Hi Todd,I understand how someone could have reservations with this. However, I can't discount it either. I had a physics professor in college (a secular university) who was also a Christian (and he even taught Sunday school at a nearby church). He specialized in Special Relativity. He embraced the idea of God created a "mature Earth." I think that I said this in a previous thread on the subject, but God is not limited in how he created the universe. He could create the Earth and speed up time in the process of creation at his own will according to his own preferred timing. I think that I used an anecdote about how (as a child) I would take many of my toys -- old and new (including some that I inherited from others) -- and set them up on the floor of my bedroom before I commenced playing with them. I am not saying that I believe that God created the universe in such a manner. That would make me guilty of the same folly of Job (toward the end of the book). I cannot question or second guess God's decisions or methods because he didn't consult me and I wasn't there. As someone else said, "Let God be true and every man a liar."I do think that there is something very interesting about the other two things that I mentioned about relativity of time as well as perceptions about a constant speed of light contrasted with the almost infinite mass of the initial universal singularity and its sudden expanse. If light is viewed as a universal "constant," that perception of its speed obviously differed when the universe was no bigger than the size of your fingernail (and light didn't have far to travel back and forth yet consequential time was also constant with light) as it exploded into the perpetually enlarging known universe. Time was different at that early stage -- especially different when considering the perspective of the observer (e.g., initial singularity location, inside expansion and outside).
_________________Christopher
I wanted to link to this merely for balance. It is a fairly technical read but as i said I think it is important for the sake of balance. http://www.reasons.org/articles/the-unraveling-of-starlight-and-time
_________________Todd