Creation Science Rebuttals -
Numbering and Observing Stars
Review by Greg Neyman
First Published
2006
In an article on the Creation, Dinosaurs
and the Flood website, young earth creation science advocate Charlie Liebert
explains how science can be wrong, and the Bible is always right.1
While I believe the Bible to be right, just as Liebert does,
his arguments about this fact are faulty. There are two parts to his claim.
First, the star Cyrus was observed as a red star thousands of years ago, but
now it is a white star. He says this change, which according to evolutionary
astronomy, should have taken millions of years, happened in only thousands
of years.
First, this stars name is Sirius, not Cyrus. Second, it is true
that some ancient astronomers 2,000 years ago described it as red. However,
other ancient astronomers from the same time period describe it as white.
Astronomers have concluded that the ancient astronomers who described it as
red were looking at it when it was low on the horizon, so the reddening was
due to the earth's atmosphere. Clearly, it could not be both red and white
at the same time, so this is a logical conclusion.
The second issue Liebert brings up is the count of the number
of stars. These same ancient astronomers said there were 5,000 to 6,000
stars. The Bible says the stars are innumerable. He says this is evidence of
science being wrong, and the Bible being right. Not so fast. The key is in
Liebert's statement, "The ancient astronomers and astrologers were very
exact observers of the heavens and they cataloged and counted the stars."
They were reporting on the number of stars that they had observed. Although
some may have claimed that their count was absolute, it was clearly based on
visual observation, without a telescope.
Scientific evidence is based on observations. Clearly, you
could not count stars that you could not see. Therefore, the scientific
observations that they made agreed with their conclusions...until the
telescope was invented! Using scientific data from 2,000 years ago to prove
that science is wrong is dubious at best.
He sums it up with the statement, "Christians that accept the
"Big Bang" today will be in deep trouble tomorrow when it is scrapped for a
better model." Not so! The Big Bang is stronger than ever today. Even if it
is scrapped for another theory, we can accept the new theory just as
Christians accepted the Big Bang. This causes no trouble for old earth
creationism.
1 Numbering
and Observing the Stars, published on the web at
http://www.sixdaycreation.com/facts/creation/astronomy/oct99.html
If you are not a Christian, and you have been holding out on making a decision for Christ because the Church always preached a message that was contrary to what you saw in the scientific world, then rest assured that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God, and you can believe in Christ and receive salvation, while still believing in an old earth. Click here for more.
Are you a Christian who believes in young earth creationism? Now that we have shown the many difficulties of the young earth creation science model in this and many other articles, how does this impact your Christian life? If you are a young earth creationism believer, click here.
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Can You Be A
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