That is kind of the argument they want to make in a manner of speaking. They assert that light can be faster than it is today and that in the past it has been. Either way it is the idea that the actual speed of light can increase or decrease which is the impossible thing for me to believe as it would require changes in the fundamental laws of physics.

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I understand your analogy about the table cloth, but all that does is pander to the changes in the speed of light being an illusion.

It's like the rubber sheet analogy (in part) which explains gravity, where space curves around high mass objects, and all objects are in constant free fall. If I hold the rubber sheet out and place a bowling ball in the center, then the rubber sheet will curve around the bowling ball, and the sheet will be stretched under the weight.

If I start to roll pingpong balls across the sheet, then the place where I roll them will determine the path they take. If they are rolled close to the bowling ball then it will take longer to travel across the sheet as it has to compensate for the stretched curvature of the rubber sheet. However, if I roll them further away from the bowling ball, then the rubber sheet is less stretched and the pingpong balls cover the same distance in less time.

The thing is I can roll pingpong balls at the same speed but some will take longer than others to reach the other side of the sheet.

The same could be said for photons travelling past a black hole or other high mass body. The photons don't slow down they just have longer to travel the closer they are to the high mass object (assuming they don't reach event horizon). The speed of light hasn't increased or decreased, it has remained the same. But it has taken some photons that are travelling close to the high mass object longer to travel from point A to point B than others traveling further away.

The speeding up and slowing down of light would just be an "illusion".

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But what young Earth creationists say is that it is nothing to do with the illusion, and that the actual speed of light has been faster. Because a few black holes here and there wouldn't really effect the time of which photons have traveled over billion's of light years. For their argument of the Universe being a few thousand years old, they would have to assert that the speed of light in the past was millions of times quicker than it is today. It's extremely unlikely in my book.

Ask Angrypoolboy, he's a young Earth creationist from what I remember, he'll know more about their arguments than me lol.

I don't believe the speed of light decay idea is held by a majority of creationists anymore. It had some popularity, but they couldn't really get it to work.
The newer idea today is that the Earth was caught in the event horizon of a white hole for billions of years, thus giving light ample time to reach Earth while the Earth remained quite young.
I think that's how it goes.

Well I suppose that is definitely more scientific-sounding, bu-

Aw no. I ain't getting this off-topic again! Ya almost got me!

*flees*

Haha, no need to worry, that's all I really know about it, anyways.

So you couldn't tell me why this hypothesis uses a white hole instead of a black hole?

Ah, I might hazard a guess on that...

A white hole, apparently, shrinks over time as it pushes away matter, so, after some time, the Earth got out of the white hole, thus allowing its time to match the rest of the universe.

I'm not sure how close that is to the idea at all, though.

I think black holes shrink over time thanks to Hawking Radiation, too. Eventually they all evaporate. DOn't they?

Highwaystar probably has the answer.

White holes are hypothetical, we have little/no evidence to support or deny them yet I'm afraid.

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Anyway, that point aside. About the time period you gave, "caught in the event horizon for billions of years". I'm assuming you are referring too an idea held by old Earth creationists in that case? The argument wouldn't work in the case of young Earth creationists as it requires extensive time periods. Especially as a white hole hypothetically causes both time reversal and matter ejection.

If the Earth was subjected to time reversal from a white hole whilst the rest of the Universe went along at a normal pace, I would assume that if it was anything like a black hole the the time reversal would be extremely extended and we wouldn't really feel the effects, kinda like how time extends to become almost infinite past the event horizon of a black hole. So allowing ample time for light to reach is an argument I don't think I can accept I'm afraid.

But all that wouldn't matter if we were caught in the event horizon of a white hole that was ejecting matter. I would think we would be either ejected from the white holes event horizon immediately or the solar system would be obliterated.

However, as all of this is hypothetical, no-one can be certain.

It's been a while since I've read about this.

Black holes do lose mass over time due to Hawking radiation, which is a type of thermal radiation. It is assuming that black holes have a finite temperature and we don't know exactly how gravity fits into this yet, so it is just making a prediction of what could happen to a black hole.

Anyway, the idea (if I remember correctly) is that particles are being formed by vacuum fluctuations around the perimeter of the event horizon of the black hole, When these particles are created there is both a matter and an antimatter version created simultaneously. (I get a bit hazy here) I think it is the anti matter particle that gets drawn into the black hole reducing the black holes overall mass and the matter particles are ejected away from the black hole.

Crap, these antimatter thingies make everything more complicated. Now a black hole is not even a black hole.