“If the Universe was created thousands of years ago, why do we see distant stars and galaxies?”
This is one of the most common questions about the creationary viewpoint. Some people see this as the strongest challenge to believing in a young Earth.

“If the Universe was created thousands of years ago, why do we see distant stars and galaxies?”
This is one of the most common questions about the creationary viewpoint. Some people see this as the strongest challenge to believing in a young Earth.
The basic issue is this: When we look out into space, most of the objects that we see are at vast distances from us. In fact, many are so far away that it seems their light would need millions or even billions of years to get here.
But we see the light from these objects today. Doesn’t this prove that the cosmos is billions of years old?
No, it doesn’t. Here’s why.
Not so straightforward
Consider this statement: “Light from those objects needs millions (or even billions) of years to get here.”
This statement sounds quite straightforward. But it isn’t.
In fact, there are multiple assumptions hidden within it. Some of them are quite subtle—so subtle that many people don’t even realize that they’re there.
But if one or more of the assumptions are false, then the statement above isn’t necessarily true. And it turns out that several of the assumptions can be questioned.
So let’s examine them, and see how well they withstand scrutiny.
Below, we’ll discuss seven assumptions that are built into the ‘Light Travel Time’ issue (which I’ll abbreviate as “LTT”). Each assumption provides an opportunity for a possible LTT solution.
The point of this article is not for me to discuss my preferred LTT solution. Instead, we’ll talk about the most popular solutions, with a short summary of their pros and cons.
The overall goal here is twofold:
- To show the importance of the assumptions behind LTT, because they’re rarely if ever discussed.
- To show that this issue has many potential solutions and avenues of exploration within a Creationary viewpoint.
Assumption #1: The speed of light has been constant throughout history.
If light used to travel more quickly in the past, then a calculation based on today’s speed of light would be incorrect.
Moreover, if the speed of light were high enough in the past, then the time required for light to arrive from distant objects could be much less than it would seem today.
Among Biblical creationists, there was once a fair amount of interest in the idea that the speed of light used to be higher in the past. Some argued that there was good scientific evidence for this.
Although this idea still has some adherents, many people think that the evidence that was offered to support it no longer seems compelling. So, for the most part, this idea no longer enjoys the support that it once did among creation-minded scientists.
I’m mentioning it here because many people have heard of it. It’s also an easily-understood example of how LTT is built upon assumptions.
Assumption #2: The speed of light is constant throughout space.
Albert Einstein predicted, and subsequent observations have confirmed, that light gets ‘bent’ when it passes close to a massive object.
In a sense, the light is affected by the object’s gravity. (A more accurate explanation is that the object’s mass curves spacetime, which affects the path of the light beam.)
But what if gravity affected more than the light’s direction? What if it also affected the light’s speed?
More specifically, what if light travelled more slowly when moving through a strong gravitational field?
If this were true, then light would move more quickly when traveling between stars, and (especially) galaxies. This would obviously reduce the time required for starlight to travel through space and arrive at Earth.
Some Biblical creationists have proposed this as the solution to the distant starlight issue. They point out that all of our measurements of the speed of light have been done within our Solar System, within the gravitational influence of our Sun.
Therefore, it might be possible that the speed of light is different in deep space, because we’ve never measured it out there.
As potential solutions go, this proposal is still fairly new. Its proponents still need to work out the full implications of their ideas, so that testable models can be created. Obviously, if this idea were to receive some observational support, it would have far-reaching consequences.
Assumption #3: The speed of light is constant in all directions.
If light travels more quickly in some directions than in others, this would have some interesting implications. Specifically, if starlight could travel toward us at a much higher speed than we otherwise would expect, then this could solve the distant starlight issue.
As Dr. Jason Lisle has pointed out, Einstein’s Relativity allows us to model the Universe in just this way. We’re free to stipulate that light is arriving from distant stars at very high speeds. According to Einstein, that works just fine—as long as we also postulate that light must travel more slowly when going the opposite direction, so that the overall average is the ‘standard’ speed of light. This makes the mathematics a bit more complicated in some ways, but it is still valid physics.
Obviously, if we can model the Universe in this way, then the LTT problem can be eliminated.
If you haven’t heard Dr. Lisle’s proposal before, this suggestion probably sounds crazy. But he’s correct—a