In their search for truth, science and religion have been little help to one another with each taking separate, but perhaps parallel paths. Science, by its very nature, is obligated to prove its conclusions based solely on impirical observations, while religion has little need of proof since proof and faith cannot coexist – one supplants the other. Religion is more concerned about where we are going than where we have been, while science seems more intent on finding our beginnings in the physical world, and the recipe of matter and time for brewing up life. Alas, science is using a different road map in seeking a highway to our past, and like the traveler seeking directions, being told by a different traveler… you can’t get there from here.
Science, understandably, seems bent on searching for the missing links of our existence and, in so doing, determined to establish dependable, accurate measuring systems for anchoring cosmic events in their proper order, but measuring systems that only science itself need be obligated to follow and use…a sort of Necessary Circular Reasoning.
Around the turn of the century one such scientific system seemed promising: the speed of light. It travels at a constant 186,000 miles per second, equivalent to about eight times around the earth in one second. Regardless of its source, light cannot be slowed down or speeded up, and therefore seemed a likely candidate for determining some “absolutes” such as motion, speed, direction, position, and time. However, Albert Einstein put this idea to rest with his “Special Theory of Relativity.” He demonstrated that this knowledge of light’s behavior would still not render any absolute answers to these complex movements in a vast universe.
Today we have become stargazers in our attempts to understand time and space and from whence we came, while perhaps forgetting the lessons of relativity from Einstein. A Creationist’s point of view is that if a Creator could create a star, he could certainly create its light beams already in place. Yet, when an astronomer looks at a star that is one billion light years away he believes he is seeing that star’s light-image when it was emitted – one billion years ago – and therefore, seeing one billion years back in time. In fact, he may be looking at light that was “created” along with the star, or at least when the star was much closer before the universe had expanded to its present size. Does this put science and religion on a different path to truth? Perhaps not.
From the accounts in Genesis we read that the Bible was describing Adam’s ability to see the stars because on the fourth day “God said ‘let there be light in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night…’ and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.” The closest star to earth, other than our own sun, is Alpha Centauri at a distance that takes four years for its light to reach us. Our sun’s light takes about 8 minutes to arrive and the Moon’s about 5 seconds. The rest of the stars that Adam could have seen without a telescope would have been only the stars in our own Milky Way Galaxy, about 100,000 light years across. The Keck Telescope perched 13,000 feet above Mauna Kea in Hawaii claims to be able to see a star that is 12 billion light-years away, in theory, the star as it appeared about 12 billion years ago since it has taken 12 billion years for its light-image to reach us. The idea is that some 12 billion years ago there was this “Big Bang” – an initial explosion out of which the universe was formed and has been expanding ever since to its present size. But how could a star get to a distance of 12 billion light years away in only 12 billion years? That’s like driving to a point a thousand miles away and arriving in one hour. Your car cannot travel a thousand miles an hour and a star cannot travel at the speed of light – nothing else can.
The creation of the universe, with its complex functioning system, would not seem seperable from its detectable history. If this proposition is true, then trying to measure time and its events would be as Einstein tried to explain – RELATIVE. Those stars may well be 12 billion light years away, or further now, but because we can see them doesn’t mean we’ve had to hang around for 12 billion years to finally see its light. It may very well be that there was a Big Bang, according to detectable scientific data, but why not also a system that accompanied creation? With creation, would not the trees in the Garden of Eden on the first day of creation have had yearly growth rings in their trunks? Growth rings are essential in the living system of a tree, yet, a scientist could have cut down the tree and declared its age by counting the rings. Carbon Dating is another method by which science claims to be able to calculate approximate age to within about 80 years. Carbonaceous material (all organic and many inorganic compounds having the element of carbon) such as fossil remains and archaeological specimens can be examined by this method. Every 5,730 years these materials release half of their remaining radioactive carbon-14 atoms (a form of carbon – an isotope). Since only half of the remaining atoms are ever released during each of these time periods, called its half-life, they are never completely depleted, and the age of the material can be calculated by a regressive scientific process. Thus, a geological formation in the Garden of Eden could have shown a calculable age in billions of years… on the first day.
The evolutionist believes in an ever growing, changing world of life in which the greater has evolved from the lesser. But where, when, and what was the “first cause?” Something cannot evolve from nothing. There seems to be a scientific evolutionary disconnect between explaining a linear history with no beginning. And, it is science, not religion, that gives us the Third Law of Thermodynamics which says that everything in the universe is being used up, burned up, shifting from order to disorder and being weekened and depleted, therefore the universe, in whatever state, could not have always existed as some would explain or it would have long since been used up. And, it is science not religion, that may someday have to come face-to-face with its own proven edict…”you can’t get something from nothing.”
Then perhaps someday the roads will converge.