Episode Transcript
Welcome to faith and science. I'm Dr John Ashton.
As I talk with some of the young people, it seems that the Big Bang theory is still dominant in the thinking of many christians. And there's a conflict there with the biblical age of the earth, and it certainly raises doubts and I'm sure that many people think, well, how do we deal with this? And I came across an article quite recently. It was titled can Christians add the Big Bang to the Bible? And it was by an industrial chemist, actually by the name of Russell Grigg. I think you can probably find the details of the article on creation.com, www creation.com. But I thought it was a very good summary of the issues. He raised some really, really important points. And of course, one of the things he points out is that there are a lot of different understandings among lay people of what the Big Bang theory actually is. Well, essentially, the current model claims that all matter and energy in the universe plus space and time, so in other words, there was no space. And it's hard for us to imagine that, that there's actually no space, no three dimensional space, where once contained in a dimensionless point of essentially infinite density and temperature. This is what happens when the scientists are looking at some of the data they have out there, and they sort of think of what are possible scenarios.
And one of the scenarios is, of course, that something expanded. So what they can do is they can run their equations backwards. And so they make up a mathematical model, and they put the data that we have now into this model and some of the laws, and they then run the model back in time.
And they have this assumption, assuming that space, time and matter and everything expanded. And when they go back, they get to a situation where their equations become infinite. And they call this a singularity.
In other words, when they solve the equation, the values of their equations can't be solved any further because everything goes to infinity. And so essentially, what they say is, well, in the beginning, essentially, there was a dimensionless point of infinite density and temperature. So these things are sort of meaningless to us, really, but they're mathematical constructs. And I think it's interesting, of course, and maybe why some people identify with this is that the Bible says God created the heavens and the earth. And in the beginning, the earth was a void and formless sort of thing.
And to me, from a mass perspective, that's almost a definition of a location. But anyway, so as they run back their equations, they get that this singularity was possibly about 13.8 billion years ago.
And so they say that this singularity suddenly began to expand, and they say because of a quantum fluctuation. Well, I'm not sure what that means. I don't think anybody knows what that means.
But I guess what it means is that there was a change that enabled that expansion to take place. So you can see there's massive amount of assumptions here, and of course, we can't know. And it's really the science of physicists are playing around with their maths.
But essentially, this big bang theory claims that this expansion took place at many times the speed of light during a very short initial inflation. So there again, we have this very rapid expansion faster than the speed of light. So it's interesting how they have to tweak the laws of physics to make their theory work.
And then, of course, they claim after about 800,000 years, and it amazes me how they get these figures, but of course, it's from solving their equations. And we have to always remember that their equations are based on a whole lot of unproven assumptions. But as a physicist, you have fun doing this and trying to find get a solution that possibly works.
And so they claim that after about 800,000 years, some of the energy that expanded had formed hydrogen atoms, which coalesced through gravity and formed the first stars, which are called population three stars. Now, we need to just pause for a moment here. We need to understand that no population three stars have ever been seen or identified.
So here again, we have this theory saying that this must happen, forming hydrogen, because from, E equals MC squared, that's the basic matter that you're most likely to form, and then, of course, from that they say that early galaxies gradually emerged. And then after about 9 billion years, they say essentially the sun formed from a rotating cloud of dust and gas, and then later, the planets formed in the solar system. And of course, there's major problems with that, in that the plane of the rotation of the planets is not at right angles to the axis of spin of the sun. It's on an angle, and some of the planets are rotating in opposite direction to the other planets on their axis, this sort of thing, so there's massive problems with that model, even though it's described in just a few simple words.
And then they say, over further billions of years, our earth gradually cooled to its present states and somehow obtained water. And so, of course, this is a major contradiction to the Bible because contrary to Genesis 1, which says our God created the earth on day one and the sun and the stars on the fourth day, it says that the Big Bang theory says the sun existed before the earth.
And also when God created the earth, it was water covered, it was cool and dark, not extremely hot and bright. So the creation story is very different. But one of the things I guess, that draws Christians in is that people think this Big Bang occurred very quickly, boom and it's all over. It's expanded. But the Big Bang theory relates really to something that has happened over billions of years. So it involves the progressive formation of the bodies in the universe, the stars, galaxies and so forth over billions of years. And so really the Big Bang is not an abrupt one time creation event, as perhaps many christians might think it is. But of course, God may well have created the universe in an expanding state, but not over eons. And need to remember, too, that we actually can't definitively measure whether the universe is expanding or not.
We're really not in a position to do that definitively. And so there's debate in that area. But it's interesting that according to Genesis 1, God created everything by his word of command.
He spoke it into existence over a period of 6 consecutive 24 hours earth type days about 6,000 years ago. And it's very interesting, of course, this is recorded by Moses. And it's very interesting when you think of the Bible story where Jesus talks about Abraham and the poor man, it's a parable, and people argue with Jesus, and Jesus' reply is along the lines, well, look, if they don't believe Moses and the prophets, they're not going to believe even if someone should be raised from the dead. And so this is a very interesting point that Jesus is essentially saying that the records of Moses, Moses and the prophets are correct, and that we need to believe those.
So it's interesting how we talk about this figure about 6000 years ago. And I had a look on the creation.com website and they have the creation event occurring roughly about 6150 years ago, a bit over 6000 years. But it's very interesting that I've done some calculations myself from the Bible, and I'll just run through these with you and give you the texts so that you can look them up, because it's quite interesting because I think it leads into some other very interesting facts. So if we go to Genesis chapter 5, in Genesis chapter 5, it records when the pre flood patriarchs became fathers.
Now, it doesn't necessarily say that this was the age when they had their first child, but this is the age when they fathered a particular child, which is mentioned in the genealogy. So for example, with Adam, it talks about Adam was 130 years old when he fathered Seth, but we know that he had Cain and Abel before then, and probably daughters and other children as. So it's an interesting point that a number of patriarchs are listed, but these people most likely, and I would say highly likely, have many other children, but they're picking out one particular descendant which is carried on. It may be that this descendant was a particularly spiritual person, as in the case of Enoch.
And so we have in Genesis chapter 5 that Adam was 130 years old when he had Seth, and Seth 105 when he had Enos, and Enos 90 when he had Cainan, and Cainan 70 had Mahalaleel. And Mahalaleel 65, we had Jared, and Jared 162, when he had Enoch. Enoch 65, Methuselah, Methuselah 187, Lamech and Lamech 182 and he had Noah.
And Noah was 600 when the flood came. And so when you add all these up, you get a total of 1656 years from creation to the flood. So 1656 years from creation to the flood.
Now, we need to remember, though, that it talks about Lamech was 182 years old. Was he 182 years old and one month, or was he 182 and eleven months? So we don't really know. So the error could be plus ten years.
So we need to remember that when we say that the flood occurred 1656 years after creation, it could be another ten years on that. That gives us an idea to the flood. But of course, we now need to relate this back to our present day time.
Well, in Genesis chapter 11, verses 10 to 25, we have the records of the age when the post flood patriarchs became fathers. Now, that's Shem. It says that Shem became a father two years after the flood. And his son Asphaxad was 35 when he had Salah, who was 30 when he had Eber, who was 34 when he had Peleg, who was 30 when he had Reu, who was 32 when he had Serug, who was 30 when he had Nahor, who was 29 when he had Terah.
Now, this is where it gets a little bit tricky with Terah. And so the clues are there in Genesis 11:32 and 32, and Genesis 12:4.
So it says that Terah was 75 when he had Abraham and the three sons, but it's interesting that it just groups all the children together and evidently they weren't twins. But if we go to Genesis 11:32, we can see that Terah died at 205 years of age, and Abraham was 75 then, and Abraham was 75 when he left Haran. So that gives a difference of 130 years up to the covenant with Abraham's covenant with God. So if we add up all those years, it comes to a total of 427 years from the flood to the covenant with Abraham.
And remember, if you want to recheck these dates, remember you can re listen to this talk by just googling 3abnaustralia.org.au and then click on the listen button and you'll see the Faith and Science programme will come up there. And of course, when you open the Faith and Science programme too, you'll also see some links there to various podcast providers where you could re listen to this as a podcast.
So just going back then, so it's 427 years from the flood to the covenant with Abraham. And again, there could be an additional ten years in there because we don't know when it talks about Nahor being 29 years, was he 29 in one month or was he about to turn 30? And should it be the average value, it's most likely going to be an average value. Assuming that the birthdays are going to be distributed, it'll be pretty close to an average value.
So when we go a little bit further, then another clue that we have is that we have a statement in 1 Kings, chapter 6 verse 1, that the Exodus occurred 479 years before Solomon's fourth year. Now Solomon's fourth year is believed to be around 967 BC. So if you look up the Internet and some of the archaeology journals, that seems to be the best one, 967 BC.
And so we have the Exodus occurring 479 years earlier. So that means that would date the exodus at 1446 BC. Now we know that the covenant with Abraham, according to Exodus, chapter 12, verses 40 to 41, that's Exodus 12:40-41, took place 430 years before the Exodus. And so the time from the flood to the Exodus was 857 years. And so when we add that up, we get the 1446 plus the 857 gives 2303 BC for the date for the flood, 2303 BC plus up to 20 years, of course, and therefore creation must be 2303 plus 1656, which equals 3959 BC plus or -20 years. So somewhere between 359 to 379 BC.
Now this is quite a bit younger because when you add on our current year, 2021, and allowing for the fact that there's no year zero, you get a date for the age of the earth is 5979 years. So again, on the basis of the calculations that I've given you, and you can look up those texts in the Bible and check it, then we're not quite the 6000 years. But it's very interesting if you look at that value of 3959 to 3079 BC.
And you look at the date of the crucifixion, which is believed to be either 33 AD or 30 AD. They were the two years where there was a Passover on a Friday in April, and they both occurred in. So in AD 30 there was a Passover.
The Passover commenced on a Friday and on AD 33. So either of those dates, allowing for the torrents, there is pretty well exactly 4,000 years after creation. I found that very interesting, mainly because, I guess we can't pay a lot of interest in biblical numerology, I find interesting, but I don't think it is definitive in any way, but it's interesting that the 4000 years is 80 jubilees. And of course, if we read about the jubilees, in Leviticus chapter 25, and the jubilee was every 50 years, or there was a sabbath of the land. And if you read the first part of Leviticus, chapter 12, it talks about the Sabbath of the land, that every 7 years was to be a year where the land was to have a sabbath. And then after 7 years of Sabbath, or the 50th year was to be a special jubilee, or the land was to return to its original owners, and so forth.
When you look at biblical numerology, 6 is often associated with man, 7 for the Lord, 8 for Jesus, and 10 for law, 12 for government, and so forth, those sort of numbers. And so it's interesting that it's 80 jubilees for that particular time there. And one of the other things, that just while we're on this topic, of course, back in Genesis, we have the record of the God's covenant, an earlier covenant that God made with people recorded in Genesis chapter 9, verse 13. And this was in chapter 9 verse 13. After the flood, God said to Noah, I set my bow in the cloud and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth, that He would no longer destroy the earth by water. Of course, we know the next destruction of the earth is by fire.
Not very good. But one of the things that fascinates me, and I know it depends on the fact that we have divided the circle up into 360 degrees, but it's very interesting that the angle for the rainbow, for the primary bow is Brewster's angle. And Brewster was a professor of physics at, I'm pretty sure was at Oxford. He was a very devout Christian. And the angle is named after him. And it's 42 degrees, which is 7 times 6.
And then of course, if you look carefully, there's often a second bow which is a little bit higher. That bow angle is 50 degrees and it's exactly 8 degrees higher. And of course through Jesus we have a higher covenant with God, a God of salvation.
So they're just some interesting things that I thought that line up, but we can see that the biblical age for the earth is around 6000 years. And I know many people think, no, the earth must be much older than that.
But when I was researching this some years ago, and I did, in my book Evolution Impossible, give 12 reasons why evolution cannot explain the origin of life on earth. I have a chapter in there which I've titled the historical evidence for a worldwide flood. It's chapter 8. And when I was researching this, I looked around for some of the most ancient chronological documents that are on record. And matter of fact, I had a guy, there was a chap working at Princeton University in the library over there who was studying the looking up scientific records in ancient civilisations. He provided me with some help and he was very interested in the work that I was doing as well.
And when I looked at the oldest chronologies that I could find, they all go back to the founding of the respective civilizations no later than about 2,200 BC probably. And so this fits very well with the flood account. And of course one of those was a series of tablets that was given to Alexander the Great that contained the astronomical records for about 1900 years. I'd have to look up the actual chapter in my own book as I just can't remember the details off hand. But it's very interesting that that fits perfectly with the biblical age for the earth.
So we need to remember that, that when we're looking at actual history and what we can know on records, it all corroborates with the Bible.
But, you know, the Big Bang theory has heaps of problems. And one of the things is that it claims that energy was converted into matter. Well, if energy is converted into matter, according to Einstein's equation, E equals MC squared, when this happens, exactly equal amounts of matter and antimatter are produced. So we could ask ourselves the question, where are the 200 billion galaxies of antimatter that had to form to balance the 200 billion galaxies of regular matter in the stars for the big Bang theory to work? They are not there.
Also, the big Bang theory is supposed to have formed by means of a quantum fluctuation, but what is that? And how could this have happened before there was any time, space, or anything for it to fluctuate in. I mean, there's a lot of real problems with the Big Bang theory.
Also, the big Bang theory depends on an early, brief inflation of the universe at many times the speed of light, with no known mechanism to either cause this or to stop it once it had happened.
So in other words, the laws of physics weren't applying, there was something different. Well, if they have to believe in that to have their Big Bang theory work, what is wrong with Creation?
And of course, the Big Bang has its own light travel time problem arising from the fact that the cosmic microwave background radiation has the same temperature over the entire sky of about 2.7 degrees above absolute zero. However, of course, there hasn't been enough time for the radiation to travel between the calculated areas of size of the universe to produce that temperature. So that's the horizon problem.
And of course, the big Bang theory produces expanding clouds of gas. Now, expanding clouds of gas do not spontaneously reverse their expansion and condense into objects we see in the real universe to be composed to form matter. So that's why they have to construct dark matter. But of course, no one's discovered dark matter either.
So you can see there are just so many fudge factors in the Big Bang theory. And that's why some years ago, a number of leading astronomers signed a letter. You can see it on if you google cosmologystatement. All one word. Cosmologystatement.org, all one word.
So there are major problems. So the bottom line is this, we don't have a scientific explanation for how we came to be here, but we do have a biblical explanation for how we came to be here. And that biblical evidence stacks up to archaeological evidence and also describes some amazing supernatural events that were witnessed by many, many people and recorded so that we can know.
You see, this world isn't all there is. God exists and God is outside this world and God wants us to have a relationship with Him. And that is so important because I would say if we're getting close 6000 years, it can't be far away before Jesus will be coming back to point out that the Bible was true and to claim his loved ones.
Remember, you can listen to this programme by going to 3abnaustralia.org.au and click on the listen button and look up Faith and Science. You've been listening to Faith and Science a production of 3ABN Australia radio.
