The “clock” for measuring time given us in the Bible can be called “dynamical time”
because this clock is based on the motion of the earth on its axis (defining the day), the period of
the moon as it revolves around the earth establishing the lunar month (used in the Jewish
calendar), and the time it takes for the earth to make one trip around the sun, which defines the
year. Planetary alignments, constellations, comets, meteors, special stars, and other events in the
heavens are ordained by God for marking out unusual events. This time-keeping mechanism,
which relies, essentially, on Newton’s law of gravity, is described in Genesis One as something
God put into place on the Fourth Day of creation:
And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night,
and let them serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years, 15 and let them be lights in the
expanse of the sky to give light on the earth.” And it was so. 16 God made two great lights—the
greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. 17
God set them in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth, 18 to govern the day and the
night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. 19 And there was
evening, and there was morning—the fourth day.- Genesis 1:14-19
Most common clocks keep dynamical time. But also in common use today are “atomic
clocks.” In fact our present precision time standards are set to atomic time rather than a
dynamical time standard. Atomic time would be locked in step with dynamical time if the
velocity of light were an absolute, fixed constant. A careful statistical analysis of all the
measured values of the velocity of light, c, shows that c has decreased during the past 300 years,
and thus atomic clocks have slowed down with respect to dynamical clocks. When the velocity
of light first began to be measured it appears that the annual decrease in velocity was very rapid.
In fact it has been suggested that the initial value of c when the universe was new may have been
as much as one to ten million times higher than its present value.
It is not possible for c to be a variable without forcing a select group of other constants to
also vary. Otherwise the universe would be unstable and serious inconsistencies would occur in
many equations of physics. The evidence available at the present time suggests that c, Planck’s
constant h, the rest mass of the electron in the atomic frame of reference, and radio-active decay
rates are not fixed. The gravitational constant G is fixed, as is macroscopic mass and most other
physical properties affecting life on earth, however. It seems probable that the reason c has
decreased is because of an increasing permeability of free space (one of the “metric” properties
of space). This would result, for example, from shrinkage of the original universe after it was
“stretched out” by God to its maximum diameter on the Second Day of creation.
The observed decrease in the velocity of light originally studied in detail by Australian
scientists Barry Setterfield and Trevor Norman follows a steeply decaying curve leveling off to
nearly zero change in recent years.
. Since it is quite possible that the velocity of light has decreased by a factor of perhaps 10
million or more, the long geological ages now in vogue, which follow the atomic clock, would
actually be compressed by this amount according the dynamical time scale of ordinary history.
Time’s Arrow in Physics
Many physical phenomena can be described very satisfactorily by mathematical
equations. Usually these (differential) equations involve mass or similar measurable properties of
the physical world, and the dimensions of length, width, height and time. From a strictly
mathematical point of view it does not matter if time is positive or negative—most equations of
physics are time reversible.
However it is not so in real life, because of something called “Time’s Arrow.” The real
world we live in is governed by an important principle known as the Second Law of
Thermodynamics. The Second Law can be stated in several forms, but basically it refers to the
tendency of things to rot, rust, decay and fall apart with the passage of time. As we use energy,
the total amount of available energy available to do additional work decreases inexorably.
Orderly systems proceed to break-down in the direction of chaos, and the “information content”
of things decreases with the passage of time. Both outside energy and outside organizing
intelligence are required to bring order out of chaos.
In the case of living organisms, it is the genetic code that instructs cells to build
themselves into orderly organisms, but this is accomplished at the expense of an overall decrease
in the total available energy of the universe.
In physics this principle is often stated as “Entropy always increases.” Entropy is a
measure of the unavailable energy in a system or the state of disorder. Technically speaking this
law of entropy applies to what is known as “closed systems.” However if a sufficiently large
circle is drawn around most any system one can think of the law applies without exception. The
earth and its atmosphere do not comprise a thermodynamically closed system because of energy
input from the sun, for example. However by drawing a circle around the solar system, one has a
closed system.
Incidentally it can be shown that energy from the sun alone is not sufficient to decrease
the overall entropy of earth or to drive biological organisms in the direction of increasing
complexity.137 This point is widely misunderstood among secular scientists today. It is wrongly
taught that energy inputs alone are sufficient for living systems to self-organize out of simple
molecules, given enough time. The above authors and other scientists as well, have shown by
careful calculation that programming information from a source outside a system is required, in
addition to energy, for the molecules of life and living cells to be assembled.
In conclusion, physical processes known to science require that time move from the past
through the present and into the future irreversibly. “Linear,” “one-dimensional” time is the time
frame of the physics of the macroscopic world. This view of time is consistent with the
progression of the ages in the Bible.
