Number 55 | June 21, 2005

Hot Spots, Double Helixes and the Crab Nebula

Last summer, my wife and I were able to take a long-planned 30th anniversary vacation to Hawai'i, thanks primarily to airline miles and hotel points accumulated from business travel. We spent a week at the wonderful Hilton Waikoloa Village, visiting white, black, and green sand beaches; swimming with dolphins; hiking to gardens and waterfalls; and enjoying tropical sunsets on the "Big Island," Hawai'i. One of the highlights, however, was a two mile hike over rugged, warm lava beds to view the Kilauea lava flow into the ocean, an awesome confluence of fire, water, and steam where God's creative power can be witnessed on a daily basis. The lava destroys as it cascades from the volcano, but new land is created as it cools in the ocean surf. Someday, the land we watched in its infancy will be as fertile as the rest of the islands.

In this issue of Ekklesia Then & Now, we will explore the Word of God as expressed in His creation.

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" (Genesis 1:1-25).

That creation is the Word of God is evidenced by the fact that He spoke (Hebrew, amar) the universe and everything in it into existence: He spoke and there was light (Genesis 1:3); He spoke and there were the heavens (v. 6); He spoke and there were seas and land (v. 9); He spoke and there was vegetation (v. 11); He spoke and there were the sun, moon, and stars (v. 14); He spoke and there were sea creatures (v. 20); and finally, He spoke and there were land animals (v. 24).

In addition to the Genesis account, creation is attributed to each aspect of the triune God.

• The Father: "...for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom are all things and we exist for Him" (1 Corinthians 8:6)
• The Son: "All things came into being through Him (the Logos, Christ), and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being" (John 1:3) and "For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together" (Colossians 1:16-17).
• The Holy Spirit: "By His breath (spirit) the heavens are cleared; His hand has pierced the fleeing serpent" (Job 26:13) and "You send forth Your Spirit, they are created; and You renew the face of the ground (Psalm 104:30).

It is the act of creation, in fact, that certifies Jehovah as the true God. The prophets testify to this creative manifestation. For example:

• "You are the God, You alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth. You have made heaven and earth" (Isaiah 37:16a).
• "Who has measured the waters in the hollow of His hand, and marked off the heavens by the span, and calculated the dust of the earth by the measure, and weighed the mountains in a balance and the hills in a pair of scales?" (Isaiah 40:12)
• "Thus you shall say to them, 'The gods that did not make the heavens and the earth will perish from the earth and from under the heavens. It is He who made the earth by His power, who established the world by His wisdom; and by His understanding He has stretched out the heavens'" (Jeremiah 10:11-12).

In heaven, the leaders will acknowledge God specifically on account of His creation: "Worthy are You, our Lord and our God, to receive glory and honor and power; for You created all things, and because of Your will they existed, and were created" (Revelation 4:11).

The Bible is certainly a powerful revelation of God's Word, but we should recognize His creation as His first and last word. Paul certainly understood this in writing:

Mark Minucius Felix, one of the early church fathers (ca. AD 200) certainly understood the powerful testimony of creation in writing:

Dionysius (the Great) of Alexandria (c. 262) had something very similar to say about the composition of earth and its occupants:

Epicurus and Democritus had it partially right, of course—physical bodies are composed of atomic particles and a lot of vacant space, but Dionysius' primary objection was the notion that creation came about through the random combination of elements.

Christ Jesus is the ultimate revelation of God's nature as it relates to love, sacrifice, and relationship, but it is His creation that reveals His awesome power.

Hot Spots and the Footprints of God

God's creation did not end on the "sixth day"—he continues to create today, and perhaps no where on Earth is that more apparent than the Hawaiian Archipelago. Most of us think of Hawaii as the six primary islands (Hawai'i, Maui, Lana'i, Moloka'i, O'ahu, and Kaua'i), but the Hawaiian island chain extends 1,200 to the northwest, encompassing a series of islands, atolls, reefs, and seamounts that display the life cycle of volcanic creation. As magma pumps out of the hot spot, shield volcanoes form, some of which emerge as islands. In some cases, islands are formed of multiple volcanoes, as is the case with the still-forming island of Hawai'i.

As islands move away from the hot spot, volcanic activity ceases, erosion begins, and they begin to sink. Coral reefs form around the gradually sloping sides of the shield volcanoes, and when the craters collapse, the thin circular band of reefs form atolls, such as the westernmost Kure Atoll. At the eastern end, the hot spot continues to pump molten lava through Kilauea and Mauna Loa on the island of Hawai'i. Just to the south of Hawai'i, a new island is forming under the ocean surface. Lo'ihi's journey to the surface of the Pacific is about 3/4 complete and is "scheduled" for appearance in 10,000 - 100,000 years. This gives a sense of the incredible time frame of the Hawaiian

island chain formuation. Haleakala (the eastern Maui volcano) probably emerged over one million years ago, and the volcano that formed what is now Kure Atoll approximately 30 millions years ago. Of course, these ages stand in direct contradiction to "young earth" theory, which suggests that God created the world some 6,000-10,000 years ago. God is certainly capable of creating the entire Hawaiian island chain at one time and making it look as if it were a long geological process¹, but why would He do so? Since God is not limited by time, His creative speaking occurs past, present, and future from our perspective. On the island of Hawai'i, His present creative power is evident as lava from Kilauea flows into the Pacific. Several hundred thousand years from now, if we last that long, perhaps tourists will bask on the beaches of Lo'ihi, a footprint of the Creator as expressed in William Cowper's hymn "God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform; He plants His footsteps in the sea, and rides upon the storm."

If the Hawaiian island chain provides relatively nearby evidence of the ongoing creative genius of God, the stars literally shout out His wonders.

The Crab Nebula and the Breath of God

I recently listened to a marvelous series of lectures, Astronomy, Stars, Galaxies, and the Universe, by Professor James B. Kaler of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, part of The Modern Scholar series (Recorded Books). I was literally awestruck by Kaler's description of the unfathomable size and variety of God's universe, but probably most by life cycle of stars themselves.
In the year 1054, Chinese and Amerindian astronomers recorded the observation of a bright new star, which the Chinese called the "Guest Star." It was brighter than Venus and was even visible in daylight for 23 days. Just over a year after its appearance, the Guest Star disappeared.

In 1758, French astronomer Charles Messier discovered the remnants of the Guest Star, which he first identified as a comet. Because the object had no apparent motion, he soon realized that it was not a comet and, to help future comet-hunters avoid the same mistake, began a list of nebulae and star clusters. Thus, the remnants of the Guest Star became known as object M1. It got its more familiar name, the Crab Nebula, from the drawing (left) done by William Parsons, the Third Earl of Rosse, at Birr Castle in about 1844.
We now know that the Crab Nebula is the remnants of the cataclysmic implosion of a high mass star core. The resultant shock wave ripped apart the rest of the star, creating a spectacular supernova. At the center of the Crab Nebula is the rapidly rotating leftover neutron star (pulsar). The Crab Pulsar is so dense that a sand grain-sized piece of it would weigh approximately 125,000 tons on earth, which reminds me of the trivial conundrum, "Can God make a rock so heavy He can't lift it?"

The Crab Nebula is a nearby object in astronomical terms, being located within our own Milky Way galaxy, but it is still 6,000 light years distant. A light year is the distance that light travels in a year, which is approximately 5.9 trillion miles, so the Crab Nebula is about 35,000,000,000,000,000 miles away, a number that dwarfs even the federal budget deficit and is effectively incomprehensible to the human mind. The Milky Way is believed to be about 80-100 million light years across, and the most distant object observed by man is more than 10 billion light years away!

Mind-boggling distances and sizes aside, the most remarkable thing about the Crab Nebula (and most other nebulae) is that they are star incubators. The part of the supernova star that exploded outward was so hot that it produced all the chemical elements needed to blend with interstellar material and form new stars. In amazing synchronicity, just as plants on earth are nourished through the death of other plants, new stars in the universe are incubated by the supernova death of other stars.

Supernovae are not very common in our Milky Way—only six have been reliably recorded (in 1006, 1054, 1181, 1572, 1604, and perhaps 1667) and none since the invention of the telescope. Considering that the Milky Way is estimated to consist of 200-400 billion stars, it is clear that supernova are rare events, which is a good thing because you wouldn't want one nearby! But there as many as 500 billion other galaxies in the universe.

We have gotten some sense of the number of galaxies in the universe through the Hubble Space Telescope, which last year completed a million-second exposure—called the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF)—aimed at a very tiny (one ten millionth) dark piece of the sky. The image (right) shows about 10,000 galaxies as far as 10 billion light years away. If that segment is typical, there would be approximately one hundred billion (10,000,000 times 10,000) , but some astronomers believe there are far more.

Even at "only" one hundred billion, the number of supernovae occurring each year is staggering, and each contributes material for new star formation. Our own sun, for example, is estimated to be about 5 billion years old and therefore the product of earlier supernovae. Throughout God's universe, stars are dying and being born right now. His creation is not a past event, but a past-present-future event, and He will decide when to bring down the curtain. In the meantime, He has populated His universe with planets, moons, comets, asteroids, stars of incredible variety (brown dwarfs, Cepheids, neutron, orange dwarfs, pulsars, red dwarfs, red giants, red supergiants, and white dwarfs), galaxies (spiral, elliptical, and irregular), black holes, novae and supernovae, nebulae, quasars, globular clusters, interstellar gasses and dust, and other unknown objects, unobserved but theorized like dark matter and WIMPs (weakly interacting massive particle).

For those who hold to a literal understanding of the Genesis creation story, this information will obviously not jibe. Too often, the Christian world views science as the enemy of faith, but when one takes a good look at the immensity of creation and its orderliness, science serves to support faith. Certainly there are those who claim random, natural processes. In discussing many of the concepts of astronomy, Kaler (The Modern Scholar) never once mentions God, but he does use such phrases as "nature wants to make...," "nature prefers...," "nature gave us a gift of..." and so on. These phrases, while Kaler might not acknowledge it, imply a consciousness behind the universe—an intelligence acting deliberately to create beauty, diversity, and order.

The findings of astronomy, which have exploded since the deployment of the Hubble Space Telescope, are not the inventions of human beings—they are the human observations of God's creation, use of the tools He has provided (standard candles, speed of light, parallax, Doppler shift, etc.), and the application of the physical laws (gravity, thermodynamics, nuclear, etc.) God infused into the system. How such findings can ignore the blatantly-obvious intelligent design of the universe escapes me! Those who deny such design seem, as Minucius Felix said, "not to have either mind or sense, or, in fact, even sight itself."

Two cosmological theories competed until 1965—the "Steady State Theory" in which new matter is continuously created and the universe has no beginning and no end, and the "Big Bang" Theory in which the universe began at some specific time with an unexplained major event. Then two Bell Laboratories scientists discovered the existence of a Cosmic Background Radiation which pervades the entire universe in all directions and which astronomers explain as the cooled "fireball" of the Big Bang. But since God spoke the universe into existence (Genesis 1:3-24), this Cosmic Background Radiation may be equally well viewed as the residual creative breath of God.

We can "behold the heaven itself," but we can also look in the opposite direction—inside, even inside the very cells that comprise us—for further evidence.

The Double Helix and the Fingerprints of God

First described by James Watson and Francis Crick in 1953, the DNA Double Helix is perhaps the most famous scientific discoveries in human history, and with the success of the Human Genome Project in mapping the sequences, it holds great promise for humanity. Gene manipulation, like almost every scientific advancement, simultaneously carries great potential for abuse. But it is not the potential and risk of DNA therapy that is relevant to this discussion of God's creation.

Cells are the basic building blocks of all organisms, and it is the DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) that carries the specific instructions that make each organism unique. DNA is arranged in the double helix arrangement (left), with the base chemicals adenine (A), thymine (T), cytosine (C) and guanine (G) attached in pairs. It is the combination of these pairs that forms the message, just as a series of dots and dashes makes up a Morse Code message.

The number of base pairs varies by organism. According to the Human Genome Project, the smallest genome (a bacterium) contains 600,000 DNA base pairs, while human genomes have more than three billion arranged into 24 chromosomes, each of which range from 50 to 250 million base pairs. Putting aside that incredible complexity for a moment, evolutionists suggest that such a DNA sequence has evolved naturally.

The Morse Code above spells out a message, but if you don't know Morse Code, it looks like exactly what it is—a series of dashes and dots that carry no meaning at all. In order for the DNA code to work in an organism, the organism must understand the code. The suggestion that the DNA sequence evolved naturally is essentially claiming that the message figured itself out! There is an old axiom that if you put a million monkeys in a room and taught them to press the keys of a keyboard, eventually they would—simply by random processes—write all the great books of the world. Given sufficient time, perhaps that is true, but there is a serious problem: who would know when they wrote even a simple, intelligible sentence? The monkeys wouldn't know, the keyboard wouldn't know, the display screen wouldn't know. It would require intelligent oversight, someone who understands the code, in this case the language.

That suggests that even if the DNA sequence evolved with changes, the genome could never know when it got it right! Even one failure among three billion could be fatal, and the message would not know what to go back and fix. Furthermore, the existence of the DNA double helix—unique to life—destroys any argument that life evolved from non-life. A non-living object doesn't even possess the DNA to evolve the code, so going back to the axiom above, the evolution argument demands that the monkeys don't even have keyboards but could still somehow write books! Ingenuous genetic scientists, therefore, are increasingly admitting that the genome implies an intelligent design—that someone who knew the code constructed the message.

I suspect there are some of you out there who understand the human genome better than I do and will mock my analogies. If so, please come up with better ones to explain how DNA can evolve to create sequences of over three billion combinations.

The discovery and study of DNA is yet another example of science supporting faith. The more science reveals of the incredible complexity and organization of creation, the more apparent it becomes that there is an intelligence and a purpose behind it all.

So here we are, on our tiny, insignificant planet basking in the sunlight of a very ordinary star in a very ordinary galaxy of hundreds of billions of stars in a universe of more a hundred billion galaxies (which, even using the lower limits, makes the sun one of 20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars). Makes one feel rather insignificant, huh? Even if our world is still a work-in-progress.

On the other hand, each of us, in each of our cells (with minor exceptions), carries coded instructions more complex than all the libraries in the world. We carry within us the fingerprints of God's handiwork. More importantly, consider that the Creator of an infinite universe with effectively an infinite number of stellar bodies chose, of His own free will, to place Himself in our midst so that, within the limits of our very finite understanding, we could know Him better and become a member of His family. Makes one feel rather significant, huh?

Postscript: So what about the Genesis account? Can a God who created the universe be described in human terms? The Bible is constrained by human intelligence and personality, but it is "living and active" (Hebrews 4:12), unconstrained by culture and time unless we humans insist on keeping it so. If the Old Testament is generally acknowledged to contain many types and patterns, why do we insist on a literal understanding of Genesis? Furthermore, no book—even the Bible—can even begin to tell us everything about God. After all, John tells us "even the world itself would not contain the books that would be written" if all the things that Jesus did were written in detail (John 21:25). I suspect that if all the things that the Godhead did were written in detail, even the universe itself would not contain the books that would be written.

To some, the Genesis story may be enough, but to me, a God that made a universe 20 billion years ago and created processes that continue His creation through time, one that possesses the creativity to create a self-renewing island paradise, one that imprints His creatures with a complex, unique code, is almost infinitely more awesome than one who got it all done in six days.

"For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made" (Romans 1:20). Our ancestors, despite a more limited view of creation, recognized it as the handiwork of God. Anyone who can look at the Hawaiian island chain, the HUDF images, or the DNA Double Helix and fail to see that handiwork with absolute clarity is, indeed, "without excuse."

[Incidentally, the Morse Code message is "Charles Darwin"]

There were several responses to this issue, most of them complimentary, and a number of you said that you are praying for Hali. Thank you. Please continue to do so.

Here's a sample of this week's responses:

A great article on the "beginnings". In terms of limitations, why refer to God as "he"?
Also in the Genesis account, God created and deemed everything good - what does that leave out? You did a great job in writing on the uncomprehensible enormity of creation but we still can't build a fly in the lab! I am also spending less time in trying to figure it out and more in an attitute of gratitute - All the great spirituals, lost their egos, the attachments to finite and human-like puppeteers - maybe that is why it is so hard for folks to see God as unseeable and to insist on a man with a beard directing human events and yet we can tap into the creative flow of this creative power, as have many religions and beliefs have done - it is when I decide I am God - that the trouble starts. 30 years ago, I walked into my first AA meeting and after hearing "that God stuff" in the 12 steps and alcohol mentioned only once, I turned to a man named Clint and said "what is this God s----?" He simply said " You are not it!" ---- my problem (ego) is alcohol, do you not drink at all? "Oh we just do that a day at a time!" That was God speaking through another human to me and I heard it.Our prayers are with Hali.

DS: This subscriber asks "why refer to God as 'he'?" Good question! I suppose it's mostly convention, since the Bible also includes descriptions of God that are distinctly feminine. Clearly, God is spirit and has no gender. Practically, what are the choices: he, she, s/he, it, neither of which are really accurate. My choice, while some may disagree, is a capitalized He.

Dick, this issue really opened my eyes to the beauty of the night skies. Thank you.
You shouldn't dismiss Young Earth ideas. Star distances cannot be accurately measured beyond 100 light years. Astromers are constantly changing distance estimates because they can't measure them accurately at all. Also, Genesis says that God created light first which means that starlight was created visible on earth which is why we can see very distant stars. Adam was created fully grown. Fruit tree were created bearing fruit. Same idea.

DS: I don't really dismiss such ideas. Some might claim they are akin to flat-earth claims, but they are categorically different. In the first place, there is no biblical account of a flat earth. Personally, I don't believe the earth and the universe are only a few thousand years old, but as I said in the article, it's possible. Yes, God could have created everything so that it looked older, but it seems to me that this would make Him a deceiver, which He is not. Furthermore, He is the Creator of those things that have allowed humanity to measure the distances. Parallax (measuring the angle of the light at different points in earth's orbit of the sun) is apparently accurate to about 65 light years, but Cepheid Variable Stars, which pulsate in relation to their luminosity) are accurate to about 100-200 million light years. Type Ia supernovae (giant exploding stars) have a generally constant brightness, allowing reasonably accurate measurement of galaxies billions of light years distant. I believe God gave us these "standard candles" to allow us to begin to appreciate the enormity of His creation. On the other hand, perhaps God created, like Adam and fruit trees, stars with their light already hitting our world. To me, it doesn't really matter. God is the Creator, and His creation is awesome!

I've heard comments about a young earth, but how old do these people think earth is?

DS: There is no absolute concenses on the subject, but most Young Earth advocates would claim less than 10,000 years. In about 1640, John Lightfoot, an Anglican minister, first calculated the date of creation to be October 23, 4004 B.C., using the generations of Genesis and historical records. About a decade later, James Ussher, an Irish bishop, came to the same result. For some reason, Ussher usually gets credit. The calculations of both Lightfoot and Ussher use a number of assumptions that make the implied precision highly unlikely, but based on their figures, 1997 was the 6000th aniiversary of creation.

I enjoyed your article, but you don't need to observe Hawaii, galaxies and DNA to appreciate God's creation. It's in full view in every blooming flower and every newborn child.

DS: How true! It's easy to miss such "mundane" events and to think of them as "ordinary" when each is, in reality, a miracle in itself.

Thanks very much for the wonderful article! My wife and I are going to hawaii this summer, but we only have two days on the big island. Is the volcano interesting enough to justify spending a large part of our time going there?

DS: I guess that's a matter of opinion. There are many magnificent sites on Hawai'i, and it is a big island, with no shortcuts! For me, the hike down to the current lava flow was probably the highlight of the trip (other than just the time with my wife). If you do go, here's some advice. Arrive long enough before sunset to make the lengthy hike. It's probably close to two miles across the lava field plus however far away you have to park. Then stay past sunset so you can see the glowing lava. Wear good hiking boots. My wife and I had sneakers and the lava field is quite warm. We got back to our hotel and discovered the soles of our feet were red. Also, be sure to take along flashlights! You'll need them for the return trip. I also suggest walking sticks. The type of lava there gets a little slippery in spots as it cools into a crusty surface. We were fortunate enough to be given sticks by visitors coming back in, and I probably would have fallen more than once without mine. Note also that the lava flow is about 20 miles from the main National Park buildings.

If you disbelieve the genesis creation story, you throw out the Bible! What makes you think you can decide what is true in Gods word and what is not?

DS: I think it's all true! Truth, however, is not always literal. It can also be symbolic or allegorical. In the case of the Genesis account, I believe it is true that God created everything, which is what's important. The amount of time He took, and even the sequence, is less so. Ancient writers weren't as obsessed with chronology as we tend to be. Furthermore, Man's understanding of our world was more limited in ancient times (although they did know the earth was round thousands of years ago). The Genesis account relates the essentials of God's creative power in ways the ancients would understand. But neither do I want to suggest that everyone has to agree with me...if your faith is based on a 6,000-year old world created in seven days, by all means hang on to that.

I have read your most recent writing several times now, and each time is brings tears of joy to my eyes. The way you brought together the awesome power of God with His personal touch-breath, fingerprints, footprints-helps give me the strength to face the many stuggles in my life. Thank you.

DS: I don't know what your struggles are, but if ET&N helped you in some way, I'm glad God led me to write it.

Unsure about or don’t agree with something in Ekklesia Then & Now? First, be a Berean (Acts 17:10-11). If you still disagree, post a message so we can all share in the discussion!

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© Richard M. Soule, 2005 Unlimited copy and distribution permission is hereby granted on the condition that this copyright notice is included.
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Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE, © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.