If the fossil record is wrong and the world is 6000yrs old

[thatoneguy]

I've seen a lot of creationists arguing that radiometric dating is wrong for one reason or another, and that the fossil record is actually just a byproduct of a global flood or some such. Well, that's all dandy, but if the Earth is less than 6000 years old, then why are able to see stars that are light years away?

Do you deny the speed of light?

Perhaps you believe that these stars are actually much closer than they appear, and we measured wrong?

Or were they created millions (or in some cases billions) of years ago, well before the Earth?

Does light somehow reach us faster when the source is farther away?

I could come up with these hypotheses all day, but quite frankly there isn't a single reason to assume any of them. If someone wants to explain this part of the young Earth theory to me I think I've done plenty to give you some ideas to brainstorm with.

So, once again, given a model of a universe that is approximately 6000 years of age, how do you explain the observation of distant stars?

[Bio-logical]

Playing devil's advocate here - or perhaps the other end of the spectrum would be more appropriate...

If God is omnipotent, which is obviously evident in everything He created, then he would not only have been able to create the stars in the sky, but also create the light that emanated from them retroactively so that it reached Earth. God would have created the Earth in the same way that he created Adam and Eve, with enough age to already function normally.

Prove me wrong.

[bernee51]

Playing devil's advocate here - or perhaps the other end of the spectrum would be more appropriate...

If God is omnipotent, which is obviously evident in everything He created, then he would not only have been able to create the stars in the sky, but also create the light that emanated from them retroactively so that it reached Earth. God would have created the Earth in the same way that he created Adam and Eve, with enough age to already function normally.

Prove me wrong.

This is known as the Omphalos Hypothesis or Last-Thursdayism, which has its very own church

[thatoneguy]

Playing devil's advocate here - or perhaps the other end of the spectrum would be more appropriate...

If God is omnipotent, which is obviously evident in everything He created, then he would not only have been able to create the stars in the sky, but also create the light that emanated from them retroactively so that it reached Earth. God would have created the Earth in the same way that he created Adam and Eve, with enough age to already function normally.

Prove me wrong.

Fair enough. Does that mean he also created us with the light of distant stars already reaching us? If so, are we looking at an imaginary version of what those stars would have looked like when they were younger, or the stars exactly how they were created? If it's exactly as they were created, then how are we seeing them change or move, when such changes would still take millions of years to reach us? Or, if its just an imaginary version of what they'd look like in the past, why would God waste time making an imaginary past that never happened?

After all, most people that "scientifically" argue for creationism (and those are the people I'm curious about, not fundamentalists) deny radiometric dating on the fact that it the information was misinterpreted, not on the basis that God tried to fool us. Saying God created the universe with an imaginary past barely qualifies as pseudoscience. I'm sure answers in genesis might be helpful. Or osteng maybe?

[Bio-logical]

Playing devil's advocate here - or perhaps the other end of the spectrum would be more appropriate...

If God is omnipotent, which is obviously evident in everything He created, then he would not only have been able to create the stars in the sky, but also create the light that emanated from them retroactively so that it reached Earth. God would have created the Earth in the same way that he created Adam and Eve, with enough age to already function normally.

Prove me wrong.

This is known as the Omphalos Hypothesis or Last-Thursdayism, which has its very own church

I was unaware that this had a name, but I was really just regurgitating things I have heard in the past anyway. I am an atheist, just giving the answers I have been given. The problem is, there is no way to prove that it is untrue and therefore the debate is lost before it began. If I say my god created everything on the planet last Thursday and gave it a history, gave you your memories and created everything with age, it is an entirely possible situation that would be impossible to disprove. It is also extremely unlikely...

[McCulloch]

This is known as the Omphalos Hypothesis or Last-Thursdayism, which has its very own church

And their own schisms and heretics, known as Last Wednesdayism .

However, the point is that this kind of thinking can lead to believers justification to ignore any particular evidence they find inconvenient. Science and logical thought would be completely undermined.

[thatoneguy]

Okay, well, I decided to take my own advice and check up on AiG. Here's what I got:

http://www.answersingenesis.org/article ... ight-prove

Interesting read. First, they admit that it's very unlikely that the speed of light is wrong or changed, because its implications would be far too immense. They say the same thing about star distance, since denying that would basically amount to denying geometry.

Next is their only real point, in my opinion. They briefly explain their interpretation of the theory of relativity, then go on to talk about how time could have passed differently for the rest of the universe then it did for us. I am no physicist, so I probably can't properly deny their scientific claims (although as far as I can tell their main goal is to make their language so confusing you have no hope but to agree).

Although, I can ask how, exactly, it helps their case when they argue that:

Since time can flow at different rates from different points of view, events that would take a long time as measured by one person will take very little time as measured by another person. This also applies to distant starlight. Light that would take billions of years to reach earth (as measured by clocks in deep space) could reach earth in only thousands of years as measured by clocks on earth.

Sure, if correct it would prove the scientific consensus wrong, but how would it do anything to help the argument that god created the universe less than 6000 years ago? It may work for an Earth that is 6000 years old, but not a universe that is. They admit that time, despite seeming like it is different from an outside perspective, always seems to pass the same from the perspective of the one experiencing it. So, we'd experience 6000 years here on Earth, but the rest of the universe would have been going much faster so the light could reach us in time. Therefore, from the outside universe's perspective, time would have taken much longer, and it'd be much older than the Earth. Their argument is scientific gibberish and it still manages not to help their point.

Then they talk about synchronization. This is an interesting one because, behind all its intentional complexity (again, I presume, to confuse readers into agreement), it actually doesn't argue anything. They give the example of time zones:

Imagine that a plane leaves a certain city at 4:00 p.m. for a two-hour flight. However, when the plane lands, the time is still 4:00. Since the plane arrived at the same time it left, we might call this an instantaneous trip. How is this possible? The answer has to do with time zones. If the plane left Kentucky at 4:00 p.m. local time, it would arrive in Colorado at 4:00 p.m. local time. Of course, an observer on the plane would experience two hours of travel. So, the trip takes two hours as measured by universal time. However, as long as the plane is traveling west (and providing it travels fast enough), it will always naturally arrive at the same time it left as measured in local time.

How any of this applies to their argument I simply don't get. If the stars are the starting points, and we are the finish, and the light makes the journey, doesn't this prove exactly what they are arguing against? The time has actually passed, but it appears to be the same. Then there's their last example:

Since God created the stars on Day 4, their light would leave the star on Day 4 and reach earth on Day 4 cosmic local time. Light from all galaxies would reach earth on Day 4 if we measure it according to cosmic local time.

This pretty much says that the stars were created years ago, but their light reached us on day 4 of creation. If this were accurate, wouldn't it just be proof that the universe was created well before the Earth?

Then there's the whole "the scientific method can't always be trusted" stuff that creationists like. It's hardly worth a rebuttal, but I'll suffice it to say that naturalism may, in actually, turn out to be wrong, but its still logically extraneous to assume that it is and we have no way of knowing what the truth is outside of naturalism anyway.

Their last bit of argument once again goes into stuff I'm not qualified to comment on. It basically argues that science makes baseless assumptions and so they can't criticize creationism for doing that. I didn't follow their explanation of "the horizontal problem," but I presume that I wasn't meant to. When they posed an argument I could follow (the time zone one) it proved sort of stupid. I'll let someone who understands physics better than I rebut this, since any argument I give would likely be as uninformed as AiG's.

In the end, it seems like they're arguing that the Earth is 6000 years old, and the rest of the universe is actually billions of years old. Interesting application of relativity, but I thought it was the universe, not just the Earth alone, that was created in 7 days.

PS, does anyone else see this irony?:

Many secular astronomers assume that the universe is infinitely big and has an infinite number of galaxies. This has never been proven, nor is there evidence that would lead us naturally to that conclusion. So, it is a leap of blind faith on their part. However, if we make a different assumption instead, it leads to a very different conclusion. Suppose that our solar system is located near the center of a finite distribution of galaxies. Although this cannot be proven for certain at present, it is fully consistent with the evidence; so it is a reasonable possibility.

[T-mash]

Playing devil's advocate here - or perhaps the other end of the spectrum would be more appropriate...

If God is omnipotent, which is obviously evident in everything He created, then he would not only have been able to create the stars in the sky, but also create the light that emanated from them retroactively so that it reached Earth. God would have created the Earth in the same way that he created Adam and Eve, with enough age to already function normally.

Prove me wrong.

This is known as the Omphalos Hypothesis or Last-Thursdayism, which has its very own church

What a beautiful example of Poe's Law if you didn't add that winking smiley

[Bio-logical]

Playing devil's advocate here - or perhaps the other end of the spectrum would be more appropriate...

If God is omnipotent, which is obviously evident in everything He created, then he would not only have been able to create the stars in the sky, but also create the light that emanated from them retroactively so that it reached Earth. God would have created the Earth in the same way that he created Adam and Eve, with enough age to already function normally.

Prove me wrong.

This is known as the Omphalos Hypothesis or Last-Thursdayism, which has its very own church

What a beautiful example of Poe's Law if you didn't add that winking smiley

That is why I chose specifically the winking smily, a little nod to Poe.

[xcept]

Hi.

First, no Christian can argue the whole theory that God make a fake past of billions of supposed years or made the earth and universe seem old. Because that is contradictory to Gods true nature. He does not deceive us. He is the same always. Just as Satan can do nothing but deceive us.

(Sidenote: love is something that must be given by the person, it cannot be force from anyone. The kidnapper cannot force the kidnapped to love them. God is love and he requires us to love him in return. If there were no other options other than believing in God, then would it still be love? If you didn't need faith to serve and love God then would it truly be love or merely like breathing air? I love air. Because I know what its like not to have air. But does it mean I really love air, or just need air?)

As the bible states, first thing that existed was water. Then God created light and light was everywhere at once. Remember god did not create time until the separation of light from darkness. Light filled the expanse instantly because there was only eternity.

In my personal opinion, I know that we never see light travelling to us from anywhere, just the end result. If light is already everywhere, then it doesn't need to travel at all it just is. Perhaps the exploding stars we can view are happening in the present? Because light has already illuminated the universe?

God is omnipotent, he would've foreknew everything about us from before creation, he would know what could pull us away from him, knowing we have a choice to find and love him. He gave us enough proof to establish faith in him and trust him, but also the temptations as well. Only way to show love is to have another choice of what to love. I choose not to be deceived, no matter how great the temptation is.