers of the idea. But the existence of Dark Matter is in doubt. It’s invoked because it has to be there even though we have never directly measured it. Some dark matter may exist, but we do not know if there are enough quantities to fix the problems with galaxies. Furthermore Dark Matter won’t fix all the problems with galaxy formation….
Walter Brown describes the situation:
Evolutionists now admit that galaxies cannot evolve from one type to another. There are also good reasons natural processes cannot form galaxies. Furthermore, if spiral galaxies were billions of years old, their arms or bars would be severely twisted. Because they have maintained their shape, either galaxies are young, or unknown physical phenomena are occurring within galaxies. Even structures composed of galaxies are now known to be so amazingly large, and yet relatively thin, they could not have formed by slow gravitational attraction. If slow, natural processes cannot form such huge galactic structures, then rapid, supernatural processes may have.
….Figure 161: Hubble Deep Field North. The Hubble Space Telescope, searching for evolving galaxies in December 1995, focused for 10 continuous days on a tiny patch of sky, so small when viewed from Earth that a grain of sand held at arm’s length would cover that area. This picture of that tiny patch of sky is called Hubble Deep Field North. Most objects in it are not isolated stars, but galaxies, each containing billions of stars. Of the 3,000 galaxies photographed that emitted enough light to measure their redshifts, which presumably measure distance, all seemed surprisingly mature. As stated in Scientific American, “the formation of ‘ordinary’ spiral and elliptical galaxies is apparently still out of reach of most redshift surveys.”16 Moreover, fully formed clusters of galaxies, not just galaxies, are seen at the greatest distances visible to the Hubble Space Telescope.17 In 1998 and 2004, similar pictures—with similar results—were taken.
Think about this. There is not enough time in the age of the universe (even as evolutionists imagine it, times a billion) for gravity to pull together all the particles comprising clusters of galaxies.18 (As explained under “Galaxies” on page 30, clusters of galaxies cannot form, even granting all this time.) Because the most current studies show fully-formed galaxies even farther away than those shown above, creation becomes the logical and obvious alternative. We may be seeing galaxies as they looked months after they were created. Vast amounts of time are no longer needed.
….
Figure 162: Spiral Galaxies. The arms in these six representative spiral galaxies have about the same amount of twist. Their distances from Earth are shown in light-years. (One light-year, the distance light travels in one year, equals 5,879,000,000,000 miles.) For the light from all galaxies to arrive at Earth tonight, the more distant galaxies, which had to release their light long before the closer galaxies, did not have as much time to rotate and twist their arms. Therefore, farther galaxies should have less twist. Of course, if light traveled millions of times faster in the past, the farthest galaxies did not have to send their light long before the nearest galaxies. Spiral galaxies should have similar twists. This turns out to be the case.
Here are some references that support Brown’s arguments. Galaxies.
Like ReMine’s Biotic Message Walter Brown is arguing for a Cosmic Message, that the universe is specifically designed to resist evolutionary interpretations and force one to accept that the most scientifically reasonable solution is that of special creation.
My professor, Trefil, in his book with self-deprecating humor refered to his own theories of galaxy formation as potential snake oil. He entitled one of his chapters in Dark Side “Solution or Snake Oil?'’
Indeed, Trefil is honest enough to admit, there are such serious problems in theories of galaxy formation, that the term “snake oil” is appropriate to describe the state of affairs. If Cosmic Message theory is correct, the empirical evidence will continue to resist evolutionary (Big Bang) interpreations of formation in favor of recent special creation. If Cosmic Message is correct, following the evidence where it leads will lead us to the conclusion of recent special creation.
Finally, in addition to Trefils mild skepticism of the Big Bang (which he expresses in his book Dark Side of the Universe), three professor at my former university reject or seriously question the Big Bang. A website that has the list of dissenters and their reasons for rejection can be found at www.CosmologyStatement.org. David Berlinski of the Discovery Institute wrote: Was There a Big Bang?
Beyond every act of understanding, there is an abyss. Like Darwin’s theory of evolution, Big Bang cosmology has undergone that curious social process in which a scientific theory is promoted to a secular myth. The two theories serve as points of certainty in an intellectual culture that is otherwise disposed to give the benefit of the doubt to doubt itself. It is within the mirror of these myths that we have come to see ourselves. But if the promotion of theory into myth satisfies one human agenda, it violates another.
Myths are quite typically false, and science is concerned with truth. Human beings, it would seem, may make scientific theories or they may make myths, but with respect to the same aspects of experience, they cannot quite do both.
June 22nd, 2007 at 10:48 pm
It seems that the leading competitor to “Big Bang” is “Steady State” or the eternal universe. Isn’t “Big Bang” more consistent with creationism than Steady State?
June 22nd, 2007 at 11:27 pm
Yes. Big Bang is very much closer to the creation model. That is why the irony is that it is rejected as inherently anti-Christian by some. Note what one secular physicist, Rober Jastrow of the Goddard Space Flight center had to say.
Tipler writes of Weinberg:
The 2nd law of thermodymics strongly suggests a universe with a finite life. This is inherently obvious in that the stars can’t be shining forever. This simple and obvious conclusion was resisted for metaphysical, not scientific reasons.
Some aspects of Big Bang physics are incoporated into various YEC cosmologies including Humphrey’s White Hole and YEC CDK. I think the argument for a non-eternal universe based on thermodynamics is very sound.
The Big Bang cosmology did a good job of making the climate in the physics world friendly to theists. It is not quite the godless theory that some have supposed that it is. Even the atheists have recognized the Big Bang theory would be more sympathetic to theism than atheism.
The Big Bang put a bound on the time for Darwinian evolution to take place, and thus the Big Bang has helped the case for Intelligent Design of life, which has helped the case for the special creation of life as well…
I had once accepted the Big Bang theory, and I viewed as very friendly to my personal beliefs, even though it did not quite fit the natural reading of Genesis. I was horrified to see treated with such contempt.
If YEC succeeds, one may look at the Big Bang as an important step in the progress of YEC theory. The Big Bang took us from a pantheistic type view of the unvierse being eternal and self-sufficent steady state place to a view of the universe as being created and having a finite life. That was an important step to creating a climate friendly to YEC theory.
For example, cosider what the Big Bang did the likes of Ernst Haekel:
The essential elements of the Big Bang proved Haeckel wrong, and it paved the way for ID to demolish naturalistic evolution. It also was very friendly to Christian theology, which, most notably among the world religions boldly argued the universe was not eternal.
June 23rd, 2007 at 10:14 pm
The main problem with the big bang theory (as I see it) is their attempts to explain how randomly dispersed hydrogen atoms formed into the well ordered planets, galaxies, galactic clusters and superclusters we see today. Why do they assume a random scattering of matter at the beggining (and why only hydrogen)? If the laws of physics show signs of fine tuning, why should the initial arrangement of matter have not also been fine tuned? Of course, once you admit that as a possability, then you have also admitted the possability that there were no billions of years of ’stellar evolution’.
June 24th, 2007 at 8:53 pm
As noted above, the presence of “dark matter”, though not a complete solution, goes part way to solving the problem of the origins of galaxies. There is recent, powerful evidence for its existence, found at the following link:
http://seedmagazine.com/news/2006/08/scientists_confirm_existence_o.php
We are still learning amazing things not even suspected 50 years ago in cosmology. I would not be so certain that a physical, plausible explanation for the origin of galaxies will not be found as a direct consequence of the physics of the big bang in the next 50. (I would contrast that state with the lack of advances in the origin of life search!)
Those who see galaxies as having been directly created should ask themselves “why would God create stars in collections such as galaxies in first place”, since a young universe has no need to confine stars in galaxies (remember galaxies serve as star nurseries in an old universe). We could survive quite happily for 10,000 or even 100,000 years circling our own sun in the neighbourhood of randomly scattered stars bearing no resemblance at all to any galaxy that we can see. We would have no need of balancing gravitational forces, or providing for star formation and nucleosynthesis via supernovae, yet galaxies provide structures able to survive billions of years with these and other important functions.
June 24th, 2007 at 9:01 pm
I guess my other preference would be to re-title this thread to “Any galaxies at all implies an old universe”, since they are structures where anything of significance occurs on time scales of millions of years: rotation, nucleosynthesis, orbits of globular clusters, formation and evolution of star clusters, growth of central black holes etc. Galaxies were definitely built for the “long haul”, not for a universe that only had to survive for 10,000 or 100,000 years. Hey, it takes light that long just to get across one (oh yes, that’s another problem in another thread).
June 25th, 2007 at 7:21 am
It seems to me that among the primary concerns in sorting the data to clarify YEC – OEC positions one has to consider the accuracy and assumptions of the “Distance Scale.” There are quite a few assumptions used to determine an object’s distance, and from that, possibly its age. Some assumptions seem reasonable, others seem far more tenuous. The concise info at this link seems to provide a good overview, but you who are experts can determine that.
http://www.astr.ua.edu/keel/galaxies/distance.html
At the beginning, the remark is made:
“In the ladder of distance indicators, propagation of errors becomes dominant. See Rowan-Robinson, The Cosmological Distance Ladder (Cambridge 1987), for a full discussion. Modern methods are described in Galaxy Distances and Deviations from Universal Expansion, ed. B. Madore and R.B. Tully (NATO ASI 180).”
Toward the end a remark stands out under the sub heading:
“Distance estimates”
“Distances to nearby galaxies are not in serious dispute,…”
To my mind this implies two things: a) some doubt still remains about distance estimates to nearby galaxies, b) distance estimates to far distant galaxies are much less certain. What then does that imply about the certainty of a 15 billion year old universe? Such doubt of course can not prove recent creation, but it certainly leaves open such a possibility.
Best regards
June 27th, 2007 at 2:05 pm
Regarding distance, in principle we can eventually get a good reading. What would it take. Currently, our best triangulation methods can establish distances of 300 light years. Triangulation works very well on earth, and surveyors have used it for ages.
The effectiveness of triangulation assumes a cosmological principle AND a euclidian geometry. The assumption of Euclidean geometry is probably false (since relativity is non-Euclidean). But I still think it ought to work for very large distances. Any one is free to weigh in on this.
To get better triangulation, we might have to build space probes which can orbit the sun from very large distances. The Earth orbits at 1 Astronomical unit (AU). We get 300 light years (I believe) via this triangulation. To get 3000 light years, we