Majestic Medley in the Heavens

 

Dr. James J.S. Johnson

There are also celestial bodies, and bodies terrestrial: but the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another.  There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars: for one star differeth from another star in glory.   (1st Corinthians 15:40-41)

The cosmos is filled with heavenly bodies that display wonderful variety.

What variety (sun, moon, stars, planets, comets, etc.) is in our universe?  Variety in the heavens actually exists on an enormous scale.

God likes variety—more variety than we can fully appreciate, even if we had multiple lifetimes to investigate His creation!

Here are two proofs:

(1) Scripture shows that variety matches God’s divine nature (i.e., God is simultaneously plural and one, being triune: Father, Son, & Holy Spirit) and how He made mankind in His own image; and

(2) God’s physical non-human creation (including animals, plants, rocks, stars, bacteria, protozoa, etc.) shows that God supernaturally selected and favors variety.

Nature displays differences in details of diverse animals, plants, microörganisms, earth’s geophysical environment, and even the innumerable galaxies of outer space – including each and every star that is out there, regardless of whether any human ever sees it or not! So, how do the heavens show God’s love for variety?

There are at least 100 billion stars in the heavens (that’s 100,000,000,000 different stars!) – that we are of (and maybe there are many more!), yet Psalm 147:4 says that God not only can count exactly how many there are, He has even given a specific name to each of those many stars!

Also, 1^st Corinthians 15:40-41 says that God gives a different “glory” to each star – and that should remind us that God gives a unique dignity to each human. In other words, each of us is valuable to God in a way that no one else is – what a wonderful fact! Since God treats each of the stars as unique, with its own name, that proves that God loves variety. In other words, God has demonstrated His love for variety in the many differences (including differences in “glories”) that He has designed into the heavenly bodies, including the uniqueness of the stars and of the planets. As humans we cannot actually count stars, one at a time, and know their individual names – to do so would take trillions of years – and during our earthly lives we cannot live that long.

Although heavenly bodies have individual uniqueness, they simultaneously have interactive relationships with one another on huge scales – for example, our solar system is a working system, within the Milky Way Galaxy (which is a working system), and there even exists groupings of galaxies.

God values variety, so the cosmos is filled with heavenly bodies that display wonderful variety.   God has demonstrated His love for variety in the many differences (including differences in “glories”) that He has artistically designed variety into the heavenly bodies, including the uniqueness of the stars and of the planets.  Consequently, stars, groups of stars, and other heavenly bodies show variety and artistic uniqueness.   (See 1^st Corinthians 15:40-41; Psalm 147:4; Job 26:13.)

For more information on this topic you might want to see these online articles:

Henry M. Morris: http://www.icr.org/article/9944

Henry M. Morris: http://www.icr.org/article/2292

Henry M. Morris: http://www.icr.org/article/1342

Henry M. Morris: http://www.icr.org/article/21014

Henry M. Morris: http://www.icr.org/article/20964

JJSJ: http://www.icr.org/article/created-sun-and-moon

JJSJ: http://www.icr.org/article/valuing-gods-variety/

JJSJ: http://www.icr.org/article/grackles-gratitude

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God, Who loves variety, made the heavens with glorious variety.

Dr. James J. S. Johnson

There are also celestial bodies, and bodies terrestrial: but the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another.  There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars:  for one star differs from another star in glory.  (1st Corinthians 15:40-41)

God has demonstrated His love for variety in the many differences (including differences in “glories”) that He has artistically designed variety into the heavenly bodies, including the uniqueness of the stars and of the planets.  Consequently, stars, groups of stars, and other heavenly bodies show variety and artistic uniqueness.   (See 1^st Corinthians 15:40-41; Psalm 147:4; Job 26:13.)

Yes, God loves variety—more variety than we can fully appreciate, even if we had multiple lifetimes to investigate His creation!  Here are three easy proofs:  (1)  Scripture shows that variety matches God’s own divine nature (i.e., God Himself is personally plural, yet one: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit  —  see 1st John 5:7);  (2)  God made mankind plural-yet-one, when He made mankind in His own image (as Adam and Eve, male and female, yet one kind — see Genesis 1:27);  and  (3)  God’s physical non-human creation (including the stars, all of which differ from one another — see 1st Corinthians 15:41).

Because of how God created His creation, nature displays differences in details of diverse animals, plants, microörganisms, earth’s geophysical environment, and even the innumerable galaxies of outer space – including each and every star that is out there, regardless of whether any human ever sees it or not!  (See “Valuing God’s Variety”, posted at http://www.icr.org/article/valuing-gods-variety/.)

How do the heavens show the hugeness of God’s love for variety?  There are at least 100 billion galaxies in the heavens (containing about 10²², i.e., 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 different stars!) – that we are of (and maybe there are many more!), yet Psalm 147:4 says that God not only can count exactly how many there are, He has even given a specific name to each of those many stars!

Also, 1^st Corinthians 15:40-41 says that God gives a different “glory” to each star – and that should remind us that God gives a unique dignity to each human. In other words, each of us is valuable to God in a way that no one else is – what a wonderful fact! Since God treats each of the stars as unique, with its own name, that proves that God loves variety.

In other words, God has demonstrated His love for both variety and detailed uniqueness in the many different cosmic “glories”) that He has designed into the heavenly bodies, including the detailed uniqueness of the planets and of the many, many, many stars.  As mere humans, we cannot actually count all of the stars, one at a time, and know their individual names – to do so would take trillions of years – and during our earthly lives we cannot live that long.  How amazing: God has chosen to make and to love each of us (Psalm 8)!

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Real knowledge about the cosmos (and its origin) must be given to us by God.

Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, and saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep; all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.  (2nd Peter 3:3-4)

Notice the scoffer’s assumption  —  that “all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation”  —  yet that assumption is FALSE.  Just as the embryology of a baby human is not representative of how a born human grows and develops, the origin of our cosmos, during Creation Week (which wonderful week of mighty miracles preceded Adam’s sin in Eden), was not then experiencing natural processes that are typical of (i.e., commonplace in) the cosmos we now live in.  How fast did starlight travel before Adam sinned?  The real answer is that we don’t know  —  yet we do know that the starlight that God made during Creation Week did accomplish His declared purposes for that starlight, which purposes required distant starlight to be promptly visible to mankind on Earth.   (Of course, this is why we need an open Bible to know real truth!)

However, if some theorist imagines and assumes (with a closed Bible) that the original starlight was limited in its transmission velocity, to what we today call “the speed of light”, that theorist could easily (though wrongly) infer that visible starlight must be eons older than the humans on Earth who see that starlight, after it arrives, visually speaking.  (But that “speed-of-light-is-always-constant” assumption is wrong when applied to Day 4 of Creation Week, just as uniformitarian assumptions also clash with many other miracles done by God during other days of Creation Week.)

So how old are the galaxies, and all of the stars in those galaxies?  Since those stars (and galaxies) were formed on Day 4, during Creation Week, we cannot know how many years ago that was  —  unless and until God, the only Eye-witness, chooses to tell us.  And, thankfully, God has done just that — He has told us about the chronology of His creation — in the book of Genesis.

Consequently, we stumble in the dark, about the true age of creation, only if we ignore the divine revelation that God has graciously given unto us:  the Holy Bible.    The Bible provides us with lots of valuable truth about many topics, including cosmogonical topics  —  so the real question is what will we do with God’s truth?  Will we prioritize and rely upon it?  Or will we effectively displace it by relying upon Einstein’s relativity postulates (by transmogrifying a modern cosmology theory into a jake-leg cosmogony “history”), when doing so is illogical?  (Because there is no rational basis for assuming today’s speed-of-light “constant” was applicable, during Day 4 of Creation Week.)

If we assume–wrongly–that distant starlight is only allowed to travel as the current speed of light (which most physicists deem a constant velocity), even on Day 4 of Creation Week, we err by committing the Uniformitarian Fallacy.  (This same fallacy would lead us to err in guessing the true age of Adam, at the end of Day 6 of Creation Week.)

Biblical creationists (especially creationist astrophysicists, who all-too-often confuse cosmology, an empirical science  —  with cosmogony, a forensic science) have no excuse for committing the Uniformitarian Fallacy  —  especially because that irrational fallacy was prophesied by the apostle Peter, who warned us that scoffers would assume that present processes are (supposedly) the key to knowing about unique events that occurred in the no-longer-observable past.  [For more analysis of how distant starlight makes sense in a created-mature cosmos, see Don B. DeYoung, “Mature Creation and Seeing Distant Starlight”, JOURNAL OF CREATION, 24(3):54-59 (December 2010).  For more analysis regarding the indispensable need for reliable eyewitness testimony, in forensic science, see James J. S. Johnson, “Genesis Critics Flunk Forensic Science 101”, ACTS & FACTS, 41(3):8-9 (March 2012), posted at http://www.icr.org/article/genesis-critics-flunk-forensic-science/   —  and “What Good Are Experts?”, ACTS & FACTS, 41(3):8-9 (March 2012), posted at  http://www.icr.org/article/7073 .]

UNIFORMITARIANS  STUMBLE  AT  DISTANT  STARLIGHT

Dr. James J. S. Johnson

Deists pegged Earth’s years in the millions

Many stretch that, today, to the billions   —

Dismissing Day 4,

God’s Word they ignore,

Thus erring by margins of billions.

 

Assuming light’s speed stays the same,

The year-count’s a wild guessing-game;

But Day 4’s light-speed

Is what God decreed  —

And not what it later became.

 

Light’s speed, now, is not “key to the past”,

Since, on Day 4, it sped super-fast;

It flashed then, in an instant —

Yet its speed, now, is constant;

Displaying God’s power, unsurpassed!

Real knowledge about the cosmos, and especially about it origins, can only be learned by starting with God’s gifts of revelation – both Scripture and Scripture-based science – if we are serious about learning the truth about the cosmos. (See Psalm 19; Hebrews 11:3; John 5:44-47.)   But, in order to avoid the Uniformitarian Fallacy, we must carefully remember that it is holy Scripture (which provides us with true information from our infinite and perfect God) that informs our “science” (which is limited by our finite and imperfect knowledge-base).

Truly, the Heavens declare the glory of God” (Psalm 19:1a)!

God made the cosmos huge, with stars of huge numbers and at huge distances from Earth.

He telleth the number of the stars; He calleth them all by their names.  (Psalm 147:4)

God, through Christ, created physical matter-energy cosmos out of nothing, and then constructively shaped that physical matter-energy, in the stretched-out expanse, as innumerable stars (and other heavenly bodies), so many and so far away (i.e., the heavens are so huge) that we cannot see that level of detail with human eyesight. (See Genesis 15:5; Deuteronomy 28:62; Isaiah 55:9; Jeremiah 33:22; Hebrews 11:12.)  Even so, God can count the exact number of the universe’s stars (Psalm 147:4a) — and God knows each of His stars, including His name for each one of them (Psalm 147:4b).