Does Light Make God a Liar?
COMMENT
If you accept that the Earth, and by extension the whole universe, is only a few thousand years old, then physics and astronomy prove God is a deceiver. There are stars several orders of magnitude further away than 10,000 light years shining their light at us. So are we to believe that God put the light mid-transit to us in order to fool us? And if he is that crafty, why were we allowed to progress far enough in science to reveal the deception? Also, if we can't trust light then we also can't trust the words we think we see on the pages of the Bible. The whole of existence falls apart as one giant deception. (Anonymous)
RESPONSE
Let’s take a closer look at that comment…
If you accept that the Earth and by extension the whole universe is only a few thousand years old then physics and astronomy prove God is a deceiver.
God is not a deceiver. He told us he created the universe in 6 days about 6000 years ago. Those who use the distance of stars and speed of light to insist otherwise are exalting the testimony of “science falsely so-called” (I Timothy 6:20) over the clear testimony of God (Genesis 1). How that makes God a deceiver remains a mystery. There are a host of unbiblical presuppositions that go into the so-called "scientific" dating schemes but the greatest one is uniformitarianism (the belief that scientific laws are as they have always been). The bible’s testimony forces us to reject that presupposition no matter how compelling it may seem to be based on observation. The bible’s testimony is that God is the omnipotent designer and creator of the laws of science and that he is at liberty to violate those rules and has done so on many occasions (Revelation 19:6, Exodus 14). Indeed, the bible does not speak of slow, natural processes constrained by uniformitarianism. It speaks of the supernatural creative power of God (Genesis 1) and a supernatural origin of the universe. Natural science by definition is a toolkit inadequate to the task of explaining a supernatural event.
There are stars several orders of magnitude further away than 10,000 light years shining their light at us. So, are we to believe that God put the light mid-transit to us in order to fool us?
Again, there is no reason to assume that God did any of this "to fool us" given that he has explicitly stated that he created all of this supernaturally in 6 days. The fool is one who exalts the testimony of nature over the testimony of a supernatural, omnipotent God.
And if he is that crafty, why were we allowed to progress far enough in science to reveal the deception?
There is no deception at all. God told us how he did it. It was a supernatural event. That settles it. If you choose not to believe him and insist upon pure naturalism based on a host of unbiblical presuppositions, you are at liberty to do so. But recognize this: the theory that something comes from nothing is NOT SCIENCE. There is no scientific proof that matter arises from nothing. That is the first law of thermodynamics. In fact, I submit that it is impossible to so much as set up a valid test of this unstable theory. Indeed, how could one create an untainted test environment that contains nothing? To do that would require the destruction of all matter. Think about that scientifically for a moment. In order to prove that something comes out of nothing, one would first need to prove that nothing can be made from something. Both are violations of the first law of thermodynamics which states that matter cannot be either created or destroyed. In other words, the theory is patently UNSCIENTIFIC from the get-go. What’s more, believing that life arises from non-living matter (abiogenesis) is also NOT SCIENCE. Simply put, your “purely scientific” view of origins is not science at all. It is nonsense peddled as science to the naive, what the apostle Paul refers to as “science falsely so-called” (I Timothy 6:20). It is the religion of “Scientism” gone to seed.
Also, if we can't trust light then we also can't trust the words we think we see on the pages of the Bible.
Trust light? Ever heard of an optical illusion? Light may not be nearly so trustworthy as you make it out to be. Truth be told, you do not really “trust light" so much as you "insist on uniformitarianism.” In other words, you believe that light is telling you, “This is how I behave and I always behave this way.” The latter part of that is not explicitly declared by the behavior of light, but is presupposed from a small set of observations over the course of an exceedingly brief span of cosmic time. The truth is that light has made no such ironclad declaration regarding its speed but the priests of Scientism have declared that light travels at a certain speed and have presupposed that this is always the case. None of this changes the fact that an omnipotent God, who created the laws of science and has dominion over them, is able to violate those laws as he sees fit. That renders all assertions about light traveling for millions of years irrelevant as a means of determining the age of the universe. What you refer to as “trusting light” is really just “trusting unbiblical, scientific presuppositions that are contrary to God’s own testimony regarding creation.”
The whole of existence falls apart as one giant deception.
No. It doesn't. What falls apart, or ought to, is your reliance upon unbiblical presuppositions as the gold standard of truth. Admittedly, most people educated in the American public school system over the last 50 years, even those who are professing Christians, are totally unaware of the degree to which “Scientism” dominates their worldview. Nevertheless, the totality of things which come to pass is greater than what can be explained by the laws of science and the presuppositions of uniformitarianism. The bible speaks of supernatural events that do not conform to the laws of science. I have often stated the bible’s teaching in this way:
The universe is not the natural produce of uniformitarian science.
The universe is the supernatural creation of an omnipotent God.
You should sincerely and objectively investigate your presuppositions and ask if they are in keeping with the bible's testimony? The bible speaks of a recent, supernatural origin of the universe and this testimony is the undoing of all uniformitarian and naturalistic presuppositions.
- Elder Daniel Samons