Time and Numbers

I love big numbers, although I can barely comprehend them. For example, light from the Sun can get to the Earth in less than 10 minutes. But if you had a spaceship that only traveled as fast as the car in your garage and started heading for the Sun today, neither you nor the kids that you brought along for the ride would live long enough to get there. The Sun is 93 million miles away, so you do the math. And yet if you wanted to travel to the next nearest star with a possibility of a planet, and could travel at the speed of light, it would take you something like 20 years to get there. Well, except for one little problem. A few nuclear fuel rods allow a large submarine to go for a year without refueling. But if all the atoms present in the entire Earth were split, there still would not be enough energy produced to enable that same little spaceship to obtain light speed. Or let me put it this way. UFO's do not come from beyond our solar system.

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The Hubble telescope has scanned the universe, and it is estimated that there are 200 billion trillion stars. Scientists have looked at something called red light shifts, and calculated the speed and time that all matter is moving outward from some central point, and have estimated the universe is between 13 to 20 billion years old. I recently heard a creation scientist ask this question. If we divide 200 billion trillion by 20 billion years, there needs to be 20 million stars formed per second, from then until now, to reach 200 billion trillion. If this is so, then why do we see so few stars being formed? So I checked out star formation on Google, and got the neat picture above. Seems that Hubble has identified a lot of "star birthing areas", visible only with infared scanners, and these have great "potential" to form lots of new stars, although the last new star identified for sure was birthed 1000 years ago. But not to worry, it's a little telescope and a very big universe. So what's 20 million per second among friends?

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We are told that the Earth began forming about 4 billion years ago, and that conditions for life were not present until about 400 million years ago. Now 400 million years is a lot of time, but not enough to program by trial and error the 3 million links of genetic code needed for the most basic initial life form. Even if chance could provide the first 100 links, which I doubt, why would links be added year after year after year, when those links would not benefit the potential life form until a million years later? The same argument applies to the latest idea that there might have been millions of shorter RNA links floating around. What is the purpose of their existence? What would cause more than a few links to combine over any amount of time? As my two year old grandchild once said, shaking her head; "I can't like this!" I think the DNA of all life is already pre-programmed to allow for variation up to certain limits. But check out sources such as the National Geographic edition on evolution, or check out evolution web sites, and still you will not find any evidence that shows gradual development of new features over time. Anthropologist can chart extinct species, and suggest that one led to the next. But the fossil record is absent of uniqueness in development. You might find a small dinosaur fossil with wings, and if that is an actual fossil, it's an already done deal. We simply do not have wings in the process of being developed over time. Nor do we find in any species of animal, plant or insect, existing today, new features in the process of development. Maybe we should call that "faith based science".

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So is the universe really 14 billion years old, beginning with a big bang? Did life begin 400 million years ago? Have the ancestors of modern man been walking around this planet for 100,000 years? The search to understand the ever increasing flood of knowledge is both exciting and important. But we need to learn how to properly balance what science tells us, and what scripture teaches. Science looks at material evidence, and interprets everything mechanically and mathematically. It looks at only the material world, and cannot measure or comprehend the spiritual world. And it is limited by two biases. The first is that because it cannot measure the spiritual, it denys it. I personally believe there are physics that govern both, perhaps the same physics, and if so then their glass will always be half empty. And the second is that because everything is regarded mechanically, science is most comfortable with a uniformist view of time. This measures the pace that things happen at today and the conditions that are known today, and then applies that pace and condition when looking backward. So an earth-shaking event like the flood is ignored, not because of a lack of a tremendous amount of evidence, but because that would be "introducing religion".

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There can be bias when looking at scripture. We need to seek the leading of the Holy Spirit to help us understand and descern what is written, and what is taught. If there is a conflict between what God says in scripture, and what science says, God is always right. I don't worry about science questioning miracles because I know that He is designer, creator, and substainor. But if a verse talks about the "four corners of the earth", I should understand the truth in that statement without having to believe that the earth is flat. Scripture talks about the sin of Adam and Eve, and believing that Adam and Eve were real people is criitcal to understanding God's plan of redemption for man. But putting a time frame on when Adam lived, and when "God created the heavens and the earth", is a matter of interpretation. Science may lead us to better examine certain sections of scripture, and it could be very wrong in its interpretation of evidence. However, the tools we use to help us understand scripture, such as teachings, and commentaries, and books, may or may not be inspired. Honest people can look at scripturre literally, and consider scriptural evidence as a whole, and still have areas of disagreement.

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Unfortunatly, the overall tendency in the church today is to try to conform scripture to current scientific and cultural information and standards. There is an evolutanry flavor being injected into the teaching of redemption and morals. It denys the authenticity of people and events in the Old Testament, and transforms a Spirit-breathed, spirit-reborn, relationship with the Creator of the universe, into a values-changing, society-conforming, philosophy left by an evolved grand master. But this has been true, even from the time of Peter. "Mockers say, all continues just as it was from the beginning of creation . . . When they maintain this, it escapes their notice that by the word of God the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and by water, through which the world at that time was destroyed, flooded with water. But the prresent heavens and earth by His word are being reserved for fire, kept for the day of judgement and destruction of ungodly men . . . Since all these things are to be destroyed in this way, what sort of people should you be in holy conduct and godliness . . . But according to His promise we are looking for a new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness dwells." (2 Peter 3)