omphalos is the Greek for "navel", and it dates back to 1857.



There are two basic problems with it: The first is that the universe might have been created 15 minutes ago, or last Thursday or whenever, with false memories implanted in us to make us believe it is older. There is no way to tell.



The second problem is strictly on creationist terms. Creationists claim that Genesis is an accurate description of the birth of the universe because God would not lie to us. To them, God not only always tells the truth, but God is truth itself. However, saying "God created the photons already on the way to earth" is to say, "God is lying to us." They can't have it both ways.



There is a creationist in Australia, Barry Setterfield, who argued that the speed of light has decreased since "creation week" not more than ten thousand years ago. He takes measurements of the speed of light since 1675, and plots a graph showing decreases in the measurements. He wrote a book in 1983, The Velocity of Light and the Age of the Universe. There are major flaws in it.



First, there were no clocks with anything even approaching the necessary accuracy until very late in the 19th century, and it was only with the invention of the atomic clock after World War II that we finally had an accurate enough clock.



Second, I am very leery of a graph drawn with the first data point (which even Setterfield admits is quite inaccurate) coming in the last 5% of the curve. A data point from the ancient Greeks would be very handy, but, alas, there is no measurement that old.



Third, Setterfield draws a curve over the data points, but is honest enough to give the confidence bars (i.e., the margin of error in the measurements). A straight line, parallel to the X-axis, would miss exactly two of the confidence bars, both in the 19th century, and misses them by not very much.



Fourth, he does what is called "blinding with science". He has a mass of mathematics which purports to support his curve. Unfortunately, while it looks impressive as heck, it is bullshit. He manipulates his data to make it fit, claims that approximations to formulae are acceptable, and so on. I have a degree in mathematics, and I was able to take his figures, work with them properly and guess what? I came up with creation happening 3 billion years ago, according to Setterfield. It's called the Omphalos hypothesis --is the Greek for "navel", and it dates back to 1857.There are two basic problems with it: The first is that the universe might have been created 15 minutes ago, or last Thursday or whenever, with false memories implanted in us to make us believe it is older. There is no way to tell.The second problem is strictly on creationist terms. Creationists claim that Genesis is an accurate description of the birth of the universe because God would not lie to us. To them, God not only always tells the truth, but God is truth itself. However, saying "God created the photons already on the way to earth" is to say, "God is lying to us." They can't have it both ways.There is a creationist in Australia, Barry Setterfield, who argued that the speed of light has decreased since "creation week" not more than ten thousand years ago. He takes measurements of the speed of light since 1675, and plots a graph showing decreases in the measurements. He wrote a book in 1983,. There are major flaws in it.First, there were no clocks with anything even approaching the necessary accuracy until very late in the 19th century, and it was only with the invention of the atomic clock after World War II that we finally had an accurate enough clock.Second, I am very leery of a graph drawn with thedata point (which even Setterfield admits is quite inaccurate) coming in the last 5% of the curve. A data point from the ancient Greeks would be very handy, but, alas, there is no measurement that old.Third, Setterfield draws a curve over the data points, but is honest enough to give the confidence bars (i.e., the margin of error in the measurements). A straight line, parallel to the X-axis, would miss exactly two of the confidence bars, both in the 19th century, and misses them by not very much.Fourth, he does what is called "blinding with science". He has a mass of mathematics which purports to support his curve. Unfortunately, while it looks impressive as heck, it is bullshit. He manipulates his data to make it fit, claims that approximations to formulae are acceptable, and so on. I have a degree in mathematics, and I was able to take his figures, work with them properly and guess what? I came up with creation happening 3 billion years ago, according to Setterfield.