rob_murfin@hotmail.com (Murf) wrote in message news:<cff14f12.0410140553.384ec67e@posting.google.com>...

Hello everybody,

Last week I was wandering the shops during my office lunch break when
I was harassed by a religeous zealot selling magazines and CDS.

Feeling argumentative I asked him whether he was (1) a creationalist
and (2) a "Young Universe" creationalist - i.e. one who believes that
dinosaurs etc didnt exist and that the universe is about 4,500 years
old...

When he replied that, yes, he didnt believe in evolution, dinosaurs
(and women's rights I assume) I suggested that he was a little
misguided.

In evidence I said "how come you can see all of the stars at night
then? After all, many of them are clearly more than 4,500 light years
away?"

He told me that "astronomy is a souless science - they lie to you".

Hmmph. He was obviously a twat, but is my line of arguemnt sound -
i.e. that you can see (or even detect) stars more than say 10,000
lightyears away a robust argument against a "young" view of
creation/existance?

Well, sort of.  But they can always fall back on the claim that God
not only created everything, but he created it in a manner such that
it would look like it's billions of years old (e.g. in addition to
4,500 years ago, creating stars 10,000 ly way, he created the stream
of light between them and us that carries an image of what the star
would have looked like 10,000 years ago if it had evolved instead of
being created).  However you can counter that counter-argument by
asking "Why is God trying to fool us?"

Paul Cardinale