Discerning Truth: Dialog on the Age of the Earth - Part 4

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February 28, 2021

In the dialog between Dr. Jason Lisle and Dr. Hugh Ross, we begin discussing some of the scientific details regarding the age of the universe. These include light travel time, fossils, ice cores, and relativity.

Discerning Truth: Dialog on the Age of the Earth - Part 5

00:01: Hi folks, welcome to Discerning Truth, the podcast of the
00:33: Biblical Science Institute. We have, in the past several sessions, been looking at a recent dialogue
00:38: I had, kind of an informal debate, with old earth advocate Hugh Ross.
00:44: And we've actually, in the last session, we've been looking at some of the scientific issues and we'll pick that up again with this session and continue to look at some of the science that, in my mind, confirms the
00:55: Biblical timescale of thousands of years. And saying it, I mean, that's one way I reach out to my fellow scientists, you know, look at these texts, unchanging physics, look at these astronomical observations, these laws and constants of physics are reliable to 16 places a decimal over the history of the universe.
01:15: So that's remarkable evidence that the Bible thousands of years ago predicted future scientific discoveries with a hundred percent accuracy.
01:24: That's just one of hundreds of examples I could give you, but I think God intended that we use those examples to bring people to faith in Jesus Christ.
01:35: Dr. Lyle, is there something you want to speak to there? The temptation is, people who know me,
01:40: I'm very interested in methodology and I probably would take issue with the notion of using a little bit of presuppositionalism evidential.
01:48: I don't think one could jump in and out. That's just my view there. I do think that when a presuppositionalist, for example, appeals to evidence, he's not appealing to evidentialism.
01:56: And like when an evidentialist appeals to presuppositions, he's not necessarily adopting presuppositionalism.
02:02: So I probably would take some issue there. Exactly right. Exactly right. The issue is, how do we use the evidence?
02:10: Do we suggest that man's mind, apart from Biblical presuppositions, is sufficient to interpret the evidence and come to the conclusion that God's Word is true?
02:21: Or do we recognize that the Bible's presuppositions are the presuppositions we need in order to correctly interpret any evidence whatsoever?
02:31: But without getting into the whole methodology debate, what do you have to say to what he said there?
02:36: I kind of understand what he's saying, generally speaking. I'm kind of tracking with him. But what are some disagreements you have with Dr.
02:43: Ross on what he said there, if you have any? Well, I thought he was supposed to be giving evidence for an old universe.
02:49: I didn't hear any. I heard that presupposed, but I didn't hear an argument for it.
02:57: Again, in Hugh Ross's statement, he's just kind of stating, here's the way things are. But he didn't actually give us an argument, the conclusion of which, therefore, the universe is billions of years old, based on any kind of process whatsoever.
03:12: And he did mention distant starlight. We'll deal with that in the debate here. But there wasn't an argument there.
03:18: And in order for his argument to be cogent, in order for it to be either sound or cogent, depending on the type of argument it is, it would have to assume, for the sake of hypothesis, my worldview, namely supernatural creation and catastrophism, and then show that that leads to an inconsistency.
03:37: Otherwise he hasn't truly refuted my position. He's just assumed his own and shown that in some cases you get consistency.
03:43: But that's not proof. That's not an argument. And we can come back to it. I mean, that's fine.
03:49: The only thing that got close to it was the assumption that starlight takes a long period of time to reach the
03:56: Earth. And it's actually not just an assumption. When you know something about the physics of Einstein, you can't just say, oh, it takes a million years for light to get from here to there.
04:07: You can't say that, because it depends on the reference frame and it depends on your synchrony convention. And Huros has assumed a particular synchrony convention, and he's assumed a particular reference frame, presumably
04:16: Earth. But it wouldn't have to be. From light's point of view, every trip is instantaneous. So from light's point of view, it takes no time at all to get from any distant galaxy to the
04:25: Earth. And that is a very well -established physics. And it turns out there are synchrony conventions that you can use that even from Earth's reference frame get the starlight here instantly.
04:34: And so I would say that, no, you're not really looking back in time. But even if you wanted to use the Einstein synchrony convention and say,
04:40: OK, if I'm looking at a light year out, I'm looking at a year in the past. That still doesn't give me any data in terms of here in the past, right?
04:49: And so the point is, wherever you look in space, you're looking at one point in time, and therefore you don't have history.
04:55: With regard to the laws of physics changing, I don't think they change generally. But of course,
05:01: God can do a miracle. God can temporarily suspend a law of physics. That's fine. Promises like the passage in Jeremiah, I think was the passage you were sort of paraphrasing, which is fine, that there are ordinances of heaven and earth.
05:14: But those were enacted at some point. Those were created at some point. At some point, God started ruling the universe in a particular way.
05:20: And you can't go back beyond that. I misspoke very slightly when I said God created these ordinances.
05:27: I mean, that's maybe a less than precise way of saying it.
05:33: The ordinances describe the consistent, repeatable, predictable way that God upholds the universe today.
05:40: And God hasn't always done that, because during the creation week, he was acting differently from the way he acts today.
05:48: During the fall, something changed, because God introduced death and thorns and thistles as the right punishment for Adam's sin.
05:54: He slayed an animal. And so something changed at that point, whether you want to call that a change of laws, laws of nature, it doesn't matter.
06:03: The point is things have changed. You can't say, well, no, the laws of physics, they go back to infinity, back to eternity past.
06:09: No, because there's not an eternity past. And so when God created the universe, and even during the creation week, he's doing things that today we would say maybe violate laws of nature.
06:20: He's speaking into existence new forms of animals and so on. He's speaking stars into existence, things that he's not doing today, because today he's resting.
06:28: He's still in that rest. He's not in the seventh day, but he's still in the rest. And so there is a difference between looking at creation and perhaps the fall.
06:36: And then subsequent to that, it's in Genesis 8 .22 where God promises the cycles of nature will continue in the futures they have in the past as long as the earth remains.
06:44: That's the other bookend. And so you can't go indefinitely into the future and you can't go back past creation, which
06:49: I would say scripturally is a few thousand years ago. If you do that, you're going to get an incorrect age estimate because you've gone past the initial conditions or the boundary conditions that God has set forth in scripture.
07:01: And this is where the secular naturalistic uniformitarian assumptions kick in for Dr.
07:08: Ross. Because once you go back beyond a point in time where the
07:14: Bible indicates there is a drastic change, the flood, or at the very least creation, certainly, if you extrapolate beyond that, then obviously you're not going to get the right answer.
07:26: That's an example of applying uniformitarianism to a degree that is unscriptural. Dr. Ross, why don't you give some evidence?
07:35: At this point of the discussion, I want to disappear ever so slightly and allow you guys to talk this out.
07:42: So what is the evidence for an old earth? And just like it was evident with Dr. Ross's assumption of the speed of light,
07:50: Dr. Lyle has his presuppositions. Why don't you have a little conversation with regards to the scientific evidence?
07:55: So Dr. Ross, why don't you lay out scientifically why you think the universe, the earth, is much older than what
08:02: Dr. Lyle thinks? Well, both of you have brought up this idea of the synchrony convention on the velocity of light.
08:08: And this is a major part of the debate we had last time that Jason and I met. And in that debate,
08:14: I said, this is testable. Well, the tests have since been done. I mean, for example, we have distant supernova that have been gravitationally lensed by an intervening galaxy cluster.
08:27: And it basically shows that the velocity of light is the same in all directions. That is wrong.
08:34: And if you, Ross, had studied this topic in any kind of depth, you would know that. No, you cannot observationally distinguish a coordinate system from another.
08:46: That doesn't even make any sense. If you understand what the synchrony convention, what synchrony conventions are, you realize that they are a way of marking time and the spatial coordinates of an event in space time.
08:58: And there are different ways of doing that. Einstein recognized that. It's very obvious in general relativity where you have lots of different coordinate systems.
09:04: That's what general relativity is all about. So no supernova. And I think I know what he's referring to.
09:10: He's referring to a supernova that occurred and it gravitationally lensed around a galaxy.
09:15: The light got bent around the galaxy and then arrived on Earth. And and then a year later, there was another image that took a different path of that supernova.
09:25: And so he's going to argue, see, the speed of light must be constant. Otherwise you'd have you wouldn't have a difference.
09:30: No, you do have it. You have a difference regardless of whether using Einstein convention or the anisotropic synchrony convention.
09:38: And and to Hugh's embarrassment, I've already answered this. This is already on the Biblical Science Institute website. I was responding to a critic named
09:46: Peter, and he had brought up the same argument. I went through and showed the math that demonstrates that, no, the anisotropic synchrony convention also predicts that the light beam from that takes the longer path, will take a longer time because it's not as directed toward the
10:01: Earth. In the anisotropic synchrony convention, only light that's directly aimed at the observer travels at the infinite speed has and therefore there's no there's no time lag.
10:11: Jason was making the point in our previous debate that the velocity of light is infinite coming towards Earth, half the velocity of light going away.
10:19: We now know that's incorrect. I direct. I could jump in because I've already answered that.
10:25: And in fact, I have an article on my website, just a few you go back, just a few issues back on the website.
10:31: And I deal with the idea of supernova and the light coming from a supernova. And it's perfectly consistent with the anisotropic synchrony convention.
10:38: And just so you don't agree with you, Jason. Oh, they do. In fact, I show the numbers. I actually do the math in that in that article.
10:44: So have a look at it. And but just to give you that another thing, too, I just just because you've slightly misrepresented my position and I want to I want to clarify that a little bit.
10:55: I'm not suggesting that the speed of light, the one way speed of light is this or that or the other. I'm not saying it's instantaneous or it's the same as the round trip speed.
11:02: I'm saying it's a humanly stipulated convention. And so it's something that we get to choose.
11:07: And that tells us how to synchronize distant clocks. And you know where that idea comes from, the idea that we're free to choose the one way speed of light.
11:14: It comes from Albert Einstein in his book on relativity, his primer book, just the basic relativity on page 22.
11:21: He talks about this. He says that light requires the same time to traverse the path A to B as for A to M as for B to M, talking about opposite directions, is in reality neither a supposition nor a hypothesis about the physical nature of light, but a stipulation which
11:35: I can make of my own free will in order to arrive at a definition of simultaneity. And that's that might be slightly paraphrased, but that's pretty close to what he says.
11:43: So this idea of being able to test the one way speed of light can't be done. And you should you should read up on this just because it's interesting.
11:49: Even if you just put the apologetics aside. It's just interesting. I don't think you're interpreting it correctly,
11:55: Jason. Am I not interpreting it right? Here's the book. It's very clear.
12:00: That's what Einstein is saying. This begins on page 22 of his book on relativity.
12:07: And he's talking about observing hypothetical lightning bolts that strike at the same time.
12:14: And how would we measure if they if they strike at the same time? If one strikes at point A and one strikes at point
12:19: B, how would you know that they really strike at the same time? And Einstein's talking about putting an observer that's exactly in between A and B at position
12:28: M. And he says so he's talking about how do we know that? How do we know that those two are at the same time?
12:35: Well, if a person at M observed, maybe he's got mirrors so he can see both A and B at the same time.
12:42: And I suppose he does observe them at the same time. Then he says that's those are simultaneous. OK, so that's the question.
12:48: He says after thinking the matter over for some time, you then offer the following suggestion, which with which to test simultaneity by measuring along the rails.
12:56: But the connecting line A B should be measured up and an observer placed at the midpoint
13:03: M of the distance A B. This observer should be supplied with an arrangement, two mirrors inclined at 90 degrees, which allows him to visually which allows him visually to observe both places
13:16: A and B at the same time. If the observer perceives the two flashes of lightning at the same time, then they are simultaneous.
13:24: I'm very pleased with the suggestion. But for all that, I cannot regard the matter as quite settled because I feel constrained to raise the following objection.
13:33: Your definition would certainly be right if only I knew that the light by means of which the observer at M perceives the lightning flashes travels along the length
13:42: A to M with the same velocity as along the length B to M. That's exactly what
13:47: Einstein is talking about. He's saying is the speed of light this way, the same as it is this way.
13:53: There's no doubt that's what he's talking about. And then he says, but an examination of this supposition would only be possible if we already had at our disposal the means of measuring time, which is the very thing he's trying to construct.
14:05: He says it would thus appear as though we are moving here in a logical circle. After further consideration, you cast a somewhat disdainful glance at me and rightly so, and you and you declare,
14:16: I maintain my previous definition nevertheless, because in reality, it assumes absolutely nothing about light. There's only one demand to be made of the definition of simultaneity, namely that in every real case, it must supply us with an empirical decision as to whether or not the concept that has to be defined is fulfilled.
14:33: That my definition satisfies this demand is indisputable. That light requires the same time to traverse the path
14:39: A to M as for the path B to M is in reality, neither a supposition nor a hypothesis about the physical nature of light, but a stipulation which
14:47: I can make of my own free will in order to arrive at a definition of simultaneity. So again, he was just mistaken.
14:53: He's trying to bluff and say, that's not what Einstein's talking about, but you can get the book and you can say, that's exactly what Einstein's talking about.
14:58: And that is well known to people who are very well versed in relativity. And you know, the astronomy astronomical community is with me on this.
15:08: No, they're not. And again, if you would read this, this, the, even the secular literature, you'll find that's not the case.
15:15: The paper that I often cite by Sarkar and Stachel, they are not creationists.
15:20: They are secularists and they, they're basically endorsing the anisotropic synchrony convention, the same convention that I'm, that I'm sharing with you here.
15:28: It's not, it's not something that the astronomical community would, they would not agree with you on this issue.
15:35: So again, here, Hugh is attempting to appeal to authority. He, when he gets backed into a corner, he does that.
15:40: Well, all the other astronomers agree with me. They don't though. Folks who are knowledgeable of relativity would not agree with you,
15:47: Ross, on this position, or very few. I won't say there's none, but very, very few. The conventionality thesis really is something that's pretty well established in the technical literature.
15:55: Hugh's just not familiar with that literature. A good paper you should read on this is John Winnie's paper, Special Relativity Without One -Way
16:03: Velocity Assumptions. Make sure you've read that, because if you haven't, we're not going to be able to have an intelligible conversation.
16:08: Let's give Dr. Ross an opportunity to kind of speak to that there. Go ahead, Dr. Ross. Well, okay. You've been asking me all along to present some scientific evidence for an old earth.
16:17: I mean, I think one thing I find impressive is when you look at the deep ice cores and sediment cores, we can actually see the
16:25: Milankovitch cycles. We've answered this, folks. Biblical creationists decades ago have looked into ice cores and sediment cores.
16:35: They do not support the notion of deep time. Take ice cores, for example. You can go to Antarctica and take, and scientists do this.
16:43: They'll take a cylindrical column of the ice that's been compacted there, and they will find these faint layers in that ice core, which they assume are produced annually.
16:56: That is, each layer is produced annually. Now, you can get annual layers like that, but the fact is you can also get a layer when a massive storm comes through.
17:04: So you can get multiple layers in one year. That's well known.
17:11: It turns out, though, that as you go further down, the layers become less and less distinct, and there's not millions of these layers.
17:20: There's not. Secularists assume that the ice has been compressed over millions of years, and so this number would contain 10 ,000 years.
17:29: They assume that 10 ,000 years would fit into that layer down there because it's been compressed. But if you just look at the numbers, you don't get the millions of years, certainly not from the layers, and you certainly don't get
17:38: Milankovitch cycle. The Milankovitch cycle is a hypothesis about the changing of the
17:44: Earth's orbit very subtly combined with subtle changes in its tilt, and allegedly you can see these things when you look into the layers.
17:53: That is not the case. Creationists have refuted that. The Milankovitch theory is inconsistent with itself.
17:59: It was based on an early, I think it was a sediment core, actually, and then they revised the date of that.
18:06: And when you change the date and use the new estimate, you don't get consistent results. So it's actually not consistent with itself.
18:12: And this has been well established. Hugh just apparently is not familiar with the literature on this topic.
18:18: We, in the last four million years, have actually seen these cycles in the deep ice cores.
18:24: And I know the argument is that these ice cores are not annual layers, but we can actually prove that by finding volcanic dust signatures of volcanoes that erupted in recorded history.
18:37: At best, that would argue that they're generally annual in recorded history.
18:44: What about the ice age that we believe happened shortly after the worldwide flood? I mean, that's going to deposit a lot of ice very rapidly.
18:51: And so, of course, we would expect as biblical creationists that the conditions would be different. But again,
18:57: Hugh is assuming uniformitarianism, which I deny. And so he's again begged the question.
19:04: And so Hugh hasn't so much made an argument for deep time. He simply assumed it in the presuppositions that he's made to to come up with these estimates.
19:13: I would also argue that the quantity of biogenic marble and limestone, 76 quadrillion tons of biogenic limestone and marble in the crust of the
19:25: Earth, that testifies of a huge abundance of light, such an enormous abundance of light.
19:32: There's no way that the silver constant can explain that in just thousands of years. If there's no global flood and if the
19:39: Earth was not supernaturally created, if God did not supernaturally create a lot of organisms on it to begin with, then maybe
19:45: Hugh's argument would have some merit. But as it is, he's assumed the secular presuppositions of naturalism and uniformitarianism and says,
19:55: OK, you know, given those conditions, there's no way you could get that amount of marble and limestone biogenic.
20:00: By the way, biogenic means that there's evidence of like fossils within it. And we see that in limestones and in marble.
20:07: I would expect that because there was a global flood in which all the fountains of the Great Deep burst forth.
20:12: Just think of the amount of organisms that were killed in that catastrophe. And then those were, you know, the sediment forms together and so on.
20:21: And you get these fossils trapped within it. And then if it's additionally worked, you can get marble and so on. It's perfectly consistent with biblical creation.
20:28: It's only if you assume that biblical creation is not true, that there was not supernatural creation, that there was not a global flood, and you instead assume uniformitarianism and naturalism, that you would argue, well, you couldn't possibly get that much material in that short of time.
20:42: If there's a catastrophe, it's not a problem. So, again, it begs the question. And I have yet to hear a allegedly scientific argument for an old
20:51: Earth that does not beg the question by assuming naturalism and uniformitarianism. We're looking at a minimum of hundreds of millions of years to lay out that much biodeposits in the crust of the
21:03: Earth. Then the solar luminosity stability, I've just written an article on this, making the point that our sun is more stable in its luminosity stability and its flaring stability than any other known star that we see in our galaxy.
21:19: I didn't get a chance to answer this in the dialogue, but I'm a little surprised Hugh brought this up because the solar luminosity, that's a huge problem for deep time.
21:27: It's not an evidence of deep time. It's an evidence for a young solar system. And the reason for that is that the equations that govern the nuclear fusion that takes place in the core of the sun tell us that as more and more hydrogen is fused into helium, that changes the density in the core and it results actually in a brighter sun.
21:47: So the sun actually should increase in luminosity over billions of years by a fairly large amount, like 30 percent from the time that life was supposedly first evolved, or in Hugh's view, the first microbes were created by God.
22:02: But the problem is the Earth would have been an icicle. So that's and this is called the faint young sun paradox.
22:07: So you might look into this. There are a number of articles from reputable creation ministries like Answers in Genesis, for example.
22:15: And, you know, just as I'm sure that Jason Lyle has taken a course on the interior physics of stars and what we realize is there's only a certain time in the burning history of a star where it's possible to get that extreme climate stability.
22:31: What Hugh said is just not quite accurate. Even in the secular view, you can have stars that in the secular view are the same age as the sun, but are not nearly as stable as the sun.
22:41: In fact, there are stars that are nearly the same mass, nearly the same luminosity of the sun in the secular view, nearly the same age, but they have super flares and things like that.
22:51: So the sun is unusually stable. That's true. And that's a design feature because, of course, God put the planet that has life on it, orbiting the sun.
23:02: So it needs to be very stable. The sun is unusually stable, but that's not an evidence for billions of years. It's an evidence of design.
23:09: And it's something that's been verified by observations in neutrinos coming out of the sun.
23:15: The paper was just published a few weeks ago where they actually can see not only the neutrinos from the hydrogen to helium fusion reaction, but the carbon nitrogen oxygen fusion reaction as well.
23:29: And so this tells us that the sun must be halfway through its nuclear burning cycle, which means it's 4 .5
23:36: billion years of age. No, it doesn't. All it tells us is that our estimates of the core temperature are pretty close to right, that the sun really is fusing hydrogen into helium, mostly by the proton -proton chain, a little bit by the
23:53: CNO cycle. That has nothing to do with age. Nothing. God could have created the star with those processes and those amounts.
24:01: It's not a problem for God. Why does he think that's an evidence for deep time? Because if God didn't supernaturally create a star and the star just collapsed in by natural forces over millions and millions of years, then it would take a long time for the conditions to settle down to their current density and so on.
24:25: But it's not a problem for God to create the sun as it is. Again, he was assumed to the naturalistic assumptions and argues against the biblical timescale on that basis.
24:33: But that really begs the question. And we've also talked about the light travel time problem.
24:39: I mean, the fact is that we have trigonometric measurements of galaxies as far away as 470 million light years.
24:49: And so just using plain geometry, a direct distance measure, and looking at the velocity of light, we know that the, you know, that galaxy's light has been traveling to us for 470 million years.
25:04: Again, he was assuming a reference frame and he's assuming a synchrony convention. From the photon's point of view, the trip is instantaneous.
25:12: And so when he says, we know it took that long. No, he doesn't know that. He doesn't know that. He's assuming that.
25:18: He seems to not understand the difference between a conclusion and an assumption. And they're very different. I'll grant that he can assume that the universe is billions of years old and naturalism and uniformitarianism, but he can't, he hasn't made a good argument for it.
25:33: And I don't think he can. And this is something that there was a major source of a debate.
25:39: We had a televised debate between me and Danny Faulkner that was reviewed by 13 evangelical research astronomers.
25:49: They were part of this. And a lot of the debate was just on, you know, how compelling are the light travel times for a universe that must be billions of years old.
25:59: The statements on our website, just go to astronomer statement at reasons .org and you'll see what the adjudicators of the debate had to say.
26:09: Well, first of all, scientific truth isn't determined by majority vote, right?
26:15: It's not like in politics where we can enact a new law or get the person in office that we like by voting.
26:21: No, we understand scientific principles by observation, by testing them experimentally. And secondly,
26:28: Danny Faulkner is not arguing for my position. He has a different idea for how God got the starlight here. So this is irrelevant to the debate that I'm having with Hugh.
26:37: Namely, I would point out that under the anisotropic sanguine convention, light takes no time at all to get from galaxy to the earth.
26:44: This is something that's well established in the physics literature, which I would argue that Hugh has not read. So him bringing up Danny Faulkner, that's a red herring.
26:53: It doesn't focus on the issue in question. What we heard in all those arguments, and I knew this would happen, we heard the assumptions of uniformitarianism and naturalism.
27:05: Uniformitarianism, the idea that today we see cycles, and today there's good evidence that they're annual. The assumption is they've always been annual.
27:12: That's a uniformitarian assumption. But you did say the assumption of naturalism. And so that I'm sure
27:18: Dr. Ross would disagree with. I don't think you would think that you're assuming naturalism.
27:24: Maybe uniformitarianism, maybe? Were you assuming that because you think that uniformitarian principle is also supported in scripture?
27:32: Is that the case, Dr. Ross? Yes, I'm not a naturalist, never have been. So yeah,
27:38: I'm glad you brought that up. I'm glad about Hugh, just so we're on the same page. When you said that the sun has to be a certain age, you assumed that God could not have supernaturally created it already with the right materials for it to be stable.
27:52: And so I'm sure you didn't intentionally mean to assume naturalism. That's a naturalistic assumption. Yeah, but that's an assumption that's testable.
27:59: I mean, I can actually look at the physics of stars. Now think about this. How could that possibly be testable?
28:07: You have a star that in Hugh's view has been burning for billions of years, 4 .5 billion years, okay?
28:13: And it's got a certain configuration. And then God creates a star that's identical to that, but supernaturally created.
28:21: Now it's identical to that. How can you possibly test that scientifically? That's what I want to know.
28:28: Yeah, but that's an assumption that's testable. I mean, I can actually look at the physics of stars and say, okay, does it have the signature of being created just 6 ,000 years ago?
28:38: What would be the signature of a star created 6 ,000 years ago? You see, if God created it with the right components for it to be fusing at the right luminosity for us to survive, how would that be distinguishable from in Hugh's view, a star that took 4 .5
28:54: billion years to get to that same condition? What's the difference scientifically, observationally?
29:01: That God couldn't supernaturally create a star in six days that you would be unable to distinguish from a star that's actually billions of years old, that God cannot do that.
29:10: I really didn't explain myself very well here, I'm afraid. But basically what I was asking
29:16: Hugh is if God has the capacity to make a star that looks identical to what
29:22: Hugh thinks a 4 .5 billion star should look like. And of course, if God is omnipotent, the answer has to be yes.
29:30: And so then how could you possibly distinguish the two? And here's where Hugh's answer gets very interesting.
29:37: Well, you're putting yourself into a trap. It's not really a trap. I'm revealing the suppressed presuppositions that Hugh has made.
29:47: He has assumed naturalism. He has assumed uniformitarianism. He admits to assuming uniformitarianism.
29:54: But the fact is, he's assumed that God can't create a star that would have the right conditions to support life on Earth.
30:04: Everything that I've been experiencing in my brain, which makes me think I've been alive for 60 years, that was just placed there one second ago.
30:13: I'm really not 70 years of age. I'm really just three days old. But the
30:18: Bible explicitly... How would you refute that then? Pardon me? How would you refute your own argument? Well, because as I read the
30:26: Bible, it tells us we can actually trust what we see in nature. We can trust the memories in our head.
30:33: I mean, we're not being deceived. It's impossible for God to lie or deceive. And so God could do all those things, but now we're looking at a deceptive
30:43: God. Now, I actually agree with a lot of what Hugh said there. I really do.
30:48: But he seems to have missed the point. My argument for why we can know that the universe isn't merely 11 seconds old is not because we can somehow scientifically distinguish it from a universe that's 6 ,000 years old.
31:03: Because God has the power to create a universe just like our current one instantaneously.
31:10: That's not the issue. But we know that God didn't do that because of what the
31:15: Bible says. Now, what I was trying to do here... I think it went over Hugh's head a little bit.
31:21: I was trying to show Hugh that the only way he could know that God did not create the universe 10 seconds ago with all of our memories intact is if we knew something about the nature of God, something about the nature of our senses and memory, from what
31:37: God has revealed to us in the scriptures. In other words, the Bible is the reason why we know the universe wasn't made 10 seconds ago.
31:45: There is no other basis for that. You cannot scientifically distinguish a universe that God made 11 seconds ago that is identical to our current universe if it's identical to our current universe.
31:56: There would be no distinguishing characteristics. And so what I was trying to do is get Hugh back to the scriptures.
32:01: And he kind of did, but he didn't get the point. Then he came back and contradicted himself, as we'll see here in just a moment.
32:07: This idea of what constitutes deception... because I would agree with Hugh that our memories are basically reliable, although because of the curse they're not always reliable.
32:17: There are things like false memory syndrome, for example, that can occur in human beings. I agree that our senses are basically reliable.
32:24: But that's very different from saying that our assumptions about how stars change over time, our assumptions about the initial conditions of a star, are accurate.
32:34: God doesn't guarantee the accuracy of those things, because those things are not something that God has placed in the scriptures for our benefit, other than to say that we know that the sun is thousands of years old.
32:45: And so those same scriptures that say that God doesn't lie, that he made our senses and so on, also tells us that God made in six days, and from the genealogies that that was a few thousand years ago, based on adding up those ages that God gave us in the scriptures.
33:02: And so to argue that the universe, no, it's really millions of years old or billions of years old, that would make
33:07: God a liar, something God can't do. And so this line of reasoning actually backfires on Hugh.
33:14: And so yeah, God could do all those things, but now we're looking at a deceptive God, and the
33:19: Bible explicitly tells us it's impossible for God to lie or deceive. Therefore, I'm willing to trust my memories.
33:26: I'm willing to trust what I see in the record of nature. I'm willing to trust what I see in the Bible, because the
33:32: Bible tells me that's something I can trust, and something I can put to the test. Yes, I have a good reason to believe that my senses are basically reliable.
33:42: I have a good reason to believe that my memories are not implanted, because the Bible tells me that. Revelation from God indicates that the universe is not just 11 seconds old.
33:53: It's a few thousand years old. But you see, that same Bible teaches that God did create the stars supernaturally on day four of the creation week, and so they're not millions of years old.
34:04: And so Hugh can't have it both ways. He can't say, well, I appeal to scripture to know the universe is 11 seconds old, but somehow
34:09: I can scientifically distinguish a 6 ,000 -year -old universe from a 4 .5 -billion -year -old universe. Can't do it.
34:16: And so if indeed everything was just created instantly five seconds ago, there would be signatures that I could check to see that indeed was true.
34:25: So the question is, can we distinguish a universe that's supernaturally created, say 11 seconds ago, from one that's much older?
34:36: And the answer is scientifically, no, you can't, because it's identical by definition.
34:42: And Hugh previously gave a pretty good answer that God has the power to do that, but he wouldn't do that because he's not the author of deception.
34:49: And to plant false memories in our brain, that would be deceptive. I would agree with that. I think that's a pretty good answer.
34:55: But then here he changes and says, oh no, they would be distinguishable. There'd be certain features, certain things that we could look for.
35:01: No, that's not the case. If God created a universe that's identical to our own but only 11 seconds old, it would be identical to our own.
35:10: And therefore there would be no scientific way to distinguish them. The only way that we know for sure that the universe is not 11 seconds old, and that God didn't just create it with our memories intact and so on, is on the basis of scripture.
35:24: God has revealed to us in his word that the earth is older than that. But the problem is that same Bible teaches that the world's a few thousand years old, that God created in six days.
35:33: From those genealogies, there's only about 4 ,000 years between creation and Christ.
35:39: So, Hugh's position backfires. All right, well this seems like a reasonable stopping point for today, so we'll pick it up next time with more of the science behind the age of the earth.