Re: appearance of age and the goodness of God

From: George Murphy (gmurphy@raex.com)
Date: Mon Mar 31 2003 - 07:20:11 EST

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    Bill Payne wrote:
    >
    > On Fri, 28 Mar 2003 09:57:58 -0800 (GMT) igevolution@earthlink.net
    > writes:
    >
    > > My name is Jason Alley, and I am posting again after a long
    > > absence. My pastor and I were talking about the appearance of age
    > > argument recently, and I was telling him that to believe that God
    > > created a young creation that bore the marks of an ancient one would
    > > be deceptive, and God does not deceive.
    >
    > Hello Jason,
    >
    > When Jesus created good (aged) wine from water, and when He multiplied
    > fish and loaves, He did so in a short period of time, yet the products
    > had the "appearance of age." If we can accept these miracles without
    > impugning His character, then on what grounds do we accuse Him of being
    > deceitful if He does the same thing with the earth, from which the fish
    > and loaves were derived?
    >
    > I think created men are biting off more than we will be able to chew when
    > we attempt to box the infinite, eternal God with our philosophical
    > arguments.

            ...................................

            I would consider apparent age arguments respectable (though wrong) if they were
    the _only_ arguments made by YECs in response to data that seems to show that the world
    is much older than ~10^4 years. I.e., if YECs were simply saying from the start, "The
    earth is 10^4 years old but was created then looking billions of years old, & there's no
    point in discussing the spurious indications of great age" then they would at least be
    consistent. But they aren't. Instead, they try to discredit radioactive dating, make
    claims about changing speeds of light &c, try to show that geological features could
    have been formed rapidly &c - & use apparent age simply as a fallback position. This
    makes it hard to believe that they really take the apparent age argument seriously
    themselves. If it were really valid, it wouldn't make any difference what Pb/U ratios
    &c were.
                                                    Shalom,
                                                    George
                                            
                                                            

                                                                                            
            

    George L. Murphy
    gmurphy@raex.com
    http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/

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