How the Planets and Moons Point to God with Spike Psarris

[00:00:00] thank you for tuning in this evening we are on k praise 1 10 a.m down here in southern california we’re broadcasting locally

[00:00:07] we’re also up in north county and then of course we’re all over social media we’re on on uh podcasts and so you can

[00:00:12] find us everywhere and we’ve had some great shows recently and this evening we have a very interesting show uh spike

[00:00:19] soares he has a bachelor’s in science in electrical engineering uh bachelors of

[00:00:25] science in electrical engineering from the university of massachusetts he’s done graduate work in physics and he was formerly an engineer in the united

[00:00:31] states military space program and um he’s going to be talking to us this evening about the the planets and

[00:00:37] how these point to god a biblical world view of things a creationist worldview not to an evolutionary worldview or an

[00:00:45] atheistic uh big bang so uh spike thanks so much for being on the program today yeah thanks for having me

[00:00:52] absolutely well uh you know i teach 12th graders and we talk about

[00:00:57] this we talk about doing big bang and these sorts of things and i’ve got quite a few uh questions that i’m really

[00:01:03] curious about um but uh you also have three dvds uh that

[00:01:09] you’re selling on your website creationastronomy.com um and i like the title it says what you aren’t told about

[00:01:15] astronomy uh and that’s really the uh subtitle there

[00:01:21] that you put can you explain that a little bit what is there really a lot that people don’t know about astronomy

[00:01:26] that’s not out in the public that is actually factually evidently um you know demonstrable

[00:01:33] well i think so uh there’s there’s a real disconnect in my opinion

[00:01:38] between science that’s presented to the public versus the science that’s actually being done

[00:01:44] if you read papers in the scientific journals and you follow the research that’s being done often the conclusions that are presented

[00:01:51] to the public as being quote unquote known or facts aren’t actually that well supported

[00:01:56] in addition there’s a lot of evidence against some of these mainstream views that also typically doesn’t filter down

[00:02:02] to the public and by the public i mean you know science museums planetarium shows textbooks science programs

[00:02:09] all those sorts of things the the typical channels through which people get scientific information often do not

[00:02:15] contain a lot of this other material that that really calls into question a lot of the conclusions that

[00:02:20] are being drawn are we talking about in like for example like a high school science classroom or a college a

[00:02:26] university level uh science class or are you talking about you know out in the public beyond school

[00:02:32] uh both actually okay okay interesting so um give us some

[00:02:37] examples of that what are some of the glaring examples that you’re talking about that that people have a particular perspective that really there’s a lot of

[00:02:44] contradictory evidence to okay uh the origin of our moon would be a good example of this

[00:02:49] so if you go look online or any of those other education outlets

[00:02:55] that we just talked about you’ll hear about something called the giant impact theory which is the idea that our moon originated from a giant

[00:03:01] collision between the earth and a very large like mars-sized object

[00:03:07] uh early in the earth’s history so supposedly this object came in hit the earth blew it up into a bunch of material most

[00:03:14] of this material fell back down some of it started to orbit the earth though and coalesced into what we have today is the

[00:03:20] moon now this is presented pretty much universally as the model that we know

[00:03:25] this is how it happened but yet there’s actually a lot of evidence against this model that shows it can’t have happened that way

[00:03:32] the model itself even from the beginning was understood to be very contrived first of all um you need to have an

[00:03:37] impactor come in at exactly the right speed and angle and the right mass and all the rest of it so it’s already kind of veering into

[00:03:43] special pleading as to how finely tuned this supposedly random event had to be but over the years more and more

[00:03:50] evidence has accumulated against this idea for example the apollo astronauts back in the late 60s and early 70s gathered a

[00:03:57] lot of samples from the moon’s surface and brought it back to earth there was actually several hundred pounds of samples that they brought

[00:04:02] and it was that material was analyzed at the time to the best of the laboratory equipment that we had which which was

[00:04:08] well done but of course several decades later we have better equipment now so some people decided to go back and

[00:04:14] re-examine that material to see if there’s anything that was missed and it was discovered that uh some of the soil samples that came

[00:04:21] back from the moon’s surface had beads of volcanic glass in it and inside the volcanic glass there was water

[00:04:28] now not much water it’s only trace amounts which is why it was missed in the 70s but it’s that’s interesting because

[00:04:33] water in the moon’s surface doesn’t necessarily tell us much about origins that could have come from comets or meteorites or whatever after the moon

[00:04:40] formed but volcanic glass from inside the moon if that contains water that means there’s water in the moon’s interior

[00:04:47] that tells us that the material that the moon was formed from also contained water

[00:04:52] and had a giant impact occurred that would have vaporized whatever water was present at the time

[00:04:58] and the moon could contain no water today if it were the result of such an impact now this was first published in 2008

[00:05:05] subsequent people have gone back and looked further and it turns out there’s even more water in the moon than was

[00:05:10] originally thought back then now they estimate that if all the water in the moon’s moon’s interior was brought up to the surface there’d be a global ocean

[00:05:17] about a meter or so deep oh my gosh so there’s a lot of water i mean the moon is still a dry object don’t get me

[00:05:23] wrong but yeah it can contain no water at all if that impact story was true the presence of water discredits the

[00:05:29] impact story yet the impact story is still being taught and presented as if it’s known

[00:05:34] fact despite this and other problems that have arisen with it subsequently oh that’s a big one yeah because i mean

[00:05:42] that’s everybody’s heard about that that this is where the moon came from and you said it was contrived when you say it’s

[00:05:47] contrived are you meaning that there’s not really any evidence to support the view it’s just really really hypothetical or what do you say what do

[00:05:53] you mean well the evidence that we have is that there’s an earth and a moon yeah exactly okay so it’s just assertion

[00:06:00] then it’s just whoops there’s a mirror pieces here the assertion i mean it’s computer simulations so this raises kind of

[00:06:07] philosophical questions about is a computer simulation really a scientific model

[00:06:12] i mean ultimately a simulation all you at best it tells you one way something

[00:06:17] might have happened it doesn’t tell you that it actually did happen that way because you can construct a lot of simulations on a lot of different stories

[00:06:23] that all fit there being an earth and a moon today gotcha now now you are a biblical creationist

[00:06:30] you believe in what the bible says about the six days of creation right correct

[00:06:35] now um when it is this a position that you’ve held for a long amount of time was there a point that you that you were

[00:06:42] not um committed to that that perspective or is that something that you’ve always held in another birthday

[00:06:49] or two i’ll reach the point where it’ll be half of my life okay

[00:06:54] it’s so it’s still still more than half my life to this point i was coming at this from the opposite perspective

[00:06:59] oh wow i was an atheist and an evolutionist oh okay huh so what changed your mind

[00:07:06] well a co-worker while working in the space program uh i got to talking to him one day over over lunch about origins

[00:07:14] and i found out that he was not only a christian but also a creationist and i was kind of dumbfounded because i

[00:07:20] was well versed in i mean i was an atheist because i was an evolutionist basically i understood that

[00:07:25] science showed there was no need for a creator so why believe in one science shows that that there’s uh

[00:07:32] no justification for that so when i found out he was a biblical creationist i was kind of taken aback

[00:07:37] because he’s an intelligent person he’s there working with the rest of us yeah

[00:07:42] i was trying to make sense of this and i said well how do you reconcile that with all the obvious evidence for evolution and he said what

[00:07:49] obvious evidence is that so i started to talk about radiometric dating and the fossil record and all the

[00:07:55] rest of it and he started to debunk all of my assertions

[00:08:00] he was he’s well-versed in apologetics he’s a good friend now okay um he he was aware of the arguments i was

[00:08:05] going to make and he had answers for them for most of them already and the ones he didn’t have immediately he went and found

[00:08:10] and as i went and checked his answers it turns out he was correct and he was very gracious about it i mean i’d say what about this fossil sequence he’d say you

[00:08:16] know they threw that one out about three years ago you should go look at that so i can go look at it sure enough they threw that one out three years ago

[00:08:23] so i asked him a lot of questions and he kept answering and i didn’t agree with him necessarily but i at least saw that

[00:08:28] he had a coherent worldview it wasn’t just blind faith in the bible which is my view of creationism at the time

[00:08:35] eventually over weeks and months i ran out of stuff to ask and so he turned the tables on me he

[00:08:40] said okay i’ve answered all your questions and you can answer mine so that’s fair he said you believe in the laws of

[00:08:45] physics don’t you i said well yeah we use them here every day he said how do you reconcile those with the big bang model

[00:08:51] and he didn’t even explain what he meant so i thought about the question and i realized wait a minute big bang model

[00:08:56] and some very fundamental physics don’t play well together actually i don’t play at all

[00:09:02] you can’t now i realize i’m believing mutually incompatible things at the same time apparently so give us an example of what

[00:09:08] you’re talking about there for the average person here what what is it about physics and the big bang model that don’t that don’t do well together

[00:09:14] i’ve since boiled this down into something i call the secular dilemma and this wasn’t quite how it was presented to me then this is just a result of my

[00:09:20] thinking sense if you’re going to construct a cosmogony a history of the cosmos you

[00:09:25] know an explanation for why everything exists yeah uh you have to answer a question at the beginning you have to

[00:09:31] pick an answer and the question that you have to answer is very simple it’s only six words did the

[00:09:37] universe have a beginning so how many possible answers are to that question

[00:09:42] two just two yes right yeah so it turns out that if you investigate

[00:09:48] the implications of answering yes you violate physics in one way if you investigate the implications of

[00:09:55] answering no you violate physics in a different way if you come at this without a supernatural creator you have to pick

[00:10:01] yes or no those are only two options you violate physics in one way or the other you don’t get to deny a supernatural

[00:10:08] creator and embrace all the laws of physics at the same time at least not to be consistent

[00:10:14] so we can talk more about that if you’re curious about digging down to the details but um that that’s very

[00:10:19] interesting you know along those lines one of the questions i had written down to ask you was uh my understanding is that einstein

[00:10:25] himself at one point in time believed the universe had no beginning i believe somewhere around 1915 or so and then he

[00:10:32] ended up changing his mind um is this relevant to what you’re what you’re talking about here

[00:10:38] um for most of the 20th century actually all the the mainstream deal was called the steady state model which was that

[00:10:44] the universe had always been there that always been something yeah uh the big bang actually didn’t become the predominant view until the mid 60s

[00:10:52] but i’m even stepping back from specific models this is a more fundamental question um

[00:10:58] and i i like doing it this way because how many people really know the ins and outs of the particular you know

[00:11:03] scientific model and whatever obscure area we’re talking about yeah and just just focus on big questions if the did the universe have the

[00:11:09] beginning if the answer is yes then the universe had a beginning and if the universe is everything

[00:11:15] which is what the word means then everything had a beginning if everything had a beginning what was

[00:11:22] there before that beginning nothing right yeah because if there was

[00:11:27] anything then whatever began was no longer everything thus was not actually the universe

[00:11:33] so if the universe had a beginning before the beginning there had to be nothing that means

[00:11:39] if you choose this option this op this answer to the question that something had to come from nothing

[00:11:45] now does physics allow that to happen well there’s a very fundamental principle in physics called the

[00:11:50] conservation of mass energy meaning the total amount of modern energy in the universe never changes

[00:11:55] you can convert one to the other but you can’t create anything from nothing and if you ever take take a physics

[00:12:01] class i mean you’ll see this principle pop up in a lot of the various formulas and stuff that you you apply sure

[00:12:07] thermodynamics yes this is sometimes called the first law of thermodynamics yes yeah

[00:12:13] so along those lines you know i actually had lawrence krauss on my program at one point in time and he wrote that book a

[00:12:19] universe from nothing and yet he’s he’s supposed to be a very very and his credentials are like

[00:12:25] through the roof so uh you know what would that conversation look like if you brought this up to him

[00:12:31] um i it was it was a lot of what he was saying was over my head i was like okay explain to me how you get something from

[00:12:37] nothing because i don’t really get that well he’s he’s already had this conversation with many people because many people have asked him this and if

[00:12:44] you read the book before before chapter one it’s actually starting in the preface he starts to explain that what

[00:12:49] he what he means by nothing is not what most people mean when they say nothing when he says nothing he’s talking about

[00:12:55] empty space that happens to be permeated with fields and obeys laws of physics and energy and

[00:13:01] all the rest of it well that’s not really nothing anymore um relativity says that space-time is

[00:13:06] actually something even if it doesn’t happen to contain particles which is dr krauss’s

[00:13:12] sort of working definition of nothing if there’s no particles there it’s nothing but even empty space it can be warped and

[00:13:18] distorted by mass it can flex and twist it is something you might hear the phrase the fabric of

[00:13:24] space time because that actually behaves that way so space-time is something whether or not it has particles that’s

[00:13:30] still something there so he’s not actually saying how the everything came from nothing

[00:13:36] according to how most people think of what nothing means gotcha he doesn’t even actually attempt

[00:13:41] to address that until late in the book i think it’s page 163 he starts saying about well okay so this doesn’t really

[00:13:47] say where space and time itself came from but a quantum theory of gravity explains that

[00:13:53] what is not said in the book though is that we don’t actually have a quantum theory of gravity this has been this is a problem in

[00:13:59] physics for several decades now it’s yeah famously difficult no one has solved it yet it’s also there’s a further problem with

[00:14:06] that statement as well to say that today’s laws of physics permit something to happen

[00:14:11] well what is the law of physics it’s a pattern of behavior that we’ve observed that the universe obeys and we capture

[00:14:16] it in the mathematical formula if you’re going to say that the laws of physics you can’t say that it came into

[00:14:22] existence with the universe and and simultaneously being the cause or involved with the cause of the

[00:14:27] universe gotcha because the cause has to come before an effect so if you’re going to say well quantum

[00:14:33] gravity allowed the universe to come into existence well what context was quantum

[00:14:38] gravity existing in there’s still something further back right yeah yeah so he’s just really i

[00:14:45] mean he’s he he’s answering yes and no to the question all at the same time trying to like you said have his cake

[00:14:51] and eat it too um but i’ve heard somebody say well look um you believe in the laws of the first law

[00:14:57] of thermodynamics the conservation of energy and matter um but then all of a sudden you say god did it and um how

[00:15:05] does he make something come from nothing you’re violating the scientific laws by appealing to a supernatural creator how

[00:15:12] would you respond to somebody who said that well he is he’s outside of the universe so if being outside of the universe can

[00:15:19] operate on the universe without violating the laws that that universe operates according to

[00:15:25] gotcha so it’s logical it’s not illogical like uh you have to do if you don’t have that supernatural creator

[00:15:32] right and i’m arguing further that’s the only logical option left because if you ask did the universe at the beginning

[00:15:38] we’ve already talked about yes means something had to come from nothing which physics doesn’t allow what about the other option no does physics allow that

[00:15:46] well now we’re running into the second law of thermodynamics which has a lot of implications since it’s something we could have a whole

[00:15:52] conversation about actually but uh this is something we experience in our daily lives uh like coffee for example hot

[00:15:58] coffee gets colder over time right it’s off to room temperature yeah so you can use coffee and this is by the

[00:16:05] the second laptop dynamics that is doing this by the way so you can use coffee as a crude form of clock

[00:16:10] if you walk into a room and there’s a hot cup of coffee sitting there how long has it been there a long time or a short time

[00:16:16] very good a short time short time could it have been there forever no no it would be cold

[00:16:22] it would have cooled off forever ago yeah right yeah so if we look out in the universe is there

[00:16:28] anything we see that hasn’t cooled off yet mars yeah many things yeah the sun

[00:16:34] if the universe were eternally old everything that is currently hot would have cooled off eternally long ago

[00:16:42] now this was yeah go ahead some people would argue now like new stars conform there’s actually

[00:16:48] issues with that statement but even if even granting that star formation still

[00:16:54] requires energy of which there’s a finite amount available if the universe were eternally old

[00:16:59] that would have been consumed eternally long ago as well so secular thermodynamics tells us that

[00:17:07] trillions and trillions of years from now if you wait long enough everything that’s hot today will have cooled off no new stars

[00:17:14] conformed everything’s radioactive will have decayed the entire universe will be a few degrees above absolute zero this

[00:17:19] is called the heat depth where everything is the same temperature we have not reached that point yet

[00:17:25] therefore the universe is not eternally old yes yes this is as if it were it would

[00:17:31] have reached this eternally long it would already be cold this is uh george gamau i believe uh is he the one that

[00:17:37] came up with this idea uh i’m not familiar with that i’m familiar with some other work he did i

[00:17:43] don’t know that he talked about this specifically okay this idea has been around for a while so i i’m not sure gotcha okay so um along those same lines

[00:17:52] um that you were talking about right there oh i had a really good question that i

[00:17:58] wanted to ask you and it just left my mind well um something i did want to talk to you

[00:18:04] about that it’s relevant to the planets and you know what we started out with by the way if you’re just tuning in my

[00:18:10] guest today is spikes harris and he um his website is creationastronomy.com

[00:18:15] he’s got a fantastic dvd set that is well worth your time checking into looking at what

[00:18:20] you aren’t told about astronomy and um as well as he’s written many articles that you can check out at creation.com

[00:18:27] as well as answers in genesis and other places um so so spike um

[00:18:35] in your background you’ve got a galaxy here um what is that what is that galaxy right

[00:18:41] there is that our galaxy messier 51 okay so this is something i’ve had a question about for a long time um and i

[00:18:48] was curious to ask you about it i’ve heard that the nebular hypothesis if you follow it which you’re saying is is

[00:18:54] faulty um that if you were to follow it that uh the rotation of galaxies and planets

[00:18:59] should all be going in the same direction but yet there are planets and galaxies that actually rotate in the opposite direction is that is that true

[00:19:06] is that a valid argument against the nebular hypothesis uh the nebular hypothesis

[00:19:11] specifically refers to the formation of the planets and moons in our solar system oh and our solar system itself planets moons and other objects gotcha

[00:19:18] um so galaxy rotation is a different question our solar system exists within our galaxy

[00:19:24] um but it’s our the galaxy is much bigger than the solar system so the network theory is talking about

[00:19:30] planets and moons coming out of a swirling cloud of gas um but galaxy rotation is a separate issue

[00:19:36] okay so does that pertain to our i believe not all the planets rotate in the same direction is that correct

[00:19:43] correct uh venus rotates retrograde so backwards compared to the others

[00:19:48] and is that a problem for the nebular hypothesis it was not expected uh there have been

[00:19:53] proposals for how that could have happened that way uh a larger issue is uranus which

[00:20:01] rotates over on its side uh it’s actually so it’s till its axial tilt is more than 90 degrees it’s it

[00:20:07] whereas all the other planets spin like tops as they go around the sun uranus rolls along sideways like a ball

[00:20:13] oh interesting so that’s something it should not have formed that way according to the nebula hypothesis and is there are there valid

[00:20:20] theories that would that would justify that uh difference the usual explanation is that a large

[00:20:26] impact or asteroid of some sort something the size of the earth i mean a very large object hit uranus early in

[00:20:31] its history and knocked it over there’s issues with that explanation though uranus’s orbit shows no sign of such an

[00:20:38] impact its orbit is almost perfectly circular and it also has a system of of satellites of moons

[00:20:44] that orbit its equator and remember its equator is almost perpendicular to the plane of the ecliptic

[00:20:49] so trying to figure out how these moons formed in this impact scenario is a real

[00:20:55] problem had they formed before the impact then they wouldn’t be orbiting where they are today because they’d be

[00:21:01] orbiting more within the plane of the ecliptic more or less uh they wouldn’t formed after the impact for various reasons and forming them

[00:21:07] during the impact is challenging as well so without getting into the details

[00:21:13] the the moons cast doubt upon this explanation but it’s the only explanation available so it’s the one

[00:21:19] that’s usually presented okay gotcha now um as far as the big bang is concerned um is there is is there a

[00:21:26] problem with a creationist believing in the big bang um you know one of the things that uh i

[00:21:32] believe edwin hubble um you know postulated the expansion of the universe based on what he was seeing um

[00:21:39] i believe it’s with the red shift with the with the colors uh correct me if i’m wrong but um is is that expansion is

[00:21:46] that a problem um for creationists to agree with a big bang or

[00:21:52] is can is there a way to coherently meld um what the bible teaches

[00:21:57] in genesis with that hypothesis the redshifts that hubble

[00:22:03] is known for investigating are consistent with the big bang model but they don’t demand the big bang model

[00:22:09] okay there’s other ways to look at that as well um so when you say the big bang as well you

[00:22:15] can mean in a generic sense where there is a point from which things are expanding or

[00:22:21] you can be more specific the consensus model among secular cosmologists includes not only that expansion but also cosmic inflation

[00:22:28] uh dark energy and some other things that represent the big bang model today

[00:22:34] so saying that redshifts are evidence of expansion that’s one way to interpret them um

[00:22:41] possibly that’s an artifact of god having expanded the heavens early in cosmic history

[00:22:47] the bible says multiple places that the lord stretched out the heavens is that poetry maybe it’s meant literally

[00:22:53] if that’s the case maybe that’s what these redshifts represent however this is not to say that we should be endorsing the secular full-on

[00:23:00] big bang model because that has a lot of assumptions built into it some of which aren’t

[00:23:07] consistent i’d say with a theistic outlook necessarily and there’s some other conclusions that

[00:23:12] a big bang cosmologist is forced to draw as a result of his approach or her

[00:23:18] approach that aren’t necessarily required just on a strict evidential basis either that was probably too long of an answer i’m

[00:23:24] sorry no that’s okay i’m actually really curious about this because um one of the things i don’t know a lot

[00:23:31] about this but i’ve heard about it and i was told that um dark energy dark matter are

[00:23:37] something that are required in they’re basically um filler

[00:23:43] for holes in the in the big bang theory the scientific theory um

[00:23:49] and you have to have dark energy and dark matter to explain um how this would all work but that it

[00:23:54] wasn’t necessary in a creationist model is is that true or what’s what’s going

[00:24:00] on there with dark energy and dark matter dark matter dark energy uh the names are unfortunate because the word dark

[00:24:05] appearing in both makes it sound like they’re linked but they’re they’re actually very separate things okay dark matter refers to

[00:24:12] evidence for mass that we where we don’t see any mass

[00:24:17] so for example galaxies are rotating in such a way that uh the the stars on the outer edge are

[00:24:22] orbiting too quickly for that galaxy to be stable over long periods of time now perhaps there hasn’t been long

[00:24:28] periods of time there’s one way to look at it but assuming that they are stable why don’t we so one way to explain those

[00:24:35] rotation curves is to postulate that there’s a halo of matter further out and the gravitational impact

[00:24:41] of that is what’s causing the curves that we see the issue is that we don’t see the mass there

[00:24:46] so perhaps that mass is in things that are very difficult to see like uh brown

[00:24:52] dwarfs for example will be you know at that distance we wouldn’t be able to see them they don’t radiate much energy

[00:24:58] um others say that that’s insufficient so now that the preferred um explanation is

[00:25:03] that there’s a lot of particles out there that don’t interact with normal matter other than through gravity so that’s dark matter

[00:25:09] so energy okay i see what you’re saying yeah okay so dark matter is an intent to explain actual observations

[00:25:18] it’s basically it it’s basically so would you say that’s a um i spoke i spoke with uh jason lyle and

[00:25:24] he said that that’s what he would call a rescuing device um something that i don’t know if he

[00:25:30] would call that a rescuing device but he says it’s something that you throw in to prop up your theory um because without

[00:25:35] it you have no way to explain it is that true or no in this i would say that’s true of dark

[00:25:41] energy okay dark matter is is is more based on observations than dark energy is

[00:25:47] okay there are some creationist astronomers who are um friendly for lack of a better word to

[00:25:53] the idea that there’s a new form of matter causing these observations that we see okay do you where do you stand on that

[00:26:00] how do you what’s your perspective um i’m less interested in the exotic particle interpretation as i am in the

[00:26:07] ordinary matter that’s too difficult to observe um but i’m i’m open either way really

[00:26:14] okay you’re just kind of that starts at this point gotcha dark energy is

[00:26:20] though an answer to original question is required by the big bang model that’s an attempt to interpret

[00:26:25] observations of cosmic expansion over large scales where the expansion early in

[00:26:32] the universe’s history according to a big bang interpretation now doesn’t match what the big bang model

[00:26:37] said so they had to add dark energy to the big bang model which is a

[00:26:43] anti-gravity energy that permeates space

[00:26:48] and continually creates more of itself as the universe expands and gets bigger

[00:26:55] and as it creates more of itself the outward push is getting stronger so over billions of years the universe is

[00:27:01] expanding faster and faster and so if i understand that correctly the problem with that from a physics

[00:27:07] perspective is that we have no reason to think there’s enough energy

[00:27:12] unless it’s quote dark energy that the the rate of expansion would be speeding up it shouldn’t be speeding up

[00:27:18] it should be slowing down is that correct gravity gravity should be um slowing down the expansion

[00:27:26] but over a large enough time scale as interpreted by the big bang way of looking at things it’s expanding faster and faster

[00:27:33] so so we’ve got to have a rescue device to figure out what that is and right now that’s dark energy even though there’s

[00:27:38] no actual evidence for that other than this interpretation that’s demanded by the big bang model yes

[00:27:45] gotcha okay you know i remembered my my previous question too we’re hopping around a lot here but but um in fact i i

[00:27:51] like the conversation it’s very interesting to me so um the question i had i got into a discussion with

[00:27:56] somebody about uh a non-believer about star formation and they were saying that

[00:28:02] stars uh can form and uh so so

[00:28:07] the the argument was that the universe is still producing stars because we were talking about um

[00:28:15] i’m blanking a little bit but from my perspective as a biblical creationist my perspective was that the stars um

[00:28:23] we don’t see stars forming anymore it was my understanding but he corrected me

[00:28:28] and said no no no there are stars forming we see stars forming is that true we see uh well sorry a single star

[00:28:36] forming would be far too long for us to observe because it would take place over a long period of time we

[00:28:41] haven’t been looking that long we do see different galaxies and different places

[00:28:47] within those galaxies where different snapshots for lack of a better word

[00:28:52] uh appear to be in different stages of star formation in other words we see places that are consistent with their

[00:28:58] ideas about how stars would form so but but the question the important question isn’t really are stars forming

[00:29:04] today the important question is how did they form in the very beginning of time

[00:29:11] that’s too melodramatic but how did the first generation of stars form because the mechanisms for star

[00:29:16] formation today typically invoke things like a supernova explosion compressing a cloud of gas and that kickstarts the

[00:29:22] compression and then stars can form or a supernova goes off and blows a

[00:29:28] bunch of uh particles and dust grains into this other cloud which cools it down drops the temperature reduces

[00:29:33] pressure and then stars can form most of the mechanisms for star formation invoke things like a supernova

[00:29:39] explosion to kick start the process but a supernova explosion is what

[00:29:44] it’s an exploding star star yeah so the mechanisms most mechanisms that

[00:29:50] we see for star formation need stars to exist before new ones can be made the question is where did the first

[00:29:55] generation come from that’s where the problem is yeah which came first the chicken or the egg

[00:30:00] something like that there’s also an issue too in that the first generation of stars could have

[00:30:05] only consisted of the matter that the big bang would have produced according to their interpretation so that’s

[00:30:11] hydrogen and helium and maybe a little bit of lithium so is that we don’t see stars with that

[00:30:16] composition gotcha is that in any way an argument for uh biblical creation um is that is you

[00:30:24] know would you say that that’s a useful argument um for arguing for biblical

[00:30:29] creation or is that not something that you would use as an argument i talk about it

[00:30:35] now it’s it’s not obviously it’s not specific enough to talk about the bible itself yeah but it is to show that the

[00:30:42] conventional way of talking about things has problems okay

[00:30:48] um also is it true i there i was looking on a website and it said um open letter

[00:30:55] on cosmology published by e-learner basically that a lot of secular scientists are complaining that the big

[00:31:01] bang model isn’t sufficient like an atheistic big bang model without a supernatural creator isn’t sufficient is

[00:31:07] that something that’s expanding beyond creationist circles is that something other physicists and astronomers um

[00:31:13] agree that it’s not sufficient or is that just mainly christians that are arguing that you i think you’re talking about eric lerner

[00:31:20] and he represents a group called plasma cosmologists who are arguing for an eternal universe

[00:31:27] rather than a big bang having which requires a beginning so he so he’s not arguing

[00:31:33] that we would agree with either either but correct yeah but he’s claiming that the big bang isn’t sufficient is that is

[00:31:40] it true among secular cosmologists that that um they have generally problems with the big bang that many of them are

[00:31:46] saying no this isn’t a workable model or is that something they’re they’re holding on to because there’s no alternative other than a supernatural

[00:31:52] creator i think you’d you find it very difficult to find any of the mainstream academics

[00:31:58] who working in this field who question the the overall idea of the big bang okay you will find

[00:32:04] disagreement about different facets of it like whether cosmic inflation happened or not some of the people who initially

[00:32:10] developed that idea have since turned or turned their backs on it because of some some of the ways that’s developed

[00:32:16] um so there’s discussion about parts of the model i i’m not aware that anybody is

[00:32:21] questioning the overall idea because they don’t really have an alternative to suggest at this point gotcha oh okay

[00:32:29] if you compared the big bang model today of the bet the model that first took uh took precedence in the mid 60s when

[00:32:36] it first became popular the model today is very different than it was back then there’s been modifications slapped on

[00:32:43] you know if you could be pejorative and call them band-aids yeah as more problems have been discovered we’ll patch this wait

[00:32:48] there’s another problem perhaps that and we’ll add inflation then we’ll add this and we’ll add dark energy if you look at this of the history of

[00:32:55] science and the structure of scientific revolutions referring to the book by thomas kuhn who talked about this

[00:33:00] uh scientific models usually don’t go gradually when something becomes mainstream everybody thinks in those terms

[00:33:07] as more problems are discovered they add patch and patch and patch and patch patch eventually the edifice gets so creaky

[00:33:13] and unstable that somebody comes in usually a young person who hasn’t written books and papers about the old model and thus doesn’t have anything to

[00:33:19] lose yeah and says wait a minute here’s a whole new way of looking at things and if that’s successful then usually

[00:33:26] sometimes in a short time sometimes a bit longer but the old model will be swept away in a fairly rapid fashion

[00:33:32] um i don’t know i’m not saying that will happen with the big bang because yeah there’s no alternative been proposed yet

[00:33:38] i’d say it’s right for it um there’s accumulation of problems that from an outside perspective said you

[00:33:44] know does this still seem like a good model to you if you’re not already committed to this way of thinking

[00:33:50] interesting um okay i so from your perspective when when you

[00:33:56] you know you’re looking at our solar system you’re looking at the planets that are out there what would you say is the most compelling argument

[00:34:03] um for you know god and supernatural creation and biblical creation is there something

[00:34:09] that um for you is by far the most compelling evidence or

[00:34:14] or is it just a whole bunch of evidences stacked one on top of another that eventually it’s just the conclusion is

[00:34:20] overwhelming what’s what’s your perspective on that um there’s a lot of evidence for youth in the in the objects uh and you can

[00:34:27] come after them from a couple different perspectives magnetic fields for example

[00:34:33] the earth has a magnetic field if you use a compass that’s how that works ask the question

[00:34:38] where is the magnetic field come from well there’s a couple of possible ways that the earth could have a magnetic

[00:34:44] field today one is that it was that it had a magnetic field when it formed

[00:34:49] so primordial a remnant field is called um the the issue with that though is

[00:34:55] that can’t last for long periods of time that will decay over time so if you believe that the earth is four and a

[00:35:00] half billion years old then that can’t be the explanation the only explanation that’s consistent

[00:35:05] with billions of years is called the dynamo theory which is the idea that uh the earth’s core is

[00:35:12] fluid the fluid motions within it moving through the magnetic field induces electrical currents which produces the magnetic field which induces electrical

[00:35:19] currents and is a self-sustaining thing the problem is that’s that that idea has a lot of challenges um

[00:35:26] that system will also lose energy over time your only source of energy in a model to

[00:35:31] keep it sustaining is uh heat from radioactive decay

[00:35:36] and raw heat is not a very efficient way of accomplishing mechanical work

[00:35:42] so people have been working on a dynamo theory for the origin of the earth’s magnetic field for a long period of time it hasn’t been successful

[00:35:49] furthermore the earth’s magnetic field is decaying measurably it loses half his energy about every 1400 years give or take

[00:35:56] so it’s consistent with a primordial field from its creation recently

[00:36:02] that is now winding down it’s inconsistent with a field that’s been self-sustaining for billions of

[00:36:08] years furthermore there’s no theoretical way to to get it to last for billions of years

[00:36:15] when we look at other objects in the solar system we see we see similar things mercury for example is tiny little planet smaller than some of the

[00:36:21] moons in the solar system it has a magnetic field this was a real surprise to secular scientists

[00:36:27] because mercury is so small it should have cooled off and frozen solid billions of years ago because small things cool off faster than hunting and

[00:36:33] then large things uh so if mercury is frozen solid then its core can’t have liquid currents

[00:36:40] within it which means they can’t have a magnetic field over billions of years but it does have one yeah furthermore the messenger mission found

[00:36:47] uh comparing results to the previous mariner 10 mission mercury’s magnetic field is decaying too

[00:36:53] something like seven percent over the 30 odd years between those two missions again this field looks very young not

[00:36:59] something that’s been there for billions of years gaining meat moon of jupiter similar logic should have should have frozen

[00:37:06] solid cooled off millions of years ago has a magnetic field saturn has a magnetic field

[00:37:12] now the issue here isn’t um that it should have frozen solid because it’s big enough for that’s not the case but

[00:37:17] its magnetic field is aligned with the spin axis of the planet which the dynamo theory says

[00:37:24] is impossible so the fact that it has a magnetic field again it could be a young field left

[00:37:31] over from its formation but that has to be very you know very recent past or has to be from a dynamo but it can’t

[00:37:36] be from a dynamo so the billions of years idea doesn’t work planet uranus it’s magnetic field

[00:37:42] it was a surprise too because uranus doesn’t radiate heat out into space it apparently doesn’t have the source of internal heat well with no heat you

[00:37:49] don’t get the that up the the currents in the core coming up so you don’t get the dynamo so you don’t

[00:37:55] you don’t get to have a feel for billions of years therefore it shouldn’t have one but it does

[00:38:01] neptune’s field now neptune has enough energy to produce a field but it is a different problem its field

[00:38:06] is offset from the center of the planet but the dynamo theory says it has to go

[00:38:12] through the center of the planet but it’s not uranus also has that problem by the way so this is a more technical issue and

[00:38:18] it’s kind of obscure because who knows about magnetic fields of planets yeah but when you understand the implications of this if these objects were young none

[00:38:26] of this is a problem these could be primordial fields left over from their recent formation that

[00:38:31] are now winding down today it’s consistent with the observations the billions of years requires a dynamos

[00:38:37] which doesn’t match these observations oh that’s amazing that’s a lot of things too that’s a lot of that’s a lot of different issues that

[00:38:43] you’re trying to justify um a question i have too is um there’s a

[00:38:49] i’ve heard and i don’t know if this is a legitimate argument or not i’ve heard that the earth’s rotation is slowing down is that true that the the rotation

[00:38:56] of the earth is slowing down yes it is and so the argument was well this is an

[00:39:02] argument for a recent creation because if you go backwards in time and it’s speeding up because it’s slowing down

[00:39:07] eventually you would get to a point where it was it was rotating so fast that um life wouldn’t be able to survive on

[00:39:13] the planet is that actually a legitimate argument i i don’t think so um okay it it’s tied

[00:39:20] into among other things the recession of the moon from the earth um the moon is slowly moving away from

[00:39:26] the earth and so the reason the earth is slowing down is because that energy is being transferred to the moon and the moon is moving away

[00:39:32] okay looking backwards in time uh the moon would have been touching the earth because it’s moving away today so

[00:39:38] backwards in time would have been closer about one and a half billion years ago now

[00:39:44] nobody thinks it actually did that so this would be an argument for the earth moon system being younger than one and a half billion years okay um that’s not an

[00:39:51] argument for recent creation it’s not precise enough of an argument um

[00:39:56] it also makes assumptions about how the earth’s continents were arranged in the past and whatever

[00:40:01] so it’s not specific enough to draw hard conclusions but it is worth mentioning in that

[00:40:09] if you just look at what’s going on today and extend it backwards in the past in a straightforward fashion you do see things that are inconsistent

[00:40:16] with the four plus billion years way of looking at things because the earth moon system is how old

[00:40:22] according to secular evolution secular astronomy uh the moon would be there roughly four billion years a little bit

[00:40:28] more depending on when this elect this giant impact was and based on different ideas on this but gotcha and based on

[00:40:33] what we’re seeing as far as its recession that just couldn’t be possible it couldn’t be that old

[00:40:40] well to say it wouldn’t be possible um is to imply that there’s no possible explanations for it a secular scientist

[00:40:46] would propose an explanation that the earth’s continents used to be arranged differently in the past and so the friction between

[00:40:53] the tidal bulge that the moon is producing et cetera et cetera they’re proposing that things used to be

[00:40:58] different in the past therefore the rate of recession would have been different in the past but that’s not based on current

[00:41:04] observations now we’re getting into the larger question of when do you leave the uh the idea of science and get more

[00:41:09] into storytelling gotcha and is that go ahead go ahead i was going to say and is that how you

[00:41:15] would respond to somebody you know who who keeps bringing up hypotheticals after hypothetical after hypothetical

[00:41:22] it’s kind of like well it could have happened i mean how do you how do you talk to somebody about

[00:41:27] when it’s constantly well it could have happened um what do you say in this scenario well it’s a good question it’s a world view

[00:41:33] issue because all of us on all sides of this debate we’re used to thinking in certain ways

[00:41:38] sometimes people will switch sides like i did but that’s that’s not an easy process you know it’s very uncomfortable to

[00:41:45] retrain to you know reshift your thinking um we see that this storytelling angle come

[00:41:51] up perhaps more in astronomy than other things because to serve certain to solve certain other

[00:41:56] problems in the solar system now there’s models that say there used to be five giant gas and ice planets some even

[00:42:03] say six well we only see we see jupiter saturn uranus and neptune but to explain away

[00:42:09] certain problems people are creating simulations with other giant planets that

[00:42:14] did various things and then left oh wow how do you refute that model yeah

[00:42:20] you’re getting into like real like just crazy hypotheticals where it’s almost like anything goes

[00:42:26] right if you’re allowed to invoke things for which there’s no evidence today then like you said anything goes it’s just

[00:42:33] not hard science anymore that’s what i would argue gotcha yeah okay i would also say

[00:42:38] looking at current observations as other challenges that these things aren’t even addressing

[00:42:44] like we talked about magnetic fields already another issue is geological activity

[00:42:49] so so the earth is geologically active because there’s plate tectonics and a lot of this is driven by internal heat

[00:42:54] which is produced by radioactive decay so with the earth okay fine that’s why

[00:42:59] we’re geologically active other objects though don’t necessarily have that as a possible source

[00:43:06] and especially if they’re small they should have cooled off long time ago it shouldn’t be geologically active anymore because they would have lost their heat

[00:43:12] the moon for example should have cooled off well over a billion years ago if it were really over 4 billion years

[00:43:18] old yeah shouldn’t be geologically active anymore now there’s evidence that it is geologically active

[00:43:25] going back to the 1500s there’s been eyewitness accounts of people seeing flashes and temporary glows of light on

[00:43:30] the moon’s surface possible explanations are the moon is releasing gas from volcanic vents

[00:43:37] could also be aliens i didn’t want to go there

[00:43:43] but no one really took this all out seriously because if you think the moon’s billions of years old and it’s an observation that can’t be repeated

[00:43:50] because it’s a you know a very short event but then the apollo astronauts brought seismometers to the moon left them

[00:43:56] behind they operated for a while and they recorded a whole bunch of moon quakes and some of these moon quakes specifically are associated with what we

[00:44:03] perceive as faults on the moon surface these are apparently tectonic faults which means this is tectonic activity

[00:44:08] which means the moon is still geologically active elsewhere in the solar system the

[00:44:14] surface of venus was uh even from a secular perspective looks very young and fresh there’s no evidence of chemical

[00:44:21] weathering of billions of years of erosion or whatever it looks like the whole planet was resurfaced by volcanic activity not that long ago

[00:44:28] well venus doesn’t have plate tectonics though what’s driving this geological activity no one’s really sure

[00:44:34] so i’m sorry go ahead i said further out in the solar system we have io or eo depending on how you

[00:44:40] pronounce it one of jupiter’s moons is the most volcanically active body in the solar system tiny little moon hundreds of volcanoes

[00:44:46] on its surface some of them are blasting material in space 180 miles very very dramatic

[00:44:52] where is the energy for this activity coming from well some of it’s coming from tidal flexing where it’s caught in

[00:44:58] a gravitational tuggle war between jupiter and the other moons and so it’s being squeezed and flexed it is receiving energy from that yes but

[00:45:04] that’s not enough to explain what we see furthermore if iowa really billions of

[00:45:10] years old four and a half billion years old uh there’s enough material coming out of the volcanoes for it to have recycled

[00:45:16] the entire moon through its own volcanoes over 30 times wow is that a reasonable ex you know thing

[00:45:23] to believe or and also by the way the volcanoes aren’t distributed in the patterns we would expect if the tidal flexing was

[00:45:30] producing all of this is i’m arguing it’s more reasonable to say this is primordial heat left over

[00:45:36] from a recent creation that’s consistent with this yeah the billions of years has problems so that’s what i was going to

[00:45:42] ask you is i mean there’s just i mean you’re just laying down you know issue after issue after issue and so

[00:45:48] obviously this is the reason that you come to the conclusion or that you continue to to um adhere to the idea that these are all

[00:45:56] recently um established and so if if

[00:46:02] in that regard is there any big problems that you see from your perspective from the biblical

[00:46:07] creationist perspective um is because you’ve laid out all these problems with uh secular astronomy and secular ages

[00:46:16] so are there problems for the recent creation perspective that uh somebody

[00:46:22] else might bring up that would say yeah well sure we have our problems but so do you and so here’s yours

[00:46:29] do you see any problems with the the recent creation perspective one of the things that’s often brought

[00:46:34] up is radiometric dating um we have rocks you know so the moon rocks that were brought back you date them and

[00:46:41] they produce very long ages you know not six thousand years yeah billions of years

[00:46:46] uh so and i i know on your show you’ve had i believed uh dr john baumgartner dr j

[00:46:52] weil and some other people who have talked about this yeah radiometric dating methods are based on assumptions

[00:46:58] we can take very precise measurements of the samples today but to convert that into an age measurement into the past

[00:47:04] require certain assumptions and if the assumptions aren’t valid then the age conclusion isn’t valid either

[00:47:11] this is something that a lot of creationists are talking about uh i’d like to see more work done on myself of course there’s not all that many

[00:47:17] people active in the creation movement who can do this sort of thing sure um so would you say that’s that’s the

[00:47:23] biggest issue in your mind probably uh

[00:47:29] we have answers for it but the answers aren’t formalized maybe might be the the best

[00:47:35] word for it there’s different ideas many of which look very promising um but through a

[00:47:40] lack of lack of people really yeah and and funding of course yeah you know you’re

[00:47:46] not gonna get million dollar grants from the government [Laughter] to prove that the their the moon is not

[00:47:51] uh billions of years old right so so when you say that in regards to um

[00:47:58] radiocarbon dating or any any type of radio active dating um when you say it’s not formalized you

[00:48:05] mean that we haven’t been able to establish exactly why the ages are showing up as old as they are

[00:48:11] um and we haven’t been able to give a consistent response to that is that what

[00:48:17] you’re saying a very scientifically evidential-based response um

[00:48:23] i want to say a couple things of carbon carbon dating is actually our friend in this yeah

[00:48:30] because a lot of things that are supposed to be old still have measurable carbon 14 in them which is impossible if

[00:48:35] they were more than a few tens of thousands of years old yeah so from that that perspective

[00:48:42] um those dates are on our side the the methods that produce other ages

[00:48:47] like millions and billions of years we can easily show that samples that are known to be young

[00:48:54] when tested by these methods will still produce millions and billions of years ages

[00:48:59] even though we know this volcano erupted in 18 whatever so that’s when the clock started for

[00:49:04] this particular dating method but it says millions of years ago yeah what we don’t have

[00:49:10] formalized yet is number one a comprehensive listing of all these dating methods because there’s

[00:49:16] there’s multiple and a in-depth detailed explanation of why

[00:49:22] they’re producing these wrong ages when we know that they are yeah there’s several different reasons why they could

[00:49:28] be were the rates of radioactive decay higher in the past there is some evidence for that

[00:49:34] why would that have happened well now you’re going to get in nuclear physics which only a handful of people are really qualified to talk about

[00:49:41] um and there’s been some work on that from our side but not not really detailed enough to show

[00:49:47] why these methods produce wrong answers we have lots of examples of them producing wrong answers we’re not quite

[00:49:54] sure why that’s the case though oh that’s really interesting huh well that’s something to pray about

[00:49:59] right there got to get some more nuclear physicists in here

[00:50:04] that’s great well um for those of you listening uh my guest today is spike pizarus and he is um

[00:50:11] he is an astronomer and uh has a lot of experience in the uh us uh naval i’m

[00:50:17] sorry not naval u.s uh was it nasa spike no nasa’s the civilian side of the space

[00:50:23] program that’s the fun friendly let’s go explore our side i was in the dark nefarious let’s exploit space for military

[00:50:28] purposes okay conspiracy theories come from um and his website is

[00:50:36] creationastronomy.com you can check him out there he’s got an awesome dvd set well worth looking at and then a bunch

[00:50:42] of different articles that that he’s written um obviously he’s incredibly well um informed and knowledgeable about

[00:50:48] this subject this subject material so please check out his stuff and uh spike

[00:50:54] i just want to say thanks a lot for being on the program i think um man you are a wealth of knowledge so i appreciate everything you’re doing yeah

[00:51:00] absolutely yeah so hopefully we can uh maybe do it again sometime in the future and and

[00:51:06] talk more about this so um my website of course is educate4life.org you can check it out and uh all kinds of

[00:51:12] resources on there for you we actually have a basics uh with the problems of secular astronomy on there as well as

[00:51:19] numerous other classes on world religions on how we know the bible’s god’s word and then even cultural issues how do we

[00:51:26] respond to our friends and family in a win some way in a loving way but also in a truth-filled way regarding the current

[00:51:32] cultural issues that are uh are going back and forth all over the place so educate4life.org that’s my website

[00:51:39] we’ll be here again in two weeks and uh we’ll be talking about the importance of making sure your kids are prepared for

[00:51:46] life after high school as they have to deal with all these different attacks on

[00:51:51] christianity in the bible so i hope you’ll join us next time thanks a lot and you guys have a fantastic evening

[00:52:10] you