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

starlight problem also holds for the stars within our own galaxy. In other words, the observations lend support to the inference that God created the stars in our own galaxy very close to Earth’s Day Four light cone, just as He did for the rest of the cosmos. In that case, the light we are receiving from stars throughout our own galaxy is reporting a history of close to 6,000 years since the stars were created, despite the fact that many of these stars are as far as 75,000 light years away. In a recent work Faulkner (2017) cautioned creationist astronomers against using SNR evidence to support young cosmos. Although Faulkner does seem to agree that the cosmos is young (Faulkner, 2013), he recommended avoiding the SNR argument because some SNRs appear to have been expanding for more than 6,000-7,000 years according to clocks in their vicinity. While we do note that some SNRs appear to be older than 6,000 years, such observations may be explainable by yet unknown processes that have caused the SNRs to expand faster than our current models predict. This is why our argument for young cosmos is based not on the “reading out” of the apparent age of the SNRs, but on the paucity of SNRs. In other words, it seems more reasonable for a Young Cosmos model to explain appearance of age, than for an Old Cosmos model to explain what would appear as a dramatic acceleration of SNR production rates in recent times. 3. Observations that suggest the distant cosmos is young What about the more distant stars and galaxies? Lisle (2010) has outlined several notable lines of evidence for the youthfulness of the cosmos at all distances. One is the presence of blue type-O main sequence stars in galaxies as far away as such stars can be resolved with present telescopes. These stars are hot and luminous and appear bluish-white in the visible spectrum. With surface temperatures ranging from 30,000 to 50,000 K and masses between 20 and 100 M ʘ , their luminosities can exceed 1,000,000 times that of the Sun (Darling 2016). These stars represent the largest mass type of the main sequence stars. Their high mass results in extremely high core temperatures, with an extreme rate of burning of the star’s nuclear fuel, leading to short lifespans--on the order of a few million years at most according to secular models. Particularly because of their size, there is no credible naturalistic explanation for their origin. Hence, the roughly 20,000 such stars in our own galaxy is another argument for its youthfulness. The existence of such stars in all the galaxies for which we have technology to detect testifies to their youthfulness as well. Moreover, as Lisle (2010) also points out, the finding that the galaxies in the Hubble ultra-deep field images display similar structure and maturity as nearby galaxies appears to constrain the distant cosmos, as we observe it today, likewise to be young. DISCUSSION We now consider how the CTC solution for the Distant Starlight Problem relates to secular cosmologies and creationist solutions. As stated earlier, current creationist solutions fall into two categories: one consistent with an old cosmos, represented by Humphreys’ solution (Humphreys 2008), and another consistent with young cosmos and represented by Lisle’s ASC model (Lisle 2010). Below we compare the CTC solution with each one of these: old-age secular models, Humphreys’ cosmology, and Lisle’s model. Finally, we address potential objections to the proposed CTC solution. 1. CTC solution versus conventional old-age cosmologies Our solution is consistent with well-established scientific theories, such as the theory of Special Relativity. It invokes neither new physics nor miracles, except the miracle of Creation itself. There is no need to assume, as Setter eld (1989) proposed, that the speed of light varied in time, although if a slight change of light speed over time were discovered, it would not invalidate our solution. Rather, the ability to see distant stars in real time is a natural consequence of applying the principles of Special Relativity and God’s own choice of initial conditions. Moreover, our proposed solution neither requires nor contradicts the modern theory of the expansion of space, which is based on the observation that distant starlight is red-shifted. Neither does our solution depend upon time dilation effects as described in General Relativity, but neither do such effects conflict with the solution we are proposing. However, there are two important ways in which our proposed solution is in sharp conflict with most conventional old-age cosmologies. First, according to our CTC solution, stars at all distances, as we observe them from Earth today, truly have accumulated only a few thousand years of history since they came into existence. This applies to the stars in our own galaxy as well as to the stars in the most distant galaxies our telescopes can detect. By contrast, conventional old-age cosmologies require that the galaxies, especially our own and those nearby, have undergone billions of years of history. Our solution is consistent with the account in Genesis 1, according to which stars were made supernaturally by God on Day Four and therefore do not require vast spans of time to form by natural processes. Second, our proposed solution excludes the Cosmological Principle, which is assumed by almost all conventional cosmological theories. According to this principle, there can be no special place in the cosmos. By contrast, our solution requires that the position of the Earth’s world line in spacetime be arranged in a special way relative to the stellar creation events (see Figure 1). The idea that young-age cosmologies ought to discard the Cosmological Principle was stressed more than 20 years ago by Humphreys (1994). This principle is acknowledged by most cosmologists, even if grudgingly, as an unproven assumption. Fundamentally, it is rooted in the presupposition that the universe is not designed and therefore ought not have any privileged location such as a center. By contrast, the Bible clearly teaches that God designed the universe and that the Earth itself indeed is a special place. 2. CTC solution versus Humphreys’ Cosmology How do other proposed creationist solutions for the Distant Starlight problem compare with our own which posits that God created the stars, near and distant, in an extremely special configuration in spacetime, namely, to lie near Earth’s Creation Day Four light cone? This initial distribution for the stars at Creation, by definition, results in their first light arriving on Earth during Creation Day Four. It is noteworthy that the latest solution published by D. Russell Humphreys (2008; 2017) displays striking similarities. However, in contrast to the solutions of the present authors and of Lisle, the general relativity phenomenon of gravitation time dilation plays an essential role in his model. This is because Humphreys posits a Tenev et al. ◀ Creation time coordinates solution to the starlight problem ▶ 2018 ICC 87