I did find all your thoughts interesting. But to focus on this, which as to my understanding is still the strongest evidence in some way for an old universe. But maybe we cannot even begin to speak about what we think "old" means.
The idea that God should create light on its way is of course ridiculous. I cannot think that God should need to cover up his tracks.
However, oddly enough, going even further out, with the hubble space telescope, I read that they see now galaxies at a distance of 20B light years or something. And these are not baby galaxies but fully developed galaxies. So maybe the idea that looking far into space will also provide a view back in time, must take a hit.
There is a sentence in book of psalms, that God "stretches out the heavens". I think, some of my questions are
- is speed of light really as constant as we want it to be?
- how would one in scientific terms describe the stretching of the heavens? And could it be observable?
What everyone has to get very humble about, is all the theories etc. are based upon electromagnetic radiation hitting the earth and how it is interpreted. So red shift to mean distance travelled is a speculative idea. Or take the idea that light could start from a galaxy 100,000 light years away. Now as the universe expanded the distance between us and the travelling light increased faster than the light was travelling so that 100,000 light years becomes 25 billion light years. For this to be true we have to be moving away from the initial point of emission faster than the speed of light. But for the light to catch up with us, we have to have slowed down again.
Now the theories say it is impossible to travel faster than the speed of light, relative to another object. The excuse is space was created between us and the light, so we were not travelling through space, but space was coming into existence so the affect is we moved away beyond the speed of light. This sounds like an excuse for an impossible situation.
Worse still it is easy to say vast space was created between us, while we were not blown apart by the space growing across our bodies. The problem is there is no difference in space between that is occupied by matter and that occupied by a vacuum.
The problem with simplified mathematics, the approximate equations can make sense but when applied they fail to account for complexity and subtle differences.
And to cap it all, none of this matters. In our lifetimes we are never going to get to the nearest star.
And the forces involved are so vast even our fusion bombs are a grain of sand to the planet. It is like the search for intelligent life in outer space. All we see is a totally aggressive and destructive environment everywhere except within our atmosphere. We are currently the only unique stable environment that can support life. The more we look it seems the less likely we will find any alternatives. And why do people fund looking? Because they believe it must be there and they want to prove evolution ie a religion is real. I do not believe in evolution, but I believe God the creator did not tell us everything or limits what might be, but invites us to explore.
As Christians I would like to answer a different question. Why did God create the universe as we see it? There is something very profound going on here, to do with His vastness and our limitations.
Hitch Hikers guide to the galaxy had a weapon called the total perspective vortex, which was designed to destroy someone by showing them their insignificance compared to the universe. I would say part of knowing God is knowing this reality and knowing God gives us His value through Jesus, which takes us and makes us unbelievably blessed and valued and important because of Him. So love does matter, life is a beautiful expression of Gods heart.
God bless you
