he day was over (Gen. 1:11-12).
Now, did Adam have a navel? Probably not, simply because the navel is a remnant of the normal birth process, and not of maturity or functionality. Therefore, for God to have created him with one would indeed be deception, because it would convey misleading information.
The Biblical concept of a fully-functional creation of materials that give the appearance of age can be extended as well to the New Testament. The creation of wine in John 2:1-10 is one example. The fact that the water was not created ex nihilo, but was already in existence is beside the point. Wine is chemically greater than water, and so it does involve a certain amount of ex nihilo creation, and furthermore it gave the appearance of having been aged (John 2:8-10). So it is with the creation of the bread and the fish in John 6:1-13. Normally, bread and fish are the end result of a long growth process before they are finally prepared for consumption. The bread and the fish were created with the appearance of maturity, not because Jesus was doing parlor magic and trying to deceive His audience, but because He wanted the materials to be functional and immediately usable.
There are three "secular" or non-Biblical possibilities to the problem of harmonizing a young universe with the allegedly-great distances of the outer galaxies: (1) the distances may not be that great after all; (2) light may take a "shortcut" as it travels through deep space; (3) the speed of light may have been considerably faster in the past. These three are not mutually exclusive, and may in fact be used in conjunction with each other. The fourth solution, which may be used independently or in conjunction with the above three, is that God created the light beams as well as the stars so that they could be—as indeed they were—seen on the fourth day of the creation week.
l. Many astronomical assumptions are like a house of cards. For example, Hubble's constant, a mainstay in uniformitarian distance calculations, has recently been determined to be considerably different than previously thought, thus resulting in the overnight "collapse" of the size of the universe to 50% of its former value.
2. Harold S. Slusher, "Travelling of Light in Space," in Age of the Cosmos (San Diego: ICR, 1980), pp. 25-37. For an additional view on the hyperbolic or non-Euclidean geometry of space, see Wayne M. Zage, "The Geometry of Binocular Visual Space," Mathematics Magazine 53 (Nov. 1980), pp. 289-293.
3. Barry Setterfield, "The Velocity of Light and the Age of the Universe," Ex Nihilo 1 (1982): 52-93.
4. David M. Harris, "A Solution to Seeing Stars," Creation Research Society Quarterly, 15 (Sep. 1978): 112-115. He also offers an explanation for red-shift that does not require an expanding universe.
5. Gletin R. Morton, "Electromagnetics and the Appearance of Age," Creation Research Society Quarterly 18 (Mar. 1982): 227-232.
* Richard Niessen is Associate Professor of Bible & Apologetics at Christian Heritage College, El Cajon, CA 92021.
Cite this article: Richard Niessen. 1983. Starlight and the Age of the Universe. Acts & Facts. 12 (7).