Astronomers assume that the supernova was at the center of a somewhat circular ring and that the front half of the ring was glowing (from our perspective) by day 240 (0.658 years). The radius of the inner ring is 0.808 arc seconds which is .00022444 degrees (0.808 /(60 * 60)). They calculate that the light from the explosion was in transit for: 0.658 year / tan (0.00022444 degrees) = 168,000 years.

Here are some of the things evolutionists say about this supernova:

1. The calculations use simple high school trigonometry and the fact that the longest path takes the longest time to travel. The velocity of light is not used in the computations of the 168,000 year transit time, since only measured delays and measured angles are used.

2. The calculated distance compares reasonably with estimates using Cepheid stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud - the galaxy where the star exploded.

3. The calculations refute the creationist Barry Setterfield's theories that the initial speed of light was much higher in the past. If light in transit changed speed significantly, the delayed light from the ionized ring should have moved at a different speed than the star's flash. In that case the years to shock impact should not agree with the measured size of the ring and the distance calculations.

4. The spectrum intensity from isotopes of cobalt, iron and titanium in the supernova fell off at the same rate as those atoms decaying on earth. If mass changed along with the speed of light, as Setterfield claims, then the decay times should differ. Distant radioactivity seems to follow the same rates as local decay.

5. Some Christians explain that God made the stars with an appearance of age. They think that the light from the most-distant stars was visible here during the creation week. Evolutionists ask, "Did God put false images of an exploding star in the light heading this way so that it would appear to be 160,000 years older that the beginning of creation?"

 Evolutionists accuse Creationists of disregarding the overwhelming evidence and using deception when we teach the Genesis "myth" that the stars were created 6,000 years ago.

Do Bible believers have a solution to this problem? Peter says we should always be ready to give an answer [apologia - a defense - a reasoned argument] for the hope that is in us. Yet our hope is not founded on measurements or calculations, but biblical promises to those who believe in Jesus. Our accuracy should involve careful interpretation of the text, rather than precision measurements or mathematical techniques. We even have biblical reasons to distrust calculated star distances since the Bible makes it clear that the heavens above cannot be measured. Although astronomers say they verified the distance with independent techniques, all their methods and calculations depend on an untested assumption - a first principle.

The most difficult thinking involves the simplest assumptions because these broad elementary suppositions lock us into a particular way of thinking. The Bible warns believers that the stoicheon [elementary ideas - first principles] of philosophy capture us like military prisoners. (Colossians 2:8) All Western schools imitate the way of thinking founded by the pagan Greek philosophers. Christians even use this Greek way of thinking to interpret the Bible. Yet none of the Old Testament prophets could have written scientific accounts, since such thinking was unknown then. The New Testament even identifies the first principle of the last days and contradicts it. This is the fundamental assumption that Aristotle invented and, sixteen hundred years later, the Europeans adopted as the foundation for Western science. It is the assumption that all things remain the same in being or relation. (See my exegesis of II Peter 3:4) Even Western children uncritically and unconsciously think about time and matter using this assumption.

Christians should accept what the Bible says about physical things, not just as true, but as fundamentally true. A fundamental truth comes first in precedence and rank. A change in your first principle is an about-face so that you see the evidence from a different perspective. I suggest that the answer to the conflicts between science and the Bible is this: The Bible denies the conceptual basis of science by denying its first principle. Yet we have such a strong faith in science that its first principle is simply accepted as self-evident. Children learn science as a complete system by doing practice problems without ever examining its elementary, historical foundations. In order to accept what the Bible says about matter and time as fundamentally true, one must reject science's dogma. Since the whole structure rests on this elementary assumption, you must distrust the whole system all at once, not just some law, theory or formula.

Does the Bible really contradict the assumption that matter is unchanging? If we use the rules of hermeneutics, not science, to interpret the Bible, it does, both directly and indirectly. We should interpret a text using the word meanings in their historical context and not with our culture. Before the Greek philosophers attempted to find permanent, causal laws of nature, the earth and heavens were thought to obey a judicial law to corrupt. A simple example of how we use our culture to interpret the Bible is the Hebrew text for Isaiah 42:5 and 44:24. These verses literally say the stretching out of the earth is an unbroken continuity.  Yet we do not take that literally, even though simple evidence supports these statements that the earth was smaller long ago. Someone could argue that we do not measure changes in the earth's size. We cannot unambiguously measure changelessness without first assuming that everything remains the same in its "being" because this idea is necessary even to define our units of measurement such as mass, time and dimension.

The Bible clearly teaches two things that, to the Western mind, seem contradictory. It gives short enumerations of years and short genealogical lists. Yet it repeatedly mentions the long ages past - that Jesus came at the end of the eons and even that the stars existed of old. Before the Greek philosophers revolutionized the world's thinking, people looked back to the age before bronze and iron as the golden age. They said the earliest generations did not live in houses because the weather was spring like. They did not war over territory or possessions because they were content to eat the abundant fruit growing everywhere. They believed their first ancestors had no governments, laws or judges, because conscience was their guide. The pagans wistfully celebrated these long ago ages when, a few generations ago, their ancestors lived long, slow lives. In contrast, we think our knowledge and living conditions are better than all prior generations and that the first humans were primitives who lived short, brutal lives.

The ancients thought the pinnacle of human existence was back in the first generations. Twenty-seven hundred years ago, Hesiod said, "miserable age rested not on them; but with legs and arms never failing they made merry with feasting beyond the reach of all evils. When they died, it was as though they were overcome with sleep, and they had all good things; for the fruitful earth unforced bare them fruit abundantly and without stint." Notice he said they remained youthful in their arms and legs, not their faces. The human skull measurably changes as we age - the brows thickening, the chin tucking in. Neanderthals had larger brains than modern man and the older ones had thick bony ridges over the eyes and receding chins while the children did not have these pronounced features. Yet skulls of Neanderthal children even have worn baby teeth as though even the infants were very old. Hesiod wrote that, "A child was brought up at his good mother's side an hundred years, an utter simpleton, playing childishly in his own home." Biblical genealogies agree that the first generations lived almost a thousand years and apparently did not have children until they were old by our standards. Job, who lived when massive dinosaurs lived in the Jordan river, mentions how people got old and died in his age: "thou changest his appearance and sendest him away" [shanah paniym shalach- literally to change the face and send away]. (Job 14:19 - 22)

The Bible states that ancient days were superior to latter days. Jacob, at 130 years of age, said the days of the years of his life were very small and bad [me'at ra'] compared to the days of the years of his fathers. Like the people of that age, Israel thought that the length of his days and years were much shorter than the length of days and years in his father's days. He even drove suckling lambs in the spring from the Euphrates to the mountains of Gilead in 10 days - which should take at least a month today. (Cattle drives in the 19^th century could only travel about ten miles a day without suffering loses). In Judges 19 we read of a Levite who left Bethlehem toward evening (literally the decline of the day). He apparently took the ridge road north with two saddled donkeys and a pedestrian servant. They arrived at the city of the Jebus [Jerusalem], six miles to the north, as the day was exceedingly down (spent). They continued over the Scopus ridge and arrived near the hill town of Gibeah, about six miles further by road from Jebus, when the sun set. In our day a donkey carrying a rider covers 2 or 3 miles an hour, so either the day was longer or ancient donkeys moved faster than modern ones. The biblical account seems to describe a long sunset. Military histories of Alexander and Xenophon also list extraordinary marches in a single day that we could not duplicate using their methods of transportation.

Could ancient days and years have really been longer than our days? If everything in creation deteriorates in an orderly way, together, as the Apostle Paul says (Romans 8:19 - 22), then our orbit, spin, size, atoms, the sun, everything changes as a relationship. Scientific experiments and mathematical analyses can only measure or model differential changes (changes that involve differences). Scientific measurements cannot be used to detect things that change as a relationship because in that case there is no unchanging reference point. The universe is full of simple evidence that matter changes in complex-together ways. However, our minds cannot think like the prophets of the Bible because of the limitations from Aristotle's little assumption. If we took what the Bible says about time and matter as fundamentally true, Christians would not need to struggle with the evident antiquity of the earth and stars. The reader might insist that clocks prove that time does not change. Einstein thought that time is what clocks measure. The Bible says God made the stars, moon and sun to serve for signs, seasons, days and years. The system God gave is natural and cyclical, unlike our clocks. God's system says nothing about invariable time or even if time is a real "thing." Solomon seems to suggest that time is merely in our minds. He wrote that everything was beautiful in its time, but God put 'owlam [long time] in our minds so that we cannot understand God's work from beginning to end. Notice the simplicity of the biblical statements. Ancient days and years were simply long, without making some philosophical definition for "time." Relational changes can only be compared with relative words, not measurements, like Jacob did when he said his days were small and bad compared to his fathers.

The reader may insist that something, somewhere must remain unchanged. Of course you think that way! That is what Aristotle assumed and what Peter predicted would be the first principle of the last days. Even biological changes are not independent of nature. Human circadian clocks are synchronized with the sun, so if an ancient day was long, children should have matured slowly. Yet vegetation and corals could have grown rapidly in a single day. (Reef building corals have a symbiotic relationship with internal algae so that sunlight produces nutrients for both). There is no disagreement between the Bible and the evidence for earth's antiquity if we accept what it says about time and matter as fundamentally true. The trillions of tons of coal, the 400 million "years" of coral beds, the evidence for vast changes since the flood, and the Antarctic ice cores are not in disagreement with a 6,000 year old earth if we accept as fundamental truth what the Bible says about time and matter. In the Western system, the reality of mathematical symbols and clocks is greater than the simple evidence that everything changes. Every human remembers that life seemed slower in their youth, but Aristotle's little assumption is so powerful that we believe our symbols rather than our senses. When we look back into the distant past with telescopes, we see overwhelming signs that in the past everything was different. Yet we do everything in our power to force the universe to fit our dogma that matter is unchanging. We even assign constancy to our symbols, even though, if atoms were a decaying relationship, our assumption and its system of mathematical measurement, would produce such constants circularly. We refuse to accept the simplest evidence, because we ascribe real reality to mathematical symbols that exist only in our minds. This symbolic system is so powerful that astronomers invent a mathematical universe filled with 99% invisible, undetectable things so that they never have to question their dogma that matter is unchanging. If we would just accept what the Bible says about matter, time, the earth and the stars as fundamentally true, we would not need all these imaginary things. You cannot take what the Bible says about the earth and the stars as fundamentally true while embracing the elementary assumption of the pagan Aristotle that is the historical basis of scientific reasoning.

Does the Bible really teach that ancient days were long? The Bible uses the Hebrew word 'owlam 438 times. It is often translated everlasting, ancient or of old and can refer to the long past or long future. The Bible says there were giants in the earth before and after the flood - men of 'owlam [long time, or of old]. (The pagans also wrote poems about these giants). Couldn't that just be a relative term, like "I picked up this morning's paper long ago?" Isaiah 51:9 "Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the LORD; Awake as in the days of old, the generations of long ago. Was it not Thou who cut Rahab in pieces, Who pierced the dragon?" Isaiah did not elaborate on the smashing of Rahab, but he calls her a tanniyn - a sea monster or aquatic dinosaur. The text uses four words for "days of old, the generations of long ago." 1.qedem 2.yowm 3.dowr 4. 'owlam

1. The antiquity - the beginning - the earliest - the afore time

2. Day - often means a single day

3. Generation, age, period of time

4. Long time, ancient, antiquity, everlasting.

Did he really mean that, in the afore time, the days and generations were "long time?" He recalls that God cut Rahab to pieces in that age of 'owlam. The people of Isaiah's age told stories of the smashing of a great planet that changed everything. The surrounding nations did not call the shattered planet Rahab, which means proud, fierce or wide, but they did refer to it as a great sea dinosaur, Hydra, Typhon, Tannin or Tiamut. (Scientists reject the accounts of the ancients that mention planet tails [Greek - kometes - long hair]. They say a planet's powerful gravity does not permit a vaporous tail, but such rejections are based on Aristotle's assumption, not what the ancients recorded.) Psalms 89:10 says it was the Lord who shattered Rahab. Job is considered the earliest book of the Bible. It even mentions two species of dinosaurs that if men tried to kill or capture, they would remember the battle and never try it again. Not surprisingly Job also refers to this great planet shattering catastrophe. Job 19:13 says that Rahab had helpers. (The Babylonian stories say the other planets followed and milled about during the battle). It was God, the Bible says, who cleared the skies, shattered Rahab, and calmed the troubled seas when the pillars of the heavens trembled. It was God who pierced the fleeing serpent (Job 26:11 - 13). (The word used in relation to the sea is not the same as the one used for the dividing of the Red sea that happened centuries after Job. Pillars trembled during an earthquake, so the trembling of the heavens possibly refers to violent motions in the sky). The cuneiform tablets describe the battle in graphic detail when apparently a moon of another planet struck the watery planet and broke it into pieces. Isaiah mentions this great catastrophe as happening in afore time, when days and generations were 'owlam - the great time, the ancient time - the long time. How could planetary chaos a few thousand years ago have produced today's clock like orbits? Only if days, years and matter deteriorate in an orderly way, as a relationship, that is together. What is the simple biblical answer to the claim that we revolved around the sun 168,000 times while that supernova's light sped towards us? The answer involves the first principle of the last days, the assumption upon which logic and scientific reasoning is based. The answer is that scientific thinking is historically based on an assumption that is falsified by the records and measurements of the ancients and denied by the Bible.

Why should a Christian consider this biblical defense?

Because it derives its understanding of matter and time from the common usage when the text was written. Words like 'owlam or Rahab's shattering should be taken in their historical context, not our cultural perspective. (The word Rahab is also used for Egypt and the name of a Canaanite woman, but when the context is a sea dinosaur, it is referring to a smashed planet.) The prophets of the Bible never imagined that material things were changeless or that time was an independent entity that never changed.

Because if we interpret earth-history this way, it results in a remarkable biblical unity.

Because the inferences from this exegesis fit the evidence from the universe simply and without mathematical reasoning.

Because its consequences are biblical.

a. Causal knowledge and understanding the long-ago past would be impossible in such a universe, which is what the wisest man, Solomon, wrote 3,000 years ago.

b. God can ethically defeat the wisdom of the world, even logic, mathematics and experiments - so that the very strength of science would be its downfall (I Corinthians 3:18 - 20).

In such a universe, the orbits, the size of planets, the sun, atoms and the rate things change at would continuously change together in complex ways, that is: as a relationship. How could the length of days and years continually change over the millennia? Only if atoms change internally AS A RELATIONSHIP. You say, we do not measure such changes. We cannot even measure atoms without using Aristotle's assumption to substitute mathematics for measurement. Relational changes cannot be measured with experiments or analyzed with mathematical models. Why should a Christian believe such foolishness? Because the Bible COMMANDS that if one thinks to be wise in this age, "let him become foolish that he may become wise."

1. Because the Bible lists less than a hundred generations from Adam to Jesus. The pagan genealogies are in general agreement with the Bible, sometimes mentioning the same patriarchs. The pagans were very explicit in their description of the long ages of their fathers. They clearly agreed with old man Israel that life continuously degenerated through each generation. Hesiod, in the eighth century BC, even wrote that this decline would continue till in the end, children will be born with "gray on their temples." Hesiod was following the first principle of his age when he expected that the deterioration would continue until, "Men will dishonor their parents as they grow quickly old."

There are two ways of interpreting the pagan writings. If you do NOT believe the Bible is inerrant, you will compare it to the pagan myths and, finding similarities, claim the scriptures were derived from the myths. However, if you believe that the Bible is the inerrant Word of the Creator, then one would expect that if it mentions a planetary smashing, the pagans who lived in that era, would have seen the same event but used their myths about planet gods to "explain" it. If the Bible says ancient days were long, then one would expect that the pagans who experienced the same things, would also mention them, but "explained" the degenerating ages to battles among the gods. Please understand, I am not saying the pagans wrote the truth.  Yet their writings are part of the historical framework for understanding the elementary assumptions of that era.  You see, their elementary assumptions about matter were opposite from ours.  Even objective thinking is subjective, subject to ones basic assumptions. This is why, in the realm of physics, thinking about first principles is of utmost importance.

2. The Bible consistently supports the ancient world view that everything deteriorates and that ancient days were long. The New Testament even says (in Greek) that gold is continuously corrupting itself right now. It repeatedly mentions the long ages past and even that we are at the end of the ages and that our time is contracted.

3. What the ancient astronomers actually measured could only be true if everything deteriorates in an orderly way as the Bible states. Their eclipses rarely agree with our ephemeris without adjustments to make them fit our dogma. Ptolemy's "errors" (when compared to our star positions) vary with galactic latitude. His angular sizes for the moon and planets are too large. His angles to the inner planets at maximum elongation are too large. In other words he measured a smaller solar system and a smaller galaxy. Yet all his supposed "errors" magically cancel each other so that his mathematical system "worked." Yet his planetary and lunar periods, sometimes averaged over hundreds of years, are very close to ours. This is what one would expect if matter is a decaying relationship where everything changes together including days and orbits. (As Augustine noted, if a day went by in an hour we would still call it a day). Is there really evidence to support this? Evidence is always interpreted with first principles. Things like distant redshift, radical changes in Mars' climate, that our continents only fit together on a smaller globe, and the resonance between Venus' rotation and earth's orbit have a simple non mathematical explanation. Matter, days and years change as part of a complex deteriorating relationship, just like the ancients thought and the Apostle Paul taught.

4. What we see in the most-distant parts of the heavens seems to fit the actual words of the Bible. The Hubble Deep Fields show blue clusters of stars shooting out of the center of compact galaxies and equally spaced naked galaxies streaming out into empty space like beads on a string. The usual claim is that these things are billions of years into the past, but the ancients who said ancient days were long, described the same scene. Ovid described how the stars, no longer overlaid with weight, shot upward until they filled the vacant sky. How could Ovid describe what we see in the Hubble Deep Fields unless time is not some independent unchanging "thing." The Bible also speaks of the ancient sky as dense as molten bronze, hammered out, continuously stretching out. The dimmest parts of our universe show dense objects that seem not to follow our laws of gravity, while galaxies closer to us have defused centers and expanded arms. What we see is what the Bible says 12 times, that the heavens are continually stretching out. Why then do we measure unchanging orbits? Because we define things like clock time, fixed mass and gravity that are based on Aristotle's Assumption. Yet great astronomers from even a few centuries ago measured things that conflict significantly with our measurements.

How is this a defense of the hope that is in us, our faith in the inerrancy of the Bible? The God of the Bible, who promises to save those who believe that Jesus died for our sins, also promises to defeat the wisdom of this age. He intends to bring down the great pride of man so that the lowly and meek who trust Him will praise Him forever. Can Christians defend the biblical version of a universe that is about 6,000 years old? Yes we can! Not, however, with the scientific system, based on the ideas of a pagan that we have elevated to the status of dogma. We must reject his elementary assumption that the Bible clearly contradicts. To abandon Aristotle's assumption is in keeping with the biblical command that if we seem wise in the things of this age, we should become fools. To do otherwise is to deceive ourselves because God is taking them in their own craftiness because the reasonings [dialogismos] of the wise [sophos] are without truth and of no purpose [mataios]. (I Corinthians 3:18 - 20)

God is not a deceiver, he defeats science with its own reasoning. Can he defeat experiments, logic and mathematics? The answer is, that God long ago decreed that matter would degenerate as a relationship so that he could defeat every human system of knowledge. Dear Christian, instead of fighting for our versions of science, we should simply state what the Bible predicted: that the assumption upon which science is founded is false. Then watch the great fortress built up against the knowledge of Him come down. He promises this will happen when our obedience is complete. (II Corinthians 10:3 - 6)

@Copyright October 2004
Victor McAllister
Permission is granted to copy this article in its entireity for personal use.

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