Special Relativity and Creation: A Brief Overview

At the turn of the last century, there was a revolution in physics from classical physics to modern physics. Modern physics relies upon twin pillars—quantum mechanics and relativity theory. In an earlier article, I briefly reviewed quantum mechanics. There are two forms of relativity theory—special relativity and general relativity. In this article, I will review special relativity; in a future article, I intend to review general relativity.

Aristotelian Relativity vs. Galilean Relativity

Mechanics is the area of physics used to study motion. Relativity is used to compare the motions of objects from different locations. Suppose that I drive an automobile on a straight, level highway at a speed of 60 mph. That speed expresses how fast I am traveling with respect to the highway, which we typically assume is not moving. Suppose that another automobile travels at 50 mph on the same highway. What is the relative motion between the two automobiles? It depends on which direction the vehicles are going. If the two vehicles are moving in the same direction, then the relative velocity is 60 mph − 50 mph = 10 mph. One could assign positive or negative signs to this relative velocity by establishing which direction on the highway is positive and asking which car is used as the reference. For instance, if I were to measure the velocity of the second automobile from my automobile, I might determine the other automobile’s velocity to be +10 mph. But using the same conventions, the driver of the other automobile would measure my velocity to be -10 mph. What if the two automobiles are moving in opposite directions on the highway? Then the relative velocity would be 110 mph. If the two drivers observe the same sign conventions as before, then one measured velocity would be +110 mph, and the other measured velocity would be -110 mph.

Let us consider another example, a sailing ship moving at a constant velocity. Suppose that a sailor atop the mast dropped a rock. Where would the rock land? Aristotle said that during the time the rock dropped, the ship would move forward, causing the rock to hit the deck some distance behind the mast. That is, though the rock shared in the motion of the ship prior to being dropped, once the sailor dropped the rock, the rock no longer shared in the ship’s motion. To make this situation more concrete, suppose that the ship is moving 5 feet per second and it takes two seconds for the rock to drop. According to Aristotle, the rock would strike the deck 10 feet behind the mast. If you consider this a reasonable expectation, consider a more extreme example, an airliner traveling at 550 mph with respect to the ground. If an object is dropped aboard the aircraft, will it be left behind by the aircraft as it falls? If that were the case, then it would be impossible to pour a drink aboard an airplane.

Obviously, objects dropped aboard vehicles moving at a constant rate are not left behind as Aristotle taught, yet people in the West believed this for two millennia. Around 1600, Galileo challenged several Aristotelian teachings, including this one. Apparently, Galileo tested this teaching by watching how objects fall in vehicles moving at a constant rate, something that few people, if anyone, had done before. This shift from Aristotelian relativity to Galilean relativity ushered in a profound change in physics.

This shift from Aristotelian relativity to Galilean relativity ushered in a profound change in physics.

Inertial Reference Frames vs. Non-Inertial Reference Frames

A few decades later, Isaac Newton expanded upon Galilean relativity. Newton formulated his three laws of motion that describe how objects move under the influence of forces. We usually study the motion of bodies with Newtonian mechanics from a stationary coordinate system where we measure positions, velocities, and accelerations of the bodies. Such a coordinate system is called a reference frame. Suppose that two physicists are at rest with one another but are at different locations. The two physicists have different reference frames, so they will measure different positions of objects. But one could transform the positions measured by one physicist to the reference frame of the other physicist by knowing the difference in position of the two reference frames.

What if the two physicists were to observe the motion of an object undergoing acceleration due to a force applied to it? Velocity is a change in position divided by the change in time. The change in time will be the same for the two physicists. While the positions measured by the two physicists will be different, the measured changes in position will be the same. Therefore, the velocity of the object measured by the two physicists will be the same. Acceleration is the change in velocity divided by the change in time. Since the two physicists will measure the same velocity, the measured change in velocity will be the same, so the acceleration they measure will be the same. Therefore, it doesn’t matter which reference frame one uses—if the reference frames are at rest with respect to one another, the mechanics will be the same. Therefore, we say that mechanics is invariant with respect to reference frames that are at rest.

What about reference frames that are moving with respect to stationary reference frames? It depends upon whether that reference frame is accelerating. Suppose a third physicist moves at a constant rate (say, in a passing vehicle) with respect to the first two physicists. The positions and velocities that the third physicist measures will be different from the stationary physicists. But if one knows the velocity of the moving physicist, one can transform his measured positions and velocities to those of the stationary physicists. The differences in velocity measurements will be the same, so the accelerations observed will be the same. Again, we say that mechanics is invariant with respect to reference frames that are at rest or in constant motion.

What if we reverse the situation, conducting the experiment in a constantly moving reference frame, say in a moving train car? A physicist in the train car and a physicist standing alongside the railroad track who is looking through the windows of the car will describe the situation the same. Again, mechanics is invariant with respect to reference frames, whether it is the lab setup that is moving or the physicist that is moving, provided that the motion is constant.

In each of these situations, one can apply Newton’s three laws of motion to describe the motion and acceleration of objects. Application of these laws allows all observers at rest or in constant motion to determine that the same forces are acting on the objects being studied. However, the situation is very different if another physicist moves at a nonuniform rate with respect to the other physicists. Because this physicist is accelerating, he will see the objects under study undergo additional accelerations that the other physicists will not see and, hence, will decide that additional forces are acting on those objects that the other physicists will not recognize.

We can consider two examples of this odd behavior. One example is a flight attendant wearing roller skates on an airliner while standing in the aisle as the aircraft accelerates to take off. The passengers aboard the aircraft will see the flight attendant accelerate down the aisle, even though there is no force acting on her as required for acceleration in Newton’s second law of motion (F = ma, where F is force, m is mass, and a is acceleration). On the other hand, a stationary observer outside the aircraft watching through the windows will see the flight attendant standing still while the aircraft accelerates around her. Why the difference?

Before answering that question, consider another example, a convertible driving on a curve on a highway. The driver of the convertible will observe loose items in the car slide to the outside of the curve. When we experience this outward sliding motion, we attribute it to centrifugal force. Meanwhile, a worker on a bucket truck above the convertible will observe the loose items move in a straight line as the car turns underneath them, with no need to invoke centrifugal force (a fictitious force).

The difference in both examples is that the frames of reference of the observers inside the vehicles were accelerating, while the frames of reference of the observers outside the vehicles were not accelerating. This acceleration produces a force on the observers moving with the accelerating reference frames. In the example of the accelerating aircraft, the passengers felt themselves shoved back into their seats, while in the example of the convertible on a curve, the driver feels the forces of the car on his body, say by his seat belt, that prevent him from sliding across the seat as the car turns. One can use Newtonian mechanics to describe the things observed in an accelerated frame of reference only by adding additional forces that observers in unaccelerated reference frames do not experience. But those additional forces are impositions that depend upon how much acceleration the reference frame is undergoing. Reference frames that do not require such additions (i.e., are not accelerating) are said to be inertial reference frames, while accelerating reference frames are said to be non-inertial reference frames. Physicists say that mechanics is invariant with respect to inertial reference frames, meaning that any inertial reference frame is as good as any other inertial reference frame to describe motion and acceleration. One can describe motion and acceleration in non-inertial reference frames, but that results in invoking fictitious forces, such as centrifugal force. Knowing how a non-inertial reference frame is moving, one can transform between inertial and non-inertial reference frames. Sometimes it is advantageous to describe motion in non-inertial reference frames using this transformation (e.g., when analyzing the motion of objects inside a rotating system, such as a spinning carousel).

There is only one accelerating frame of reference that is locally equivalent to an inertial reference frame. In free fall under the influence of gravity, mechanics is invariant (i.e., objects experience no net force, absent other forces like air resistance, and so the effects of gravity within that frame are indistinguishable from being in an inertial frame). This is a consequence of inertial mass, as defined by Newton’s second law of motion, being identical to gravitational mass, as defined by Newton’s law of gravity:

Where M and m are the masses of the two bodies undergoing mutual gravitational force, F, and r is the distance between the centers of mass of the two bodies.

There is no reason why inertial mass and gravitational mass are the same, but they are observed and experimentally verified to be the same. We call the equality of gravitational and inertial masses the equivalence principle. As we shall see in a subsequent article about general relativity, the equivalence principle is very important in the development of general relativity. However, as I show in the next article, the equivalence principle also is important in avoiding some misconceptions about special relativity.

There is a strong design implication here. If inertial mass and gravitational mass were not the same, then there would be no stable orbits. It is gravity that provides the centripetal (center-seeking) force that makes orbital motion possible. If an orbiting body (a satellite) has sufficient speed perpendicular to the force of gravity, then the body continually falls as it moves around the earth. The amount of gravitational force is proportional to the gravitational mass. But what if the inertial mass, the amount of acceleration the object experiences as the result of the gravitational force, is not the same as its gravitational mass? Let the ratio of the inertial mass to the gravitational mass be k and the orbital period of a satellite be T; then, one can show using mechanics that T is proportional to √(kr³). Consider an astronaut on a space walk outside the International Space Station (ISS). Both orbit at the same distance, r, from the earth’s center of mass. But the mass of the ISS is more than the astronaut’s mass. Therefore, the ISS and astronaut will not orbit the earth within the same period, with one leaving the other behind (which one is left behind depends upon whether the inertial mass is greater than the gravitational mass or the gravitational mass is greater than the inertial mass). Only if the two types of masses are the same are stable orbits possible. Some readers may recognize that if k = 1, the relationship between T and r becomes Kepler’s third law of planetary motion (the square of the orbital period is directly proportional to the cube of the semimajor axis of the orbit).

In this discussion, I have avoided the question of how we know what is moving and what is not moving. It seems built into our psyche that there must be an absolute standard of rest against which all motion can be expressed. Perhaps it is because all our experience is on earth, which appears to be terra firma, but is it? Anyone who has driven an automobile with a manual transmission has been fooled more than once at a traffic light. If the vehicle next to me appears to move, is that vehicle moving, or is my automobile moving? I have been so confused several times. There are many other examples, such as sitting in a train at a station when the train on the next track appears to move slowly (again, I have experienced this confusion). You see, the question of what is moving and what is not moving is not as simple as it seems at first. Physicists have given this much thought, and the best resolution appears to be Mach’s principle, which is more appropriately discussed in the context of general relativity, so I shall defer that discussion to when I discuss general relativity in a future article.

For now, suffice it to say that as the earth orbits the sun, the earth is in free fall. Since free fall is an inertial frame of reference, then the earth orbiting the sun provides us with an inertial reference frame. However, as the earth orbits the sun, the earth also spins on its axis. Rotation around an axis is not free fall and hence introduces non-inertial effects. Consequently, the spinning earth is not an inertial reference frame, though it is a very close approximation to an inertial reference frame. Departures from an inertial reference frame on the rotating earth are very small, too small for us to notice in most instances. The most obvious departure from an inertial reference frame is the Coriolis effect (moving objects appear to curve/deflect when observed from a rotating system like earth, which is why hurricanes/cyclones spin in different directions in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres). Except for the Coriolis effect, only the most sensitive experiments and applications (such as gyro-based measurements) must account for the spinning earth not being an inertial reference frame.

The Wave Nature of Light vs. the Particle Nature of Light

What is light? This question has been debated throughout the ages. Two distinct theories of light emerged. One theory was that light is a particle, meaning that what we perceive as light is a stream of particles emanating from the light sources. The other theory is that light is a wave, that is, a periodic disturbance in some substance, or medium. An example of a wave motion is waves kicked up by winds passing over large bodies of water. The water in a wave moves up and down, going nowhere, but the wave moves forward. Contrast that with the particle theory. If light is a particle, then the light particle moves from the point of emission of the light to the point of absorption of the light. But if light is a wave, then the light wave moves from the point of emission to the point of absorption, but no particle moves between the two points. From a classical physics perspective, these two theories are incompatible with one another (but in modern physics, they are compatible, in what we call the wave-particle duality).

At the dawn of modern science four centuries ago, there were proponents of both theories of light. Newton favored the particle theory; he called the particles of light corpuscles. Because of his stature as a scientist, Newton’s corpuscular theory was the dominant theory of light throughout the eighteenth century. However, in 1801, Thomas Young performed a crucial experiment in which he passed monochromatic (one wavelength) light through two closely spaced slits. If light is a particle, then it will pass through one slit or the other, but not both slits. However, if light is a wave, then the wave is spread out and will pass through both slits. Once the wave passes through the two slits, two new waves will appear on the other side. As these waves continue their travel forward, they will combine in an interesting way. Where the waves are both at a maximum, the waves will reinforce and produce a large displacement. But where one wave is at a maximum and the other wave is at a minimum, the two waves will cancel out, producing no displacement. This phenomenon is called interference, and it is exhibited by other waves, such as sound and water waves. Young observed a series of dark and light fringes on a screen beyond the double slit, indicating interference, something that a wave can do but a stream of particles cannot do. Therefore, for the first time, light was demonstrated to be a wave.

As with any scientific revolution, it took a few years for scientists to fully accept the result of Young’s double-slit experiment, since it required overcoming Newton’s dominant theory of light, but by the 1820s, the majority of scientists had come to embrace the wave theory of light (near universal acceptance occurred later that century, especially after Maxwell proposed his theory of light). But this raised a new question—all waves that scientists had observed required a physical medium, something that vibrated as the waves passed through it, so what is the medium of light? On the earth, the medium for light could be the air around us (which later turned out to be a false assumption), but scientists also had come to realize that space outside the earth is “empty” (from the nineteenth-century perspective; today, we know that space is not entirely empty), lacking any significant material that could act as the medium for light. So how could we see the sun, moon, and stars if there was no medium for light to travel between them and the earth? Scientists developed the theory that space was filled with some previously unknown substance that they called aether, from the ancient Greek term for the fifth element that filled heaven where the gods lived (the Roman equivalent was quintessence).

To be the medium of light, aether required some extraordinary properties that scientists had never encountered before. Aether didn’t appear to have mass. Nor did aether resist the motion of bodies, such as the planets, as they moved through it. Some also speculated that as objects moved, aether closed in behind those objects so that light could pass either way behind the moving objects. While having all these properties, aether must also have extreme (perhaps infinite) tensile strength (the resistance to breaking when a stretching force is applied) for it to act as such a good medium for light. These extreme and perhaps even contradictory properties ought to have caused scientists to pause. But again, scientists at the time were constrained by the assumption that all waves require a medium. Consequently, this made the aether a necessary theory—even with all its extreme properties.

But the situation became even more convoluted. By the middle of the nineteenth century, scientists had conducted several experiments to test the aether theory. Aether was originally conceived as being at rest, providing the absolute standard of rest that scientists largely assumed must exist. However, some experiments contradicted this idea (such as Fizeau’s experiment, in 1851, which measured the speed of light in moving water). Therefore, the aether theory was modified to allow aether to be entrained as objects moved through the aether. Some experiments indicated that this did not happen either. This realization spawned consideration of aether being partially entrained by objects as objects moved through it. This was puzzling to scientists, but the necessity of a mechanical medium was so engrained in scientists’ thinking that it was difficult to conceive of any other type of medium, thus making it difficult to think that light could propagate without one.

The most famous aether experiment was the 1887 Michelson-Morley experiment. This clever experiment employed an interferometer with two mutually perpendicular tubes, or arms, that allowed light to travel independently along both arms. An interferometer is a device used to measure the interference patterns of bright and dark fringes produced when light interferes with itself. In the Michelson-Morley experiment, monochromatic light passed through a beam splitter that divided the light into two beams, with the two beams passing through either arm of the device. A mirror at the end of either arm returned the two beams back to the beam splitter, where the two beams of light were recombined and the interference pattern observed. One arm of the interferometer was oriented parallel to the earth’s orbital motion, while the other arm was oriented perpendicular to the earth’s orbital motion. Earth’s motion through the aether would cause the path lengths of the light beam in the two arms to be different. The light in the parallel arm would take a different amount of time compared to the light in the perpendicular arm, producing a detectable shift in the interference pattern. If the arms of the interferometer were precisely the same length, then the observed interference pattern would allow calibration of the earth’s motion. However, it is impossible to make the arms so precisely the same length. To get around this problem and to account for other potential systematic errors, once Michelson and Morley observed the interference pattern, they rotated the interferometer 90 degrees so that the arm that originally was parallel to the earth’s motion was now perpendicular to the earth’s motion, and the arm that originally was perpendicular to the earth’s motion was now parallel to the earth’s motion. This was expected to produce a different interference pattern. A comparison of the two interference patterns could be used to calibrate the earth’s motion. However, to nearly everyone’s surprise, there was no difference in the observed interference patterns (null result).

What did the null result of the Michelson-Morley experiment mean? According to late-twentieth-century and now twenty-first-century geocentrists, the null result meant that the earth is not moving, and hence, it is the center of the universe. However, that apparently was not a significant response in 1887 because already there was abundant evidence for the heliocentric theory (and there still is abundant evidence)1. I will return to the discussion of geocentrists’ misunderstanding of this experiment shortly. The aether theory was so deeply ingrained that for decades, physicists attempted alterations to the aether theory to resolve the null results in terms of classical physics. For instance, Fitzgerald and Lorentz hypothesized that moving objects were compressed in the direction of motion through the aether. Thus, the arm oriented in the direction of the earth’s motion in the Michelson-Morley interferometer was shortened so that the transit times of the light in the two arms were the same. While this could explain the null result, it was ad hoc in that there was no clear physical reason (at that time) why length contraction ought to have taken place (Einstein’s theory of special relativity later provided a basis for length contraction).

The Aether vs. a Better Medium for Light

More than two decades before the Michelson-Morley experiment, developments in our understanding of electricity and magnetism paved the way for the proper understanding of the Michelson-Morley experiment. People had known about electricity and magnetism for a long time, but these two phenomena were thought of as being two different, unrelated things. However, experiments in the first half of the nineteenth century demonstrated the intimate relationship between electricity and magnetism. For instance, scientists found that moving charges produce magnetic fields and that magnetic fields accelerate moving charges. In 1865, James Clerk Maxwell published a set of equations (now reduced to four equations) that completely describes electromagnetism (as the unified theory of electricity and magnetism is now called).

However, experiments in the first half of the nineteenth century demonstrated the intimate relationship between electricity and magnetism.

Maxwell’s theory was built on field theory, a very powerful way of looking at some physical phenomena. Newton was bothered by gravity operating across empty space. Other forces that we encounter require direct contact, but gravity does not operate that way. To answer how gravity could work between objects without any physical contact between the objects, physicists proposed that the presence of a large mass, such as the earth, alters space around it. This alteration of space is a field. A field has magnitude and direction at every point in space. In the case of gravity, another mass moving through the field of another mass moves in accordance with that field. In the case of the earth, its gravitational force is directed downward toward the earth’s center, thus objects fall downward, the direction of the gravitational field. Near the earth’s surface, the magnitude of the gravitational force is 9.8 m/s² = 32 ft/s², but the field strength decreases with increasing elevation.

In Maxwell’s theory, a charge produces an electric field in the space around the charge. Other charges within this field are accelerated by an amount determined by the strength of the field and in the direction of the field, as well as the amount of those charges. One difference between gravitational fields and electric fields is that gravitational fields go only one direction, but since charges come in two types, positive and negative, electric fields can go either direction. Similarly, a moving charge produces a magnetic field. Moving charges passing through the magnetic field undergo a force dictated by the magnitude and direction of the magnetic field. A permanent magnet in the presence of a magnetic field will align opposite the magnetic field.

In his paper, Maxwell solved his equations simultaneously, which resulted in a wave. The solution indicated that the electric and magnetic fields were perpendicular to one another. Two perpendicular lines define a plane. The electric and magnetic fields simultaneously oscillate, or vibrate, in this plane. As the fields oscillate, a wave propagates in a direction perpendicular to the plane. The predicted speed of the wave closely matched the measured speed of light—a groundbreaking discovery. In his paper, Maxwell wrote:

“The agreement of the results seems to show that light and magnetism are affections of the same substance, and that light is an electromagnetic disturbance propagated through the field according to electromagnetic laws.”2

That is, Maxwell offered to the world the true medium of light, electromagnetic waves. It is ironic that fields that describe the behavior of energy without requiring a physical medium are more aethereal (abstract) than the mechanical medium physicists at the time were entertaining and hence were a better candidate for aether. However, even Maxwell was so deeply ingrained in thinking about the aether being mechanical that he apparently had difficulty grasping how different this electromagnetic field medium was from the aether under consideration at the time. Unfortunately, Maxwell died at a relatively young age (48), eight years before the Michelson-Morley experiment. I’ve often wondered if Maxwell had lived another 20 years whether he would have taken the next step.

The next step is that, like mechanics, electromagnetism is observed to be invariant with respect to inertial reference frames. Since light is an electromagnetic phenomenon, then the speed of light must be invariant with respect to inertial reference frames. (This invariance challenged the need for a medium like the aether.) As I previously discussed, free fall is an inertial reference frame. As the earth orbits the sun, it is in free fall, so the speed of light must be constant regardless of which direction one measures the speed of light as the earth orbits the sun. If one accepts Maxwell’s description of electromagnetism, this is an inescapable conclusion. Hence, Maxwell’s electromagnetism predicted the null result of the Michelson-Morley experiment—though no one at the time realized it. In 1905, Albert Einstein was the first person to realize this, at least in print. The title of his paper, “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies,” demonstrates what Einstein’s explanation for the null result of the Michelson-Morley experiment was truly about.

Geocentrists’ Spin on the Michelson-Morley Experiment

Geocentrists claim that if the earth is orbiting the sun, then the Michelson-Morley experiment should have had a positive result. To make their point, geocentrists often bring up the positive results of the 1913 Sagnac experiment and the 1926 Michelson-Gale experiment. Both these experiments used interferometers of the same type used in the Michelson-Morley experiment. Georges Sagnac spun an interferometer on a turntable in a lab and found a fringe shift, indicating that the speed of light is not the same in different directions as the interferometer is turned. Geocentrists argue that since the Sagnac experiment showed a difference in the speed of light as the interferometer turned, then the Michelson-Morley experiment should have shown a difference in the speed of light as the earth orbited the sun. Since the Michelson-Morley experiment had a null result, geocentrists concluded that the earth must not be orbiting the sun.

The Michelson-Gale experiment employed an interferometer with its arms oriented parallel and perpendicular to the earth’s daily rotation. This interferometer was much larger than the one used in the Michelson-Morley experiment because the speed of the earth’s rotation is much less than the earth’s orbital motion and hence requires a large apparatus to measure the rotation. Like the Sagnac experiment, the result of the Michelson-Gale experiment was positive, indicating that the earth is rotating on its axis. Geocentrists argue that since an interferometer can measure the earth’s rotation, then an interferometer should be able to measure the earth’s revolution around the sun, but since the Michelson-Morley experiment had a null result, geocentrists conclude that the earth must not orbit the sun.

This demonstrates geocentrists’ ignorance/misunderstanding of special relativity. The earth’s orbital motion is an inertial reference frame, so according to special relativity, the speed of light is invariant in a reference frame that is orbiting (in free fall). However, as I previously stated, the earth’s rotational motion is not an inertial reference frame nor is a rotating reference frame in a lab. Hence, within special relativity, the speed of light in a rotating reference frame is not invariant. Once one realizes this, then one understands that special relativity correctly predicts/explains the results of all these experiments and that the earth orbits the sun.

Conclusion

There is abundant evidence for special relativity. Time dilation is a well-tested prediction of special relativity. For instance, some products of high-altitude cosmic ray collisions are very short-lived, and most of them ought to decay long before they reach the ground, yet they survive to the ground in higher numbers than can be explained apart from special relativity. These particles move very fast, close to the speed of light. At this speed, time is dilated, so the unstable particles exist longer in their frames of reference than they would exist in our frame of reference, allowing them to reach the ground. The same is true of short-lived particles produced in collisions in particle accelerator experiments—they last longer than if they were not moving at such high speeds. These results are consistent with length contraction as well, as predicted by special relativity. Special relativity also predicts that the mass of a very fast-moving particle ought to increase. This has been confirmed in cyclotrons, a type of particle accelerator. As a particle accelerates, its mass increases, causing the particle to get out of sync with the switching electromagnetic fields used to accelerate the particle. The way to get around this problem so that the particle can accelerate to higher speeds is to change the frequency at which the electromagnetic field is switched. This is done in accordance with the mass increase predicted by special relativity. The success of this approach is evidence for special relativity.

For a long time, there has been resistance to special and general relativity among recent creationists. The reasons for this rejection are not clear. Part of the resistance may stem from the misappropriation of Einsteinian relativity by moral relativists, arguing that “all things are relative,” meaning that there are no absolutes. But that is not what modern relativity states. For instance, special relativity does not view all reference frames equally, only inertial (non-accelerating) reference frames. And within inertial reference frames, there is an absolute—the speed of light. To object to special relativity on these grounds is to commit the fallacy of equivocation.

Special relativity is good science, and it does not contradict Scripture, so I urge all creationists to readily accept it.

The theory of special relativity is a consequence of Maxwell’s equations and the observation that electromagnetic phenomena are invariant with respect to inertial reference frames. If one rejects special relativity, then one must also reject Maxwell’s theory of electromagnetism. That is too high a price to pay, for I believe Maxwell’s theory of electromagnetism is the best physical theory that we have. Special relativity is good science, and it does not contradict Scripture, so I urge all creationists to readily accept it.

I hope in the future to discuss general relativity.