"Beams of Distant Starlight"

New blog on the kid: Deflating a Star Size, Again, or Two · What Would an Astrophysicist Object, and Why Don't I Buy It? · Supernova of Kepler - 20 000 light years away? · Crab Nebula · Creation vs. Evolution: "Beams of Distant Starlight" · But of Course Astrophysics is a Science, Right ...?

Keaton Halley in a response to feedback* said:

Unfortunately, however, Plantinga does claim that evolution is compatible with Christianity. Is this because he has sufficiently answered the many points of incompatibility that creationists have raised? No. For the most part, Plantinga doesn’t even interact with creationist arguments or the many biblical texts that contradict evolution. In fact, he displays his utter ignorance of creationist literature when he claims that we believe God created the world with built-in fossils and beams of distant starlight (p. 10).

I have indeed not seen any Young Earth Creationist writer (perhaps some pastor making a sermon transscript available) presenting God as creating the world with built-in fossils.

However, my introduction to systematic creation science was a book by one Edgar Andrews. It was Ur Intet, a translation of two writings, that later on in English, after the Swedish example, were published together - From Nothing to Nature. The publication date for this English one volume access to the two writings was 1989, and by then I had left SSHL after completing 12th grade, done two years of university and was starting my military service. The Swedish volume Ur Intet was given me as a birthday present back when I was in ninth or tenth grade, by my mother. I was fifteen in 1983 and 16 in 1984. When I first read it, I had not yet planned on becoming Catholic, and by the end of 1984, I was "down that rabbit hole,"** after revising what I thought I knew about the Inquisition.

Now, in that book, one possibility (cited as such) for distant starlight was precisely beams of distant starlight built-in into creation, or starlight created in transit.

Considering this the only option Creationism has to deal with "Distant Starlight Paradox" is ignorant, but presenting it as one option actually given is not.

My own view is stars were close in creation week, one light day up, and perhaps still are so now. Indeed, this gives an elegant explanation to why the week has seven days with one day of rest. While the light of one star takes 23 hours, 56 minutes and 4 seconds and some to reach earth, the star itself is making 6.2831853 times this distance around Earth and is in the same spot as it was 23 hours, 56 minutes and 4 seconds before, while its light from then is observed. The distance of the radius, the distance covered by light in 23 hours, 56 minutes and 4 seconds, corresponds to week days with work and the fact that the seventh of them is less than half complete means that the Lord's day must have the work burden reduced. Note also, 2π after the obvious 6.28 (twice affirming Exodus 3.14) has decimals that involve 318 (the men of Abraham) or 53 (Hail Mary's in a Third of the Rosary).

This would be impossible if the 0.76 arc seconds in comparison to the c. 20 arc seconds back and forth per year of alpha Centauri were a parallax in relation to aberration - but quite possible if they are instead a proper movement, performed by angels, and Earth shall not be moved.

Other example, when it comes to Dating, the views of Setterfield are sometimes described as the ultimate or only go-to, these implying, apart from another solution to the Distant Starlight (speed of light was higher) also that the decay rates were faster. Again, Andrews can help to answer this, in this case not to say "it exists" (though he may have done that too) but to say there is another solution. One I partly endorse. In the time of the Flood, carbon 14 levels in the atmosphere were much lower, they have risen since then.

However, I do not think we have not yet reached a stable level of carbon 14, rather that we did reach it by part of the time having a faster build-up of carbon 14 levels than now. Between Flood and Fall of Troy in medium c. 5 times faster, but starting out 10 times faster.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Coloman of Stockerau
13.X.2022

* https://creation.com/plantinga-conflict-evolution
cited in
https://creation.com/epistemic-abyss-naturalistic-evolution
** Somewhat irreverent way of putting it, it is after all the Church that Christ founded!