Answers in Genesis recently published an article entitled Anisotropic Synchrony Convention—A Solution to the Distant Starlight Problem. At first, this site might remind you of other sites based on Poe’s law (spoof sites), like Objective Ministries (a good example is one of its funnier articles that depicts half-eyed octopi). The Answers in Genesis article deals with some of the essential problems creationist scientists face, such as the distant starlight problem:
According to the Bible, everything in the universe was made in the span of six days (Exodus 20:11); these are clearly ordinary earth rotation days comprised of one evening and one morning (Genesis 1:5). Moreover, this creation happened a few thousand (roughly 6,000) years ago, as deduced from the genealogies we read in sections of the Bible such as Genesis 5 and 11. The clear biblical teaching therefore is that everything in the universe is a few thousand years old. Since light travels a distance of one light year (about 6 trillion miles or 9 trillion kilometers) in one year, it would seem that we should only be able to see objects within a radius of 6,000 light years. Objects beyond that distance should not be visible, since presumably their light has not yet reached us. Yet, paradoxically, we can see galaxies whose distances have been measured to be many billions of light years away. This apparent mystery has been often addressed in creation literature as “the distant starlight problem.”
A sane person reading this might find a lot of problems, don’t worry, creationists see problems too and the author of the article elaborates (because of his scientific integrity) on some of the problems this approach has:
But the light-in-transit model undermines the basic reliability of our senses. Consider: the light-in-transit model would mean that all events (supernovae for example—fig. 1) beyond about 6,000 light years have never happened. They would merely be a sequence of images in a beam of light created by God. These images would not correspond to any real event… But if God is willing to make movies of fictional events at distances beyond 6,000 light years, then why would we arbitrarily assume that He would not also make fictional movies nearby? (Is the tree outside my window real, or is it merely a picture embedded in light beams created by God?)
Arguments of this nature embody the ‘mental gymnastics’ that creationists undergo to maintain their beliefs regarding creationism and evolution. What is worrisome is that so many individuals who don’t believe in evolution, 25% in last year’s Gallop poll (36% with no opinion either way), hold this belief likely without giving it much thought or investigation. So why bother targeting clearly foolish people like those at Answers in Genesis, or the Creation Museum? The people who believe in creationism defer to those people as their experts and never investigate their claims. It is appalling, perhaps even dangerous, that so much of our citizenry think the Earth is 6,000 years old and furthermore that evolution is an absurd notion.
The whole notion of holding one piece of knowledge fixed (the Bible) while altering everything around it to fit is inherently anti-science.