Why Common Sense — and Mars Rovers — Prove Light Isn’t Instant

You don’t need to be an astrophysicist to see the flaw. Sometimes, all it takes is common sense.

Discussions about creationism often drown in technical jargon — relativity, cosmology, redshifts, synchrony conventions. Many readers assume they’re not qualified to follow along. Some simply do not wish to engage in highly detailed discussions and choose to trust someone, with whom they already agree.

But sometimes, what’s needed isn’t math. It’s common sense — grounded in what we already know about how light and communication work. That’s the approach I want to take in this post.

Author’s note: I usually write in Swedish, but this time I wanted to make an argument accessible to an international audience. Some of the phrasing below was produced or refined with the help of ChatGPT, but the idea and reasoning are my own.

It is also unusual since some parts of the text have been written by ChatGPT. But the argument is mine. The idea is mine. The instructions to ChatGPT are from me. And I edited the text afterwards. Before we got to an article there also was a lot of back and forth between me and the bot, where I gave it further instructions. There are many ways to use AI while writing. I am experimenting.

I will look into what is known as the Distant Starlight Problem. If the light and radio waves from stars and other objects in the universe have traveled millions and billions of years to reach us on earth, is that not an argument for an old universe? Today, I will refute one explanation from the Young Earth Creationist (YEC) crowd.