Creationists believe the universe is 6,000 years old. They believe that light from the most distant galaxy took less than 6,000 years to reach Earth. Their primary argument is that the speed of light from distant galaxies is slowed for various reasons, that the speed of light is variable.

Mainstream science says that the universe is expanding. An analogy is to picture dots on a balloon as galaxies. As you inflate the balloon, the galaxies move farther apart. No matter which galaxy you are in, the other galaxies move away from you. The farther the galaxy, the faster it moves away. Mainstream science says that distant galaxies are moving away at near the speed of light due to the rapid expansion of the universe. In the spectrum of light from distant galaxies, the frequency is stretched (lowered) toward red. You may have witnessed this in the change of pitch from a train whistle, siren, or horn coming toward you and then moving away. The pitch rises, then drops (the Doppler shift). The sound wave is compressed as the source comes toward you, and stretched as the source move away. Light operates the same way. A yellow ball moving toward you will appear greenish as it approaches, and will appear orange as it passes. To observe such a change, the ball would have to be moving about 3200 miles (5200 km) per second. The more the frequency of light is stretched (the more the frequency is shifted toward red), the faster the galaxy is receding, and the farther away it is, thus showing the galaxy is millions/billions of light-years away. So far, I have found that creationists have four different explanations for the redshift.

• Light is slowed by dust and gas.
• Light ages over a period of time and slows down.
• The speed of light used to be faster and is slowing down.
• Light is slowed down by passing through a galaxy.

In all creationist explanations that I have found for redshift in light from receding galaxies, they all have to do with the SPEED OF LIGHT SLOWING DOWN. Redshift is caused by the FREQUENCY of light being STRETCHED (lowered toward red). The speed of light has nothing to do with frequency of light. Radio waves move at the speed of light, and are at a much lower frequency. A slowing of the speed of light does not explain redshift. Even if the speed of light used to be faster, it still wouldn't explain redshift. For massive galaxies slowing down light passing through them and causing a red shift, photons have no mass and are not affected by gravity (except to follow curved space around a gravitational object). Once the light leaves the galaxy, gravity has no effect on stretching the frequency of the light. For light losing speed by going through dust and gas, or a galaxy, I say the light is only dimmed, not slowed down.

On light slowing down as it passes through water, glass, etc., there is in Astronomy Magazine, May 2009, in an article "Light Fantastic" by Bob Berman: "In moving through a medium, photons don't truly slow down. Rather, each hits an atom, gets absorbed and re-emitted, and a new photon continues on. The process takes a tiny bit of time, hence the delay. The light we see through windows are different photons from the ones that first struck the glass."

For a given redshift in the spectrum of light from a receding galaxy, we can calculate the recession velocity that would cause that redshift. In creationism, if redshift is caused by a slowing of the speed of light, you cannot calculate what speed of light would produce a given redshift. In other words, what speed of light would produce redshift z=1? Redshift z=2? How about a chart with the y-axis being speed of light, and the x-axis being the redshift?

And yes, I know about Barry Setterfield and his "The Atomic Constants, Light, and Time". He claims the reason stars seem to be more than 6,000 light-years away is that in the beginning, light traveled 10 million times faster than now, and has been slowing down. See "Is the Speed of Light Slowing Down?" by Frank Steiger, at www.fsteiger.com/light.html. Steiger said "Setterfield's hypothesis was so lacking in plausibility that even the Institute for Creation Research rejected it".

A constant speed of light throughout the universe is a fundamental postulate of Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity. It is a central tenant. Would not a variable speed of light invalidate Einstein's Relativity? Would not it invalidate E=MC², making mass and energy variable? Wouldn't that change the structure of matter? I find it impossible to believe that Einstein was wrong, especially with most, if not all, of his predictions out of relativity being verified by observation, measurement, or experiment.

Take a look at "Speed of Light Not Slowing, NASA Study Says" at www.space.com/scienceastronomy/lightspeed_031217.html. It says "The speed of light, one of the constants scientists rely on to study the universe, appears to have held its ground under some tight NASA scrutiny despite other theories that it may slow as it moves through space. By comparing gamma ray observations of two nearby galaxies, a NASA researcher found evidence that the speed of light is still traveling as fast as it ever was. The finding reinforces the relevance of Albert Einstein's special theory of relativity, which depends on a constant speed of light as the maximum speed attainable by any object. ..."

I spent a week reading "Resources for Scientists" articles on the Institute for Creation Research website, at www.icr.org, especially "The Current State of Creation Astronomy" by Danny Faulkner (Ph.D. Astronomy) at www.icr.org/research/index/researchp_df_r01.
It gave me more insight on how creationists think. Mainstream astrophysicists begin with a question or observation, then look for a solution via mathematics, observation, and measurement. Creationists begin with the solution (young Earth, young universe), then define the evidence, usually by discrediting mainstream science.

In the article mentioned above by Danny Faulkner, he himself admits that "... probably the single biggest problem that recent creationists face today is the light travel time. If the universe is billions of light years in size, then how did the light from most objects get here in a few thousand years? One answer is that light travels in a non-Euclidean geometry ... few take it seriously any more." He also said "The speed of light is not a constant that can be arbitrarily changed. It depends on some fundamental constants that have an effect of the structure of matter. If the speed of light is changed much, the structure of matter will be dramatically changed". Then another big one, he said "We must go beyond arguing what is wrong with evolutionary models". I assume by evolutionary models he means mainstream models.

I am currently looking for any measurement or experiment that proves the speed of light is variable.

There is no doubt there are hundreds of billions of galaxies in the universe. In creationism, light from the farthest galaxy can take no longer than 6,000 years to reach us. Therefore the farthest galaxy is 6,000 lightyears away. If you were to compress hundreds of billions of galaxies into a universe with a radius of 6,000 lightyears, the night sky would be awash with light. Note that science says that the nearest galaxy, Andoromeda, is 2.2 million lightyears away.

I have calculated that 300 billion galaxies within 6,000 lightyears means that galaxies would average 3 lightyears apart, center to center. Science says that the distance between galaxies is about 30 times the average size of galaxies. Therefore in a creationist universe, galaxies would average around one-tenth lightyear in diameter. Science says the diameter of our Milky Way galaxy is 100,000 lightyears, a million times larger than a creationist galaxy. At this scale, in a creationist galaxy, stars would be a million times smaller. The Sun would be 4,567 feet in diameter (less than a mile).

Mainstream science concerning the expanding universe:
FACT 1: There was Eintein's "discovery" in his equations. Since at the time it was not known that the universe was expanding, he added his cosmological constant to make expansion go away.
FACT 2: About 10 years later, Edwin Hubble, by noticing a red shift in light from distant galaxies, discoverd the universe WAS expanding, which said Einstein was right in the first place. Einstein called it his greatest blunder, which means he believed the redshift discovery.
FACT 3: Peter Higgs proposed what is now called a Higgs field, sort of like a magnetic field and gravitational field. It's purpose was to explain why matter has mass.
FACT 4: Theoretical physicist Alan Guth came up with his Inflation Theory, and provided the mathematics that the Big Bang was caused by a decay of a Higgs field. Inflation Theory includes negative (repulsive) gravity, which explains expansion of the universe.
See www.edge.org/documents/day2/day2_guth_index.html.
FACT 5: Many now think Einstein's cosmological constant represents the dark energy (repulsive gravity) that is causing expansion of the universe.

This is the kind of science I believe in - discover something indirectly through mathematics or directly by mathematical proof, imply or make a testable prediction, then prove the implication or prediction. You cannot do this with creationism. All you can do is make verbal contraditions, like "how could the explosion of the Big Bang cause order?". This is very impressive to the under-informed. Mainstream science says it was an expansion, not an explosion. Big difference.

One tactic Creations use to ridicule mainstream science is by claiming "circular reasoning". They claim we say "the universe is expanding because of redshift, and redshift is caused because the universe is expanding". Mainstream science does not think this way.

Read this:
"Zero field is the natural state in the absence of charged particles. The Standard Model requires (mathematically) that for a Higgs field, the lowest energy occurs when it has a specific non-zero value." I thoroughly understand and appreciate what this means regarding the probable origin of the universe. If you don't, you are not qualified to denounce the universe happening by chance.