Some comments on the creation week: Day 4

A while back, I taught a short series on creation for my Sunday school class. It was supposed to last for the summer and I had planned on covering several topics like the role of creation in evangelism, various ways some Christians reinterpret Genesis in order to fit it with popular scientific theories, and how to answer some of the more common objections people raise against creation. One lesson I had planned was to cover the days of the creation week, giving a short description on what happened each day. However, there were so many questions asked and such interest shown that the single lesson I had planned ended up being stretched over 5 lessons.

It was during that time that I realized that, even though the language of Genesis 1 is straightforward and easy to read, many Christians don't stop to consider the full impact of what is happening on each day – not so much from a spiritual perspective but rather from a physical one. To that end, I thought it would be worthwhile to have a short series of posts, each covering one day of the creation week. This isn't meant to be a treaty on the subject. Instead, I hope to simply open a few eyes to the realization that what is being described were real events that literally shaped the world. Even so, the posts will be a little longer than usual.  I apologize in advance and only say that I will do my best to make them worth the while to read.

In this post, we’ll be looking at the events of Day 4. 

Genesis 1:14-19, And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so. And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.

Day 4 marks the creation of the heavenly bodies – the sun, moon, and stars. We have seen already that God created light on Day 1. The presence of light clearly demarcated day and night so that the passage of days could be measured until now. Here, God creates the permanent lights to replace the temporary one He had created earlier.

v. 14-15, And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.

Interestingly, the Bible reveals the motive for creating these heavenly bodies. In this passage, I can identify at least 4 purposes:

1) And let them be for signs: Exactly what is meant by “signs” is not made clear in this passage. I've heard some pastors talk about the gospel message being present in the signs of the zodiac but I'm very skeptical of the claim. I've heard all the details and feel they're simply a stretch. It reminds me a little of Nostradamus, where his quatrains are just vague enough that they can seem to explain some future event.

Still others talk about signs like the star of Bethlehem which announced the birth of Jesus. I've written before (here) how the “star,” as described in the Bible, did not behave in a way any astronomical body would. I suspect that was more likely an angel.

I believe “signs,” in this passage, most likely means God will use the heavens to reveal His power. Psalm 19:1, says, The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork. Simply put, the vastness of space and number of stars gives us a glimpse of the power of God. Also, there are the miracles like Joshua's Long Day (Joshua 10:11-13) and the turning back of the sun (Isaiah 38:8). In both cases, we see the authority of God is above the movement of the planets.

2) And for seasons: We see that God purposefully created the seasons. We know that He gave the plants and tree to Adam for food. We see perhaps too that God intended Adam to farm. Of course, it was not initially the burden that it would become after the curse. When God cursed Adam, He warned him that he would plow but now the ground would produce thorns and He would have to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow.

Because there are seasons, we know that by this time, the earth was certainly in motion, making its elliptical orbit around the sun; the earth must also have already been tilted on its axis. Both of these factors determine the seasons.

3) and for days, and years: Many of our denominations of time are derived from natural phenomena. One rotation of the earth on its axis is a day; one orbit of the sun is a year; one orbit around the earth by the moon is a month. Even the start of each season is clearly identified by a solstice or equinox. We see from these passages that it is God who ordained how long a day would be or how long a year is.

By the way, there is no natural phenomenon that accounts for a seven day week. Many believe the seven day week – which is recognized by so many cultures – is a legacy of the original seven day week established by God during the creation.

4) And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: One obvious blessing from the sun is that it not only gives us heat but it also gives light. God could have created us to live and see in the darkness but He ordained it to be otherwise and so gave us the sun and moon to give light upon the earth.

In the Bible, light is often used metaphorically to represent knowledge or enlightenment. The Bible is a lamp for our feet (Psalm 119:105). Jesus also said that believers walk in the light while the lost love darkness because their deeds are evil (John 3).

One criticism often made of the Bible is that it seems to say in this passage that the moon “gives” light. First, it doesn't say exactly that. It does refer to the moon as the “lesser light” that rules the night but does not describe a method by which the moon gives light. But moreover, it is an acceptable and common use of the language to say the moon gives light. I remind you of the well known poem, ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas.

“The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow

gave the lustre of midday to objects below.”

v. 16a, And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night:

So, after having given us the purpose of the sun and moon, the Bible then says God creates them with very little description as to how. There is no description like the plants seeming to come forth from the ground or the land rising out of the sea as with earlier creative acts. It only says that God wanted there to be these lights and so He made them.

An interesting fact about the sun and moon is their difference in size. The sun's diameter is about 400 times larger than the moon's but the sun is also 400 times further away. The result is that both objects appear to be almost exactly the same size when viewed from earth. It is incredible to think this is just an accidental coincidence; Such a coincidence is far more likely to be a product of design.

v. 16b, he made the stars also.

The earth is not some insignificant speck in the vast cosmos; rather, God created the universe with the earth in mind. The enormity of the universe and the innumerable number of stars gives us a glimpse of God's omnipotence. However, the earth is the indisputable center of God's attention. The sun and moon, which affect the earth most directly, are given the most description in this passage. The stars receive barely a mention.

I can't let this pass without mentioning the distant starlight problem. Out of our ignorance, we question how the light from millions of light years away (in distance) can reach us in a single day or even a few thousand years (of time). The fact that we haven't yet found a completely satisfactory answer to the question is not necessarily evidence that it didn't happen. We see the light from the stars so we know it has had time to reach us. Therefore, we can continue seeking answers to understand how.

I did write a post about this subject some time back.  The “distant starlight problem” might not even be a problem at all!

v. 17-18, And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness:

Critics of the Bible will often pounce on this verse as an excuse to ridicule the Bible. Some ancient philosophers (it would be a stretch to call any person of antiquity a “scientist”) believed there was a dome over the earth and the heavenly bodies were literally lights inside the dome. This just wasn't Christian or Jewish philosophers but many other cultures believed this as well. This passage in one sense could be understood to support that idea. However, it doesn't literally say it. There are at least two other ways we might understand this passage.

First, we ordinarily refer to the sun, moon, and/or stars as being “in the sky.” It would be odd to describe them otherwise. I have used similar wording on this very blog many times and no one has ever accused me of believing in a dome around the earth. For the Bible to say that God that put them “in the sky” need not mean anything more than we mean by the same term.

Secondly, the word “firmament” in the KJV is a little esoteric. Other translations have “heavens.” The Bible attests there are three, distinct heavens: the first heaven is the sky/atmosphere around the earth. The second heaven is outer space. The third heaven is the abode of God. The word “firmament” in the KJV could include either the 1st or 2nd heavens.  The same passage in the NASB can be read and understood without the ambiguity or controversy we find in the KJV.

v. 19, and God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.

Prior to now, days were marked by the temporary light created on Day 1. Now, God has created the sun and the meaning of a “day” is clearly defined as one passing of evening and morning. Once again, we see that the days of the creation week are ordinary days.

Exotic cosmology

Once upon a time, people believed the sun, planets, and stars orbited a stationary earth – an idea called, “geocentricism.” I'm sure it seemed intuitive to everyone then because we certainly can't feel the earth moving and the sun seems to move across the sky. In a real sense, geocentricism seemed to explain the “evidence” well. Some things, however, like the retrograde motion of planets, seemed to not fit the theory well.

In the second century, a Greek philosopher/astronomer named Ptolemy, tried to smooth out the difficulties with geocentricism. He believed the planets moved around the earth in an orbit called a deferent. As the heavenly bodies moved in this large circle, they also moved in a smaller circle called an epicycle around an imaginary point called an equant. These ideas seemed to address the observed problems with geocentricism well and Ptolemy's theories endured until the time of Galileo.

Today, we understand that the Sun is the center of our solar system and the earth, as well as the other planets, orbit it. The apparent retrograde motion of other planets is caused by a difference in the relative speed of planets as they are observed from the earth. Deferents, epicycles, and equants never existed at all! These things were the symptoms of a flawed theory. They seemed to answer some questions about the theory but the real problems laid in the theory itself. So as long as the underlying theory persisted, more and more fanciful sub-theories had to be invented to keep the failed theory afloat. You might call it them “fudge factors.”

So where am I going with all this? Well, when it comes to secular theories of cosmology, I've seen a lot of same behavior among scientists. There are several crazy, er... I mean, “exotic”... explanations that have been invoked in order to hammer down stubborn difficulties with their theories. Actually, I'm only using the term “exotic” to be nice. These theories are so insanely ridiculous that I suspect that deep down even their most staunch proponents don't sincerely believe them. They merely cling to them because without them their entire worldview completely fails.

A UNIVERSE WITHOUT EDGES

Imagine for a moment a very large, flat meadow of grass with a crowd of people standing in it. You are somewhere in the crowd. Through just simple observation, it would not be hard to guess where you are in the crowd. If all the people are on one side of you and no one on the other, you would be on the very edge of the crowd. If there were more people on one side than the other, you would be toward the edge. If there were about the same number of people everywhere you looked, you would be closer to the center. It's not hard, right?

As we look around in the universe, we observe about the same number of stars no matter which direction we look. Just as in my crowd analogy, it would be very reasonable to conclude from this observation that we are somewhere near the center of the universe. Of course, the universe is very, very large and since we cannot see the edge of it in any direction, it makes it hard to be sure that we're in the center. It would be like being in the ocean with no land in sight; you would really have no idea if you're in the middle of the ocean or just outside sight of the shore. To really know we're in the center, we'd have to have more information.

In the mid-19^th century, Dutch physicist, Christian Doppler noticed that sound waves changed frequency relative to the observer when the source was in motion. He dubbed this phenomenon, “the Doppler Effect” and believed it would apply to all waves including light and radiometric waves. In the beginning of the 20^th century, we were able to observe this phenomenon in the light from distant stars. The light from the stars was “redshifted” indicating that the light wave was being stretched and that the star was moving away from us. As we began to survey more and more stars, we realized that the stars uniformly seemed to be moving away from us at a constant speed.

The implications of what was being observed was huge. Obviously it meant the universe was expanding but more than that, the general movement of the stars directly away from us further seemed to confirm our position near the center of the universe. In this enormous universe, the odds of us coincidentally being in the center are mind numbingly small. If God had intended us to be in the center of the universe, then the remote odds of it happening randomly don't matter. However, scientists, because of their bias toward natural explanations will not allow themselves to consider that we're here by design. So what is the solution?

Scientists have put forth a model of the universe where there really is no center – or rather everywhere is the center. Space is a flat surface that is being stretched like the surface of a balloon being blown up. All points on the surface would be moving away from each other yet there is no edge nor center to the universe. They say space is curved, similar to the surface of the earth and if you started in one direction and headed in a straight line, you would eventually end up where you began. No matter where you are in the universe, we would observe exactly the same things in every direction.

This “Balloon Model” of the universe seems to be the epitomy of an “exotic theory.” To me it seems way more far fetched than Ptolemey's equants and epicycles. The mad genius of it is that really is no way to test it. There's no way we could fly to edge of the universe to see if it's there. We can't stand back from the universe and see if it resembles the surface of a balloon. We can only picture the universe based upon we can observe from the earth and that supports the Bible.

THE OORT CLOUD

When I was young, I used to think that comets hurtling through space were similar to meteors entering earth's atmosphere; I pictured it as a fiery ball with a long tail of flames. I know now that comets are made of ice and the long tail we see is actually ice particles being blasted away from the body of the comet as it passes near the sun.

The fact that comets lose some of their mass each time they pass near the sun has a bearing on the age-of-the-earth debate. Obviously, if a comet becomes smaller with each orbit of the sun, eventually it must disappear all together. Also, each time a comet comes near the sun, it also risks collision with a planet or the sun itself which would end its life immediately. Simple reason, then, forces us to acknowledge that comets can only exist so long. Their long tails are a visual testimony of their short livedness. Eventually, they will either exhaust all of their matter or crash into a planet. If our solar system were really billions of years old, they should all be gone by now. End of story.

One very famous comet is Halley's comet which passes by our sun once every 75 years. It is consider a “short period,” one who's orbit takes less than 200 years. Since Halley's orbit is only 75 years, in just one million years it would have passed by the sun more than 13K times! No one believes that is possible and I'm not suggesting that's what secular scientists believe. Actually, secular scientists believe the maximum life span of Halley is about 40,000 years. If the universe is less than 10,000 years old, this isn't a problem at all. However, it doesn't comport well with the idea that the solar system is millions or billions of years old. If the solar system is really billions of years old, why are there still so many short period comets left? In order to rescue their theory, secular science must find a source that can replenish comets as they are exhausted. After all, since there still are comets, and we know that most of them can't have been circling the sun for billions of years, these comets had to come from somewhere more recently.

Secular scientists are claiming a very exotic source of new short term comets known as the Oort Cloud. According to Wikipedia, the Oort cloud, “is a theoretical concept of a cloud of predominantly icy planetesimals proposed to surround the Sun at distances ranging from 2,000 to 200,000 AU (0.03 to 3.2 light-years)” [bold added]. As we read through the entire Wiki article, we see a lot of other conditional descriptions; words like “conjecture,” “thought to be,” and “hypothesized” abound. The Wiki article is brimming with “facts” about the Oort cloud – things like it's composition, size, origin, location, etc. It's amazing that we can know so much about something that we've never seen and really aren't sure even exists!

In the same article, we can read the following:

“Over the course of the Solar System's existence the orbits of comets are unstable, and eventually dynamics dictate that a comet must either collide with the Sun or a planet or be ejected from the Solar System by planetary perturbations. Moreover, their volatile composition means that as they repeatedly approach the Sun, radiation gradually boils the volatiles off until the comet splits or develops an insulating crust that prevents further outgassing. Thus, Oort reasoned, a comet could not have formed while in its current orbit and must have been held in an outer reservoir for almost all of its existence.”

You can read it for yourselves. The Oort cloud was hypothesized seemingly for no reason other than the need for a source of comets! It about as scientific as saying comets are made by unicorns. Most people agree that science is founded upon observations. Here, we are talking about a hypothetical source of comets that cannot be observed so their belief is the Oort cloud is no more scientific than my belief in God. The existence of the Oort cloud is simply necessitated by a belief in an old universe. It's akin to a faith belief except they see it as more plausible because it's a “natural” explanation rather than a supernatural one.

INFLATION COSMOLOGY

The Big Bang model of the universe is a theory brimming with difficulties – I mean difficulties beyond the obvious, “where did all the matter come from.” The problems I'm talking about are a little less obvious but still very substantial. Please note too that these aren't my objections to the theory. These are objections raised by secular scientists and discussed in this Wiki article.

The Horizon Problem: If we looked toward the eastern sky, we could see galaxies that are estimated to be 10 billion light years away. We could see the same thing in the western sky. So if one galaxy is 10 billion light years away in one direction and another is 10 billion light years in the other, then they would be 20 billion light years apart from each other. Now, secular scientists date the universe to be around 13.8 billion years old. Assuming that is true, the light from the “eastern” most region of space has not had enough time to reach the “western” region. Even though we can see both ends, they should not be able to see each other because their light could not have traveled the 20 billion light years of distance between them in only 13.8 billion years. Are you still with me? OK. Here is the problem: everywhere we look, the universe appears to be homogenous.

If I dropped an ice cube into hot water, the cube would melt and the water would cool a little. Eventually, it all becomes the same temperature. That's homogeneity and it always happens eventually once the two things begin to interact. It seems to have already happened in the cosmos. The cosmic background microwave radiation, for example is the nearly the same everywhere we look. But how could the entire universe have evened out so uniformly if all the regions have not had enough time to interact?

The Flatness Problem: Matter produces gravity. Objects in motion have kinetic energy. When the supposed Big Bang happened, matter began to expand. Once the expansion began, kinetic energy would have carried the matter forward while gravity would have been slowing the expansion. Let me see if I can explain it in lay terms.

If the rate of expansion were too slow, gravity would have quickly pulled everything back into a Big Crunch. If the expansion were too rapid, the matter would have accelerated too quickly for stars to form. From the very beginning there must have been a perfect balance, a “fine tuning,” between the expansion and the slowing or else the universe could not exist as it is now. The precise balance of 1 is represented by the value Ω (omega). The margin is so narrow as to be incredible.

These Horizon problem and Flatness problem just two problems with a Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe. While either one alone could be fatal to the theory, scientists cling desparately to the belief there had to be a solution. Enter now Inflation Cosmology! It was suggested in the 1980s that in the very early seconds after the initial expansion, the universe when through short period of hyper-expansion where it figuratively exploded from about the size of a grape to trillions of miles across in just a fraction of a second. They say such an event would solve a few difficulties.

First, they suppose that the homogeneity we observe occurred prior to the hyper-expansion, while all of space was still close together. When inflation occurred, it carried the homogeneity out with it. Concerning the flatness problem, the inflation supposedly forced the value of Ω to that fine-tuned balance of 1. Some have compared it to a how a balloon smooths out as it inflates. I'm not sure how well the analogy describes the solution but most cosmologists seemed satisfied with it.

So what is the evidence for all of this? We'll, it's pretty much like the evidence for the Oort cloud – they simply need it for their theory to be viable. It's a sort of fudge factor to get around some of the serious difficulties they know exist with the Big Bang. Actually, the idea of inflation is even less credible than the Oort cloud. In the case of the Oort cloud, at least we know that icy bodies exist in the universe. We've never seen an event like the inflation epoch and there's nothing in physics that would otherwise suggest such an event could or should occur.

CONCLUSION

When we consider modern cosmology, the Big Bang doesn't sound unreasonable at first hearing. We can see the stars moving away from us. If the universe is continuously expanding, then we need only extrapolate backward to conclude that at some point in the distant past, all matter very close together. It's obvious. Yet no matter how reasonable it sounds, some things just don't add up – things like the flatness problem or the horizon problem. There's also the unsettling coincidence that we appear to be at the very center of the universe. Never mind there are still many other difficulties I don't have time to discuss.

To be certain, scientists have “explanations” for all these things. They invent exotic theories to explain their failed predictions. It's like epicycles all over again. However, unlike epicycles, we can't test these fanciful cosmologies as easily. Scientists say that there really is no center of the universe and it would look basically the same from any vantage point. Really? How do we test that? We can't even fly to the next star, let alone a star millions of light years away, to see how the universe looks from there. We only know what the universe looks like from our vantage point.

The Big Bang theory is simply a modern version of Ptolemy. It might seem reasonable at first but it is completely contrary to reality and can only be kept afloat by continuously invoking very unreasonable sub-theories. These sub-theories, though, lie outside scientific inquiry. They can't really be observed or tested. They aren't as much theories as they are stories. Secular scientists believe them not because the scientific evidence for them is overwhelming but because they refuse to consider the alternative.

The “Distant Starlight Problem” may not even be a problem after all

If anyone were to ask me, “What is the most effective argument to use against young earth creationism?,” I would have to say it's the distant starlight problem. Actually, it's the only objection that even gives me pause. No other argument that I've ever heard in the support of atheism, evolution, or Big Bang cosmology has earned a second thought from me. The only problem I have with any of them is that, it's a big worldwide web and I haven't been able to respond to them all yet. But the distant starlight problem... it's like an itch that I've never been able to scratch.

For anyone not familiar with the problem, let me give you a quick thumbnail of what we're talking about. Genesis 1:14-16 says, “And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so. And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.” If God intended the stars to be for signs and seasons, it makes sense that Adam could already see them. However, some of the stars are very, very, very far away. The distance to stars is measured in units called light-years. Even though a light-year sounds like a measure of time, it's actually a measure of distance – it's the distance light can travel in 1 year, approximately 5.879 trillion miles. We've estimated the speed of light to be 186,000mi/s (the speed of light is represented by the letter, c), so if a star were 10 million light-years away, it should, theoretically, take the light from that star 10 million years to reach us. But if the earth is only 6,000 years old, how can we see the light from that star? //RKBentley scratches his head//

The first thought most people have is that God simply made the star with its light already shining on the earth. This has been called the, “Light in Transit” solution. The problem with that solution is that we sometimes see astronomical events occurring in the skies. We may see a supernova, for example, happening 50 million light-years away but we shouldn't be able to see the supernova until 50 million years after it happened. Did God create a beam of light, that would shine for 6,000 years, and would eventually reveal the nova of a star that never really existed? That hardly seems likely. If the universe is only 6,000 years old, how could the light of a real supernova travel 50 million light-years of distance in only 6,000 years of time and allow us to see it? That's the distant starlight problem!

The distant starlight problem has caused many Christians to doubt the clear words of the Bible. It has even led to the apostasy of some. To them, the science must be true, the universe must be old, so the Bible must be wrong. How sad. What a lot of these same people don't know is that even the Big Bang model has it's own time/distance problem called the Horizon Problem. I can discuss the Horizon Problem in another post, but the fact that old and young universe models have a time/distance problem suggests there is something about the way light travels that we just haven't figured out yet. There's certainly no need to reject the Bible because of it!

In the past, I've talked about my preference for Dr. Russell Humphreys' White Hole Cosmology. I still probably lean toward that theory but, again, I'll have to discuss it in another post because there's another theory that I haven't discussed before. Just recently, I came across a video that opened my eyes to the possibility of a solution that, frankly, I had been dismissive of in the past – namely, that the one-way speed of light is merely a convention. I'm going to link the video below but let me try to explain it in my own words.

Most people would be surprised to learn that we've never thought of a means to measure the one-way speed of light. Speed is usually determined by the distance traveled divided by the time it took (s=d/t). There are some problems, though, when you try to do this with the speed of light. For example, you might try setting up a mile long track with a clock at the end and fire a laser toward the clock, then see how long it takes for the laser to reach the clock. The problem is, how does the clock know when to start counting? Well, you could run a wire from the laser to the clock that would tell the clock when to start; the problem with this solution, though, is that the signal would travel along the wire at the speed of light and wouldn't reach the clock until the laser did! What a pickle. You may be thinking of other ways to try but, before you get ahead of yourself, I should warn you that the video below already deals with the problems with any solution you could probably think of.

The only way we've been able to measure the speed of light is to shoot a laser at a mirror, which then reflects it back to a clock at the start. This way, we know with certainty when the laser was fired and when the laser hit the clock – so we can calculate the time it took to travel the distance to the mirror and back. Yet this isn't the one-way speed of light; it's the two-way speed of light, the time it took to travel both directions. What if light travels at one speed in one direction, and a different speed in another direction? It doesn't matter what speed the light travels either way as long as the entire trip averages out to c. Light could even travel at ½ c in one direction, then instantly in the reverse direction and we would never know it!

This isn't some crackpot idea thought up by creationists. Einstein wrote about this more than 100 years ago where he said that the time it takes light to travel from A to B, will be assumed to be the same time it takes to travel from B to A. In other words, the one way speed of light is a convention, merely a definition we all agree to.

While I was watching the video, my interest was piqued at about 14:02 when the video made the following comments:

Einstein chose the convention where the one way speed of light is always the same. But from an experimental perspective, any other convention is just as valid, up to and including one where the speed of light is c/2 one way and instantaneous the other way. And in that case, it's interesting to think about what each observer is seeing when they look at the other. Mark [a hypothetical observer on Mars] would be seeing the earth as it was 20 minutes ago but earth is seeing Mars in real time, exactly as it is right now. And this effect wouldn't stop at Mars. Look behind it, and you could see stars hundreds of light-years away – not as they looked centuries ago but exactly as they are right this instant.

I'm sure the farthest thing from Veritasium's mind is solving the distant starlight problem for young-earth creationists. They will probably hate me for even using their video while discussing my theory. But if the speed of light toward earth is instantaneous, then there is no distant starlight problem!

Now, skeptics may be asking, Why? Why should we believe the speed of light is different in different directions? Well, there are a lot of things we're still trying to figure out about the universe. If we could solve this piece of the puzzle, it could unlock the other mysteries that elude us. The video describes it this way (beginning at 16:39):

Maybe this is an odd quirk of the universe and there's no good reason for it. Or maybe, when physics takes the next paradigmatic leap, our inability to measure the one-way speed of light will be the obvious clue to the way general relativity, quantum mechanics, space, and time are all connected and we'll wonder why we didn't see it before.

We should never wed ourselves to a scientific theory. Our minds are wicked, our understanding is finite, and our hearts are deceitful and continuously rebel against God. Theories we think are true now, may someday go the way of blood-letting and geocentrism. Only the word of God is sure. Still, I can't help but to think that, as we accumulate knowledge, we are getting closer to the truth. Psalm 19:1 says, “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.” When I look at the night sky, I can see there are a lot of stars. I can see the universe is big. But is that all there is to it – a big bunch of space with a lot of balls of burning gas? I don't think so. There may be no end to its complexity and the more we learn about the universe, the more I stand it awe of the infinite mind that created it!