The universe’s birth certificate

Once you let go of the Bible as history, all Christian doctrine begins to disintegrate. Dr Nigel Leaves, the Warden and Dean of Studies at John Wollaston Anglican Theological College in Perth (Australia), provides a typical example in The God Problem: Alternatives to Fundamentalism.1 He says ‘the major factor in the waning of the Christian faith is its continuing insistence on a supernatural God—the Almighty, the lawgiver and judge.’ He considers four alternatives to ‘fundamentalism’ (i.e. believing in the God of the Bible), saying, ‘Traditional beliefs about God cannot be sustained in the light of the latest scientific and critical thinking.’ And of course the ‘latest scientific thinking’ rests on the foundation of discounting the time scale of Genesis creation.

But the Bible gives us a measured time scale, an eye-witness record, of history, a foundation far more secure than any modern scientific estimate. A measurement wins over an estimate any day!

My birth certificate gives me a measured time scale for my age. It is an eye-witnessed statement that I was born on 28 January 1946, and other eye-witnesses have maintained a record of the earth having circled the sun 61 times since then. Likewise, the Bible gives us a ‘birth certificate’ for the universe—an eye-witness statement that God created it in six ordinary-length days in the time of Adam. The family histories and patriarchal ages in Genesis continue this record. God then confirmed it to Moses and wrote it down with His own finger in stone in the Sabbath Commandment (Exodus 20:11; 31:18; 32:16).

Jesus then confirmed the authenticity of the OT scriptures—in detail and in its entirety2—by correctly predicting his own death and resurrection on their foundation. That is, death entered the world only as the penalty for Adam’s sin at the Fall, and Jesus, the last Adam (1 Corinthians 15 and Romans 5:6–21) took our place and paid that penalty for us, thus restoring us to eternal life. Once the penalty was paid, death no longer had any hold on Him and He rose from the dead. Jesus’ Resurrection authenticates Genesis as real history. The Resurrection of Jesus, an attested fact of history (Acts 17:31)3, is thus our guarantee of the measured biblical time scale for the universe (Luke 24:27,44).

No scientist has any alternative or better ‘birth certificate’ for the earth or the universe. All scientific estimates of earth and universe age require a whole lot of assumptions. The key assumption is uniformitarianism, which is atheism disguised as science, because it assumes no miraculous interventions in history.4 Christians have no reason to accept, and every reason to reject, atheistic assumptions about the universe.

Jesus’ Resurrection validates the accuracy of the Bible, especially its history of Creation and Fall. No Bible scholar since Jesus has risen from the dead to validate any alternative point of view. Don’t let anyone steal from you this precious gift that God has given us in the Bible.

We fundamentally disagree on what is true. All of what we believe to be true in terms of origins is based on some assumptions and beliefs. Take the age of the universe.
1. Fact: We can see starlight from distant stars
2. Fact: The speed of light in a vaccum, when measured on or near earth, travels at a given rate.
3. Assumption: C has always been (and is) constant.
4. Assumption: The stars arrived at their present locations (more or less) about 13 billion years ago.
5. Ipso facto Assumption: since we can see the stars, and light travels at a given rate, the furthest, and oldest, ones we can see are 13 billion light years away, and correspondingly 13 billion years old.

While you will accept assumptions 3-5 without question, I do not. I don't have much faith in scientific conjecture, only in the hard sciences that can be demonstrated in the laboratory. Thus, I will not "interpret" the Bible differently just because it seems popular or pragmatic to do so, if it violates the plain reading of the verses.

Dude, thou assumest too much..
Why would you assume I accept your point 3 - 5?
Take your point #4 & #5. There are new stars being "born" or "created" all the time. Many are dead or are in the process of dying. Stars don't stay in any one spot, but are generally moving through space at high rates of speed.
BTW, there is no evidence that the furthest stars are the oldest.
Another BTW, based on the latest detection technology, it is estimated that there are at least 50,000 bilion billion stars, that is 50,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars. That is more than all the grains of sand on all of the sandy coastline on earth (216,000 miles) using the average width of 55 yards and a depth of 5 yards - with the avg per sand grain diameter of 2/100th of an inch.

Take your point #4 & #5. There are new stars being "born" or "created" all the time.

Now that's a bold assertion! How long does it take a cloud to condense to into the size of a star and start thermonuclear reaction? They do blow up all of the time, though!

Stars don't stay in any one spot, but are generally moving through space at high rates of speed.

Granted. Just funning on one of the reasons that have been proposed to determine the age of the universe.

A much more scientific sounding assumption is the Hubble Constant, which interestingly enough is the reciprocal age of the universe. So, we estimate the age of the universe based on an emprically derived constant that assumes constant decelleration from a point in time which the constant for the assumption is based on. Or did I miss something.

Awesome about the number of stars, isn't it. If things continue, by 2050 I predict the estimated number of stars will double at least, as we get more powerful telescopes. Even more amazing is this:

"He determines the number of the stars and calls them each by name. Great is our Lord and mighty in power; his understanding has no limit. Psalm 147:4-5

“Second, this was before the big creationist movement got really organized and started pushing for legislation, taking over town councils, schoolboard, and filing multiple lawsuits.”

Right, those years after the movement really got started were the second part of Reagan’s revolution, when we took over the congress for the first time in a half century and took over a majority of Governorships, state houses and conquered New york city and Los Angeles Mayors offices.

We even managed the first time in American history that an elected president was impeached. It sounds pretty good to me.

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