The SALT observatory in Sutherland, a remote and chilly village in South Africa, which has a telescope sensitive enough to detect a candle on the moon, has helped to reveal the magnitude of the greatest explosion ever recorded.
ASASSN-15lh, about 3.8 billion light years away from us, exploded with a force equivalent to 200 supernovae and 570 billion times the power of our sun.
That would have consumed all of our solar system in a single event.
However, it would also have significantly impacted the Milky Way galaxy. It certainly would have been 20 times the luminosity of the 100 billion stars in our galaxy.
The discovery was confirmed using a collaboration of observatories to pinpoint its location and measure its distance from us. The distance was measured using spectrographic tools.
How and why it happened, is shrouded in mystery, because it defies all known scientific theory and logic. It is an aberration.
That gives it astonishing intellectual credibility, because few scientists would confess to something that breaks down all they know.
I personally find young Earth arguments so spurious that I tend to just get irritated by what I regard as closed-mindedness. Worse, young Earth theories portray God as a magic-man, which is so at odds with His displayed character that I am left to wonder if we worship the same God.
The idea that God could create the world, which implies creating the universe that made that possible, within 7 calendar days, is such a stretch of imagination that it reduces God to a wand-waving magician.
The biblical context of God differs: We know not how long Adam and Eve were in the garden before they fell, but the context suggests time – lots of it. It took almost 2,000 years to bring a flood of judgment. It took at least 500 more years to bring the law. The time to bring salvation was about 4,000 years. The time to destroy His enemies and judge the world, another 2,000 years.
I don’t know about you, but it seems most contradictory for someone capable of making a universe in a moment, to be incapable of achieving all the above in a similar moment.
In simple terms, God is a process or systemic thinker. His character is completely at odds with the instant thinking of this age.
To Him time, patience, endurance and persistence, are so dear to His heart that they express the essence of holy living and a meaningful relationship with Him.
This world prefers instant gratification, so I suppose that accounts for young Earth ideas, at least in part. However, the greater dilemma lies in a misconception of God.
It takes our engagement of Him out of the game and limits our walk with God to an inevitability.
That’s why some so naively say, “If it is your will God”. Why even bother to pray if He is just going to do what He does and wave His wand, anyway?
That all reduces our faith to a one-way street, where God does and we just receive it.
It also makes the cross a complete sham.
Why so much agony and patient enduring, persistence through so many sifted hearts over so many eons, if God can sweep it all away in an instant.
Why indeed, should I persist in repentance and a long walk with God?
Where is the gain, what is the advantage? I can go to church and switch Him on and off in instant experiences that should suffice.
Well, when I see compelling evidence of a huge, logic-defying explosion, which is reliably reckoned, using powerful instruments, to be 3.8 billion light years away, and, as such, at least that old, I find it near impossible to consider young earth thinking.
After all, if the universe was billions of years in the making, and if that was required and unavoidable, could the same God who made that also be responsible for the immensely complex and sophisticated events that made this world, in a moment? I think not.
(c) Peter Eleazar @ www.4u2live.net
No comments:
Post a Comment