light years

[Jet Black]

Well, as mentioned before, the light could've started reaching earth at a much closer distance, then moved away from the earth as the universe expanding, making more space between celestial systems. It could've started out taking only a few weeks to reach earth at first, and as it reached earth, and moving away as the universe expanded.

If I had a powerful flashlight pointed at a wall, kept the light from it steadily pointing at the wall, and drove away in a car with someone at the wheel---
If someone tried to measure how old that light was and started first by measuring the distance of the source, then calculating the speed of light, they would come up with the wrong age. That's because it did not take however many seconds for the light to get there; there light was always there.

I am assuming here that you are trying to describe the analogy the same as the "real" situation above. The problem is this. You have your powerful flashlight pointing at a wall, and you can measure the spectrum (the colour of the light) of that flashlight. Now as soon as you start driving away, the spectrum of the flashlight will appear to change for an observer at the wall - it will become redshifted (i.e. the wavelength of the light will get longer) This is the basic doppler effect known about for a long time. So if you are receeding incredibly quickly with the flashlight, then I can see how fast you are receding from me, by looking at the spectrum of the flashlight. Of course you might ask how I know what the original spectrum of the flashlight was. perhaps you could be a certain distance away, stationary, with a red flashlight, or zooming away from me with a white flashlight - how would I know? well that would be a good question, but one with a particularly simple answer. As you know, all materials are made from atoms and molecules, and these atoms will absorb and emit light at very particular wavelengths. The patterns of wavelengths that a particular element absorbs is unique to that element. For example, these are the particular wavelengths that hydrogen will absorb and emit at:

http://radio.weblogs.com/0101365/images/elements/hydrogenlines.jpg

The reason for this is the amount of energy that the electrons require to jump from level to level in the hydrogen atom.

Now if your flashlight (and if it was a star, it would be) was a flashlight with lots of hydrogen gas in it, then I could see these particular lines. If you were driving away very quickly, then the location of those lines would change.

Back to your analogy, yes, you might be shining a flashlight, but if you are moving away from me, I can measure how fast the flashlight is going by the change in its spectrum.

As mentioned, no one knows how fast the universe was initially moving at creation. And if it's believable that the Big Bang's "explosion" made the universe move at many times the spead of light, initially, then it is believable, that the universe could've moved that fast initially, at creation.

the critical pont here is how fast things have been moving since the cosmic microwave background (it wasn't microwave back then) formed. There have been no periods of inflation since then, and there were no stars before then, just fairly uniform hydrogen gas, with a little helium and a dash of lithium. we can tell by looking.

Finally, things don't zoom away from each other at the speed of light or faster. This would create an event horizon that we could not see beyond. Your suggestion is that things might have shot away from us at speeds faster than C (well technically that expansion occurred at superluminal speeds) that would create the paradox that we shouldn't be able to see those things. The physics that you suggest to move things to distances greater than 6000 light years would forbid you from seeing them - 6000 light years would be the edge of the event horizon.

 

[JohnR7]

The "experts" don't agree, but that's because they don't undertand how facts work.

They only know how to look at things from their rather narrow viewpoint. A lot of the Bible is written from God's perspective and there are people who are able to understand God's viewpoint. But for those who do not know God, then they do not know His way of looking at things.

As far as the earth being around 10.000 years old, that is when there was a mass extinction and a new beginning. As God always does, He preserves a small remenant of the old, to repopulate the earth with.