How do young earth creationists reconcile the age of the universe with the speed of light, and visible distant objects? I am not trying to be argumentative, this is an earnest question, as this question got me in huge trouble when I was growing up attending a southern baptist Christian middle school. This question (and people's reactions to it) is actually one of the things that lead my away from the church as a teenager (which I later came back to).

If the speed of light is constant and we can see distant objects (stars,  galaxies, etc) that are millions or billions of light years away how can we account for a young age of the universe?


My father, at that time, was convinced that the speed of light has been slowing down since the creation of the universe. Although, I have never seen any credible evidence of this, and it would seem that measurements taken at CERN (and elsewhere) would be seriously affected if the speed of light was not a constant. 
My 8th grade science teacher said it was because objects used to be closer than they are now, and have moved away from each other over time. However, if the universe was only 10k years old, and two objects started next to each other and traveled away from each other at nearly the speed of light, the most distant objects in the universe would still only appear to be a little less then 10k light years away.
God creating the universe with photons in flight, making the distant universe (and therefore past events) only appear to be taking places (or even existing), is certainly deceptive and I cannot accept it.
Do YEC consider the age of the Universe and the age of the Earth two separate questions?


My question isn't 'how old is the universe?', or 'did the big bang happen?', or 'creation vs evolution'. It is simply this: how do Christians, who are YEC, reconcile this? 

Edit

Some have asked, why I cannot accept that God created photons in midflight giving the appearance of age? 


In the video series @SeanDowney posted below, the presenter speaking against this argument shows a star that is 150k light years away that we observed blowing up. So, if God created photons in midflight then for 8k years God has been showing us a star that never existed and showed us an event (the start being destroyed) that never took place.
This is a specious argument in general, because I can make the same argument that God created the universe 5 minutes ago and all the evidence to the contrary (physical evidence, our memories of the past, etc.) were all put in place to give the appearance of age.


In both these cases, God making the universe appear to be billions of years old, instead of 5 minutes old, or the universe appearing to be billions of years old instead of 10k years, involves deception on the part of God that I cannot accept God (or my conception of him) would perpetrate.
If you accept that God could create the universe out of nothing and create it any way He desired, then the explanation of God creating the universe with photons in flight has to be taken as a possiblity.  I realize you have discounted it as deceptive and therefore unacceptable, but consider the following...

When God created trees, did He create only seeds that grew into trees or did He create full grown trees complete with rings?  I assume that He created full grown trees that had an apparent age greater than their literal age.

Similarly, was Adam created as a baby (or embryo) or was he created as an adult?  Again, I assume that he was created as an adult with an apparent age greater than his literal age.

In those examples, would anyone assume that God was being deceptive?  Probably not because we are not looking at the apparent age of trees or Adam to determine how long ago God created the universe.

As a YEC, I don't look to my surroundings to guide me in how to make sense of the Bible, I look to the Bible to guide me in how to make sense of my surroundings (to include the entire universe).

I don't think God created the universe with the goal of us being able to examine it to determine how long ago He created it.  I believe it is more accurate to assume He created the universe as huge as it is so that we would be impressed and glorify Him.

I have a MSEE degree, I minored in Physics when I got my BSEE.  I know this answer does not present a scientific view.  Science can neither prove nor disprove God's creation of the universe.  If it could, then there would be less need for faith "and without faith it is impossible to please Him..."