200,000 years ago, two stars located 200,000 light years away, collided.
Did God arrange for this to occur 200,000 years ago?
Or did God make it look like that is what happened 200,000 years ago?
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At the very least, God could have prevented it. Instead, he apparently chose to let the heavens declare his glory.
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If no one saw brake lights come on, then they meant to do it. 
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Here is an fascinating article about another collision, this one about 130 million years ago, as I recall:
George, these really are good illustrations of why a young universe is so far out there. Thanks for pointing it out.
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@jpm,
The one thing we can say is that those YEC’s who hold to The Fall have a companion concept to go with the “out there” scenario of God creating a projector image of stars colliding … a million years ago … when in fact, nothing collided at all:
and that’s the notion that the whole universe “changed” the moment Adam and Eve “created Evil” by eating from the Tree of Knowledge. All of a sudden, vegetarian lions and wolves started eating helpless lambs and rabbits - - all because Evil had been unleashed on the world by Adam and Eve.
Holy smokes…
Do you mean to say :“two stars that were two hundred light years away from each other collided”? In that case, they were not 200,000 light years away from each other. Not at time of collision…That actually is the formula for world peace — keep all human beings 200,000 light years away from each other and we basically will all get along.
Or were the 2 stars 200,000 light years away from Earth – wherever Earth was located at that time? And so they collided and we just recently made the observation.
No, the event really happened. It was not a fabrication in the sky. Have a great day, and try to steer clear of supernova on the highway!!!
The event reported was believed to have happened 200,000 light years away … thus taking 200,000 years for the light to reach us here on Earth.
But if all creation is less than 10,000 years old, God would have obviously had to create the illusion of two stars colliding 200,000 years ago. This could be accomplished by changing the nature of light from a collision that happened 6,000 years ago or less - - or by > poofing! < into existence a light show of two stars colliding, when in fact those stars never existed that far away!
Yes, I know. I was just joking about the wording. I am not YEC though once was. I know God created everyone — and He certainly created you and me — but He created you and me via the biological systems He developed. So it is OK by me that other things work in accordance to various laws as well — and time is meaningless to Someone Who has existed forever.
Please do not argue with me about the word “meaningless” and have a nice rest of your weekend.
You are extrapolating a bit much from all this. The universe is old. The matter of Adam and Eve – or were they named Little Joe and Olive Oil? – is something else. The story does have merit, no matter the names of the individuals.
I’m not sure what you mean in this posting. And in your prior post, I have no idea why you expected that I would argue about the word “meaningless”. @bluebird, you seem to be taking all kinds of twists and turns in your thinking.
For me it is cut and dried:
If physics and cosmology tell us that the event happened 200,000 years ago …
[1] Then a YEC has to decide whether the Universe is at least 200,000 years old … or
[2] God created the illusion of the event:
and God could do that in two different ways - - by
(a) having the event happen 6000 years ago, but distort the physics of light enough to make it seem like 200,000 years ago…
or…
(b) create a total illusion that there ever was two stars to begin with.
You are probably right to question me. I was being a bit flip both for first post and for this one.
First post was worded in a way that could be interpreted differently. I understood original intent but was jesting about the wording. That was all.
Your post seems to go from the issue of the age of the Universe to the matter of Adam and Eve. I think these are two different subjects. So yes I joked a bit there too.
I have been fascinated to learn recently that leading YEC’s acknowledge the storytelling aspect of the distant starlight problem and seem to favor a “young earth, old universe” work around through some sort of relativity / time dilation - and this seems to be much more strongly endorsed than either common folk YEC’s (or their opponents!) seem to realize.
See, for example, this post on creation.com (Starlight and time—a further breakthrough) about Hartnett’s book - it’s not clear in that post but if you google for other reviews it seems to be talking about millions of years passing in the universe ‘out there’ while days pass on earth. Dr. Wile seems to endorse this interpretive possibility as well (Another Stunning Confirmation of General Relativity : Proslogion). Also for example see this AIG post (New Solution to the Light Travel Time Problem | Answers Research Journal) for its mention of “biosphere” and “white hole cosmology” models - which seem to be similar - there’s probably a lot more if you search those terms more specifically.
I will leave the implications of such models as an exercise to the reader, but I’m curious if these models will become more recognized in response to evidences of age like gravitational waves lining up with electromagnetic waves, or a potential Planet Nine with an orbit longer than a strict YEC age of the universe…
Nice observations, @joshuahedlund!
I’ve always wondered when YEC’s would start to seamlessly counter-point:
“Just because the Earth is 5,000 years old doesn’t mean the Universe is that young.”
But so very few YEC’s are ever wiliing to admit the Universe is not the same as the Earth!
I have trouble understanding how they can see it that way. Genesis 1 is pretty forthrightin the six days of creation, and if you see it as literal six days, hard to work an old universe in with that, without twisting things a lot. I sometimes wonder how doing all the gymnastics to make it fit a literal reading is in any way considered more “simple” or understandable than accepting it as metaphor and finding deeper meaning in that.
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Speaking from my own past, I think it comes from a sincere but misguided desire to reconcile “the bible as the inspired Word of God” with “what the bible seems to be ‘plainly’ objectively saying to me” and not being aware of the level of subjective cultural/personal/tribal bias in that second part.
I just read the book Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes, and it brings out some amazing assumptions that westerners don’t even realize they bring to their interpretations. The chapter on Time is mind-blowing; our culture is far more obsessed with chronological time and ordered narratives in a way that misleads both fundamentalist readers and critics. While the chapter doesn’t even touch on creation, the implications are, shall we say, “plain.”
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I’ll look for that book. Thanks for sharing. Understanding some the later writings is to some extent more difficult than the first 11 chapters of Genesis.
@jpm,
Just to make sure we are discussing the same page in the same chapter in the same book:
When I suggested that YEC’s have a problem admitting that the Universe could be billions of years old … while the Earth could be younger, I meant it in the following way:
Possible YEC Point 1: The Creation of the Universe is not the topic of Genesis.
Possible YEC Point 2: The Creation of the Earth in this part of the Universe is the topic of Genesis:
Possible YEC Point 3: The Universe may be billions of years old … but it may well be empty of life. Genesis describes how God created the Earth and filled it with life.
Haven’t we all bumped into some YEC who separates the timescale of the Universe from the timescale of the Earth?
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