Are Stars Forming — Really?

We frequently hear from secular astronomers about star formation in molecular clouds. No kidding? How long does it take? Oh, tens of millions of years if you accept deep-time cogitating. Fact is, nobody has ever seen a star form. That doesn't stop the cosmic evolutionists from stating their opinions as fact, thought. One creationist astronomer has the essential attitude of, "So what? Even if stars did form, they're using existing materials, and stars are not all that complex anyway". Seems reasonable to me.

Secular astronomers and their religious sympathizers claim that they can see stars forming. This involves massive conjecture, assumptions, and defying the laws of physics.
Circinus Molecular Cloud Complex image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / UCLA
The years have not been kind to star formation proponents. They still have to find ways to defy the laws of physics, and give some kind of plausibility for their uniformitarian ideas. Why is this so difficult? Because science does not support the Big Bang, deep time, or cosmic evolution. Instead, science supports recent creation.
In almost any standard university astrophysics text you will find a chapter on star formation. Stars are alleged to have formed, and still do form, from giant clouds of molecular hydrogen gas. That is the standard party line. Thus it follows from standard big bang thinking that they were not created by the Creator on the fourth day of Creation week as outlined in Genesis 1, but naturally condensed out of gas (and dust) under the force of gravity only.

Nowadays you can read about dark matter as the seeds of the formation of galaxies and hence stars. But dark matter is still just a hypothetical substance. So how does star formation stack up without invoking such stuff? What physics can explain the alleged collapse of giant molecular clouds (GMC) to form stars? What were/are the typical explanations for star formation when dark matter was/is not assumed? And what unprovable uniformitarian assumptions are required?

To discover the answer to these questions I went to (and hence I quote extensively from) a standard 1996 first year university astrophysics text “An Introduction to Modern Astrophysics” (1st Edition) by Carroll & Ostlie, hereafter referred to as Carroll & Ostlie. I also looked at what the authors might have added in terms of overcoming some of the problems for star formation, a decade later, in their 2nd Edition, and found no substantive improvements.
To finish reading, click on "Giant molecular clouds — A look at uniformitarian assumptions in star formation".