Creationism in Crisis - A Rainbow On Another Planet! Did God Flood That One Too?

WASP-76b showing its 'glory'

© ESA, work performed by ATG under contract for ESA.
CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

Each glory is unique, depending on the composition of the planet’s atmosphere and the colours of the light from the star that illuminates it. WASP-76 (the «Sun» of WASP-76b) is a yellow and white main sequence star like our Sun, but different stars create glories with different colours and patterns.

© ESA, work performed by ATG under contract for ESA. CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO.

CHEOPS detects a "rainbow" on an exoplanet - Medias - UNIGE

Scientists working at the CHEOPS space telescope control centre in the University of Geneva (UNIGE), Switzerland, working in collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA) and the University of Bern (UNIBE), have discovered something which should ring alarm bells in the minds of Bible literalists.

It is the discovery of a rainbow in the atmosphere of an exoplanet known to science as WASP-76b.

WASP-76b is an exoplanet discovered in 2013 and confirmed in 2016 by a team of astronomers led by Neale P. Gibson using data from the Wide Angle Search for Planets (WASP) project. It belongs to the class of exoplanets known as "hot Jupiters," which are gas giants similar in size to Jupiter but with much higher temperatures due to their close proximity to their parent stars. Here are some key characteristics of WASP-76b:

1. Discovery: WASP-76b was discovered using the transit method, which involves observing the slight dimming of a star's light as an orbiting planet passes in front of it. This dimming effect is periodic and can be used to infer the presence and characteristics of the planet.
2. Physical Characteristics: WASP-76b is approximately 1.8 times the size of Jupiter but significantly more massive. It has a high surface temperature, estimated to be around 2,400 degrees Celsius (4,350 degrees Fahrenheit). This extreme heat is due to the planet's close orbit around its host star, WASP-76, which is located about 640 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Pisces.
3. Atmospheric Composition: One of the most intriguing features of WASP-76b is its atmospheric composition. Observations using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile revealed the presence of iron and titanium vapor in the planet's atmosphere. This finding is significant because it provides insights into the atmospheric chemistry and physical processes occurring on hot Jupiter exoplanets.
4. Extreme Conditions: The extreme temperature and atmospheric conditions on WASP-76b make it an inhospitable world, unlikely to support life as we know it. Its atmosphere is thought to be dominated by high-speed winds and extreme atmospheric dynamics, which may lead to unusual weather patterns and atmospheric phenomena.
5. Importance for Exoplanet Research: WASP-76b is one of many exoplanets discovered in recent years that are helping astronomers better understand the diversity of planetary systems beyond our solar system. Its unique atmospheric composition and extreme conditions make it a valuable target for further study, particularly in the field of exoplanet atmospheres and planetary formation theories.

Overall, WASP-76b represents a fascinating example of the diverse range of exoplanets that exist in our galaxy and provides valuable insights into the atmospheric characteristics and physical processes occurring on these distant worlds.

The reason this should set alarm bells ringing in the minds of Bible literalists, is because they believe that 'the' rainbow was sent by the god of the Bible to show believers that he wouldn't ever inflict another genocide on the planet because, although being omniscient and perfect, he regretted the time he did it in a fit of temper and flooded the planet to a depth that covered the highest mountains.

Or so the tale goes.

Before about 4,000 years ago, obviously, sunlight wouldn't have been diffracted into its component colours by passing through raindrops, or so those who didn't understand how rainbows are formed wrote.

And God spake unto Noah, and to his sons with him, saying, And I, behold, I establish my covenant with you, and with your seed after you; And with every living creature that is with you, of the fowl, of the cattle, and of every beast of the earth with you; from all that go out of the ark, to every beast of the earth.

And I will establish my covenant with you, neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood; neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth. And God said, This is the token of the covenant which I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations: I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth.

And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud: And I will remember my covenant, which is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh. And the bow shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth.

Genesis 9: 8-17

Apparently, God is so forgetful that he needs the rainbow to remind him not to lose self-control and commit genocide again.

But the question for creationists is, did God commit genocide on another planet too and put a rainbow there to remind him not to do it again? If not, how do rainbows form on another planet if they only appear on Earth because God puts them there?

If he did commit genocide on another planet, this means there must have been life there too, yet WASP-76b is far too hot to sustain life as we know it, being a 'hot' Jupiter-like gas giant which orbits its sun (WASP-76) closer than mercury orbits ours.

How this discovery was made is the subject of a news release by the University of Geneva:

How Science Works - Discovering How Planets Are Really Made - And Why The Bible Myth Is Wrong

Planets emerge from the dense disk of gas and dust encircling young stars.

Credit: NASA

Accretion disc

Our survey of the sky is uncovering the secrets of how planets are born

Look in the Bible for a description of how planets are formed, and you can search all day in vain. It simply isn't there. In fact, the very concept of planets and planetary orbits isn't there.

What the Bible myth describes is a childlike guess at the formation of the universe by people who thought the entire universe was the small part of Earth they lived and herded their goats on. So, they described it as a small, flat place, floating in the sea, with a dome over it (because that's what the sky looked like to them).

Stuck to that dome were the sun and moon as lamps, and what we now know are planets, stars and far-off galaxies, they thought were lights stuck to the underside of the dome. They even guessed that there must be pillars holding up the ground and that the stars could be shaken loose from the dome by earthquakes, when they would fall to Earth and could be stamped on by a goat, albeit a big goat!

Don't believe me? Find a Bible and read Genesis 1: 1-18 and Daniel 8:10. Nowhere will you find the words planet, orbit or accretion disc.

What you get is exactly what you might expect if you brought up a child to believe in magic and magic spirits but kept them away from any sources of information about science, geography, geology or cosmology, then, at about the age of 10, asked them to describe the universe and make up a story about how it was made. What you would get is what you get if you use a creationist form of deductive logic - you just look at it and describe what you think you see.

You get the result of ignorant intuition, which is about as far removed from what is really there and how it came to be the way it is as its possible to be.

We know this because we can compare the results of that method in the Bible with the results of scientific investigation and the scientific method used to describe how planets are really formed as part of the process of forming suns and planetary systems within galaxies which are themselves a tiny part of a vast universe consisting of trillions of galaxies, each with trillions of suns and probably several trillion planets in orbits around those suns, almost none of which is visible to someone standing on the surface of Earth and 'just looking'.

The following article by Christian Ginski, a Lecturer of astronomy at the University of Galway, Ireland described what we now know of hos planets are formed and just how many there might well be in the cosmos. His article is reprinted under a Creative Commons license, reformatted for stylistic consistency:

How Science Works - And Why Religion Doesn't - Dark Matter - Building Testable Hypotheses

Map of the distribution of dark matter in the Universe.
The bright areas represent its highest concentrations - which is where galaxies form

N Jeffrey/Dark Energy Collaboration

Dark Matter

‘Dark stars’: dark matter may form exploding stars – and observing the damage could help reveal what it’s made of

Dark matter is known to exists, and yet no-one knows what it is.

Creationists, in a desperate attempt to reduce science to the same status as their evidence-free superstition, will claim this shows that science is a religion really. But that childish claim soon disintegrates when we understand how scientists can know that dark matter exists when they don't know what it is.

Unlike religion's god(s), scientists can measure dark matter's effects on stuff they know more about, like the 'normal' matter that you and I are made of - atoms and molecules of which stars, galaxies and super-clusters are made of. They can see the gravitational effects of dark matter, so there must be something with enough mass to produce that gravitational effect.

Theists, on the other hand can never demonstrate any effects of the god(s) they believe in and are reduced to presuppositional claims and assertions, designating their god(s) as the cause of things they don't understand - the god of the gaps false dichotomy fallacy that passes for religious apologetics.

So, what are these effects that dark matter exerts?

The gravity produced by dark matter is what holds spinning galaxies together and prevents the detectable matter in them from flying outwards by the centrifugal force of rotation. It also produces gravitational 'lensing', which is the effect of light being bent by a large mass to act like a giant lens and make distant objects look closer.

So, we know dark matter is out there even though we don't know what it is, so scientists try to work out what it could be composed of and make predictions of what this stuff would do if it existed. This is the testable hypothesis. The trick is to construct experiments to test those hypotheses.

In the following article, Andreea Font, Reader in Theoretical Astrophysics, Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool, UK, outlines some of the current hypotheses that seek to explain dark matter. Her article is reprinted from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license, reformatted for stylistic consistency.

Creationism in Crisis - How The Milky Way Was Formed - 12-13 Billion Years Before 'Creation Week'

A visualisation of the Milky Way galaxy, with the stars that Khyati Malhan and Hans-Walter Rix identified in the Gaia DR3 data set as belonging to Shiva and Shakti shown as colored dots. Shiva stars are shown in green and Shakti stars in pink.

© S. Payne-Wardenaar / K. Malhan / MPIA

Researchers identify two of the Milky Way's earliest building blocks | Max Planck Institute for Astronomy

Between 12 and 13 billion years before creationism's little god decided to create a small flat planet with a dome over it in the Middle east, where the only people to notice were simple goat-herders from the Bronze Age, natural forces were creating the Milky Way galaxy out of two smaller galaxies that astronomers have named Shiva and Shaki:

Who are Shiva and Shaki? Shiva and Shakti are two fundamental concepts in Hinduism, representing aspects of the divine.

1. Shiva: Shiva is one of the principal deities of Hinduism. He is often referred to as the destroyer within the Trimurti, the Hindu trinity that includes Brahma (the creator) and Vishnu (the preserver). Shiva is also known as the god of meditation, yoga, and arts. He is usually depicted as a yogi, adorned with snakes and a crescent moon on his head, with a third eye on his forehead representing wisdom and insight. Shiva is often associated with asceticism, but he's also a family man, as he's married to the goddess Parvati and has two sons, Ganesha and Kartikeya.
2. Shakti: Shakti is the divine feminine energy and the primordial cosmic power in Hinduism. She is the personification of the creative energy of the universe. Shakti is often depicted as a goddess, sometimes alongside Shiva, and sometimes as an independent deity. She represents the dynamic forces that move through the entire cosmos. Shakti is considered the mother goddess, the source of all, and is revered in various forms such as Durga, Kali, Parvati, and others.

In some philosophical interpretations, Shiva represents the male principle (Purusha) while Shakti represents the female principle (Prakriti), and their union is seen as the basis of creation and existence. This union is often symbolized as Ardhanarishvara, a composite androgynous form of Shiva and Shakti, depicting the inseparable nature of masculine and feminine energies.

The discovery was made by two scientists working at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Heidelberg, Germany who have identified the components of two proto-galaxies that merged to form the Milky Way, by combining data from ESA’s astrometry satellite Gaia with data from the SDSS survey. The astronomers have published their findings in a highly technical paper in The Astrophysical Journal and explain it in a Max Planck Institute for Astronomy news release:

Astronomers have identified what could be two of the Milky Way’s earliest building blocks: Named “Shakti” and “Shiva”, these appear to be the remnants of two galaxies that merged between 12 and 13 billion years ago with an early version of the Milky Way, contributing to our home galaxy’s initial growth. The new find is the astronomical equivalent of archeologists identifying traces of an initial settlement that grew into a large present-day city. It required combining data for nearly 6 million stars from ESA’s Gaia mission with measurements from the SDSS survey. The results have been published in the Astrophysical Journal.

The early history of our home galaxy, the Milky Way, is one of joining smaller galaxies, which makes for fairly large building blocks. Now, Khyati Malhan and Hans-Walter Rix of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy have succeeded in identifying what could be two of the earliest building blocks that can still be recognized as such today: proto-galactic fragments that merged with an early version of our Milky Way between 12 and 13 billion years ago, at the very beginning of the era of galaxy formation in the Universe. The components, which the astronomers have named Shakti and Shiva, were identified by combining data from ESA’s astrometry satellite Gaia with data from the SDSS survey. For astronomers, the result is the equivalent of finding traces of an initial settlement that grew into a large present-day city.

How Science Works - Checking, Rechecking and Questioning What We Think We Know. The Only Certainty Is That There Are No Certainties

New research suggests that our universe has no dark matter | About us

A leading theoretical physicist has questioned whether dark matter really exists.

Dark Matter is a placeholder for what appears to be mass without substance which suffuses the universe, observable only by the gravity it exerts and thought by mainstream cosmologists to account for 27% of the matter in the universe with 'ordinary' matter making up just 5%. The rest - 68% - being composed of dark energy, another placeholder for something theory says should be there to account for the expansion of the universe, but which we don't have a model for in the standard model of particles and related fields.

I don't pretend to understand this stuff, but I'll post it here by way of a rebuttal of creationist claims that scientists devise experiments to try to prove preconceptions and that peer-review is just to ensure conformity to scientific orthodoxy.

Besides, the HTML coding is the sort of challenge I enjoy.

In fact, science is about continued reassessment and revision with names made not by confirming preconceptions but by overthrowing established consensus or exposing flaws in it which require further investigation. The leading theoretical physicist is Professor Rajendra Gupta of the Faculty of Science, University of Ottawa, Canada, who has just published a paper in The Astrophysical Journal. He has also authored an earlier paper which he believes shows the Universe to be about twice as old as the mainstream consensus believes it to be, so he can hardly be described as subscribing to some establishment orthodoxy. His work is explained in a University of Ottawa News release:

Creationism in Crisis - "No! No! My God Is A Little God, And I Want Him To Stays That Way "

Webb Unlocks Secrets of One of the Most Distant Galaxies Ever Seen - NASA Science

Continuing a series showing how much more impressive the Universe is than religion's prophets ever thought it was.

How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, "This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant?” Instead they say, “No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.” A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths.

Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has just detected one of the most distant galaxies ever seen. Because the velocity of light through space is a finite quantity, this means that the radiation detected by the JWST left the galaxy when the Universe itself was only about 430 million years old, in other words about 13.4 billion years ago.

To put that into miles means calculating the distance light travels in a year and multiplying that by 13.4 billion. In one year, light will travel just over 16 billion miles, so the object the JWST has detected is about 214.4 trillion miles away, and, if it's still there, it will now be at least 13.4 billion years old - which is a really long time compared to the age the authors of the Abrahamic holy books thought.

To put that in perspective: here is how the Christian Bible describes the Universe:

The Universe as described in Genesis 1: 3-18

And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day. And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day. And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.

Gen 1:3-10

[…]

And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so. And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.

Gen 1:14-18

And here is how the scientists at NASA using the JWST and the Hubble Space Telescope describe just a tiny portion of the universe

Looking deeply into space and time, two teams using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have studied the exceptionally luminous galaxy GN-z11, which existed when our 13.8 billion-year-old universe was only about 430 million years old.

Initially detected with NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, this galaxy — one of the youngest and most distant ever observed — is so bright that it is challenging scientists to understand why. Now, GN-z11 is giving up some of its secrets.

Vigorous Black Hole Is Most Distant Ever Found

A team studying GN-z11 with Webb found the first clear evidence that the galaxy is hosting a central, supermassive black hole that is rapidly accreting matter. Their finding makes this the farthest active supermassive black hole spotted to date.

“We found extremely dense gas that is common in the vicinity of supermassive black holes accreting gas,” explained principal investigator Roberto Maiolino of the Cavendish Laboratory and the Kavli Institute of Cosmology at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. “These were the first clear signatures that GN-z11 is hosting a black hole that is gobbling matter.”

Using Webb, the team also found indications of ionized chemical elements typically observed near accreting supermassive black holes. Additionally, they discovered a very powerful wind being expelled by the galaxy. Such high-velocity winds are typically driven by processes associated with vigorously accreting supermassive black holes.

“Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) has revealed an extended component, tracing the host galaxy, and a central, compact source whose colors are consistent with those of an accretion disk surrounding a black hole,” said investigator Hannah Übler, also of the Cavendish Laboratory and the Kavli Institute.

Together, this evidence shows that GN-z11 hosts a 2-million-solar-mass, supermassive black hole in a very active phase of consuming matter, which is why it's so luminous.

Pristine Gas Clump in GN-z11’s Halo Intrigues Researchers

A second team, also led by Maiolino, used Webb’s NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph) to find a gaseous clump of helium in the halo surrounding GN-z11.

“The fact that we don't see anything else beyond helium suggests that this clump must be fairly pristine,” said Maiolino. “This is something that was expected by theory and simulations in the vicinity of particularly massive galaxies from these epochs — that there should be pockets of pristine gas surviving in the halo, and these may collapse and form Population III star clusters.”

Finding the never-before-seen Population III stars — the first generation of stars formed almost entirely from hydrogen and helium — is one of the most important goals of modern astrophysics. These stars are anticipated to be very massive, very luminous, and very hot. Their expected signature is the presence of ionized helium and the absence of chemical elements heavier than helium.

The formation of the first stars and galaxies marks a fundamental shift in cosmic history, during which the universe evolved from a dark and relatively simple state into the highly structured and complex environment we see today.

In future Webb observations, Maiolino, Übler, and their team will explore GN-z11 in greater depth, and they hope to strengthen the case for the Population III stars that may be forming in its halo.

The research on the pristine gas clump in GN-z11’s halo has been accepted for publication by Astronomy & Astrophysics. The results of the study of GN-z11’s black hole were published in the journal Nature on January 17, 2024. The data was obtained as part of the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES), a joint project between the NIRCam and NIRSpec teams.

But it's not fair to blame the authors of the Bible for getting it so hopelessly wrong. They were doing their best with what little knowledge they had.

Creationism in Crisis - The Universe Is Much Bigger Than Our Prophets Said...

The James Webb Space Telescope observed 19 nearby face-on spiral galaxies in near- and mid-infrared light

NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Janice Lee (STScI), Thomas Williams (Oxford), PHANGS Team, Elizabeth Wheatley (STScI)

NASA’s Webb Depicts Staggering Structure in 19 Nearby Spiral Galaxies - NASA Science

How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, “This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant?” Instead they say, “No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.” A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths.

Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space

Face-on spiral galaxy, NGC 628, is split diagonally in this image: The James Webb Space Telescope’s observations appear at top left, and the Hubble Space Telescope’s on bottom right. Webb and Hubble’s images show a striking contrast, an inverse of darkness and light. Why? Webb’s observations combine near- and mid-infrared light and Hubble’s showcase visible light. Dust absorbs ultraviolet and visible light, and then re-emits it in the infrared. In Webb's images, we see dust glowing in infrared light. In Hubble’s images, dark regions are where starlight is absorbed by dust.

NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Janice Lee (STScI), Thomas Williams (Oxford), and the PHANGS team

Continuing with the theme of how different the universe really is compared to the laughably naive description of it in the Bible where the sun, moon and stars were stuck to a dome over Earth above which there was just water. And the stars could even be shaken loose by earthquakes when they would fall to Earth and could be trampled on by goats.

By contrast, here are the latest clutch of images from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). They are all of face-on spiral galaxies taken in the infra-red spectrum. Compare them to the description in Genesis where the entire Universe has a small, flat Earth at the centre of it.

Bible Blunders - How Bronze Age Goat-Herders Described The Universe - And How It Really Is

N79, a star-forming region in the Large Megallanic Cloud

Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, O. Nayak, M. Meixner

The Universe as described in Genesis 1: 6-18

Galactic Genesis: Webb Space Telescope Reveals Massive Star-Forming Complex

If you asked any 6-year-old to draw a picture of what they thought the world with the sky, sun, moon and stars would look like if you could stand outside it, chances are they would come up with something not massively different to the way it is described in Genesis:

And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day. And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good …

Genesis 1:6-10

And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth.

Genesis 1:16-18

And it gets even more laughable when you read in Daniel:

Therefore the he goat waxed very great: and when he was strong, the great horn was broken; and for it came up four notable ones toward the four winds of heaven. And out of one of them came forth a little horn, which waxed exceeding great, toward the south, and toward the east, and toward the pleasant land. DANI And it waxed great, even to the host of heaven; and it cast down some of the host and of the stars to the ground, and stamped upon them.

Daniel 8:8-10

And it doesn't get any better in the New Testament, where the authors also though Jesus would believe the stars would fall to Earth when they broke loose.

Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken.

Matthew 24:29
(Quoting Jesus)

And the stars of heaven shall fall, and the powers that are in heaven shall be shaken.

Mark 13:25
(Quoting Jesus)

And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind.

Revelation 6:13

Bible Blunders - The Ignorant Authors Of Genesis

Panels a and b show early images of the visible appearance of Uranus and Neptune reconstructed from Voyager 2 ISS images in 1986 and 1989, respectively, showing Uranus to be pale blue-green, and Neptune dark blue (PIA18182 and PIA01492, credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech). While these early Uranus images were close to ‘true’ colour, the Neptune images were actually stretched and enhanced. Panels c and d show more recent reconstructions of the true colours of these planets, showing them to be more similarly coloured.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Björn Jónsson,

https://www.planetary.org/articles/uranus-neptune-color-difference

Voyager 2/ISS images of Uranus and Neptune released shortly after the Voyager 2 flybys in 1986 and 1989, respectively, compared with a reprocessing of the individual filter images in this study to determine the best estimate of the true colours of these planets.

Credit: Professor Patrick Irwin, University of Oxford.

New images reveal what Neptune and Uranus really look like | University of Oxford

You will search the Bible in vain for any mention of the planets of the solar system, let alone a description of them, and the only description of Earth is so laughably childish it's incredible that anyone could take it seriously.

The reason for that should be obvious to anyone familiar with the scientific ignorance of Bronze Age people, but it's a measure of how far science has taken us since those times, and especially since the European Enlightenment when religion first began to lose its suffocating grip on European culture.

The astounding thing is that there are people alive today, living in technologically advanced countries with modern medicines, skyscrapers, satellite communications and navigation system, the Internet, air transport, nuclear power and space exploration, who still believe those simple people from the fearful infancy of our species had a better understanding of the universe than the scientists on whose discoveries their technological society is based.

For example, astronomers are now in the position of being able to have informed debates about the details of planets such as Neptune and Uranus because we have put instruments into space that can send back accurate data to inform those debates. We can now see that what the simple authors or Genesis thought were little lights stuck on a dome over a flat Earth are in reality large planets orbiting a sun which, unlike the description of it in Genesis, is not hanging from the same dome the planets are stuck to, but is a massive body at the centre of a planetary system in one of hundreds of billions of similar suns and planetary systems in one of maybe a trillion other galaxies, none of which would be affected by earthquakes on Earth, let alone fall down when they could be trampled on by a giant goat! [sic] (Daniel 8:10). (Seriously! There really are grown adults who believe that!)

An example of this informed debate was published open access recently in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. The research is described in an Oxford University News release:

Small Gods - More Magnificance Of The Real Universe Revealed,

The 'Running Chicken Nebula
("No, No! Ours Is A Small God And We Insist It Stays That Way!)

VLT Survey Telescope (VST),
hosted at ESO’s Paranal site in Chile

The Running Chicken Nebula comprises several clouds, the most prominent of which are labelled in this vast image from the VLT Survey Telescope (VST), hosted at ESO’s Paranal site. The bright star labelled Lambda Centauri is actually much closer to us than the nebula itself, and can be seen with the naked eye. The clouds shown in wispy pink plumes are full of gas and dust, illuminated by the young and hot stars within them. Overall, this image spans an area in the sky of about 25 full Moons, one of which is shown to scale for reference.

Credit: ESO/VPHAS+ team. Acknowledgement: CASU

New 1.5-billion-pixel ESO image shows Running Chicken Nebula in unprecedented detail | ESO

Astronomers using the European Southern Observatory in Chile have revealed in unprecedented detail, the so-called, 'Running Chicken' nebula, named not after creationists when asked a direct question, but because some people think it resembles a running chicken. The photographs were taken using the Very Large Telescope (VLT) as a series of images capturing different wavelengths of light, then carefully stitched together to form this detailed composite image.

The Running Chicken Nebula actually comprises several regions, all of which we can see in this vast image that spans an area in the sky of about 25 full Moons [1]. The brightest region within the nebula is called IC 2948, where some people see the chicken’s head and others its rear end. The wispy pastel contours are ethereal plumes of gas and dust. Towards the centre of the image, marked by the bright, vertical, almost pillar-like, structure, is IC 2944. The brightest twinkle in this particular region is Lambda Centauri, a star visible to the naked eye that is much closer to us than the nebula itself.

There are, however, many young stars within IC 2948 and IC 2944 themselves — and while they might be bright, they’re most certainly not merry. As they spit out vast amounts of radiation, they carve up their environment much like, well, a chicken. Some regions of the nebula, known as Bok globules, can withstand the fierce bombardment from the ultraviolet radiation pervading this region. If you zoom in to the image, you might see them: small, dark, and dense pockets of dust and gas dotted across the nebula.

Other regions pictured here include, to the upper right, Gum 39 and 40, and to the lower right, Gum 41. Aside from nebulae, there are countless orange, white and blue stars, like fireworks in the sky. Overall in this image, there are more wonders than can be described — zoom in and pan across, and you’ll have a feast for the eyes.

This image is a large mosaic comprising hundreds of separate frames carefully stitched together. The individual images were taken through filters that let through light of different colours, which were then combined into the final result presented here. The observations were conducted with the wide-field camera OmegaCAM on the VST, a telescope owned by the National Institute for Astrophysics in Italy (INAF) and hosted by ESO at its Paranal site in Chile’s Atacama Desert that is ideally suited for mapping the southern sky in visible light. The data that went into making this mosaic were taken as part of the VST Photometric Hα Survey of the Southern Galactic Plane and Bulge (VPHAS+), a project aimed at better understanding the life cycle of stars.

Contrast this small fraction of the visible universe (it occupies an area of the night sky about the size of 25 full moons) with the laughably naïve description of the Universe in Genesis 1: 6-18:

And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good. And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the third day.

And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so. And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth. And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.

The Universe as described in Genesis 1: 6-19

And, just to reinforce the ignorance of the authors of Genesis who guessed what they didn't know and got it so spectacularly wrong, here is a selection of deep-space images from the ESO:

Creationism in Crisis - A French 7-Year Scientific Program To Disover The Origin Of Life!

Aerial view of the construction site of the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) in the Atacama Desert, Chile.

© G. Hüdepohl (atacamaphoto.com)/ESO

Investigating the origins of life | CNRS News

Although it's nothing to do with evolution, which is the science of how living organisms respond to environmental pressures and diversify over time, abiogenesis is a favourite of creationists because they imagine, without being able to define 'life', that it must involve some magical, God-given quality that turns 'non-life' into 'life'. But then when did facts bother creationists?

So it must be disconcerting to those of them who are still in touch with reality, that 28 French scientific organisations, involving over 100 scientists, have formed a partnership (Programme et Équipement Prioritaire de Recherche - PEPR) led by the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (French National Center for Scientific Research - CNRS) to research into the origins of life, not only on Earth but on other planets. The project is already being known as 'Origins'.

According to the CNR News release by Mehdi Harmi:

How Science Works - Facing The Challenges of New Information

Artistic rendering of the possible view from LHS 3154b towards its low mass host star. Given its large mass, LHS 3154b probably has a Neptune-like composition.

Credit: Penn State
Creative Commons

Discovery of planet too big for its sun throws off solar system formation models | Penn State University

Theists embrace certainty at the expense of truth because it feels safe in an uncertain world in which truth is subordinate to opinion. Scientists embrace doubt because it leads them closer to the truth in a world full of wonder and begging to be understood, where truth is supreme and leads opinion wherever it may go.

In other words, religion is unreasonable certainty; science is reasonable uncertainty.

So, if there is one thing theists hate, it's being challenged with new information. It's not just scientific information that shows how far removed from reality their founding myths, such as those in the Bible, are, but information that shows, for example, that several of the 'epistles' attributed to Paul were forgeries trading on his name to give them added authority, or that the description of his 'conversion' on the road to Damascus was actually a description of a temporal lobe epileptic seizure and that his reason for being there didn't make any sense in the geo-political and legal context of the times.

So heavily invested are most devout theists that inconvenient facts like these are not considered reasons to change their minds; they are considered reasons to look for excuses to deny and dismiss the evidence. There is a vast and very lucrative industry, especially in the USA, which specialises in selling people 'reasons' to deny the science and believe the myths in the Bible, for instance. Remaining stoically ignorant of science is even considered virtuous in some parts of the world where religions still have a strangle hold.

Contrast that with science, where the most exciting news is that someone has discovered something that means we need to revise our thinking and change our minds. With science, when the facts change, the intellectually honest change their minds; with religion, when the facts change, they try to change the facts because the beliefs are sacred.

An example of how science welcomes and embraces new evidence is the news that cosmologists have probably discovered a massive planet orbiting a sun that is too small for such a large planet orbiting so close to it. This might not sound dramatic but if confirmed, it will demand a reassessment of how we think planetary systems form.

Creationism in Crisis - More Elegant Grandeur That The Little Gods' Prophets Never Told Us About

Part of the Sagittarius C region near the Milky Way’s core, revealing a dense star-forming area with numerous protostars and infrared-dark clouds.

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope

Hidden Wonders: Webb Space Telescope Detects Unexplained Structures in Heart of Milky Way

How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, “This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant?” Instead, they say, “No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.” A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths.

Carl Sagan,
Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space

The Universe as described in Genesis 1: 6-10

Compare the following images taken by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope with the way the founding prophets of the Abrahamic religions described the Universe.

Creationism in Crisis - The Universe is Much Bigger Than Our Prophets Said, Grander, More Subtle, More Elegant..

The Crab Nebula seen by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) and MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument)

Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, T. Temim (Princeton University).

The Crab Nebula Seen in New Light by NASA’s Webb - NASA

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has gazed at the Crab Nebula, a supernova remnant located 6,500 light-years away in the constellation Taurus. Since the recording of this energetic event in 1054 CE by 11th-century astronomers, the Crab Nebula has continued to draw attention and additional study as scientists seek to understand the conditions, behavior, and after-effects of supernovae through thorough study of the Crab, a relatively nearby example.

The Crab Nebula seen by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope

How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, “This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant?” Instead they say, “No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.” A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths.

Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space

The Universe as described in Genesis 1: 6-10

The Crab Nebula - a tiny fragment of the universe as seen by science:

Creationism in Crisis - Scientists Got The Age of The Moon Wrong! But It's Not Good News For Creationists.

4.46 billion years old

The Moon is 40 million years older than previously thought - Northwestern Now

Scientists have recalculated the age of Earth's moon and found they got it wrong.

But, before creationists start jumping up and down with excitement, it's not good news.

The recalculated age shows the Moon to be, not 4.425 billion years old, but 40 million years older, at 4.46 billion years old. This now makes it 44.6 million percent older than the Universe, which, according to creationist superstition is only 10,000 years old, instead of the 44.25 million percent older that used to be thought.

This means, if creationists want to dispute this new age on the grounds that the dating method used was flawed, they need to show how the 'error' made 100 years look like 44.6 million years, in a universe moreover that they claim to be so finely tuned that altering any of the parameters by even a small amount would make life impossible. Radiometric dating of course depends on the decay rate of unstable isotopes which in turn depends on random quantum fluctuations in the strength of two of the four fundamental forces - the weak and strong nuclear forces.

This new age was arrived at by analysing the zircon crystals in the moon rock brought back by the Apollo 17 moon landing:

Creationism in Crisis - The Universe Is Far Bigger Than Creationist Superstition Says It Should Be

Artist’s impression of a record-breaking fast radio burst

ESO/M. Kornmesser

Astronomers detect most distant fast radio burst to date | ESO

From observation of the 'red shift' we know the Universe is expanding and, by calculating the rate of expansion, we can calculate how far away an object is from any point in the Universe such as Earth.

If the creationist superstition were correct, assuming the Universe is expanding at the velocity of light (in fact, it is nowhere near that fast), the farthest objects could be no more than 10,000 light years away. This is the time it would take for light leaving the object to reach Earth, travelling at the velocity of light (186,000 miles per second).

However, an international team of astrophysicists has discovered a remote source of 'fast radio bursts' (FBR) of radio waves lasting less than a millisecond, in a galaxy so far away that its light took eight billion years to reach us! Although this is the farthest FBR source so far discovered, being about 50% farther away than the previous farthest, it is by no means the farthest object so far detected. These are about twice that distance, consistent with the Universe being 14 billion years old. In other words, the Universe has been expanding for much longer than 8 billion years, and for many times longer than the 10,000 years creationists belie.

So, any creationist capable of doing the simple maths should be able to work out that the Universe is far too large and has been expanding far too long for it to have been created 10,000 years ago, by several orders of magnitude.

The location of the FRB source was pinpointed by researchers at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) and its discovery is explained in an ESO press release:

Creationism in Crisis - Colliding Planets Falsify Creationism

Image shows a visualisation of the huge, glowing planetary body produced by a planetary collision. As the resulting debris moves between the host star and Earth it causes the star to appear to dim. The host star is seen in the background of the image.

Credit: Mark Garlick

October: Exoplanet collision | News and features | University of Bristol

The reason creationism is so easy to refute is that its claims are simplistic, designed as they are to appeal to those who think like children and who know little or no science.

This means we can construct simple hypotheses and predictions and test them against the real world. When we do that, we invariably find the hypotheses are easily falsifiable and the predictions fail to be fulfilled.

Science readily accepts, for example, that much of the observable universe emerged from chaos under the directional force of gravity, which turns a chaotic system into a progressively ordered system, so galaxies, superclusters, black holes, suns and planetary systems all emerged from the background chaos of the Big Bang and quantum fluctuations. This view of the universe predicts that there is still a degree of chaos and unpredictability about the universe.

M1: The Crab Nebula from Hubble.
The chaotic remnants of an exploding supernova.

Credit: NASA, ESA, J. Hester, A. Loll (ASU)

Creationists however, insist that the universe, and everything in it was created in a few days by a perfect, omniscient, god, casting magic spells and commanding everything to appear from nowhere, made out of nothing, in a perfectly ordered and designed universe. It then either micromanages it or sits back and watches while it runs on a prepared a set of rules that govern it (depending on the flavour of creationism and how much the superstition has tried to accommodate science while still believing in magic and the fairy tales they were told in childhood).

So, our simple hypothesis then is that a universe created according to creationist superstitions would be perfectly ordered and free from chaos, and of course had the ultimate purpose of providing humans with somewhere nice to live, like America. Such a well-ordered universe would never have planets colliding, or comets being knocked out of stable orbit in the outer reaches of the solar system and moving into elliptical orbits around the sun, for example. Nor would it have had a minor planet colliding with a young Earth as is believed to account for the Moon and the axis tilt that causes the seasons.

Creationism in Crisis - How We Can Tell The Bible Is Not The Work Of The God Described in It

A creator god would not have got so much wrong when it tried to describe the world it had created and described is as though it knew no more than a parochial Bronze Age pastoralist who knew almost nothing and had to rely on guess-work and folkloric superstitions from the fearful infancy of our species.

A picture is worth a thousand words:

The universe from descriptions of it in the Bible.

And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.

Genesis 1: 6-10.

How the Universe really is, as revealed by science:

Creationism in Crisis - Now it's Tree Rings Recording Solar Storms 4,300 Years Before The Universe Existed! Oops!

Artist illustration of events on the sun changing the conditions in Near-Earth space

Credit: NASA

The Miyake Event is the biggest yet discovered.

Alamy/PA

Researchers identify largest ever solar storm in tree rings | University of Leeds

It's probably unkind to laugh at creationists, who probably genuinely don't know any better and are too dim to learn any science. But they leave us little choice when they wave aside all the evidence of a 14 billion-year-old Universe and a 3.8 billion-year-old Earth as 'wrong' or 'scientists lying' or 'planted by Satan to mislead us', or even 'faked by God the liar almighty as a test of faith', in favour of an evidence free-superstition they were taught by their parents and which they are too terrified to let go off in case they get a zap from an invisible, magic mind-reading sky thug, stories about which they were terrorized by as children, or worst of all, they don't feel important enough?

Their infantile superstition is, of course, that Earth is 8-10,000 years old and was created by magic pretty much as we find it today, just because a bunch of Bronze Age pastoralists thought so.

And then along comes an international team of those pesky scientists who only go and produce evidence that a tree was alive on Earth 4,300 years before the Universe supposedly existed and recorded in its annual tree rings a massive solar storm from a sun that supposedly hadn't yet been magicked into existence, and which is allegedly hanging like a lamp from a dome over Earth so we can tell it's not night! (Remember! It's unkind to laugh! LOL!)

Creationism in Crisis - Astronomers Discover The Early Stages of Planatary Formation - About Which The Bible is Silent

An image of the radio wave emission strength from the disk around DG Taurus, observed with ALMA. Rings have not yet formed in the disk, suggesting that it is just before planet formation.

Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), S. Ohashi et al.

How the Bible's authors saw the Universe.

Press Releases - Astronomers Discover First Step Toward Planet Formation - ALMA

The universe described by the Bronze Age story in the Bible is almost laughable in its naivety, yet there are still ignorant people who think it was accurately described by the creator of it.

It has a flat Earth at the centre, with a dome over it to keep the water above the sky out, and the sun and moon are lamps hung from the dome to tell us when it’s day or night. All the stars, which we now know are vast galaxies or even superclusters of galaxies, millions of lightyears away, are described as small lights fixed to the inside of the dome, which can shake lose and fall to Earth during earthquakes.

Apart from a magic man speaking some magic words, there is no explanation of how the planet Earth formed, nor any appreciation of planetary systems orbiting a central sun, and of course, no hint that there could be trillions of such planetary systems or the vastness of the Universe.

Of course, you can't really blame the authors who wrote that stuff in the fearful infancy of our species. They were only doing their best with what little knowledge they had. What you can blame though are the ignorant fools who have failed to keep up with scientific discoveries and who still believe those laughably naïve myths are real science and history.

To add to their embarrassment, astronomers have now confirmed what we have suspected for many years now - that planetary systems and planets like Earth form in the accretion discs of second or third generation stars which were formed from condensing clouds of gas and debris produced by exploding earlier stars at the end of their life. These clouds contained not only hydrogen, helium, lithium and lighter elements but also heavier elements produced in the last stages of the earlier sun's demise as it collapsed inwards, forcing the lighter elements in its core to form heavier elements such as iron, calcium, carbon, silicon, oxygen, etc.

As the new sun's gravity pulls these larger elements towards it, angular momentum forces them into a flattened disc orbiting the sun. It was in these discs that the planets condensed around orbitally-stable centres of gravity.