From: Josh Bembenek (jbembe@hotmail.com)
Date: Mon Mar 31 2003 - 11:42:27 EST
>From: George Murphy <gmurphy@raex.com>
>To: Bill Payne <bpayne15@juno.com>
>CC: igevolution@earthlink.net, asa@calvin.edu
>Subject: Re: appearance of age and the goodness of God
>Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 07:20:11 -0500
>
>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.
George-
I think you've made this argument before, but consider: if the earth is
indeed young, and has the appearance of age then either:
1 the data is wrong about the earth being old
2 the interpretation is wrong about the earth being old
So, starting with the hypothesis that the earth is young, these approaches
are merely reconciliatory strategies and do not conflict necessarily with an
appearance argument. Obviously, if the earth is young, then whoever claims
it is old has gotten the wrong impression-- and therefore it is only
appearing to be old rather than being old. Therefore, to those that the
earth appears to be old, they are wrong for one of the two reasons above, or
it actually does appear to be old and we cannot put our minds around why.
Regardless, if your null hypothesis is that the earth is young, you begin to
address the question differently than if you say the earth is old. It is
not necessarily true that they are contradicting themselves by approaching
the problem from different directions.
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