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

remain today at the edge of the universe, albeit probably in the form of ice. Hebert (2017) concurs that the waters above reside at the edge of the universe, though he did not identify what phase the waters above may be in. Faulkner (2016b) agrees, except that he believes that the water remains in the liquid form, based upon the fact that the Hebrew word for water used in the Day Two creation account means only liquid water where it is used elsewhere in the Old Testament, and that there are Hebrew words meaning ice or water vapor, if either of those was the intended meaning. In my earlier review, I observed that one of the reasons the creation model of astronomy had not advanced much was because of the lack of biblical specifics. There are primarily two specifics—God created space on Day Two, and God made astronomical bodies on Day Four. The lack of details could be viewed as an encumbrance, but it can be quite liberating in the sense that we are free to consider any number of possibilities, provided they do not contradict direct statements of Scripture. Nor should we be afraid to reevaluate our positions. For instance, did God create the astronomical bodies ex nihilo on Day Four, or did He make them from material that He created earlier in the Creation Week? The text of the Day Four account does not tell us clearly. The majority opinion has been that God created the heavenly bodies ex nihilo , but previously I had preferred the concept that God made the astronomical bodies on Day Four out of matter that He created earlier in the Creation Week (Faulkner, 2004). I had based my belief on two things. First, I had believed that God created space and the matter of the universe in Genesis 1:1 (but I since have changed my thinking on this – see below). The second reason was the use of the Hebrew verb asah rather than bara consistently during the Day Four creation account. But the expanse of Day Two may have been empty, so there was no matter from which to make the astronomical bodies. Therefore, I now am reconsidering ex nihilo creation on Day Four. A related question is whether God created the astronomical bodies instantaneously, or was there some (rapid, directed) process involved? Again, the Genesis account does not reveal the answer to that question, so we are free to explore various options. There were many processes during the Creation Week. For instance, God made man from the dust of the ground (Genesis 2:7). Similarly, God formed the land and flying creatures from out of the ground (Genesis 1:24; 2:19). Furthermore, God caused plants to grow rapidly out of the ground (Genesis 1:11–12; 2:9). Similarly, on Day Three God gathered together the waters below the sky to form seas and let the dry land appear. All these creative acts imply processes. With this pattern observed on other days of the Creation Week, is it likely God followed a similar pattern on Day Four? What effect did the Fall have on astronomical bodies? At one time, biblical creationists nearly universally believed that the second law of thermodynamics came into existence at the time of the Fall. However, over the years there has been much retreat from this position. A large part of this belief was based upon a faulty view of the Fall and the curse (Anderson, 2013). I have noted that belief that the second law of thermodynamics began at the time of the Fall can lead to some peculiar thinking about the initial state of astronomical bodies (Faulkner, 2013b). This is particularly true of craters, a topic that I shall discuss in a later section. The cosmic microwave background (CMB) is the single great prediction of the big bang model, the 1965 discovery of which led to the widespread acceptance of the big bang. Biblical creationists reject the big bang model, so how can we explain the CMB? One possibility is that the CMB is not cosmic at all, but rather could be locally generated (Faulkner, 2014b). Assuming the CMB truly is cosmic, what possible explanations do creationists have? An early attempt to explain the CMB was absorption and re-emission of starlight by dust (Ackridge, Barnes, and Slusher, 1981), but that mechanism does not work (Steidl, 1983). Two proposals recently have appeared in the creation literature. Humphreys (2014) proposed a new picture of how gravity works where the CMB is explained in terms of the Unruh effect. As part of my proposal that water is at the edge of the universe (Faulkner, 2016b), I suggested emission from this water may be the source of the CMB. These two proposals require further work, and additional explanations would be welcome. NATURE OF REDSHIFTS Beyond the basic biblical questions related to astronomy that I just raised, there are other questions of cosmological consequence prompted by astronomical observations where creationists disagree. One question is the nature of redshifts. It is an observational fact that most extragalactic objects exhibit redshifts, and that redshifts at least generally correlate with distance (the Hubble relation). At one time, many creationists doubted the reality of the Hubble relation, but fortunately, much of that doubt has faded. Accepting the reality of the Hubble relation, what does it mean? The simplest interpretation is that the universe is expanding. If the universe is expanding, we say that redshifts are cosmological. Creation astronomers generally believe that redshifts are cosmological, but some prominent creation physicists do not. For instance, Hartnett (2003b, 2004b, 2005c, 2011b, 2011c, 2014), drawing heavily from the work of Halton Arp, has called cosmological redshifts into question. Many Christians have suggested that the numerous Old Testament mentions of God stretching out the heavens refer to the expansion of the universe. However, Hartnett (2011a) has called into question this interpretation of these passages. I, too, have questioned this (Faulkner, 2016a, p. 50) on the basis that this interpretation did not begin to appear until rather late in the twentieth century, long after Hubble’s 1929 discovery of the expansion of the universe. Certainly, the stretching of the heavens had to mean something to the authors and the original readers of these passages. They likely would have understood this in relation to God’s act of constructing the rāqîa‘ God made on Day Two. God called the rāqîa‘ “heaven” (Genesis 1:8), and knowing that the rāqîa‘ is something that has been stamped or spread out, it is easy to identify the spreading of the heavens with the expansion of the rāqîa‘ on Day Two. That is, the spreading of the heavens is a past event, not an ongoing process. Creation scientists concerned with cosmology appear to be converging on this understanding, but with a difference of opinion as to when this happened. Hartnett (2005b) and Humphreys (2008a) believe that this stretching of the heavens was on Day Four. However, there is no hint of expansion in the Day Four account (Genesis 1:14–19), though there is a strong indication of expansion in the Day Two account (Genesis 1:5–8). Therefore, it is a more natural reading of the creation account to identify any past expansion of the universe with Day Two rather than Day Four. Resolving this difference ought to be a priority within the creation astronomy community. While biblical passages that refer to the spreading of the heavens may not necessarily refer to the expansion of the universe, that does not preclude the possibility that the universe is expanding. Cosmic expansion is the most straightforward interpretation of the Hubble relation (Faulkner, 2018a; 2018b), but not all creationists agree with this interpretation (Hartnett, 2003c; 2004a; 2011a; 2011b; Faulkner ◀ Creation Astronomy II ▶ 2018 ICC 38