Appearance of Age (light Created in Transit)
The Omphalos hypothesis was originally proposed in the context of geology, in the 1857 book Omphalos by Philip Gosse. The book sought to reconcile the long geological ages advocated by the leading geologist of the time Charles Lyell, with a recent creation. Gosse claimed that universe has an appearance of age, but is actually very young. (Omphalos is Greek for navel/belly button. The theory suggests Adam and Eve did have navels, despite never having been born of human parents.) It was revived by creationists in the 20th century. Critics have parodied it as "Last Thursdayism", as in "the world might as well have been created last Thursday", with the physical world and even people's memories of earlier events being merely planted by God.
The Omphalos hypothesis, as applied to cosmology, attempts to answer the "starlight problem" by positing that light which appears to source from distant galaxies was actually created by God en-route, conveniently avoiding long light travel times.
Read more about this topic: Creationist Cosmologies
Famous quotes containing the words appearance, age and/or created:
“Most lovers ... picture to themselves, in their mistresses, a secret reality, beyond and different from what they see every day. They are in love with somebody else—their own invention. And sometimes there is a secret reality; and sometimes reality and appearance are the same. The discovery, in either case, is likely to cause a shock.”
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“Old age is always wakeful; as if, the longer linked with life, the less man has to do with aught that looks like death.”
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“I was walking along and I’m looking at the tall buildings. And I got to thinking about what Thoreau said: “They created a lot of grand palaces here, but they forgot to create the noblemen to put in them.””
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