Mysteries of Creation (Part 5)

Age of the world

The French scientist Comte de Buffon theorized in his 1779 book Epochs of Nature that the Earth was once a hot molten ball that took around 75,000 years to cool down (the figure was 3 million years in his unpublished manuscript).⁸³ In 1899. Lord Kelvin calculated the age of the earth, based on the cooling rate of a molten sphere, at 20 to 40 million years (revised from his 1862 computation of 100 million years). With the advent of radiometric dating, in 1913 Arthur Holmes made an estimate of 1.6 billion years in his book The Age of the Earth. In 1956, Claire Patterson published her calculations for a 4.5-billion-year age of the earth, extremely close to the 4.6 billion years widely acknowledged in the scientific community today.⁸⁴

Cosmological calculations. When Edwin Hubble discovered in the mid-1920s that the universe was expanding, he suggested that finding out how fast the universe was expanding and how large it was would reveal its age.

The density of the mass or quantity of matter the cosmos contains determines how the gravitational force slows down the expansion rate, which in turn depends on the age and density of the universe.  Cosmologists measure the cosmic expansion rate by establishing the relationship between the distance of an object from Earth and the rate at which it is moving away, revealed by redshift (stretched wavelengths of light). They then assess the density of the universe to calculate its age.⁸⁵

14-16 billion years?

Scientists have variously placed the age of the universe at between 10 to 20 billion years. The wide range is the result of the uncertain expansion rate of the universe and the age of the oldest stars. Both depend on the extrapolation of available data, which are inadequate. Astronomers use the Hubble constant, a measure of the expansion rate of the universe, whose value scientists have not agreed on.⁸⁶

The NASA has nonetheless officially placed the age of the universe at 16 billion years, with a potential error of plus or minus 15%. Thus, the universe could be at least 13.5 billion years old, or 18.5 billion years old at the most. Some scientists use a figure of 12-18 billion years, but the most common estimate is 14-16 billion years.⁸⁷

Big Bang “echo.” In the 1940s George Gamow and his students Ralph Alpher and Robert Herman formed a theory that, since elements heavier than hydrogen can be formed only at a high temperature, the universe must have been supremely hot at its birth.⁸⁸ Their calculations showed temperatures of billions of degrees around one second after the Big Bang. After a few hundred thousand years of expansion, the radiant heat would have gone down to just thousands of degrees.⁸⁹

They concluded that the Big Bang produced a blackbody or thermal radiation and predicted that a trace or “echo” left by the blast still exists, pervading the universe. In 1965 American physicists Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson detected by radio telescopes a uniform background of microwave radiation in space, which has since been called “cosmic microwave background radiation” (CMBR). Coming from all directions, the CMBR’s temperature is almost the same everywhere, approximately 2.7^o Celsius above absolute zero (-459.67 °F, or -273.15 °C) -- very close to what Gamow and his students had calculated.⁹⁰

15 billion years?

According to the World Book: “Observations of supernovae and the CMB radiation suggest that the present age of the universe is about 13.7 billion years. This estimate agrees with studies of the ages of stars in groups called globular star clusters, which contain the oldest stars found in the Milky Way.”⁹¹

A news report in early 2006 stated: “The latest data from NASA’s Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe is based on three years of continuous observations of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), the afterglow light produced when the universe was less than a million years old.”⁹² If the CMBR appeared sometime during the first million years of the Big Bang, the universe may be somewhat older than 13.7 billion years. The Encyclopedia Britannica notes: “The discovery of the 2.7 K background radiation… is regarded as convincing evidence that the universe originated approximately 15 billion years ago...”⁹³

The shape of time

In a novel concept, M.I.T. physicist and author Gerald Schroeder (Genesis and the Big Bang, The Science of God, God According to God, etc.) likewise equates the six “days” of Creation to some 15 billion years.

The “cosmic clock.”

Schroeder based his calculations on the CMBR, which he calls the “clock” of the cosmos. He explains that about “0.00001 seconds after the big bang… (t)he universe was approximately a million million times smaller and hotter than it is today… the temperature… is not a value extrapolated or estimated from conditions in the distant past or far out in space. It is measured right here on Earth in the most advanced physics laboratories and corresponds to a temperature approximately a million million times hotter than the current 3^oK black of space. That radiant energy had a frequency a million million times greater than the radiation of today’s cosmic background radiation.”⁹⁴ This translates to a ratio of 1,000,000,000,000 to 1 in the perception of earth time vis-à-vis cosmic time. Thus, at the Big Bang, one second in cosmic time was equivalent to about one trillion seconds in Earth time.

However, he points out that as the universe rapidly expanded and cooled, cosmic time would have slowed down. Frequency, wavelength, and temperature are all directly related: when temperature goes down, so too the frequency, and wavelength becomes longer (and vice-versa). So, as the radiant energy cooled, its wavelengths were stretched and its frequency became lower – as measured today in light coming from the Sun. “Waves of sunlight reaching Earth are stretched longer 2.12 parts in a million relative to similar light waves generated on Earth. This stretching of the light waves means that the rate at which they reach us is lowered by 2.12 parts per million. This lowering of the light wave frequency is the measure of the slowing of time. For every million Earth seconds, the Sun’s clock would ‘lose’ 2.12 seconds relative to our clocks here on Earth. The 2.12 parts per million equals 67 seconds per year, exactly the amount predicted by the laws of relativity.”⁹⁵

The CMBR reveals how much cosmic time has slowed down since the Big Bang. “The radiation… has been stretched a million million fold… That stretching of the light waves has slowed the frequency of the cosmic clock – expanded the perceived time between ticks of that clock – by a million million.”⁹⁶ In simple terms, time passed at a much slower rate at the edges of the expansion compared to time on Earth. Whereas an imaginary clock at the edge of the cosmos would have shown only days, a clock on earth would have already recorded billions of years. (It is the exact opposite of Humphreys’s Starlight and Time hypothesis.)

Exponential regression.

The redshift observed in galaxies suggests an expansion factor of 10¹² or 1,000,000,000,000 (1 trillion).⁹⁷ As the universe expanded, the waves of radiant energy stretched in the same ratio as the expansion.⁹⁸

“Each doubling in size ‘slowed’ the cosmic clock by a factor of 2.”⁹⁹ In the mathematical equations Schroeder presented, each succeeding Creation “day” was equivalent to just a half-period.¹⁰⁰ “Each successive Genesis day exponentially represents fewer years as perceived from our earthly vantage…”¹⁰¹ In other words, each “day” following Day One was only one-half the length of the “day” immediately preceding it.

Schroeder noted that the “opening chapter of Genesis acts like the zoom lens of a camera. Day by day it focuses with increasing detail on less and less time and space. The first day of Genesis encompasses the entire universe. By the third day, only earth is discussed. After day six, only that line of humanity leading to the patriarch Abraham… This narrowing of perspective… each successive day presents in greater detail a smaller scope of time and space…”¹⁰²

In Schroeder’s calculations, Day One was 8 billion years long, Day Two 4 billion years, Day Three 2 billion years, Day Four 1 billion years, Day Five ½ billion years, Day Six ¼ billion years – for a total of 15.75 billion years – i.e., the age of the universe.¹⁰³ This closely matches a 16-billion-year age estimate for the oldest stars. Schroeder suggests a plus or minus 20% margin of error.¹⁰⁴

Spiral structure.

We usually think of time as a straight line, proceeding from the past through the present to the future. However, it looks like the Designer of the universe had drawn up a Creation scheme of time that is much more elegant than just a simple straight line.

The exponentially regressing scenarios of Creation, diminishing day after day, seem to display a structural design. Schroeder notes: “Genesis has chosen a base that occurs throughout the universe, a base known in mathematics as the natural log e.”¹⁰⁵ He is referring to a figure that occurs more often in nature than any other shape: the spiral.¹⁰⁶ We see it from the macrocosm to the microcosm -- in the shape of galaxies, hurricanes and tornados, whirlpools, breaking waves, animal horns, snail shells, seahorses’ tails, mammalian ears, human cochleae, flower seed-heads, emerging fern leaves, DNA molecules. The spiral, Schroeder  hypothesizes, was the structure of time at the Creation.

In a simplified version of Schroeder’s CMBR-based timeline below, we can see an intriguing “day”-by-“day” correspondence between the Biblical account of creation and the scientific version of the birth of the universe.¹⁰⁷ (Schroeder notes that if corrections are made based on the recently observed increase in the rate of expansion of the universe, the start of Day One would be approximately 15 billion years ago.)¹⁰⁸

Schroeder’s CMBR-Based Timeline

(6 “Days” of Creation = 15.75 Billion Years)

Day	Start b.p.*	Duration	End b.p.	Bible	Science
1	15¾billion	8 billion	7¾billion	Light	Big Bang, light, electrons, atoms, galaxies
2	7 ¾ billion	4 billion	3¾billion	Firmament	Milky Way, Sun
3	3 ¾ billion	2 billion	1¾billion	Oceans, dry land, plants	Earth cooled, bodies of water, bacteria, algae
4	1 ¾ billion	1 billion	¾ billion	Sun, moon, stars	Clear, oxygen-rich atmosphere
5	¾ billion	½billion	¼ billion	Aquatic animals, reptiles, winged animals	Multi-cellular, aquatic animals, winged insects
6	¼ billion	¼ billion	ca. 6,000	Land animals, mammals, humankind	90% extinction, hominids, humans
		15¾billion

*before present

Science-Scripture match-up.

In Schroeder’s timeline, the scientific data basically parallel the day-by-day Genesis account from Day One to Day Four; but the match-up is broken on Day Five, when reptiles and insects appeared. His Day Five supposedly began 750 million years ago and ended 250 million years ago. It agrees with the fossil record, which places the age of amphibians at 417 million years, insects 350 million years, and reptiles 323 million years; but it does not conform with the Bible, which says God created “creeping things” (amphibians, reptiles, insects) on Day Six.

Moreover, God’s “seventh-day” Sabbath rest does not form part of the timeline after Day Six, which he says ended about 6,000 years ago. Did the “days” stop their exponentially regressing rate? How long was God’s Sabbath? Did it suddenly shorten to a 24-hour day?

Framework Hypothesis.

A third theory, unconnected to either Young Earth Creationism or Old Earth Creationism, does not involve any timeline of “days” at all. Known as the Framework Hypothesis (also “framework interpretation” or “literary framework view”), it proposes that the six “days” of creation in Genesis are neither literal nor figurative “days,” but literary or symbolically artistic descriptions of the origin of the universe.

The idea first appeared in the writings of the early Church father Augustine (354-430). It has gained acceptance among many theistic evolutionists and some progressive creationists through the works of modern scholars like Meredith Kline, Henri Blocher, Bruce Waltke, and Gordon Wenham, who contend that the Genesis account is so full of repetitive formulas and figurative language that the wording of the text cannot be taken literally.¹⁰⁹

For instance, they say the first and fourth “days” of creation closely resemble each other, like two descriptions of just one event. On the first day God "divided the light from the darkness” and “called the light day and the darkness… night.” This is repeated on the fourth “day” when God created two great lights "to divide the light from the darkness" and "the day from the night." The Genesis writer is said to have used the literary device of parallelism. The only difference is the introduction of “two great lights… to rule” over the realm or dominion of light on the fourth “day.” The same realm-ruler relationship pattern recurs between the second and fifth “days,” and the third and sixth “days.”

Thus, Framework theologians divide the six “days” of Creation into two triads. The first three “days” depict the creation of the first triad of realms: (1) darkness and light, night and day; (2) the firmament, waters under and above; and (3) dry land, grass, herbs, trees. The next three “days” portray the creation of the second triad of rulers: (4) the sun, moon, and stars to rule the day and the night; (5) living creatures in the waters and fowl that fly in the firmament; and (6) beasts of the earth, cattle, creeping things, and man on dry land.

Hence, the six “days” of Creation advanced according to topics, instead of chronological sequence, as illustrated in the table below:

Framework Hypothesis

(Creation “days” not literal; but figurative literary devices)

Day	First Triad: “Realms”	Second Triad: “Rulers”	Day
1	Darkness and light, night and day	Sun, moon, and stars – to rule the day and the night	4
2	The firmament, waters under and above	Creatures in the waters, fowl that fly in the firmament	5
3	Waters and dry land; grass, herbs, trees	Beasts of the earth, cattle, creeping things, man	6

⁸³Terry Mortenson, “Where Did the Idea of ‘Millions of Years’ Come From?”, The New Answers Book 2, 2008, p. 12

^84.Bodie Hodge, “How Old Is the Earth?”, The New Answers Book 2, 2008, p. 48

⁸⁵Cosmology, Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia Deluxe 2004

⁸⁶Hubble Constant, World Book 2005 (Deluxe)

⁸⁷Age of the Universe, Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia Deluxe 2004

⁸⁸Big Bang Theory, Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia Deluxe 2004

⁸⁹Cosmology, Encyclopaedia Britannica 2009 Student and Home Edition

⁹⁰Big Bang, World Book 2005 (Deluxe)

⁹¹Universe, op. cit.

⁹²“Astronomers detect new clues…”, op. cit.

⁹³Expanding Universe, Encyclopaedia Britannica 2009 Student and Home Edition

⁹⁴Gerald Schroeder, The Science of God, 1997, p. 59

⁹⁵Op. cit., p. 52

⁹⁶Op. cit., p. 59

⁹⁷Ibid.

⁹⁸Op. cit., p. 55

⁹⁹Op. cit., p. 65

¹⁰⁰Op. cit., p. 69

¹⁰¹Op. cit., p. 66

¹⁰²Op. cit., p. 65

¹⁰³Op. cit., p. 63

¹⁰⁴Op. cit., p. 69

¹⁰⁵Op. cit., p. 66

¹⁰⁶Ibid.

¹⁰⁷Op. cit., pp. 63-74

¹⁰⁸Op. cit., p. 70

¹⁰⁹Framework Interpretation, Wikipedia, Internet

(Excerpted from Chapter 3, Conundrums of Creation, THE DEEP THINGS OF GOD: A Primer on the Secrets of Heaven and Earth by M.M. Tauson, Amazon.com)