John W Burgeson wrote:
>
> George said three things. Two "well done." The third -- "sorry, you err."
>
> >> 1. Nobody has a good scientific answer to the claim that God created
> the world 15
> minutes ago with all memories &c.
>
> 2. Nobody has a good scientific answer to the claim that
> I'm a brain in a vat & my body & all the rest of you are figments of my
> imagination.
>
> 3. Much less should any Christian who believes that God created a real
> world that was "very good" entertain
> such notions. >>
>
> The last part is your claim, George. Gosse argued the "pre-time"
> worldview; presumably he thought it to be at least a probably truth.
> Gosse was a Christian. So this one case refutes your word "any."
>
> Now if you want to soften t he claim a bit -- no argument. <G>
a) I said "much less _should_", not "much less _can_". I certainly didn't mean
to deny the Christian faith of someone who buys apparent age. Christians think all
kinds of things that they shouldn't.
b) Gosse wrote ~140 years ago when it seemed plausible to argue that creation
would require apparent age, quite apart from any supposed need to reconcile Genesis
with the geological time scale. That is not the case today. As I have pointed out
before, if cosmic structures & life developed through natural processes from the big
bang, there would not need to be any "prefabricated" artifacts & therefore no spurious
appearance of age. Of course there's an "if" there but at least we've made a good deal
of progress in that direction since Gosse's time.
So while the apparant age argument was excusable in Gosse's time, there's no
excuse for somebody like Morris using it today - as in a recent post here - unless, of
course, one's highest priority is maintaining a questionable interpretation of Genesis.
Shalom,
George
George L. Murphy
gmurphy@raex.com
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
Received on Mon Feb 2 11:35:49 2004
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