Though it is often difficult to decide who wins the Moron of the Year Award, this year we have a strong contender in Ken Ham at Answers in Genesis – a creationist Web site. The exact Web page in question is here.
The question asked of Mr. Ham is simple enough. “If God created the world 6,000 years ago or so, why are stars millions of light years away?”
The answer, according to Mr. Ham: “Brendon, what a question! Yes, we know from the dates God gives us in the Bible that He did create the whole universe about 6,000 years ago. When we hear the term light-year, we need to realize it is not a measure of time but a measure of distance, telling us how far away something is. Distant stars and galaxies might be millions of light-years away, but that doesn’t mean that it took millions of years for the light to get here, it just means it is really far away!”
Ladies and gentlemen, this is the kind of answer you get from people who have never taken a class in physics, but instead base their view of reality on an anonymous book, written by a bunch of Bronze Age sheep herders. In short, you get profound idiocy.
Mr. Ham is correct, in that a light year is a measure of distance. It is the measure of how far light travels in one year! Hence the name. So, if a star is say, 20 million lights years away, it will take 20 million years for the light from that star to reach us.
A special nod of thanks to irReligion.org for finding this gem!
