In one of the discussion threads on christiannews.net the issue once again arose regarding the age of the Earth. This particular discussion dealt with newly discovered intact fossil fish. The debate raged (on and on and on) about geology and Genesis and man’s creation. But I asked a question several times and could not get any responses (save one) from “young earth” believers: Is the Earth the same age as the universe or is it much older?
So in the next series of posts I want to explore if and how the Biblical account of creation squares with our empirical understanding. I will start by exploring the first created thing: light.
And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. – Genesis 1:3
You can’t get much earlier than that.
Sir Isaac Newton is considered the first scientist to explore the nature of light. He was able to determine that white light was actually composed of many colors, i.e. a spectrum. Isn’t it interesting that the God left a spectrum (rainbow) as a sign that he would never again destroy the Earth.Was light composed of many colors prior to the Flood? We have no way of knowing for sure, but we can be certain that such is the case today.
Another thing that Newton determined was that light behaves like a wave. Using a double slit experiment he observed the interference pattern that one would expect a wave to produce. In the physics of that time, it was believed that waves were fluctuations in density of some medium, so if light were a wave then there must be some medium in which it propagated. No one knew what it was, so they proposed a hypothesis that the universe was infused everywhere with a substance with no mass which could occupy the same space a other objects. It was deemed the luminiferous aether (or ether). It was a major goal of 19th century science to determine its nature.
If there were such a thing as the ether, then it was reasonable to expect the velocity of light to differ depending on the direction in which it was measured. After all the Earth was speeding through space at considerable velocity.One experiment sought to prove the hypothesis that the velocity of light differed depending upon the direction in which it was measured. This is the famous Michelson-Morley experiment. It is one of the classic examples of a falsifiable hypothesis and this experiment is a stunning example of falsification What they found was that light propagated at exactly the same velocity irrespective of the direction in which it was measured. In other words, they determined that the velocity of light in a vacuum was a constant.
This would have major repercussions in physics leading eventually to the Special Theory of Relativity. It is of such major importance that the question must be asked: Is there anything in Michelson-Morley the contradicts the Biblical account of the creation of light?
I am very interested in getting the response of anyone (especially a pastor or teacher) who holds to a more literal reading of Genesis. If we can’t come to some common ground on this topic there may be little hope in harmonizing the Biblical creation account with current cosmology.
Let’s hear what you have to say.