I spent the previous chapter discussing the Creation account, and how it can be harmonized with both an Old Earth and a Young Earth viewpoint.
However, I think it’s important to spend a few more chapters discussing the nature of time and how we measure it, because this has an important bearing on how we think of the past, the future, and the universe in which we inhabit; and it also reflects directly on the nature of God.
We usually measure time in relation to some kind of motion. For example, we define a “day” as one rotation of the Earth around its own axis, and a “year” as the time it takes for the Earth to make one orbit around the Sun.
Young Earth proponents argue that on Day 1, God was marking out the beginning of time on Earth, as measured by the planet’s own rotation and the light from God’s Spirit, combining to create the very first evening and morning.
However, scientists have also invented their own “clocks” which they consider to be measures of time on a much longer scale. Light itself is used as one of these clocks. Light travels at about three hundred million meters per second in a vacuum. A “light year” is defined as the distance light travels in a year.
The universe is billions of light years across, and seems to be expanding. Cosmologists equate distance with age, so it is assumed that the universe must also be billions of years old. This is the “Distance/Age Assumption” I mentioned in the previous chapter.
However, the theory of inflation, as taught in cosmology, suggests that in the beginning, the universe expanded from something very small, like a mustard seed, to millions of light years across, in almost no time at all. During this period of rapid inflation, distance wasn’t a good measure of age.
Inflation theory is based on the principle of naturalism. In other words, according to cosmologists, God wasn’t involved. But if a small universe can come into being and expand to millions or tens of millions of light years across all by itself in virtually no time at all, just think what God could have done, if He had been behind the inflation and expansion.
If God had continued the initial inflation a little longer, even just an infinitesimal moment longer, the universe would have inflated to the size it is today, and it would still be virtually zero years old, because during inflation, distance doesn’t equate to age, at least not by the measure scientists use today.
The important thing to realize is, this was an expansion of space, which means that light and space itself would be stretched. To give you an illustration, let’s say you took a large elastic band and cut it. You laid the piece of elastic on the ground in a straight line, and you put markings on it that divided it into ten equal segments. You then put Jack at one end of the elastic, and Jill at the other. In the measuring system we have just devised, Jack and Jill are 10 units apart, each unit being a segment of our piece of elastic.
Now, let’s stretch the elastic significantly, so that Jack and Jill become much further apart, but are still standing at each end of the elastic. If we used the markings on our elastic to measure how far apart they were now, what would it say? It would still say they were 10 units apart, because the measuring line itself has been stretched.
This might sound strange, but this is exactly what happens as the universe inflates. Light may be the measuring tape of the universe, but the measuring tape itself is also stretched as the universe expands. If God had extended the period of inflation to stretch out a fully working universe, he could have done it very quickly in virtually no time at all, and the distance we see would have no actual bearing on its age.1
This is how we could still see objects billions of light years away, even if they are new. Let’s say we put ourselves at one end of our piece of elastic, and we placed galaxies at each one of the markings on it. If the piece of elastic stands for light, God could have stretched the elastic billions of light years out in virtually no time at all, and yet remarkably, we would still be able to see the galaxies on them, because the light itself had been stretched. The speed of the stretching would not be restricted by the speed of light, because light is part of what is being stretched out, the very thing we normally use as the speed limit of the universe.
If God really did create the universe this way, it may have been better to get most of the stretching done quickly, so it could be made ready to be inhabited. According to the prophet Isaiah, this is precisely what God did: “Do you not know? Do you not hear? Has it not been told to you from the beginning? Have you not understood the foundations of the earth? The One sitting over the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are as grasshoppers. The One stretching out the heavens like a fine gauze, and he is spreading them out like a tent to dwell in.” 2
A person usually puts up a tent before dwelling in it, and they do it quickly, ideally before night comes or it starts to rain. And if we can create computer games that generate virtual worlds or even galaxies in a matter of seconds, why would it need to take God billions of years?
If we were to replace the elastic in our analogy with fine gauze, the analogy Isaiah uses, and put galaxies at the crossroads of each thread, we would still be able to see the galaxies as the gauze is being stretched out, and also once the main stretching has been completed, because light itself would also have been stretched. It is part of the fabric.
Through Isaiah, YHWH also says, perhaps with a hint of sarcasm to those who seem to know better than God: “Ask me about my sons, and instruct me about the work of my hands. I myself made the earth and created man on it. My own hands stretched out the heavens, and I instructed all their host.” 3
In other words, using a little more inflation than cosmologists normally permit, God could have stretched out the heavens almost instantly, to create a habitable universe. There wasn’t any need to drag the process out over billions of years.
But this raises an interesting question. Let’s suppose God really did create the universe ready for habitation almost instantly. In other words, it didn’t take billions of years, but was stretched out to almost the size we see today by extending the period of inflation just a little longer. The question is, how old would it look?
This would depend on our criteria and assumptions for measuring age in the first place. Let me give you a comparison, to explain what I mean. According to all four gospels in the New Testament, Jesus fed a group of 5,000 men, and also women and children, from just five loaves and two fishes. Afterwards, the disciples collected twelve baskets of leftovers.
Now, if we apply naturalistic thinking here, then Jesus simply couldn’t have done this. After all, to make enough bread to feed thousands of people would require large quantities of flour, yeast, water, oil or fat and perhaps some salt. It would also require plenty of ovens, or some kind of baking process that could heat the loaves to at least a few hundred degrees Celsius for thirty minutes or more. Since the apostles didn’t carry around large quantities of baking products and portable ovens, at least as far as we know, Jesus couldn’t have done what was claimed.
Of course, this line of reasoning is absurd, because if Jesus had done it the way loaves are normally made, he wouldn’t be performing a miracle, he would be running an open-air restaurant. Perhaps it was called The Jesus Crust. Clearly then, we can’t use naturalistic thinking when it comes to miracles.
But the more relevant question here is, how old would Jesus’ loaves look? Presumably they would have contained all the necessary ingredients to make bread, and appear to have been baked at just the right temperature for the required length of time. They would probably even have a nice crust.
However, if a breadiologist, an expert at dating crusty bread, was able to take a small sample from the crust of one of Jesus’ newly produced loaves, and he was able to examine it using the latest breadiometric dating techniques, I suspect he would have to conclude that the bread had been baked at over 200 degrees Celsius for at least thirty minutes, with an error margin of perhaps two or three minutes.
The scientific data would be in major conflict with the reality that Jesus produced the loaf almost instantly, a second or two before. The scientist, as a respected member of the Royal Society of Venerable Breadiologists, would have little choice but to report a “loaf age” of about half an hour; but his age would be out by a factor of up to 1,800, or three orders of magnitude.
As a result, skeptics and atheists would gleefully proclaim that the gospel story must be untrue, because breadiometric dating has proved that Jesus’ crust was much older than Christians claim it to be. Either that, or Jesus must have been fooling scientists with an appearance of age.
Hopefully the logical flaws in their reasoning are clear. By definition, miracles don’t follow the ordinary course of nature. This doesn’t mean they are impossible or without explanation. They just require intervention in nature, in the same way that buildings don’t make themselves, but require intervention in nature from humans.
Neither was Jesus trying to fool people with an appearance of age. It’s just that a miraculously produced loaf of bread is presumably going to look like it has gone through the normal baking process, otherwise it wouldn’t be a loaf of bread. It would be a blob of dough or something equally unappetizing.
The purpose of Jesus’ miracle was to feed a hungry crowd, while also demonstrating his power and authority as the Son of God. But If Jesus had given them all lumps of dough, and told them to bake their own loaves, it would have been a little odd. If he’d given them all packs of flour, yeast, water, and then left them all to it, we would suspect a cosmic prank.
Crusts are normally the result of a baking process; but if Jesus’ loaves had crusts, he wasn’t fooling anybody. He was simply producing fully formed, appetizing loaves miraculously. It is the breadiologists who are in error, by thinking their dating technique could measure the age of the bread.
Now, I am using this “Jesus Crust” analogy, to make a very important and hopefully memorable point. Scientists often use “clocks” they think are appropriate based on their naturalistic thinking, but the clock may not be accurate at all if a miracle or some other factor was involved.
A universe that was created fully functional almost instantly would be similar to one of Jesus’ loaves, in the sense that it would look fully baked. But if we assumed the distance we could see was equated to its age, then it would appear to be old.
Some people object to this, arguing that if this is the case, God is fooling us with an “appearance of age.” But God isn’t fooling anyone. Humans are simply fooling themselves with their Distance/Age Assumption. They assume that since we can see billions of light years across, the universe must therefore be billions of years old.
No wonder Isaiah said, “Do you not know? Do you not hear? Has it not been told to you from the beginning?” God has already told us what he did and how he did it. He isn’t trying to fool anyone. He said he stretched out the heavens, and continues to stretch it. But he doesn’t have to have done this at the same slow rate of expansion we see today.
Even according to cosmologists who don’t credit the beginning of the universe to God, there was an initial period of inflation during which the universe expanded at an incredible rate. I am simply suggesting God continued that period a little longer than cosmologists would allow him to do so, until he had a universe close to the size of the universe we see today. In this case, the distance we see doesn’t equate to age, and determining the age of the universe based on how far we can see would be a false assumption.
This begs the question: how could a coherent universe form so quickly, and how could the material be held together during the stretching? About 99.9% of the universe is in plasma form anyway, the fourth state of matter after solids, liquids and gases. Plasma is dominated by electrostatic and electromagnetic forces and fields, so electromagnetism may have held it together during an extended inflationary phase. Once the inflation was completed, gravity could perhaps take over.
One of the things that humans find difficult is to completely shift our way of thinking, without bringing prior assumptions along with us for the ride. We then find ourselves trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. Let’s call this “Square Peg, Round Hole” thinking.
For example, someone might ask, what about the spiral arms of rotating galaxies? How could they possibly have time to form, if the universe is young? This is a good example of Square Peg, Round Hole thinking.
It is only an assumption that they have already been rotating for a long time, but we don’t actually know this. This is simply a consequence of the Distance/Age Assumption. No human has been able to observe a galaxy make even one full rotation. A spiral shape could have been formed if the matter in a galaxy was unfolded at the same time as the stretching.
Actually, it is an ancient universe that has the real problem, because if the universe is billions of years old, spiral arms should have smeared out by now. Curiously, even very distant galaxies, assumed to be some of the youngest in the universe, appear to be very similar to older galaxies. Over the decades, scientists have come up with ideas to explain the preservation of spiral arms, including spiral density wave theory, and dark matter.
In this chapter, I haven’t attempted to give a complete model of how the universe was formed. I have simply aimed to show that it could have been formed very quickly, as God stretched out the heavens.
Scientists assume the process has taken billions of years, because we can see billions of light years away. But inflation is not restricted to the speed of light, so God could have simply taken the process of inflation and extended it just a little longer, “stretching out the heavens like a fine gauze,” to create a habitable universe very quickly; and since light itself is stretched in the process, this would still allow us to see distant objects, even if they are billions of light years away.
1 For more information on how light itself is stretched as the universe expands, see the article “Misconceptions About The Big Bang” by Charles H. Lineweaver and Tamara M. Davis, published in Scientific American, March 2005. 2 Isaiah 40:21,22. 3 Isaiah 45:12.