George -- you wrote: "But according to the apparent age hypothesis,
nature is
supposed to suddenly become deceptive if we try to push it past that
point.
It's a pretty small step from that to the position that the one whose
creation nature is, and who is supposed to have seen that creation to be
good, is deceptive."
It is not that I disagree with you about all this -- it is simply
my point that Gosse, at least, proposes a solution to it which does not
require him to posit a deceptive god. As a second point I observe that
none
of my YEC friends, I think primarily here of Duane Gish, posit a
deceptive god.
The concept, AFAIK, is entirely one of OECs as they observe that a
deceptive god is
certainly one possible YEC argument. Usually they say it is a necessary
YEC argument, which I think is incorrect. Often they (we) discuss it as
if
our YEC friends endorse it, which is both incorrect and uncivil.
Burgy
On Mon, 15 Jan 2001 14:21:42 -0500 george murphy <gmurphy@raex.com>
writes:
> John W Burgeson wrote:
>
> > Glenn wrote: "
> > But then the question immediately arises--Is God capable of
> decieving us
> > about the plan of salvation? oooh--that is a bad question but the
> > logical
> > outcome of a deceptive God."
> >
> > That question ONLY arises if someone makes the claim of a
> deceptive god.
> >
> > Nobody, AFAIK, makes that claim. At least not in the context of
> > an origins hypothesis.
> >
> > Yes -- many OECs claim that YECs implicitly make the claim. But
> that
> > OEC claim must be on the basis of an inference and -- dare I say
> it --
> > muddy
> > thinking. Maybe unimaginative thinking is a better term.
>
> Of course nobody says "I believe in a deceptive God." But
> the
> implications of the apparent age argument are pretty hard to
> distinguish in
> a practical way from such a view.
> We know that we can rely on regularities of basic natural
> processes
> for inferring events for short intervals in the past. Bear tracks
> in the
> forest are evidence for a real bear. Radiocarbon abundances (with
> attention
> to possible variations in cosmic ray intensity &c) can be used to
> date
> pieces of wood for a few thousand years in the past. Tree rings
> give
> indications of real ages. In other words, nature is "truthful" up
> to about
> 6000 years ago. But according to the apparent age hypothesis,
> nature is
> supposed to suddenly become deceptive if we try to push it past that
> point.
> It's a pretty small step from that to the position that the one
> whose
> creation nature is, and who is supposed to have seen that creation
> to be
> good, is deceptive.
> One response to that is, "But God has _told_ us in the Bible
> how old
> the earth is." That depends of course on a particular way of
> reading
> scripture, but let that pass for now. I think the force of that
> argument
> arises from the historical circumstance that for a long time in
> Europe the
> world was believed to be ~6000 years old on the basis of scripture,
> so that
> the evidence of an old earth from geology came as a challenge to an
> accepted
> view which was supposed to rest on divine authority.
> But look at the matter from outside that context. Consider
> a
> Chinese geologist who has grown up apart from any knowledge of the
> Christian
> tradition, but who has also escaped any anti-Christian
> indoctrination. He
> is well-trained in the natural sciences and has investigated the
> question of
> the earth's age very thoroughly and honestly, with no anti-Christian
> ax to
> grind, and concludes that the earth was formed ~4.5 x 10^9 years
> ago. Then
> one day he encounters a Christian who tells him that he is a sinner,
> and
> that Jesus of Nazareth is the Son of God, God's agent of creation
> of the
> entire universe, and his savior from sin and death. Our geologist
> is
> existentially and intellectually convinced and about ready to commit
> his
> life to Christ. Then the Christian says, "Oh, there's just one
> other
> thing. The Bible teaches, and you have to believe, that God created
> the
> entire universe 6000 years ago."
> Now of course it's very likely that this last point would
> cause the
> geologist to reject Christianity, thereby pointing out the relevance
> of Mark
> 9:42 to those who make a YEC position an essential component of the
> faith.
> But suppose by the grace of God that didn't happen. What could the
> geologist conclude? If he tries to use the apparent age argument to
> make
> sense of things, he'll think something like this: "I investigated
> God's
> good world as honestly and thoroughly as I could and concluded that
> it was
> billions of years old. To begin with I had no preconceptions about
> the
> matter, and was willing to consider the possibility that the geology
> texts
> were wrong. I would have been quite content to find that the earth
> was only
> about 10^4 years old. But all the evidence points to an age of
> several
> billion years. And I believe that God is the creator of the world
> and of
> its laws.
> Therefore _______________________________."
> & I leave you to fill in the blank.
>
> Shalom,
>
> George
>
> George L. Murphy
> "Theologia naturalis delenda est!"
> http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
>
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