apparent age

Garry DeWeese (deweese@ucsu.Colorado.EDU)
Wed, 3 Apr 1996 08:44:28 -0700 (MST)

As was recently noted, Supernova 1987A is a good test case. While
conceivable that God would create with apparent age, it is much less clear
that he would create evidence of an object that never existed and an
event that never occurred. To paraphrase Einstein, "God may be subtle
but he is not malicious." Thus to defend God's creating evidence of
non-existent entities, one would have to claim God had a higher good he
was seeking, which could only have to do--at least indirectly--with our
beliefs about the age of the earth. In that case it seems we should take
the appearances as evidence, and not try to look for places where God
"forgot to cover his tracks." Or why should we assume that God created with
apparent age, which is obvious to all, but only reveals his "deception"
to the chosen few who are clever enough to find the tiny hints he left
lying around? On that model, how can we follow any consistent
hermeneutic? Perhaps God doesn't want us to believe the plain sense of
the text after all. Maybe Bultmann was right to find traces of mythology
in the resurrection account; perhaps Wellhausen was right to find hints of
multiple authorship in the use of different divine names...

What is comes to is a neo-gnostic position where only the illuminated are
in on the truth.

Garry DeWeese