RE: Apparent Age: Rethinking Creatio ex Nihilo

Paul, thanks for the comments. I've responded point by point below.

> I read your paper... but still I am unconvinced! Even your domino analogy

> seemed inaccurate... your dominos are the same back to the beginning, but
> the properties of the universe seem to have changed going back in time...
> (density, for example). A better analogy might be to picture the dominos
> getting blacker and blacker as you go back toward the beginning. If at
some
> point in the sequence you find a domino that is "absolutely black", you
> would have a good idea that you'd reached the beginning even before
looking
> to the next one (you can't get any blacker). If you tried, and found some

> sort of observational barrier that prevented examination, you might
conclude
> that your theory of a beginning was on track.

Aren't you referring to something very like causal zero-time? It's already
included in the domino analogy (and the law of apparent age). That said, I
don't think the suggestion of changing colour is particularly clear for this
analogy (compared to the illustration of changing spacing between dominos).
Just because the domino can't get any blacker doesn't mean the whole causal
order couldn't continue -- there could be another domino, it just wouldn't
be any blacker. This is because causal zero-time can only occur when the
entire system is seen to collapse. Colour isn't an attribute which forces an
end to the row like domino spacing.

> > First, the concept of "showing past events". Here, the distinction is
> > often
> > drawn between "age" and "maturity" (or in your words "evidence of
history"
> > and "just fully formed things") -- in that only "age" is said to show
> > specific past events. But the distinction is a false one. In terms of
> > implying a causal physical history, the two are indistinguishable. The
> > very
> > presence of teeth is no less evidence of "past events" than are
cavities.
> > Teeth do not simply appear without a specific physical formation any
more
> > than cavities. Any physiologist can tell you that teeth require a
> > meticulously specific process of formation.
> >

> What you are saying above is only true for "universes with histories".

Not at all. Essential and non-essential age both evidence to specific past
events -- whether following creation or not.

> For a recent creation that has no true history, there would be no need for

> cavities, or any of the processes normally associated with development (or

> history in general). As long as something functioned, that was all that
> would be strictly necessary, even if the life forms had the DNA
instructions
> that allowed future generations to develop as we see today. There is no
> reason to impose our experience of things "as they are now" onto the past
> creation methodology. There is nothing to prevent God from creating a
> hippopotamus with shorter teeth just right for a mature hippo to use
without
> having them show evidence of having worn down. And certainly there's no
> need for one to be broken!

Yes, absence of non-essential age is entirely possible -- I do stress this
repeatedly. But any number of scenarios are logically possible. What I'm
interested in is the most reasonable expectation of apparent age at creation
point.

> I just don't follow your logic at all here. Why would evidence for past
> events of a non-essential historical nature be something that doesn't
bother
> you? It implies a history that never happened.

But why does it imply the reality of that history? Because that's the usual
course of things -- physical cause and effect. But this simply does not
apply to cases of miraculous creation. Say you're in the Garden of Eden at
creation point and you cut open a tree. You look inside at the tree rings.
You know these rings don't mean the tree actually grew -- why? Because you
know the tree was just created -- the rings and all the signs of age are
simply part of the created tree. Now, let's say the rings show some very
specific story. You can make out bad and good seasons, maybe a forest fire
which looks as if it occurred eight years ago. Does the tree now suggest the
reality of this story any more than before? Not at all! And for exactly the
same reason -- you know it was just created and that any implied history is
merely part of the created tree.

Consider two pebbles. The first has no radioisotope decay (this isn't to say
it doesn't have an implied history -- it just has a different implied
history), the second has enough decay to point to 4.5 billion years of age.
Does either pebble suggest the reality of their apparent age? Not if they
were just created. There is no deceit in terms of implying the physical
reality of a past that never was.

You may validly ask "why would God include this detailed story? Why would he
make it look like there was a forest fire? Why would he include 4.5 billion
years of decay?" These are good questions which I feel are answered by the
presumption of general causal consistency. However, let's say there isn't
any conceivable reason for God to include the forest fire evidence or
radioisotope decay -- here I think we might call God a deceiver. But why?
Not because the evidence suggests false history -- all creation beyond
zero-time does this, and we know we can dismiss this apparent age because it
is creation. No, the reason it would be deceptive is because God has created
apparent age which defies what could be reasonably expected. If this was the
case, when we looked at the evidence of forest fire, we might indeed doubt
that it was a case of creation because creation just isn't expected to
include forest fires.

But I argue that the presumption of general consistency does furnish good
reason to include such non-essential apparent age. It can be reasonably
expected and so is not deceptive in any sense.

> It really gets close to the
> idea that maybe everything was created last week, we'd never know if our
> memories were created intact. And the presence of the testimony of the
> Bible as evidence against that is good... but then I would counter that
God
> created the physical universe also, and the testimony of the physical
> universe is that it had a long history. It's just as reliable if it had
the
> same author. And God would surely want his creation to testify to the
truth
> as much as possible, and knowing our limitations, I would expect him to do

> it in a way that would communicate that truth as clearly as possible.

I certainly agree that the physical world is as much a testimony to God as
is Scripture. But this doesn't mean that everything should be obvious and
straightforward. It was Lewis who wrote in Mere Christianity "Besides being
complicated, reality, in my experience, is usually odd. It is not neat, not
obvious, not what you expect. [...] Reality, in fact, is usually something
you could not have guessed. That is one of the reasons I believe in
Christianity. It is a religion you could not have guessed. If it offered us
just the kind of universe we had always expected, I should feel we were
making it up. But, in fact, it is not the sort of thing anyone would have
made up. It has just that queer twist about it that real things have."

I'm not pretending Lewis was advocating anything like total apparent age,
but I think the point applies: we can't dismiss an idea simply because it
doesn't seem like an intuitively clear way for God to do things.

> It seems like you are saying that creation of a universe that operates
under
> "a presumption of general causal consistency" would require both essential

> and non-essential apparent age evidence because that is what we see...
that
> is, it is the only example we have. Isn't this circular?

How is it circular? I am merely proposing that we extend the only causal
order ever observed (general causal consistency) to creation, lacking
evidence to the contrary. I'm not just saying "hey, look at the past before
the YEC date -- it's generally causally consistent... I'll just say that's
what we should expect!" Rather, first I say that we have nothing directly to
go by. However, what we do have is recorded history which we know to be
governed by general causal consistency. We also know that the universe was
set up in this way (and sustained) by the same divine mind responsible for
configuring creation with its implied history. I'm not saying it has to be
this way, I'm saying it's a best-guess presumption. Which is where I quote
Hawking making an analogous point:

"[One could] say that God, being omnipotent, could have started the universe
off any way he wanted. That may be so, but in that case he also could have
made it develop in a completely arbitrary way. Yet it appears that he chose
to make it evolve in a very regular way according to certain laws. It
therefore seems equally reasonable to suppose that there are also laws
governing the initial state."

> You could say
> that I suppose, but there is no reason to believe that is the only way it
> could be done. And it still seems deceptive.

God could have certainly created a universe marked by a patchwork of
inconsistent implied histories as per the usual YEC scenario. But I don't
see any reason beyond sheer intuition to accept this. And my contention is
that the "deceptive" criterion must be dropped altogether (see above).

> You make the analogy in your
> paper of running a simulation until getting to the point of interest, and
> then creating the universe in the state present in the simulation at that
> time. Such a thing could in theory be done. But the whole point of a
> simulation is to model a reality that would be otherwise too complicated
or
> difficult to actually create. But for God, anything is possible. Why not

> just actually create the history, all of it, from the beginning?

I'm not trying to answer these sorts of questions here. I'm just asking IF
God created a universe recently as per the usual YEC Genesis reading, what
should we expect in the apparent age.

Hope that helps!

-Josh
Received on Mon May 22 19:43:29 2006