A Time Machine to Cosmic Creation

This here Universe, with all the stuff and everybody in it, is my tov Friend Jesus' 13.7 billion year old Home.




FINDING A WAY BACK

On the one hand Science asserts that the Universe began 'inflation' or expanding with the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago, while quite a few well organized and eloquent American Christians hold to a Young Earth Creation model (approximately 6000 to 10,000 yr old Earth), history beginning with Divine Creation during a literal 6+1 week of God creating Everything by saying: "Let there be.......".

Where do you stand? Are scientific explanations good enough for you? Or does your faith compel you to be a YEC believer?

How good would it be to have a time machine and go research it all. Instead of relying on best theory, find your way back and see for yourself for instance what God was up to 6000 years ago, if anything and if he or she actually existed. Wouldn't it be good (or 'tov', the word used in the Hebrew Bible to capture some ahh... GOOD Creatin') to have the means to look into our past directly, kinda catch the Creator in the act/absence so to speak!

This topic is meant to prove such transport exists, big un too with room enough for anyone curious about how and when the universe in heavens name was created, evolved or inflated or whatever is the origin of Reality. Let's get on board!


COLLISION OF THE ANTENNAE GALAXIES




I've read conservative estimates of a trillion galaxies existing in our universe, our own Milky Way just one fair sized example, while over the past decades we've observed 100 ongoing collisions between near and far galactic neighbors. By the way, I'd qualify myself as a cosmological idiot, nevertheless venturing to extrapolate from the trajectory of discovery, that looking further back in Space-Time we are bound to find there have been LOTS  of galaxies bumping into each other.

One such collision is in the video above, between the popularly named Antennae Galaxies (for two 'antennae-like' trails of violently ejected stars) whose official designations are NGC 4038 and NGC 4039. My point is: apart from making a neat picture and perhaps a catchy name, there's nothing extraordinary or rare about this collision or any others, for as long as wondering souls looked up to heaven, stars, galaxies (including colliding ones) and the snakelike brilliance of the Milky Way have been nightly reflecting in human eyes.


PUTTING IT TOGETHER

Now let's assemble our machine. Engage and make it so. Then travel back in time to directly observe God creating the All from nothing 6000 years ago, if possible go back beyond that 350,000 years Before Present (evolution of Modern Humans) and even past a hundred million years BP to check up on the evolution of earthly life.

The size of Antennae interacting, galaxies NGC 4038 and 4039 mixing it up together in space is known. This glittery irregular double galaxy bubble is a whopping 500,000 light years across. Postulating nothing moves faster than light we already know that going from two separate 100,000s light years sized galaxies approaching one another to becoming fully merged must take longer than 500,000 years. Of course their real closing rate is a fraction of light speed, estimated at 'mere' 100s of kilometers/second. Combining the Antennae merger's approach speed with the hu-hu-mongous sizes of our galactic duo, the entire process moving from 2 distinct galaxies to full fledged intertwined collision, the Antennae galaxy observation today, has taken hundreds of millions of years.


YOUNG EARTH CREATIONISM = DEAD
...GOD = ALIVE & WELL?


This is painful if you happen to love that 6000-10,000 year model, patterned after Irish Archbishop Ussher's erroneous interpretation of biblical genealogy and charismatic Creationist movements among 7th Day Adventists and Evangelicals. I'll do my best to explain why the Antennae Galaxy collision 'kills' YEC and any 6000 or even 10s of thousands/yrs age of planet Earth, Life and the Universe.

On the surface the cosmic panorama of two galaxies (again, not unique, is happening all over!) merging, and knowing their size and closing rate, we also know the transition from 2 separate to colliding/merged took hundreds of millions of years. No big deal if say you're an Atheist following the latest findings by the James Webb Space Telescope. YEC Christian Fundamentalists might attempt to dismiss it as yet another attack on God and Jesus by the forces of evil (and secularism). But must Faith and Science be mutually exclusive?






I really don't think faith & science are Either/Or. Now the direct observation of Antennae and the process of NGC 4038 and NGC 4039 merging establishes a timeline of 100s millions of years going from 2 separate galaxies to the merged state we see today. Even allowing for a massive margin for error (considerably smaller galaxies and/or faster approach) there remains no conceivable way for our Universe to be 'younger' than (let's go crazy here) 100 million years.

PROBLEM FOR YEC CHRISTIANS: the usual Out for Young Earth Creationist proponents, saying that the Universe was created for instance 4000 BCE with apparent age built in, billions/yrs worth of light waves well underway the moment God says 'let there be light!', our Sun and other stars instantly mature enough to support, warm and light the way for God's creatures.

Unfortunately this theological escape hatch won't work for colliding galaxies. Check out the biblical creation account.


Genesis 1:16-18 Orthodox Jewish Bible/OJB

"And Elohim made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night; He made the kokhavim (stars) also.

And Elohim set them in the raki’a of the heaven to give light upon the earth,

And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness; and Elohim saw that it was tov."


Hebrew lawgiver Moses, with other authors of the so called Five Books of Moses in the Torah/Old Testament, offers his best (Egyptian?) sourced description of how Elohim (=Yahweh, the God of Israel) created the heavens. God set two lights, the Sun and Moon in our sky, as well as the stars. To set means 'given a position/function to help mankind walk by day and rest at night, learn the harvest seasons and navigation'.

The 'stars' includes our universe's galaxies in this unimaginably vast act of Creation. The Sun, Moon and Stars (again, galaxies in there) are created in "Tov" quality. It is Hebrew expressing the quality of being more than simply Good – tov means that something is fulfilling the Divine purpose for which it was created. New powerful technologies reveal to us the unimaginable power and awesome beauty of the Spiral Galaxies (actually, there are several shape variants), being able to look at thousands of individual galaxies in stunning detail seems enough to make even an Atheist wonder... this stuff is too... Tov. However, galaxy collisions uhh.... clash  with the Creation story: if God used his creative power to make two (read: hundreds, thousands or billions of) galaxies collide, this would be destroying these galaxies' intricate gravitational power structure, their stable support for life on Earth like planets and erase the most tov aspect of all, their BEAUTY. The result instead would be pockets of chaos all through the Cosmos.

Galaxy collisions are the opposite of Tov=Good Creation, namely Ra (Hebrew denoting Evil and Destruction).

Therefore the God of the Bible cannot have literally created from nothin stars, galaxies, galaxy collisions and the Sun and the Moon on day 4 of the literal 6 day (+ day 7 for 'rest') Creation Week.

To end. The above proves Archbishop Ussher and his modern day Christian YEC followers wrong, is all. Shocker, if you based your worldview on this human tradition... OK I really do get it. But to my mind I live in a very very very old and big universe filled with wonders and secrets 99.99% of which we yet have to discover. My way of belief is saying this Universe, with all the stuff and everybody in it, is my tov Friend Jesus' 13.7 billion year old Home.


purr