A young sun - a response

Thanks, Lizard Breath, My wife and I had a good cackle over that quote.
Mike.

Sorry to but in when the discussion was going so smoothly, but a 7000 year old sun would not be giving out any light. The sun is not transparent, and light does not simply pour out from its interior. The photons get emitted, absorbed, re-emitted, etc billions of times before they manage the random-walk to the surface and shoot off into space. According to Frank Shu (Professaor of Astronomy at University of California, in "The Physical Universe') this random walk would take about 30,000 years.So a 7000 year old sun would not be shining yet!The only option that works is to assume that God deliberately made the universe to appear old, and he created photons in transit from the centre of the sun just as he created light in transit from the distant galaxies. This is the "Omphalos" theory, and you can take it or leave it, but there is no way to prove it right or wrong. Any evidence that the sun and universe are not old would then be a slip-up on God's part.Mike.

I feel Eta has copvered the technical side of the age of the sun, but Buz is stuck in the philosophical side. His God has to create a sun which must appear to be old in order to be functioning, but Buz does not want to go whole hog with the theory the the whole universe was created appearing as though it was 12 billion years old - I presume he doesn't like the apparent 'deceit' on God's part.But this appearance is unavoidable. If God created the universe as a static snapshot, it would immediately collapse. So He had to create it with momentum. The Earth had to be moving in it's orbit, just as though it had just moved from an earlier position!In the same way, any living organism would be created with new cells in the process of forming, and 'old' cells dying off and being eliminated through natural processes. A created tree would presumably have tree rings, and Adam would have a navel!So get rid of this picture of a 'static' universe being created. The universe is a PROCESS, and must be created with all its processes in action, giving an appearance of age. The very fact that Earth must be created moving in it's orbit gives the 'deceit' of previous time. There is no other way to do it. So don't pick on God. (All this from an atheist!!!).But Buz is left with the mystery of why 12 billion years of apparent history is necessary, when He could have managed with 1 million or less. Guess we need a new revelation to solve this mystery, but in the meantime science is the best we have.Mike.

OK, Buz, I was not aware of your position regarding endless creations and recreations of the universe. But if God has been doing that for an endless past, he must be repeating himself for the umpteenth time by now. OK. Ok. So that is off topic, and another issue!I was trying to make the point that just as God is obliged to make the Earth with orbital momentum, as if it had just come from somewhere, so all the processes of the universe must be created as on-going, AS IF they had a past history.How much APPARENT past history is required to make the universe seem consistent seems to be the issue of your young sun discussion.Whether the APPARENT past history NEEDS to be consistent is another matter, but this consistency is a central requirement of scientific theories. Hence the concern when the apparent ages of stars in globular clusters seemed to be greater that the age of the universe calculated from the Hubble constant. And hence the satisfaction when geological dating, astronomy, cosmology, evolution, etc all give consistent dates. (OK, I am sure you have many arguments here!).Mike.

The above was a reply to your comments about my comments. I realize the topic has progressed a bit further, and don't want to drag it back to ground already well trodden, so please ignore it if you wish - I won't be offended. - Mike.