Utterly Meaningless

I’m not sure how that information would make any creationist change his/her mind?

Is any thing too hard for the Lord? Genesis 18:14a

Excellent, I am now a fan of NGC 3718 and its attractive contrapposto pose. The pleasure is all the richer and deeper for knowing that it was millions and millions of years in the making and I just happen to be in the right time and place to experience it.

I’m not expecting anyone to change his or her mind. The question was an honest one.

How does one explain 2 galaxies 150,000 L.Y. apart interacting? Do we have to suppose that gravity moves at Warp Factor 10? Or are all of the scientists completely wrong about the size of the universe?

There’s a great question, Is anything too hard for god? Could god microwave a burrito so hot that he couldn’t eat it? Obviously our measure of a light year is wrong, and the devil put it there to make us doubt. And I’m sure there is some further justification in the Bible to suggest that a light year is actually not what we think it is, and light doesn’t travel that fast.

There are two Young Earth explanations for this. One is completely coherent (and unsatisfying). The other is fascinating in theory but hard to work out in practice.

The completely coherent explanation is that God created the universe to LOOK old. This solves every problem except “Why would God do that?” I find it fundamentally unsatisfying.

The fascinating explanation works perfectly in theory: assume that Earth is the literal center of the universe and lies at the bottom of an ENORMOUS gravitational well. (I’d have to go into string theory to explain how this could happen without being at the bottom of a black hole at the same time, but I’m convinced it’s not completely impossible.) Gravity slows time down. Billions of years could pass on the periphery of the universe while only six days passed at the center.

This notion is spelled out in some detail in a book called “Starlight and Time.” I give it high marks as a hypothesis, but I don’t think it really works as a theory. (I don’t think the Milky Way would be a spiral galaxy if this was what really happened, and all the evidence I’ve seen suggests the Milky Way is a spiral galaxy.)

Can god create a wrestler so big that he can’t body slam him?

I don’t know. I gave up on logic and rationality when Dubya was elected.