While I view the cosmogeny laid out in The Bible as myth, I don't think that a deity who created a universe with the appearance of immense age would be a liar (well, would necessarily be a liar, anyway), any more than I would consider a sculptor who employed a veristic style to be a liar, or the animators who eventually bridge the "uncanny valley" to be liars.
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
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quote:Originally posted by 0Megabyte: Could you enlighten me, Lisa?
I don't care enough. I didn't even read through that whole link. GIYF. You're the one who cares about this subject.
So, basically, you're going to call all conflicting evidence untrue, you're going to move the goalposts at a record pace involving the acceptability of evidence, and then you're going to refuse to answer any good questions about your own assertions. You're even admitting you don't care enough to fill yourself in on the details of the position you are contesting; you just start out with the assumption that it is untrue and let nothing challenge that.
You 'care enough' only to make blanket claims, but then suddenly your interest wanes the second it comes down to backing yourself up.
Evidence contradicting your view is met with demands for impossible perfection. Classic maneuver: if your opponent successfully addresses some point (geological record, varves, etc), then say they must also address some further point. If you can make these points more and more difficult or diverse then eventually your opponent must 'fail.' If nothing else, you will eventually find a subject that your opponent isn't up on.
This is related to argument by question. Asking questions is easy: it's answering them that's hard. People give you answers. You give pithy statements and leave it at that.
Unfortunately, it leaves you with an empty hand when debating in the framework of logic and evidence and all of that, because sharp-eyed folk like mr. megabyte will try to put it to the test and end up making your young-earth position seem completely unrelated to scientific methodology, despite the way you frame your position as being a model based on reason. It's not. It's unscientific and fallacious.
I know, I know, "Young-earth creationist standpoint found to be intellectually bankrupt, news at 11," big surprise, but y'know.
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posted
Noemon, I agree with your thinking that there is no justification for calling God a liar merely because He might create people and trees and planets and stars and galaxies and a whole universe with apparent age. He created all these things the way He wanted them to be. He wanted a mature man who could be His friend, so Adam did not have to begin as an infant. He created all the trees of Eden hundreds of feet tall, so Adam could be impressed by them and stirred to admire their sense of grandeur, and the God who made them. God created a universe with stable star and planetary systems so we would not have to wait for these things to form over long periods. He made the universe so that you could see the light from the stars and galaxies at one end of the universe to the other, because He wanted a universe filled with light, and not darkness. How He did all these things is a worthy question for our scientific inquiry.
One interesting question would be: Did the hundreds-of-feet tall trees in Eden have annual growth rings? I am not sure how to answer that. But perhaps it is a chicken-or-the-egg kind of thing. Oh yes, and did Adam have a navel? Probably not. Nor Eve. Her children were the first to have navels, I would expect. In the Resurrection, a fair number of us are undoubtedly going to seek out Adam and ask him if he has a navel. It will be one of many moments of levity as we begin the happiness of the future life.
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Unless God has a navel, of course. Since Adam was formed in God's image, if God has a navel, Adam would too, even though it wasn't necessary.
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There's a huge difference between appearance of age and appearance of experience.
I.e., did Adam have a scar on his knee from the time when he was four years old and fell on a rock? 'Cause figuratively speaking, the universe has plenty of scars from when it was much younger.
Appearance of age is one thing. But if God created this universe with appearance of experience, that is deceitful.
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quote:When we look at evidence for some unusual event or phenomenon and say "God did it," we do not stop. That is our starting point.
That doesn't jibe with the most well known examples of "God did it." Behe, for example, keeps pointing at biological structures and saying "irreducibly complex", which translates more or less to "God did it", yet refuses to do any actual science to substantiate that claim or refute it. He does stop there.
The only reason we have plausible alternative theories for the development of these structures is that rather harder working scientists continued to research them. Behe said "God" and stopped there. The evolutionists, even if they had said "not God", kept working.
It's particularly damning to Behe's "God did it" case that many of those evolutionists do believe in God but they don't automatically invoke Him as a direct cause for any phenomena they do not yet understand.
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posted
Meh. If God created a house and told you the creation took place a few seconds ago, you'd expect certain things. If you walked inside and the walls were scorched like they had just been on fire, and in fact you could still smell smoke, you'd assume there had been a fire. But if God insisted that he had created the house right that second...
There's no way you could avoid some cognitive dissonance. Why would God create a new house with scorched walls and smelled of smoke from a fire that never took place? 'Cause that's the situation young earthers are stuck with.
You smell the smoke, you see the scorched walls, and are forced to say no fire ever took place.
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posted
""Why" is a perfectly reasonable question. Assuming that the reason is to trick us is not."
There might be ANOTHER reason, but if the young earth theory is true, in my mind, that would require that the creator be deceitful. There is no rational way to interpret the evidence available to us in the physical world to mean that the earth is fewer then billions of years old, so if it is, then our rationality is being deceived. Considering that a god that could create a young earth so that it appears to be ancient could create the earth to appear exactly the age that it is, that deceit must be intentional.
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posted
Unfortunately, God doesn't seem to want to address the whys in this case. At least, he certainly isn't telling ME why the Earth has evidence of experience, as is mentioned.
And to Lisa:
What is wrong with you?
You make claims, then you ignore the arguements against them! You refuse to discuss them, you essentially state "it's so" and dismiss us.
The difference between you, and between scientists, is that scientists care about understanding, about evidence, and do not commit the evil of willful ignorance.
Yes. It's an evil. One of the greatest evils in the world. (believing without evidence isn't evil. We all do it, in many cases, myself including. I don't do so for God anymore, but we all do such things. It's just what we have to do.)
Willful ignorance, that closedness of mind, is EVIL.
Why don't you see it? It makes me incredibly sad, to see a decent person act in such an evil, and potentially harmful manner.
I'm sure I've said some rude things here, to you. Nothing I wouldn't say to a flat earther, but even so, it's rude.
However, your sheer intellectual dishonesty worries me.
What other parts of your life do you use this?
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I say that God created the earth several billion years ago, but revealed His scripture in such a way that it appears to indicate a much younger earth. Why the scriptures would have an appearance of youth, I can't say. Posts: 3275 | Registered: May 2007
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quote:Only evolutionists and agnostics and atheists stop at this point...
More correctly, Ron, atheists and agnostics (and, I suppose, evolutionists) never get to this point, because nowhere will any of the evidence available to mankind suggest "God did it." So it's incredibly important that "God did it" is your starting presumption; without that baseless assumption, none of your other "science" makes any sense.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote:Originally posted by MattP: I say that God created the earth several billion years ago, but revealed His scripture in such a way that it appears to indicate a much younger earth. Why the scriptures would have an appearance of youth, I can't say.
quote:Originally posted by MattP: I say that God created the earth several billion years ago, but revealed His scripture in such a way that it appears to indicate a much younger earth. Why the scriptures would have an appearance of youth, I can't say.
posted
You've convinced me. I'm a young Bible creationist.
As far as I'm concerned, the Bible has only existed for 50 years. Any references to the Bible before that time are simply misunderstandings. God created the Bible as it exists today (New Revised Standard Edition) 50 years ago and it only seems to our imperfect understanding that it's actually older than that.
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I think the weak anthropic principle can be applied to the question of whether a god creating the universe as it appears would necessarily be a deceiver.
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0Megabyte - It's 50 years. The tree in my back yard clearly tells me that it's 50 years. Disagree with God if you like, but enjoy hell.
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I have it from a very reliable source that the Universe will not be created until next Thursday.
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Did I mention that Rivka is the one who will be doing the creating? She's obviously resting in preparation.
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In that case, would you mind writing a note to my boss, explaining why I won't be in for work tomorrow?
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quote:Originally posted by Noemon: How so, twinky?
If creating the universe in this manner was necessary such that human life could exist, then I'm not sure to what extent it counts as "deception" even if the universe is younger than it looks.
It's basically "if god hadn't created the universe this way, we wouldn't be here to observe it" instead of "if the universe wasn't this way, we wouldn't be here to observe it." Posts: 10886 | Registered: Feb 2000
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quote:It happened before, and you can prove something by demonstrating why and how it will happen.
It is impossible to demonstrate why and how anything will happen though. You can demonstrate why and how something DOES happen, because demonstrations occur in the present. But how would you ever know that it won't happen differently in the future, without relying on some unproven assumption that the future will operate just as the present does? How could you ever demonstrate anything about the future?
We can call stuff proven all day if we want to, but it seems to me that doing so becomes pointless if it is possible the thing we are calling proven might turn out to be false. For instance, it was fairly easy for the Bush administration to say Iraq had WMDs in the past, and come up with an explanation that they said demonstrates how and why Iraq will develop such weapons now and into the future. They tried to claim that constituted "proof". But as it turned out, there were no such WMDs. What good is calling something proven if the "proven" thing could still turn out to be completely wrong?
It does behove us to think of a conclusion as being true once we have proven it - but only if being "proven" actually entails being true!
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quote:So it's incredibly important that "God did it" is your starting presumption; without that baseless assumption, none of your other "science" makes any sense.
Why is this assumption baseless? It is certainly supported by the narrative of the Bible, if nothing else.
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quote:Originally posted by Noemon: How so, twinky?
If creating the universe in this manner was necessary such that human life could exist, then I'm not sure to what extent it counts as "deception" even if the universe is younger than it looks.
It's basically "if god hadn't created the universe this way, we wouldn't be here to observe it" instead of "if the universe wasn't this way, we wouldn't be here to observe it."
Ah, okay; that's an interesting thought. I misunderstood and was under the impression that you were saying precisely the opposite, which didn't really make any sense.
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
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One of the main things I hate about Hatrack of late is the tone of superiority. (Nor am I excluding myself -- I'm part of the problem too.) Yesterday alone you could feel superior about your scientific knowledge, your choice in music, your ability to speak English, your disdain for religion, or a few other things.
One of the main things I love about Hatrack is the consistent ability of many posters to truly work at understanding the other side.
twinky, that was very well put. Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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quote:Originally posted by MattP: I say that God created the earth several billion years ago, but revealed His scripture in such a way that it appears to indicate a much younger earth. Why the scriptures would have an appearance of youth, I can't say.
That truly was pretty awesome I gotta say. Though you said it in jest, I seriously like that phrasing. I think it's closer to the truth then some may believe. Though I would say it came out that way rather then God intentionally worded it that way.
----- As for Adam, belly buttons, and what not. Where does it ever say Adam just appeared as a man? For all we know he was created as an infant and raised in the garden by God. Actually I think Orson Scott Card said the last book he will ever write is a Pastwatch entry about the Garden of Eden.
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quote:Originally posted by rivka: One of the main things I hate about Hatrack of late is the tone of superiority. (Nor am I excluding myself -- I'm part of the problem too.) Yesterday alone you could feel superior about your scientific knowledge, your choice in music, your ability to speak English, your disdain for religion, or a few other things.
:: laugh :: That's so well put! An air of haughty intellectual superiority is the armor of the intelligent-but-not-terribly-physically-impressive. I wore a really nice set of the stuff myself when I was younger, but these days I've mostly learned not to don it, I think.
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
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quote:Originally posted by Noemon: An air of haughty intellectual superiority is the armor of the intelligent-but-not-terribly-physically-impressive.
Noemon doing ----> alot does little to increase your actual physique, but it certainly would decrease intellectual superiority. Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:Originally posted by MattP: I say that God created the earth several billion years ago, but revealed His scripture in such a way that it appears to indicate a much younger earth. Why the scriptures would have an appearance of youth, I can't say.
That truly was pretty awesome I gotta say. Though you said it in jest, I seriously like that phrasing. I think it's closer to the truth then some may believe. Though I would say it came out that way rather then God intentionally worded it that way.
It wasn't entirely in jest. I just had a minor epiphany that the same reasoning used in the "appearance of age" argument could be used to argue the opposite position.
Just as the young earthers look at the Bible and see a clear statement that the earth is only thousands of years old, I look at the earth and the universe and see a clear statement that they are billions of years old.
The young earthers that acknowledge the apparent age of the universe are conceding that this second statement is present, though they apparently give preference to what they see as a more explicit statement of age in scripture. However, if the entirety of creation, its appearance of age, and its appearance of experience are all also God's work, then God is presenting us with two apparently contradictory statements of age.
Given the admission that the universe has an appearance of age, and that we do not necessarily know God's reason for creating this appearance, I don't see how an assumption can be made that it's the observed universe's age that we are misinterpreting rather than the scripturally described universe's age.
Posts: 3275 | Registered: May 2007
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quote:Originally posted by Foust: Meh. If God created a house and told you the creation took place a few seconds ago, you'd expect certain things. If you walked inside and the walls were scorched like they had just been on fire, and in fact you could still smell smoke, you'd assume there had been a fire. But if God insisted that he had created the house right that second...
There's no way you could avoid some cognitive dissonance. Why would God create a new house with scorched walls and smelled of smoke from a fire that never took place? 'Cause that's the situation young earthers are stuck with.
You smell the smoke, you see the scorched walls, and are forced to say no fire ever took place.
Right. But it would be informative. It would allow you, using your mind, to see what caused the fire (even though it didn't happen).
That may sound dumb to you, but even if the world is no older than 6000 years, we can properly treat it as though it is billions of years old. If God did His job right, then it's legitimate to extrapolate back beyond actual creation even if that prior time never really happened.
In other words, there isn't really the conflict that some of you think there is. Yes, the world is young. And yes, for purposes of scientific inquiry, you can treat it as though it were old.
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quote:In other words, there isn't really the conflict that some of you think there is. Yes, the world is young. And yes, for purposes of scientific inquiry, you can treat it as though it were old.
And I'm perfectly happy with that position. It's consistent with the evidence AND with your doctrine. Win-win, I say. Of course it's philosophical position, not a scientific one, so the creation science folks are not about to accept it.
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alot does little to increase your actual physique, but it certainly would decrease intellectual superiority. 
