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:
“Though an unpleasant sort of person, and even a queer threatener withal, yet, if one meets him, one must get along with him as one can; for his ignorance is extreme. And what under heaven indeed should such a phantasm as Death know, for all that the Appearance tacitly claims to be somebody that knows much?”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“The secret of heaven is kept from age to age. No imprudent, no sociable angel ever dropt an early syllable to answer the longings of saints, the fears of mortals. We should have listened on our knees to any favorite, who, by stricter obedience, had brought his thoughts into parallelism with the celestial currents, and could hint to human ears the scenery and circumstance of the newly parted soul.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Neither a work of nature nor one of art we get to know when they have been finished; we must surprise them in the process of being created so as to understand them to some degree.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)