These are some of the many claims made about the James Webb Space Telescope after the first images taken by the telescope were released. When describing an image of the Carina Nebula Katie Mack, Hawking Chair in Cosmology and Science Communication at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, wrote: “Where Hubble’s view showed us the edges of the clouds, JWST lets us peer within, to watch the process of creation as it happens, to see, like never before, how new light is born from the stuff of the stars. We came from that. We are made of that. This is our cosmic origin story, viewed 8,000 light-years away, in another part of the Galaxy, but, nonetheless, entirely ours.”
Meanwhile Chris Impey and Daniel Apai of University of Arizona are looking for signs of life on exoplanets, i.e. planets outside our solar system. They commented: “Thanks in large part to powerful next-generation telescopes like James Webb, scientists like us will soon be able to measure the chemical makeup of atmospheres of planets orbiting around other stars. It is hoped that we will detect a chemical signature of life on one or more of these exoplanets.” However, they admit finding chemicals associated with life, such as water, carbon dioxide, oxygen and methane, does not mean they have found life. Oxygen is generated by sunlight splitting water molecules, as well as from photosynthesis by plants, while carbon dioxide and methane are produced by volcanoes as well as cows and other animals.
Image of Carina Nebula: NASA/STScI
References: BBC Science Focus 14 July 2022; SciTech Daily 15 July 2022
Editorial Comment: It is good to see these scientists recognising that finding some chemicals in outer space that also exist in living things on earth does not mean they have found life in outer space, but it doesn’t seem to stop them wanting to find life in outer space. Over the past few decades a lot of time and resources have been poured into finding alien life because of an evolutionary belief that life can arise from chemical interactions alone, and therefore there is no need for the Creator. This is simply not true. Living things are made of chemicals, but the difference between chemicals in living things and chemicals in the physical environment, even in outer space, is the way they are organised and controlled, i.e. life requires masses of information. Information comes from a creative mind who is outside the system of matter and energy.
The idea that our bodies are made of the stuff of stars is a romantic pagan Sagan fiction based on the Big Bang theory, that has to explain why living things full of elements like carbon, oxygen and nitrogen, when the universe is supposed to have started out with just hydrogen. The Creator of the cosmos tells us clearly that our bodies are made of the stuff of the earth, which He created three days before He made the stars. As well as serving mankind for signs, times and seasons, (Genesis 1: 14) the stars and other heavenly bodies are there to declare the glory of God (Psalm 19) and they remind us of His greatness and power. Through technology like the new space telescope, our generation has been privileged to see more wonderful and glorious things in the heavens. The images produced by this telescope are truly superb and definitely worth studying, but they are not our “cosmic origin story”. Those who study these new images are without excuse for failing to give honour to the Creator, and will be judged for substituting their own ideas for the Creator’s clearly written word.
Creation Research News 21 July 2022
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