BJ Irvin

Genesis 1–11 is straightforward literal history.

Well, data from the James Webb Space Telescope has done it again! The JWST has allowed scientists to peer deeper into space than ever before. And what they find continues to overturn evolutionary and deep-time expectations. It’s happened yet again. In other words, here is your weekly installment of “Everything we thought we knew about evolution/the history of the universe is wrong”! According to popular science reports, “JWST has revealed that galaxies were spreading carbon, oxygen, and other heavy elements through space just 500 million years after the Big Bang. The surprising discovery suggests the young universe became chemically enriched much earlier than expected. . . .” According to the big bang model of the universe, “The earliest universe contained little besides hydrogen and helium, the two simplest elements at the top of the periodic table. As gravity gathered this material into dense clouds, stars began to form. Inside those stars, extreme heat and pressure enabled nuclear fusion and other reactions that created heavier elements such as carbon and oxygen. “When stars reached the ends of their lives, including some that exploded as supernovae, they released those elements into space. That material later became part of new generations of stars and planets and eventually contributed to the chemistry needed for life. The carbon in the human body and the oxygen people breathe were both produced inside earlier generations of stars.” Now, of course, this is nothing more than storytelling. No one has observed this supposed process of star formation. This is simply a model applied to the evidence. But it’s always had a big problem—where are these “pristine” early stars (called Population III stars) made only of hydrogen and helium? In this model, these Population III stars should exist, but they’ve never been observed. So where are they? Well, this new study, which used JWST data to supposedly peer at “galaxies as they appeared more than 13 billion years ago”—that’s very close to the alleged big bang—claims that these stars are elusive because “early galaxies were already sending heavier elements such as carbon and oxygen into surrounding space much sooner than expected” and “if galaxies were already enriching nearby space only 500 million years after the Big Bang, truly pristine gas may have disappeared quickly. As a result, Population III stars may not have remained common for long enough to be easily observed.” The article says, “Remarkably, the chemical signatures surrounding these infant galaxies looked similar to those found around far more mature galaxies billions of years later. The finding suggests that even at cosmic dawn, galaxies were already manufacturing heavy elements and spreading them into their surroundings.” But in reality, the finding does not suggest that “galaxies were already manufacturing heavy elements and spreading them” at cosmic dawn—the evidence is that galaxies look the same no matter how far away they are (remember, they are measuring distance, not time—the alleged time is also an interpretation based on assumptions). The idea that pressure in “early” stars created heavy elements and then supernovae spread those elements to be incorporated into newer stars and planets is an interpretation of the observational evidence. It’s storytelling! And it’s storytelling that is constantly changing. It doesn’t matter what evidence arises, even when that evidence contradicts earlier expectations—the evolutionary models are so plastic, they just mold them to fit the new evidence. There’s another explanation for why Population III stars have never been found and why the universe isn’t matching the expectations of those who start with the big bang: The big bang didn’t happen. The Bible gives us the true history of the universe, and it didn’t begin with a big bang and stars slowly forming. It began when God spoke and fashioned the earth, covered with water, and then He created light and darkness, and on day four of creation week, He created the stars fully functioning also. The evidence from the JWST will continue to defy secular scientists’ predictions because they have the wrong worldview based on the wrong starting point. Instead of trusting the interpretations and storytelling of men and women who weren’t there, don’t know everything, and often make mistakes, we should believe the eyewitness account of history given to us by the God who was there, knows everything, and has never made a mistake. “The heavens are telling of the glory of God; And the expanse is declaring the work of His hands” (Psalm 19:1).