We recently received the following letter for possible placement in the Outlook.

Dear Rev. De Jong:

According to the National Geographic, May, 1988 issue (Page 618), on February 23, 1987, astronomers first observed an exploding star (supernova) in the Large Magellanic Cloud viewable in the southern skies. This star is 170,000 light years from earth. Thus, assuming the universe was created 6000 years ago, what the astronomers saw was part of a light-path from the star to earth which God created at the same time He created the star and placed it 170,000 light years away. Light actually emitted by the star itself will not reach earth until another 164,000 years have elapsed. The same is true for all heavenly bodies at a distance greater than 6,000 light years from earth. Light from each one observed to date is not from the body itself but is part of a stream of light from the body to earth, which God created at the same time that He created the body itself. God must be chuckling at all the astronomers excitedly peering through their telescopes at these created light-paths and wracking their brains to develop theories explaining what they see.

Any God-fearing person might wonder: Would God convey a message via this created light-path indicating that a star had exploded when such was not actually the case? Can astronomers believe that what they see actually happens or is God, for reasons known only to Himself, deluding them?

Believers today are faced with a problem akin to that faced by Christians in Columbus’ day who firmly believed that the Bible plainly showed that the earth was square. When Columbus and later Magellan returned from their voyages without having fallen off the earth, they had a choice of standing firm in their beliefs or studying the Word with newly opened eyes.

Yours in Christian love,

Bert Enserink

9214 Ives

Bellflower, CA 90706

While letters often appear in our pages with little or no comment, this letter states so briefly and clearly some of the questions that trouble us and perhaps many others in the current controversies about evolution that some further consideration of them at this point seems appropriate.

   

The Explosion?

The letter takes occasion from the news about last year’s supernova explosion to suggest a question about whether that actually occurred. “Would God convey a message via this created light path indicating a star had exploded when such was not actually the case? Can astronomers believe that what they see actually happens or is God . . . deluding them?”

I do not see any question arising as the letter raises it about the occurrence of the explosion. Our readers may recall the article in our August 1987 Outlook calling attention to the supernova and the way in which it was upsetting a lot of long accepted theories and compelling extensive revisions. Should anyone question or be surprised that a star explodes? Didn’t Psalm 102:25, 26 long ago teach us to expect such changes in a universe that “will grow old like a garment” and “perish?” The problems arise not about whether this occurred, but about the explanation of this event and the way this is even being cited as a proof of the evolution theory. How could the fact of an explosion prove evolution? What explosion ever created anything? Explosions that we know destroy rather than create. In all our experience it is a truism (as the “Sound of Music” put it) that “Nothing comes from nothing. Nothing ever could!” It has to be an indication of the desperation of evolutionary theorists (determined at all costs to show how everything must have been produced without a Producer) that they finally resort to trying to explain the infinitely complex organization and order in the universe as the product of random explosion. Even some of their own colleagues are beginning to criticize such explanations as statistically preposterous (Recall Dr. John Oller’s article in our July-August Outlook on “Darwin’s Worst Nightmare.”)

The Timing?

Our correspondent’s more important questions are not about the reality of the exploding star but about the timing of that occurrence which, according to astronomical theory, we should assume took place 170,000 years ago. How can such an old explosion be reconciled with a possibly much younger universe? Perhaps we should first ask how an astronomer knows that this event which was first seen last year took place 170,000 years ago. The attempted answers to that question quickly become extremely complicated. They bring us into the astronomers’ assumptions and conjectures which try to measure the unimaginable distances involved in “light-years”—each one being the distance which a beam of light, traveling where we can observe it at 186,000 miles per second, covers in a year.

The best systematic survey of the field of astronomy from a Christian perspective that I have been able to find continues to be Paul M. Steidl’s The Earth, the Stars and the Bible (reviewed in our May 1987 issue). (Even evolutionist writer Dr. Howard Van Till in his recent Science Held Hostage pp. 62–64, in another discussion, has to concede Steidl’s scientific integrity.) Steidl’s book devotes one of its last chapters to “Problems of Time,” dealing among others with the same questions as Mr. Enserink’s letter. His discussion points to the many unanswered questions in these areas, including questions about such apparent “constants” as the speed of light and the effect of gravity. We remember that Einstein early in this century suggested that light does not always travel in straight lines but is ”bent” by gravity. We even confront an ongoing argument about the existence or non-existence of “black holes”—areas in which gravity is conjectured to be so intense that even light cannot escape from it! (John G. Taylor‘s notorious book on the subject goes so far as to suggest that we ought to be tapping the “holes” as unlimited sources of power, conveniently skipping over the little question of how that conjectured power could be conveyed across light years of distance to where we need it!)

Regarding the longer distances in space and time, a great deal of reigning theory is based on the “red shift” observed in the light emanating from distant objects. Spectrograms of those objects compared with others show a shift toward the red or the blue. This color shift is thought to show whether the object is receding from us or coming closer to us, somewhat in the way the sound of a passing train’s whistle changes to a lower pitch after it passes us. In astronomy a blue shift is thought to indicate that the light’s source is approaching and a red shift that it is receding, the amount of that shift showing its speed.

The January 1988 Sky and Telescope highlights in 5 pages a growing controversy among astronomers as new evidence threatens this basic assumption about red shifts. Halton C. Arp has had a long and distinguished career during which he compiled a valuable and widely used Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies. His prolonged research showed more and more apparent connections between distant galaxies and powerful radio sources. “This would have been completely acceptable if these associated objects had showed the same red shifts, but they did not.” According to astronomical theory these different red shifts proved that these objects were at enormous distances from each other, yet Arp and his associates’ growing mass of evidence showed that they were connected. That evidence forced the observer to ask whether the red shift theory might be mistaken. Rather than let this research shake astronomers’ confidence in the basic assumptions that had long governed this field, scientists fiercely resisted the persistent Arp and associates, who found themselves denied access to the journals and the telescopes essential to further research, in a way not unlike the way Galileo was threatened and persecuted by the medieval church. In the Sky and Telescope article about the controversy, Geoffrey Burbridge, a world renowned astrophysicist and head of the Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona, expresses his outrage at the injustice which drove Arp from this country to Germany. Arp’s 200-page 1987 book, Quasars, Redshifts, and Controversies, heavily illustrated with evidence, tells the story of his prolonged research and the extraordinary efforts to stop it (published by Interstellar Media, 2153 Russell St., Berkeley, CA 94705 for $19.95). The September, 1988, Sky and Telescope reports how the “Redshift Debate Rages On.”

The story of this present redshift argument is a striking example of what Herman Bavinck observed in the November 1901 Methodist Review (May 1988 Outlook, p. 9). While “Theology is accused, and justly so, of have usurped, in early times all the sciences . . . . no science has ever done this more entirely than physical science in the present day . . . . it forces its method upon all the sciences, and considers the mechanical interpretation the only one that is warranted to the claim of being scientific.” The adherents of evolution, “skeptical according to their principle,” are “hardened dogmatists in practice and oftentimes worse fanatics than the adherents of a religious belief. While they do not acknowledge objective truth, they are more certain of the truth of their own teaching than many an orthodox believer.”

While Paul Steidl’s survey of astronomy calls attention along the way to the multitude of unanswered questions, he observes that the assumption that the universe is very old “is not based upon astronomical evidence initially but upon the theory of evolution which many Christians, correctly we feel, believe not to be true. If the theory of evolution is disregarded, there is far less reason to begin with the assumption that the universe is old. The evidence can be examined more objectively” (p. 4). Toward the end of his survey he comments, “I have given numerous examples of evidence which demonstrate that the universe is not as old as we are commonly led to believe.” “Remember, we are combating a philosophy, not a body of objective facts proving evolution. ‘For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.’ We are fighting the interpretation of the facts, and the world’s interpretation is based upon a rejection of God” (p. 219).

Steidl was making the same point that H. Bavinck did 90 years ago in the article already mentioned, when be foresaw the intensifying conflict between two contradictory world views. “For man has undertaken the gigantic effort of interpreting the whole world, and all things that are therein, in their origin, essence and end, what is called purely and strictly scientifically, that is, without God . . . . only and alone from an immanent self-development” (in this evolutionary theory). While he saw many following this trend only part-way and trying to find compromise positions (as we do today), he foresaw these compromises quickly falling apart as such people had to choose and surrendered point after point to the all–demanding anti-Christian system of those who, “beginning and continuing without God, are also determined to end without” Him.

U.S. Senator Jesse Helms aptly summarized the present situation (in an essay, “A Nation Adrift,” in the 1986 publication The Rebirth of America , pp. 81, 82). “Today the doctrine of evolution is in disarray. Although the man on the street may not know it yet, the theory of evolution is being dismantled through modem discoveries.” “Even the head of the French Academy of Science candidly admits, ‘Evolution is a fairy tale for adults.’” “To settle for evolution or ‘the big bang’ theory without God begs a thousand scientific questions. Where did the original energy and matter come from? What caused the explosion? How could impersonal forces acting randomly construct a universe whose planets rotate with such precision that we set our clocks by them? It is preposterous to believe that ‘nothing times nobody equals everything! . . . Author Aldous Huxley once responded to the question of why evolution was so readily accepted. He admitted ‘the reason we accepted Darwinism even without proof is because we didn’t want a God to interfere with our sexual mores.’ There you have it. The real reason modern man does not want to believe in God is he wants no interference from the Creator.”

Is God Misleading Us?

We finally have to face in our correspondent’s letter, the more basic question many others also ask, “Is God misleading us with scientific evidence?” The assumption in the question is that all of this alleged “scientific evidence” is the revelation of God. (That is exactly what many of our would-be Christian evolutionists are trying to make of it—a Divine revelation that takes precedence over God’s revelation in Scripture.) But we need to notice that most of this evolutionists’ alleged “scientific evidence” is nothing of the kind. It is not divine revelation, but the anti-Christian INTERPRETATION that unbelievers over the years have been trying to impose upon the universe; it is not God’s revelation, but their effort to suppress God’s revelation of Himself in His creation (Romans 1:20ff.).

What is going on in this case is another variation of the habit of fallen man against which James warned us: “Let no one say when he is tempted, ‘I am tempted by God;’ for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he Himself tempt anyone. But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed.” One tries to dodge his own responsibility by blaming God for what he does or wants to do—in somewhat the way Aaron tried to excuse his carving the golden calf “I threw the gold in the fire and this came out!” (Ex. 32:4, 24)—God did not reveal the evolutionary theory, but unbelieving men concocted it, and now many Christians, tired of trying to resist majority opinion and wanting to join the crowd, try to make it credible by calling it Divine revelation!

The Heavens Reveal Our Ignorance

Part of the problem exemplified in this letter is our thinking that we know and wanting to know too much-more than any man knows or can know. Does the scientist “know” that this event occurred 170,000 years ago and the Christian “know” that the universe is only 6,000 years old? A virtue of the most knowledgeable and convincing writers that I have been able to find in these matters is their frank acknowledgement of our vast ignoranceOne often has occasion to recall D. H. Kromminga’s epigram, “It’s better not to know quite so much than a lot of things that ain’t so!” A main point of almost all the Bible’s references to astronomy is that they remind us of how little we know or can know about this overwhelming creation ( cf. Psalm 8, Isaiah 40, Job 38:31ff., for examples). And Paul warned the Corinthians (1 Cor. 4:6) “not (to go, or to think) beyond what has been written.” In admitting our ignorance, responsible writers are faithful to such Biblical reminders. Herman Bavinck’s treatment of these matters is remarkable for its admission of many unanswered questions. Howard Van Til’s Fourth Day faults Paul Steidl’s, admission of an unanswered question (p. 239). Ever since my exposure to these questions began sixty years ago as a teen-ager in very liberal public schools I have noticed that some orthodox writers, in their commendable zeal to defend the Christian faith, have felt that they must have some kind of answer for every question they faced and sometimes their attempted answers could be as foolish as the questions! Others, who often seemed therefore to be more convincing, frankly admitted unanswerable questions. Didn’t Paul say “We know in part” (1 Cor. 13:9, 12)?

Does this often necessary admission of ignorance, especially in matters such as these, mean, therefore, as many today take it to mean, that we can be sure of nothing, must leave every question unanswered and be “open” to every opinion—“lost” with the rest of the crowd in a totally relativistic society? Must we join today’s relativists?

Glory and Power

It means nothing of the kind. Paul’s “We know in part” in no way restricted his triumphant, “I know’s.” Because he preached only, “Thus saith the Lord!” he could declare to every people, the Living God who made the heavens and the earth (Acts 14:15; 17:24) and “the whole counsel” of this God (20:27). His faithful followers have always had to hold the same position. Herman Bavinck, who, because he called attention to our unanswered questions about details of creation, has been erroneously claimed as an evolutionist, identified the evolutionary system as the substitute for God in the devil-inspired effort of apostate men to develop their own alternative explanation of the universe, and he exposed the total bankruptcy of that theory in contrast with the glory of God’s revelation (May 1988 Outlook). J. G: Vos offered one of the best treatments of these matters in an address to our Reformed Fellowship over 20 years ago (reprinted in April and May 1987 Outlooks). Although he had once himself accepted Usher’s calculation of a 6000 year old universe, he became convinced on the basis of the Bible, that this figure could not stand, but he saw no room, on the same basis, for the billions of years demanded by evolutionists; and warned that we must keep in mind that the basic issue is not the timing, but God’s creation of man and the universe.

Stating the matter in clearest and simplest terms, “By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible” (Heb. 11:3). This Biblical affirmation is a flat contradiction of the evolutionary theory which tries to explain the origin of everything merely from the material universe itself. Whom will we believe, God or unbelieving man?

In this world we “know in part” and we often learn from unbelieving experts—Didn’t our Lord once say that, “The children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light” (Lk. 16:8)? But the information concerns God’s world and work. He certainly does not give us more dependable revelation through the theories unbelievers have formulated to justify their rejection ofHim than He gives us through His Word! To make those unbelieving “scientists” the judges of everything that “happened,” (as Howard Van Till’s book and its supporters demand) is a quick and sure way to lose the Christian gospel, which consists of revealed facts, not myths (Luke 1:1–4, 2; Peter 1:16; 1 John 1:1–3). Those who surrender decision about “what happened” to unbelieving scientists may, of course, long keep and repeat some of what they call the Bible’s poetic “myths” and our old liturgies and creeds (as a former liberal chaplain colleague did) as symbols of unity but consider it foolish to really believe them. That is the route by which many churches in our time have lost the Christian faith. Our 1988 synod’s condoning of it shows how far our churches have already gone down that road.

God’s Word always compels us to choose whom we will believe, Him or His rejectors. “No man can serve two masters.” God’s Word begins with His creation and His exclusive claim to all of it. In it He addresses us through His Son by whom and for whom all things were created and are held together (Col. 1:16–18) and who came to save the fallen creation and men through faith in Him. The Lord at His coming will reveal many surprises to us who now, like children, know only “in part,” but those surprises will not contradict the vast revelation He has already given in His Word about His creation and direction of all things to fulfill His purposes. They will rather enhance our wonder at the revealed mysteries which far surpass our present ability to imagine. We will have to learn to confess Him and His revelation here and now in a hostile world if we are to anticipate a part in the chorus of His triumphant people whose theme will then be, “You are worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power; For you created all things, and by your will they exist and were created” (Rev. 4:11)!

PDJ