YEC Lisle’s Incoherent Science

I tried to give Jason Lisle the benefit of the doubt when he was boasting about this young earth creation prediction for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). But I have to conclude that he is just lying or at the very least he has convinced himself of that lie. I say this based on a YouTube video of him speaking to a church audience and his 2024 article in ARJ. ARJ is just a young earth creationist website sponsored by Answers in Genesis to promote young earth views. About 21 minutes into this video he is once again bragging about his young earth unscientifically based prediction (his words not mine), about what JWST will find. And ridiculing secular scientists with strawman arguments and misrepresentations.

I pointed out Lisle’s wildly false prediction regarding JWST’s data in my last post. Emboldened by his propaganda tour to churches for his misrepresentation of JWST’s data, he decided to put some science behind his claim. He probably felt he needed to do this because by his own admission, his prediction is a god of the gap prediction. Or more accurately Lisle of the gap prediction. The prediction is based entirely on his misinterpretation of the Bible and no basis on science. As a result, he probably felt that he need to put some reality into his imagination. So, in 2024 he wrote this article Sizes of Galaxies in JWST Data Suggest New Cosmology on the ARJ website. Christian theoretical astrophysicist Luke Barnes[1] has posted a critique of Lisle (2024) on ARJ.

The purpose of the article is to explain the JWST data through the young earth creationist lens. Before we begin let’s get two things straight. Everything in that Lisle article is a joke. It is a non-starter. Everything in it is irrelevant and obsolete because he believes in ASC which I’ve thoroughly discredited it here and here. Even if you ignore his instantaneous one-way light fantasy. These JWST galaxies that he is talking about are billions of light years away. He can’t have that in a young earth creation. It will take light billions of years to get to us on Earth. But then he will invoke his ASC fantasy and that nullifies everything. But this is what young earth creationist do. They do whack-a-mole. Pretend to have a solution by breaking everything else. They are like a child breaking the entire cookie jaw to get one cookie.

Let’s put those two intractable problems aside and look at the ideas in his article within the realm of secular science. And he is using arguments from secular science to defend the ideas in his article. So we are talking about a universe that is about 13.8 billions years old with extreme redshifts z > 10–15. Just in case for those who are not familiar with what redshift is:

the “z” in redshift literally stands for the dimensionless redshift parameter, and it’s defined in terms of how much the wavelength (or frequency) of light has shifted toward the infrared spectrum. It can also be blue-shifted but that’s not in this discussion.

Here’s the core definition:

In the article, Lisle argues that JWST’s high-redshift galaxy sizes and brightnesses are better explained by a non-expanding universe where:

• Redshift is due to Doppler motion, not space expansion.
• Light loses energy over distance (“tired light”), causing redshift without expansion.
• Galaxies don’t evolve significantly, so distant ones should resemble nearby ones.

He claims this model fits JWST’s angular diameter data better than ΛCDM (Lambda Cold Dark Matter), and passes the Tolman surface brightness test, which ΛCDM allegedly fails at high redshift.

I am going to leave the argument for model fitting to a real astrophysicist like Luke Barnes to correct Lisle’s ad hoc toy modelling.

I want to focus on the real-world implication of his ideas. I say ideas because Lisle’s ideas doesn’t even rise to the level of a hypothesis. He has no real peer review. No real-world testing and experimentation. Just a couple of ad hoc ideas that breaks the cookie jar just to get a single case to match and even that, is specious. I am surprise someone with Barnes’s credential would even waste his time on Lisle’s nonsense.

Let’s layout Lisle’s argument in more detail. In Lisle (2024) he is not actually arguing for a young universe as I’ve said above. He is arguing how God created the universe. He claims that because God created Adam and Eve as fully grown adults, God also created the universe mature. The galaxies didn’t evolve into the universe we see today. It was created from the beginning to look like our nearby galaxies. And the universe didn’t have to expand from an infinitesimal point to what we have today. It was always this big and all the galaxies were set in their place at varying distances. They were set in motion moving away from each other, giving the appearance of expanding but in reality, they are just moving apart.

When he sees the images from JWST, he claims those galaxies are not blobs they are well defined galaxies, with the same size, brightness, composition of elements and optical dimension like our Milky Way galaxy. He said the secularists don’t believe the Bible so they don’t know how God created the universe. They assumed that it evolved naturalistically over time with an expanding universe. The JWST data has proved them wrong and he is right. He doesn’t think the universe is expanding. Therefore, the redshift that we see, (the redshift is a fact of measured data) are caused by the doppler effect of motion. Doppler shifts that is intrinsic due to moving objects like a train whistle changing pitch as it move away or toward you.

After the JWST data came out, he probably thinks that because his unscientific predictions had a pretty good match with the results. He feels emboldened now to try and resurrect some old theories to promote a static universe and attack the big bang. The big bang had been an arch-enemy of the young earth creationist for a long time.

I am going to keep the math at a minimal in this series on YEC. I am just going to pick out a few key equations from his article that is necessary to illustrate his argument. (People who want more math can refer to Lisle and Barnes’s articles. If I feel the need later on, I might include more of the mathematical derivation of these equations.) This series is intended for the same audience that Lisle has been preaching to, Christians. I want Christians to know they can believe in the inerrant Word of God and science is not a threat to biblical truths.

YEC have long hated the big bang this was Lisle’s chance to be the hero and revive an old and discarded theory for a static universe, in hope of displacing the big bad bang. A universe with a non-expanding Euclidean space. And he is going to do this by using a few equations that does not rely on the expansion of space ΛCDM. To account for the high redshift of the JWST galaxies he posits it is due to doppler motion of the galaxies. What is in these equations and what do they do? What these equations need to show is to predict the brightness and size of these galaxies, because under the ΛCDM theory the predictions do not match the JWST data. The FLRW solution based on ΛCDM predicted at high z the galaxies should be much dimmer and smaller but they are not.

“distant galaxies will appear somewhat different at a given redshift than they would if the redshifts are entirely due to the Doppler effect. For example, the angular diameter of a galaxy at a given redshift will be different between a model that assumes redshifts are caused by expansion and one that assumes that redshifts are caused entirely by the Doppler effect. The apparent brightness will differ as well. Data from the JWST now make it possible to distinguish between these models.”

Let’s start with his doppler model for redshift which is purely due to recessional velocity. The doppler distance to the galaxy is given as:

From that you get the distance angle of the galaxy, one of Lisle pillar to overthrow established science.

This is the FLRW equation which includes the metric component for expansion is integrated into the distance calculation.

Next, he gets the luminosity of the galaxy with this equation with a bit of correction added for doppler effect on redshift.

And again, through substitution he get this for distance luminosity his second pillar.

And the FLRW equation

Essentially the doppler equations and the FLRW equations are very similar. Lisle just dropped the integrals and kept the non-expansion part. Why is this important? Because for the same reason why he thinks FLRW agrees with his doppler model at low z, is also why FLRW thinks he agrees with expansion. But the real difference come in the intermediate range and high redshift. Here is a graph comparing the difference in predictions between the 2 models. But the predicted results can be dramatic.

How good is Lisle’s claim his doppler model fit with JWST data? I would refer you to Barnes reply to Lisle (2024), which Barnes pointed out much of the data he used in his comparison are older data with z < 8. What if we compare it to data that is at intermediate z. Which model has a better fit.

Observational data ultra-compact radio source angular-size dataset (Gurvits et al. 1999 / Jackson 2006 → 330–613 objects)

The data from JWST is fantastic. It is nothing short of engineering at its best. But it is way too early to jump to the conclusion that ΛCDM should be discarded for a static model. In my previous post on why Lisle’s predictions are wrong but he still continue with his propaganda presentation to church audiences. Even in this article he is exaggerating his claim. I pointed out how he misrepresented the data with different images than what he is claiming. I want to present a more detail picture of what JWST’s data really is. I briefly mentioned in my last post how JWST get these deep field images of galaxies. Here is a more detail process.

What JWST actually sees at high-redshift objects (like those at z=10 to z=20), the light is so stretched by the expansion of space that their original ultraviolet and visible light has shifted entirely into the infrared (IR) spectrum. JWST is primarily an infrared telescope. For a galaxy at z≈10, its primary Lyman-alpha emission is stretched from ∼0.12μm (UV) all the way to ∼1.3μm (Near-IR), and the crucial rest-frame visible light (which tells us about the galaxy’s stars) is shifted into the mid-infrared range (2.0μm to 5.0μm).

Raw Images are Black and White (Grayscale): The NIRCam instrument (Near-Infrared Camera) uses specialized detectors (like the HgCdTe arrays) that measure the total number of photons hitting each pixel over an exposure time. These detectors have no color filters in the way a cell phone camera does. Each raw image is a monochromatic (grayscale) map of photon intensity for a very specific, narrow range of infrared wavelengths defined by a single filter (e.g., F200W, F356W, F444W). The final color images are composites made by assigning a visible color (Red, Green, or Blue) to three or more different infrared filter images and then blending them together. This is a scientific choice to highlight different features, with shorter IR wavelengths typically mapped to bluer colors and longer IR wavelengths mapped to redder colors.

To get a useful image of a high-z galaxy, astronomers must use extreme techniques to boost the Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) JWST uses very long integration times (many hours per field) and takes dozens or hundreds of exposures. These are carefully aligned (dithered) and stacked. The signal adds up linearly, while the random noise only adds up according to the square root, causing the SNR to increase dramatically. The result is a final, highly-processed image where the faint galaxies, which might have only contributed a few hundred photons total, are finally visible against the near-black background.

Am I saying the JWST is not reliable? No absolutely not. I am just pointing out the limit to our technology. I am just saying when it comes to extreme z galaxies the conclusion from them are little bit of art mixed with science. Are the existence and brightness of these galaxies a surprise. Yes, it is. What does it mean? It is still an ongoing debate. Mass is inferred from brightness and color, which depends on assuming the type of stars (Initial Mass Function) and the amount of dust present. If we overestimate the mass, the problem with ΛCDM shrinks. Don’t forget we are still just looking at blurred blobs. Astronomers can compensate for that but again it is a judgment call.

Let’s take this out of the speculative realm and back to what we know. When we are comparing an expanding model to a static model of the universe, we can’t just look at an extreme case like the early universe and ignore everything else. This is what I meant by the whack-a-mole analogy. Even if everything goes Lisle’s way in this case. His doppler model still does not address the problem with the isotropic nature of the CMB (Cosmic Microwave Background) radiation. In his 6,000-year creation story armed with a static doppler model, he can’t even account for the existence of a CMB. Another big problem for him is the BAO (Baryon Acoustic Oscillations). This is a well understood and modeled physics phenomena that explains the clustering of galaxies. A static doppler universe can’t explain this. It’s not that Lisle’s model is wrong on these but it can’t explain it at all. Still another problem is time dilation of supernova. Lisle’s model of time dilation of supernova is approximately off by a standard deviation of ≈10, if it were model through the entire light curve.

But finally, I think for me the biggest problem for Lisle’s doppler model is relativistic velocity of these galaxies. I say biggest because unlike the other problems this is one that everyone can understand. We all learned from grade school Einsteins famous formulation E=mc² . We all know this even if we don’t really know its implication. We’ve all been told that we can’t go faster than light. It would take almost infinite amount of energy to even approach the speed of light. And yet in Lisle’s doppler model his galaxies at z ≥ 10 have relativistic velocity of near c.

Based on his model and his acknowledgement of the relationship between velocity and redshift, he provided this equation in his article.

This makes the velocity of his JWST galaxies a ratio of the speed of light. By plugging in the numbers, you would get this for z = 10.

It is not credible to have an entire galaxy screaming through space at almost the speed of light. Not only that, it must have started at that velocity because you can’t have a fully formed galaxy accelerate to that speed. It would rip itself apart. He would have to invoke the Lisle of the gap explanation. That 6,000 years ago when God created everything in almost an instant. He set these galaxies in motion at this speed. We all agree that God can do anything He wants but to put this on God stretches beyond credulity.

I said I didn’t want to use too much math or get too technical and I hope I haven’t. I think I’ve only included what was necessary to make my point. But looking back I think I will do one more post (hopefully my last on YEC) on some of the issues I touched on in this one. Specifically, on the CMB, BAO and Type I supernova and how they are handled or not handled by the ΛCDM and static models.

[1] Luke Barnes is a theoretical astrophysicist, cosmologist and postdoctoral researcher at Western Sydney University. He received his PhD in Astronomy from the University of Cambridge in 2009. He is a John Templeton Fellow and has published papers in the fields of galaxy formation and the fine-tuning of the universe for life. He is the author, with Geraint Lewis, of A Fortunate Universe: Life in a Finely Tuned Cosmos, (Cambridge University Press)