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The Creation Answers Book

The Creation Answers Book

Lessons & Chapters

Lesson 1 Does God exist? (Chapter 1)

Lesson 2: Six days? Really? (Chapter 2)

Lesson 3 What about gap theories? (Chapter 3)

Lesson 4 What about carbon dating? (Chapter 4)

Lesson 5 How can we see distant stars in a young universe? (Chapter 5)

Lesson 6 How did bad things come about? (Chapter 6)

Lesson 7 What about arguments for evolution? (Chapter 7)

Lesson 8 Who was Cain’s wife? (Chapter 8)

Lesson 9 Were the ‘sons of God’ and/or the Nephilim extraterrestrials? (Chapter 9)

Lesson 10 Was the Flood global? (Chapter 10)

Lesson 11 What about continental drift? (Chapter 11)

Lesson 12 Noah’s Flood-what about all that water? (Chapter 12)

Lessons 13 & 14 How did all the animals fit on Noah’s Ark? and How did freshwater and saltwater fish survive the Flood? (Chapters 13 & 14)

Lesson 15 Where are all the human fossils? (Chapter 15)

Lesson 16 What about ice ages? (Chapter 16)

Lesson 17 How did animals get to Australia? (Chapter 17)

Lesson 18 How did all the different ‘races’ arise (from Noah’s family)? (Chapter 18)

Lesson 19 What about dinosaurs? (Chapter 19)

The Creation Answers Book Study Guide

by Dr Don Batten, Dr David Catchpoole, Dr Jonathan Sarfati, and Dr Carl Wieland

Lesson 5: How can we see distant stars in a young universe?

Text: The Creation Answers Book, chapter 5

Supplemental materials:

Section: The big bang light travel problem

Discussion questions

  1. What is the horizon problem?

  2. Discuss some of the ways that ‘big bang’ astronomers have sought to solve this problem.

  3. How does this problem place the ‘big bang’ on the same footing as biblical cosmology?

Section: Created light?

Discussion question

  • Discuss the implications of the idea that God created light ‘on its way’ on the fourth day of creation. List the pros and cons of this idea.

Section: Did light always travel at the same speed?

Discussion questions

  1. What are some bad arguments used against the c decay theory?

  2. What are some good arguments used against the c decay theory?

Section: New creationist cosmologies

Discussion questions

  1. Define ‘cosmology’.

  2. What crucial idea may provide a clue to explaining distant starlight from a biblical perspective?

  3. Discuss the scientific and theological problems associated with the ‘big bang’. (See also Q&A: Astronomy and Astrophysics for information.)

  4. How do we know the given distances to the stars are real?

Section: New approaches: Dr Russ Humphreys

Discussion questions

  1. What are some of the weaknesses in Dr Humphreys’ original white hole cosmology?

  2. Explain how Dr Humphreys’ new model draws on Scripture to provide a framework.

  3. What other assumptions does Dr Humphreys make?

  4. Dr Humphreys’ new model describes the earth as being plunged into a zone of ‘timelessness’. What are the physical effects of this on earth? What are the physical effects of this outside the timeless zone?

  5. What would an observer on Earth see as the result of Dr Humphreys’ model?

  6. How has Dr Humphreys’ model been applied to scientific anomalies such as the ‘Pioneer anomaly’?

Section: New approaches: Dr John Hartnett 

Discussion questions

  1. Describe the concept of ‘cosmological relativity’.

  2. What are some of the strengths of the cosmological relativity concept?

  3. What assumptions does Dr Hartnett use in his cosmology?

  4. How does his cosmology differ from Dr Humphreys cosmology?

  5. Summarize Dr Hartnett’s model of cosmology. One possible answer follows:

    Dr John Hartnett uses the concepts of a cosmic centre of mass, expansion of space, and recent time dilation and incorporates cosmological relativity. Cosmological relativity is derived from the development of special relativity theory (the effect of motion on time) for the large scale structure of the universe. The model involves the usual four dimensions (three of space, plus time) but adds a new fifth dimension, the velocity of the expansion of the cosmos, which is like the effect that velocity has on time in special relativity. When applied to a universe with a centre of mass it explains a lot of what we see. Time dilation also results, but not due to a net gravitational effect in a finite bounded universe—it is due to the enormous stretching of the fabric of space. At Creation, God caused space to rapidly expand such that clocks on Earth at the centre of the expansion ran very slowly compared to clocks in galaxies in the expanding cosmos.

  6. What are some of the problems that Dr Hartnett’s cosmology solves?

Further discussion questions

  1. In general, what is a ‘model’? Read ‘Hanging Loose’: What should we defend? What should our attitude be toward Scripture, and toward models based on Scripture?

  2. Although ‘distant starlight’ seems a problem for the Biblical young-universe teaching, there are many other astronomical evidences that point toward a young universe. Write a paper presenting various evidences for a young universe. (See also Q&A: ‘Young’ age of the Earth and Universe—Astronomy).