John W Burgeson wrote:
.............................
> Four -- Gosse spends many pages discussing how things would look (did
> look, as far as
> he was concerned) on the day they were created. His argument was, as far
> as I can
> remember without his book beside me, that life of all kinds exists in a
> cycle -- seed to tree to seed,
> chicken to egg to chicken, etc. etc. and God, in the creation of any new
> life form "suddenly"
> must necessarily create it at some point in that cycle. But whatever
> point it is created, there
> must necessarily exist (Gosse gives many examples of this) an appearance
> of age.
>
> One needs to do a Gedanken experiment to embrace this, and I think it is
> kind of fun to do so --
> from Gosse's book I suspect he did too. Look upon Adam 10 minutes after
> the creation process
> is complete. He is, perhaps, 18 years of age. Oops -- apparent age. In
> his gut are the remains of
> a meal he did not eat (for he had not yet been made) two hours ago. On
> his belly a naval
> of his non-birth 18 years previous from a non-existent mother. A tree
> nearby has growth rings (without them
> it could not stand) of years never experienced.
>
> Now -- assume you are there (you are Eve). You observe all these things,
> and many many others.
> You saw down the tree to check the rings. Do any of 1000 other
> "scientific" experiments you
> wish on the flora and the fauna. All of these necessarily show "apparent
> age." Yet -- creation just
> happened a few minutes ago.
>
> The point here, and I unfold it awkwardly, is that if one assumes God
> created ex-nihilo,
> there is no way (in our present universe at least) that this creation,
> looked at 10 minutes after
> it took place, would not exhibit "apparent age." Yet were we there
> to observe, we would know better.
>
> Since there is no way God can create the universe we know without an
> apparent age look,
> the deceptive god argument fails.
>
> Note that since it is generally agreed that God can do essentially
> anything, he
> could have created Adam (and the other stuff) w/o apparent age. But it is
> difficult
> (Gosse argues) to understand how these living beings could function. The
> tree
> would fall over; Adam would have stomach distress (or be hungry beyond
> belief) w/o
> the remains of his previous meal -- etc.
If I may package two replies (to this & your earlier post to me)
together:
On the general question of a "deceptive God" - as I agreed before, no
one begins by postulating such a deity. But the apparent age argument is
essentially that God deliberately created a deceptive
universe. There is a difference but I'm tempted to say, as one of my
colleagues did about an arcane theological discussion he found himself
trapped in, "I was unable to split hairs finely enough to follow his
argument."
Now as to the specific form of Gosse' argument as you report it:
Belief that God is the creator of an evolving universe of the big bang type
(with, of course, biological evolution &c) is a counterexample to your claim
that "there is no way God can create the universe we know without an apparent
age look". All the ages measured within such a universe are real (assuming,
of course, that theories and measurements are accurate.) It is of course
anachonistic to present that as a refutation of Gosse, but it does do in any
such argument presented by a modern YEC. One might go even farther and say
that, as far as we can tell, such an evolutionary big bang universe is the
only kind of universe God could have created that would have been
non-deceptive.
Shalom,
George
George L. Murphy
gmurphy@raex.com
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
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