I have been staring at my computer screen for a few days
now, simply trying to frame the argument, no not argument, rather it was a
discussion on the long seven-hour flight from Oakland to Philly.
I managed to have gotten the aisle seat very near the front
of the plan, I found myself sitting next to an older woman, in her late fifties
or early sixties. Very prim, proper, her white hair drawn back into a tight
bun. Her glasses that sat low on her nose, shielding clear blue eyes, she also
had a quick smile that she offered as she sat against the window.
Once in the air I noticed she was reading a book, “Starlight
and Time.” By Russell D. Humphreys, in my mind I thought great someone to talk
science with since I was reading a book on parallel universes. This would not
be such a bad flight after all.
After engaging in pleasantries, I nodded to her book and
said jovially, “I am a sci-fi writer and gobble up books on science so I have a
better grasp of the science concepts I employ in my stories. I don’t think I
have seen that book before.”
Her smile stiffened as she eyed my book, and then said matter-of-factly,
“Modern science is wrong.”
It was a long flight, I had never met a Young Earth
Creationist before and it certainly was a revelation. If you do not know what
YEC is, it is a creationist movement that believes in a strict adherence in the
Bible’s creation story that God created the world/universe in six, 24-hour day cycles
somewhere between 5,700 and 10,000 years ago.
The book my companion was reading attempts to refute the
greatest objection to their theory, the light of distant stars. It was an interesting discussion, from what I
gathered, the model holds that the earth is near the center of the universe,
and that due to relativistic principles relating to gravity, light, and time
dilation, only a few thousand years of time transpires on earth while the rest
of the expanding universe experienced billions of years of time
.
I asked her if she believed that the distances that science
has established for nearby stars and even galaxies are correct. She answered
yes, which gave me a moment of pause, because I had written down on my note
pad, 186,000 and even circled it. 186,000
miles per second, or about 671 million miles per hour is the speed of light.
The farthest galaxy we can see is A1689-zD1, and that is at a distance of 13
billion light years.
I pointed this out to her, that the math doesn’t seem to work
based on the speed of light, and the acceptance of distance of galaxies. She
had an answer which surprised me.
She stated that our Milky Way is near the center of the
universe, and that the proverbial “Let there be light” moment was the birth of
a “white hole” several light years in diameter. Furthermore the solar system
and more importantly the Earth is near the event horizon, thus the incredible
gravitational pull slowed time on Earth relativistic to the rest of the
universe.
Strictly speak that could be possible, however I don’t know
if “white holes” exist But I asked her
if it did exist, why we cannot find any evidence of the gravitational effects
of this “white hole”? If the event happened only say 10,000 years ago we should
be able to see the effects of such a strong gravitational pull and thus far
there are none, especially if the gravitational field of such magnitude were
close enough to earth.
That quieted her a moment. I didn’t win the argument, I just
pointed out that if we can measure the effects of gravity everywhere else in
the galaxy and universe, surely we should be able to see the effects of a field
that close to Earth bending light.
She sat back and smiled, then opened the book again and
began reading. Clearly, our friendly discussion was over.
I want to be perfectly clear that I don’t discount anyone’s
belief, but I do question things when they attempt to use science to explain
something by “cherry-picking” their evidence. If you state that such huge gravitational field
is what caused the discrepancies between the bible date for the Earth and the
rest of the universe, you should be able to back it up with empirical evidence.
After we landed, I said good-bye and disembarked heading
towards the baggage claim, when I heard her on the phone telling someone that
she had a horrible flight because she sat next to a non-believer.
Wow.
