Why did God get rid of the Trilobites?

[slartibartfast]

He didn't. It's all a ruse. Since the earth is only 6000 years old all fossils were put into the earth at that time to tempt poor bastards like us 6000 years later to the dark side by making evolution look like a viable theory to test our faith, when none of it actually happened. Stop looking for reasons to doubt God's word - all you need is the magic book. It explains everything.

I have had numerous conversations on other forums where Christians were making exactly this and other related arguments. Same goes for distances between stars etc. Their refutation for light having observably travelled billions of years to reach us being proof of a Universe far older than 6000 years was that God created all of the light beams in mid-flight - at the same time as all of the "Stuff" in the Universe in the exact state that it exists today - so they would appear to reach us at the exact moment he intended (ie. now that he has deemed us to invent telescopes). It never occurred to the person that if God had that power / intention they he wouldn't have to create any stars at all - just continuously creating mid-flight light beams and other radiation would do.

It astounds me that seemingly rational and functioning people can actually believe that if there is a God, he would go to such lengths to create a completely "fake" Universe with the level of intricacy required to continually defeat new levels of the science onion an still remain consistent just for our benefit.

OK, how do they explain the fact that the farther away the star system is, the younger it is. It is possible to see star's beginning to form. It is possible to see vast hydrogen clouds collapsing onto a central region. It is even possible to view molecule hydrogen (H2) forming streams. These appear as dark lines since they absorb the radiation coming from behind them.

They don't (explain the fact). Any God that goes to the trouble of creating light beams in flight wouldn't hesitate to add various levels of galaxy maturity to complete the illusion. 

The fact is that people who believe the earth is 6000 years old are either uneducated and don't understand the contradictions and issues this introduces, never mind the science, or they haven't bothered to look at any of the evidence to the contrary because they are lazy. This makes for very awkward conversations. The level of "thought" required to exist in that bubble is extremely low. It also has the added side-benefit of making the "Explanation" accessible to everyone so that even uneducated / intellectually challenged people can adequately explain the way of life to their children. 

Religious people exist on a spectrum of acceptance of science - this ranges from completely literal interpretation of the bible (including the 6000yr "theory" and literal belief in the story of Noah) through highly educated Christians who follow science who bend their interpretation of the bible wildly to fit their broadened world view. If you talk to the latter, it becomes much harder to refute views with science as the person's world view has already been adjusted carefully to incorporate reality. For instance, I talked to a person who believed in evolution for all non-human life-forms (albeit guided by God rather than being purely based on natural selection), but believed that humans were "special" and "upgraded" to have a soul only a few tens of thousands of years ago by God from the mindless animals they were before. This viewpoint is much harder to challenge with evidence, since you can't disprove that God may have contributed to natural selection, and you then have to have a conversation about what makes humans "human" including a "soul" conversation which is highly philosophical. 

In my OP I was more thinking about the grass chewing type.