And one of the things that makes it so easy to trust the standard view of evolution, in particular, is amply illustrated by the legend of the Nasa astronomers: the doubters are so deluded or dishonest that one needn't waste time with them. Inevitably, those of us who aren't professional scientists have to take a lot of science on trust. Darwin was wrong – according to another creationist rumour, he'd recanted on his deathbed, anyway – and here, at last, is scientific evidence! The astronomers have happened upon proof that God controls the universe on a day-to-day basis, that the Bible is literally true, and that by extension the 'myth' of creation is, in fact, a reality. 'about a full day!' Uproar in the computer lab.
He thumbs through it until he reaches the Book of Joshua, chapter 10, in which Joshua asks God to stop the world for. The scientists are baffled, until a Christian member of the team dimly recalls something and rushes to fetch a Bible.
There's a problem: way back in history, one whole day appears to be missing.
T he story, still sometimes repeated in creationist circles, goes like this: it is the 1960s, at Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Centre in Maryland, and a team of astronomers is using cutting-edge computers to recreate the orbits of the planets, thousands of years in the past.
