What is this “scientific study” nonsense you are talking about? It is academics who study, while scientists verify their speculations with experiment. Your defense just highlights the weakness of these speculative sciences when you say:
“You just have to know the difference between scientific study and the land of make believe.”
The difference is supposed to be experimental verification. Without it, there can be no reliable distinction made between a scientific hypothesis and “make believe”. Since such verification is impossible with the speculative sciences, none of their ideas can carry the weight of “real” science.
“The point is, there are multiple ways to look back in time, and cosmology alone debunks a young universe.”
No, it is impossible to actually observe the past, in the way that we can observe the present. All we can do is look at after effects of past events, and try to reconstruct the past, speculatively. Even viewing light from distant stars, as in your example, is simply looking at these after effects, not direct observation.
So what is direct observation? Photons (or something elase) bounce of whatever is “observed” in order to make it “observable.”
This is nonsensical. You are looking at light entering your eyes that is billions of years old, the same way light from the Sun that enters your eyes is 8 minutes old. I hardly see the difference. The whole concept of the "present" is relative.