>Sorry to disagree with you but the wine analogy appears good to me.
>Creation shows "maturation" everywhere we look. As an example, if God
>created the Earth even 80x10^6 years ago, a greater age would be
>implied in the weathering products which His biological creation
>depended on at its initiation (most gymnosperms and angiosperms require
>soil).
>
>I believe for my geological and paleoenvironmental studies it is
>preferable to assume that His creation has "maturated" over a very long
>time period by our standards.
John, I concur completely. Creation does exhibit "maturation" everywhere we
look, over what appears to be a very long time period. But it might have
been otherwise; God might have fashioned creation so that it appears freshly
minted in every instant. There is nothing necessary to the concept of
"creation" that entails "appearance of age." But there is something
necessary to the concept of "wine" that entails some sort of "appearance of
age." Jesus turned water into wine, wine that appeared to be aged, and
necessarily so; it wouldn't have been "wine" otherwise. God created the
heavens and the earth, and they certainly appear to be aged, but that is not
necessarily so. My complaint with Bill Payne's analogy is that one cannot
legitimately construct a theory about the appearance of age in creation
specifically on the basis of the appearance of age in the wine at Cana.
Tom Pearson
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Thomas D. Pearson
Department of History & Philosophy
The University of Texas-Pan American
Edinburg, Texas
e-mail: pearson@panam1.panam.edu