The Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Creationism (2018)

Dennis, P.W. 2018. Consistent young earth relativistic cosmology. In Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Creationism , ed. J.H. Whitmore, pp. 14–35. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: Creation Science Fellowship. CONSISTENT YOUNG EARTH RELATIVISTIC COSMOLOGY Phillip W. Dennis , 1655 Campbell Avenue, Thousand Oaks, California 91360, pwdennis@earthlink.net ABSTRACT We present a young earth creationist (YEC) model of creation that is consistent with distant light from distant objects in the cosmos. We discuss the reality of time from theological/philosophical foundations. This results in the rejection of the idealist viewpoint of relativity and the recognition of the reality of the flow of time and the existence of a single cosmological “now.” We begin the construction of the YEC cosmology with an examination of the “chronological enigmas” of the inhomogeneous solutions of the Einstein field equations (EFE) of General Relativity (GR). For this analysis we construct an inhomogeneous model by way of the topological method of constructing solutions of the EFE. The topological method uses the local (tensorial) feature of solutions of the EFE that imply that if ( ) , M g is a solution then removing any closed subset X of M is also a solution on the manifold with A M M X = − and the restriction A A M g g = . Also, if ( ) , A A M g and ( ) , B B M g are solutions of the EFE in disjoint regions then the “stitching” together of ( ) , A A M g and ( ) , B B M g with continuous boundary conditions is also a solution. From this we show conceptually how an approximate “crude” model with a young earth neighborhood and an older remote universe can be constructed. This approximate “crude” model suffers from having abrupt boundaries. This model is an example of a spherically symmetric inhomogeneous space-time. We discuss the class of exact spherically symmetric inhomogeneous universes represented by the Lemaître-Tolman (L-T) class of exact solutions of the EFE. A more realistic model refines this technique by excising a past subset with an asymptotically null spacelike surface from the Friedmann-Lemaître- Robertson-Walker (FLRW) cosmology. We build the model from the closed FLRW solution by selecting a spacelike hyperboloidal surface as the initial surface at the beginning of the first day of creation. This surface induces, by way of embedding into FLRW space-time, an isotropic but radially inhomogeneous matter density consistent with the full FLRW space-time. The resulting space-time is a subset of the usual FLRW space-time and thus preserves the FLRW causal structure and the observational predictions such as the Hubble law. We show that the initial spacelike surface evolves in a consistent manner and that light from the distant “ancient” galaxies arrives at the earth within the creation week and thereafter. All properties of light arriving from distant galaxies retain the same features as those of the FLRW space-time. This follows from the fact that the solution presented is an open subset of the FLRW space-time so that all differential properties and analysis that applies to FLRW also applies to our solution. Qualitatively these models solve the distant star light problem and from a theological point of view, in which God advances the (cosmic) time of the spacelike hypersurfaces at a non-uniform rate during the miraculous creation week, solve the distant light problem. We conclude by briefly discussing possible objections of some of our key assumptions and showing that a relativist cannot consistently object to our assumptions based on the merely operationalist point of view that an absolute spacelike “now” cannot be empirically determined. KEY WORDS general relativity, young earth cosmology, distant starlight, presentism, 3+1 formalism Copyright 2018 Creation Science Fellowship, Inc., Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA www.creationicc.org 14 INTRODUCTION It is well known that one of the large conundrums of young earth creationist (YEC) models is the cosmological issue of reconciling a large universe with a young earth. Given that the universe is only 6000 years old then no object further than ~6000 light years would be observable today. A large universe with a uniform global speed of light of 8 3 10 / m s × requires a large light transit time from distant objects. Since the current size (diameter) of the observed universe is widely considered to be 92 billion light years, the transit time would seem to require the age of the universe, on the whole, to be in the order of tens of billion years. [Note: Using a radius of 46 Gly for the observable universe and assuming a Minkowski metric (flat universe) yields a light transit time of 46 billion years. The Minkowski result is merely a back of the envelope estimate. However, the universe is not Minkowskian. It is generally known that such a calculation is invalid in general relativistic cosmological models as the curvature and expansion of the universe leads to different results. One less widely recognized effect of expanding space is that space can expand faster than the speed of light while the local speed of light is constant. This explains how the observable size can be greater than the speed of light times the age of the universe. Actual light transit times in GR need to be computed using null geodesics and integrating the time along the geodesic by way of the metric tensor. Such a calculation leads to the usually quoted age of ~13.8 billion years.]