Young Earth? Stars are Light Years Away

I just got a weird idea. Please be warned it just popped into my head so feel free to debunk it with FACTS.

what if a short distance away (less than 1000 ly) there is a layer in the milky way galaxy that contains a lot of gas and forms an ellipse following the shape of the milky way. It would look like images were coming from a different place than they actually were due to the angle of the gas layer and the index of refraction of the gas. Kind of like when you stick a pencil in water and the pencil looks broken. so where we think a star is is not its actual location. This might also contribute to the blur of images from stars far away.

---Pineapple

What kind of gas can distort star light from the entire universe?

anything that had a different index of refraction than what we accounted for would bend any light that passed through it. If this "bubble" encompassed the earth, any stars we looked at would be viewed through this different material, much like looking through a sheet of thick plastic.

---Pineapple

I think it's safe to say that if this were the case, we would be aware of it. Remember, humans are kinda smart.

Zip

Questions like this are very very interesting, but , they can also become a stumbling block. People would like to have the answers to questions immediately, but it doesn't always work that way. Did God create light on it's way, or did light travel faster in ages past. It would be interesting to know right now.

Place your faith in Jesus Christ and someday you will have the answers to all your questions.

[edit on 16-9-2005 by dbrandt]

We do know right now.. E=Mc2. This equation is not something that has suddenly been thrown into question because it contradicts a myth. Are oldearthers going to try rewrite Einstein as well? Time will tell.

God is above His creation and can suspend some of what He has created. Jesus ascended to heaven defying gravity. The sun stood still for Joshua and the earth's rotation reversed for Hezekiah.

Yes that science really does challenge the theory of relativity. Well done.. of course this would mean that the planet os only 6000 years old and is orbited by the sun. I see no reason why I should accept either of your examples as fact anymore than I would believe that umpalupas are being used as slave labour in chocolate factories.

Be that as it may, there are substantial arguements for "intelligent" universal design that cannot be so simply dismissed. Please avoid such ungainful summaries. They benefit nobody.

Zip

Actually they disuade people from saying "God can change the laws of physics so it doesn't have to make scientific sense." There may be substantial arguments for intelligent design [eg fractel theory] but that wasn't one of them.. please post any others you can think of [that do not rely on the bible for credibilty] and I will consider them seriously.

[edit on 17-9-2005 by riley]

Well, if the star is X light years away from us and is Y years old while Earth is Z years and if Y is larger then X while Z is smaller then both then the light would be shown on us even if the Earth wasn't there to "see" it. Hey math can be useful! Dang it teach was right, better apologize on monday.

Y>X>Z I think that is how the teach would put it.

Its been scientifically proven that time is a property of the universe. Time moves forward at different speeds depending on speed of an object and its mass. As such a property, it is also part of the universe's creation. Therefore, the one who created the universe (God) is outside of this time and is unaffected by it. It is silly to point at Genesis and insist a "day" is a literal day, especially when a day doesn't really mean much of anything to a creator that does not directly experience our days. Perhaps God has his own timeline above/separate from ours, or perhaps everything just happens "all at once" to him. Who knows, no way to tell from our perspective and its not my problem. Regardless, he obviously would not be bound by our timeline since it came into existence along with the universe.

The Bible even says "a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years like one day". Obviously such a statement would not be possible except for someone who is outside of our space/time and not bound by it.

So, its silly to hold God to our literal "days".

I don't believe the creator of everything would deceive us by on purposely building the universe with an aged appearance, or by accelerating light or starting it in mid-flight, etc. Nor would he have the universe set up in such a way that our best most-reasoned analysis of it brings us to the conclusion that its really big and really old... but its actually small and young and if we don't believe its small and young despite everything we see with our own eyes (which he created too) then we all go to hell. No, that'd be wrong. It'd be evil. God's not evil, and if he were, then we're all screwed and we're just wasting our time here until we die.

The Bible holds God to "our literal days." (Genesis 1:5) Are you saying that the Bible is silly, or that our interpretation of the Bible is silly?



This is in reference to how a day feels in the presence of God (2 Peter 3:8). It's along the same lines as the phrase, "time flies when you're having fun."



So are you saying that the Bible is dishonest, or are you saying that it can't be taken literally?

Zip