This is the online edition of In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood
(7th Edition) by Dr. Walt Brown. The online version of the book is designed to be read online.
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Conclusion
Is the CMB (1) left over from the big bang, (2) radiation emitted for a brief instant from all created matter, or (3) something else? Both (1) and (2) place the CMB at the beginning of time and attribute the radiation’s current low effective temperature (2.73 kelvins, or -454.76°F) to an expansion of space.
The big bang’s explanation for the CMB has several widely recognized problems.
- The CMB, when viewed over the entire sky, is thousands of times too smooth to have produced the galaxies we see today, even after billions of years.
- The most distant galaxies seen are tightly clustered, much more than gravity could accomplish over the big bang’s age of the universe.
- According to the big bang theory, there is no reason why radiation from opposite sides of the universe should be identical, because radiating matter that far apart could not have reached thermal equilibrium. However, if the CMB is a natural consequence of the creation of matter within a very compact universe that was later stretched out, identical radiation would be expected.
All of this does not necessarily mean that the explanation proposed here for the light of Day 1 is correct. However, if one considers the many other problems with the big bang theory—a discussion that begins on page 30—the two choices described here are reduced to one. (Other possibilities, usually of a nonquantitative, nontestable nature and having nothing to do with the CMB, have been proposed for the “light of Day 1.”)
Yes, there is much we do not know about light and the beginning hours and days of the universe. However, faulty ideas should be exposed and superior ideas presented, even if they are not the final answer. Otherwise, incorrect ideas are accepted by default—reinforcing the reigning paradigm.
The subject is not unimportant. God asked Job (Job 38:19–20), “Where is the way to the dwelling of light? And darkness, where is its place, that you may take it to its territory, and that you may discern the paths to its home?” Just as Job could not answer those questions and others related to creation (Job 38), we also fall short—even though we better understand light and just how immense the universe is today.
One thing is clear: on Day 1, three days before the Sun and all stars were made—or before the creation of all stars was completed9—a temporary light source illuminated the spinning earth and provided day-night cycles.