Can you be both a Christian and an Evolutionist?

[Ramblinman]

João Magueijo is a pioneer of the varying speed of light (VSL) theory of cosmology -an alternative to the more mainstream theory of cosmic inflation- which proposes that the speed of light in the early universe was of 60 orders of magnitude faster than its present value.

Source article

[TheBartman47]

How did God get light from vastly distant stars here in time for us to see them ???

Actually, a more accurate question would be how did the stars get so far away from us. There are a handful of Bible verses that mention God "stretching out the heavens". If the stars were all much closer in the past (so that we can see their light) then God stretched out the heavens so quicly that it causes a "red shift" in the light from those stars, then there is no issue to have both a "young earth" creation model with stars at "billions of lightyears" away, plus combine this with the very likely possibility that at creation time, light could have been MUCH faster than it is today. We know that the speed of light has been slowing ever since we've been able to measure the speed of light. So, if light speed is slower today, that means it had to be faster in the past. Extrapolating just how fast though is anyone's guess.

[Ramblinman]

Extrapolating just how fast though is anyone's guess.

João Magueijo is not guessing, there's some pretty good physics behind his proposal that light speed at creation was 60 orders of magnitude faster than the present speed.

Magnitude is NOT 60 times light speed. It is light speed raised to the 60th power.

If you haven't worked it out, that is real, real fast!

Not to mention the fact that the Universe itself has been expanding and was much smaller at creation.

[Bare_Truth]

.... there's some pretty good physics behind his proposal that light speed at creation was 60 orders of magnitude faster than the present speed.

Magnitude is NOT 60 times light speed. It is light speed raised to the 60th power. .....

Well not quite
60 orders of magnitude is 10 raised to the 60th power which looks like:
1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

That has to be multiplied onto the speed of light which is

186,000 miles per second
Or 6.71E+008 Miles Per Hour = 671,000,000 MPH = 672 million MPH

-------------------------

For you metric types we start at:
3.00E+008 meters per second
Or 1.08E+009 Kilometers Per Hour = 1,080,000,000 KPH = 1.08 Billion KPH

Then just ad another 60 zeroes to those numbers to match the theory of higher speeds of light early in the creation of the universe.

[Ramblinman]

Bare Truth, pardon my rusty math!

If you don't mind one more conversion, I think it might be helpful to put this in terms of light years (present Light Years of course).
Then, we would have to postulate a smaller universe, say 7,000 years ago. How small?
I realize that there would be deceleration both in universe expansion and light speed moving forward from the instant of Creation, but assuming a creation 7K Years ago, can you calculate both the size of the Universe and the speed of light on the 7th day, when Adam and Eve first saw the most distant visible galaxies and then figure if God would have to create photons in between the observer and the most distant galaxies?
OR if the speed of light and size of the Universe would not require that?

Just as an example, the galaxy named "UDFj-39546284" is considered to be 13.2 billion light years from Earth.
Disclaimer Probably not visible to the naked eye, even a naked (and perfect) Adam!

Based on these figures, how long did the light we now see from it actually take to reach Earth?
Have fun!!!

[Bare_Truth]

.... can you calculate both the size of the Universe and the speed of light on the 7th day, when Adam and Eve first saw the most distant visible galaxies and then figure if God would have to create photons in between the observer and the most distant galaxies?

At the present I lack sufficient parameters of the currently favoredtheory to produce an answer but as to the second part of your question, I doubt that God would have to create extra photons along the path as the luminous bodies would likely be spewing them out as they followed their path to their present location.

Based on these figures, how long did the light we now see from it actually take to reach Earth?

Again I lack sufficient parameters of the currently favored theories however most of the theories postulate that it was a very brief amount of time before the speed of light and laws of the universe reached the state we now experience. So I would have to say that if we use your postulated 7000 year age of the universe. the photons now arriving at our location were deposited approximately 7000 light years from our current location and therefore required a smidgen less than 7000 years to get here. Of course you must realize that "smidgen" is a currently unrecognised standard for a time unit.

In the event that you would like to get a better conceptional handle on the nature of the phenomena involved, you might try reading the book, Mr Tomkins in Wonderland . The book is an attempt to try to explain how we might experience the world if the so called constants of the universe were actually closer to the speeds etc. that we experience now, for instance what if the speed of light were 40 miles per hour. So if you drove your car at 40 mph all places in the entire universe would be at zero distance from you because of the Lorentz contraction of lengths, and at 39 miles per hour virtually no time would pass for you but many years would elapse for the person you left behind. etc. etc. Then there are interesting things that happen if Planck's constant were different and the effects of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.

[christian84]

The theology of creation each of us become creative contemporary cosmology originating and understanding as she discovers his eschatological horizon. Christ's and Alpha, and Omega creation. Focusing on the purpose of creation in Christ we can better anchor in the reality show, it living in eschatological tension, always aspiring to the ultimate meaning of cosmos and history, which completes the eschaton but can be anticipated in our history now there. In this theological perspective facilitates both interfaith dialogue (because it transcends confessional theology ), but also a dialogue with the natural sciences in various fields, which began insisting on the finality of nature, not just its description or causality.