RE: Apparent Age: Rethinking Creatio ex Nihilo

On Mon, 22 May 2006, Josh Klose wrote:

> 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.
>

My comment will be tangential to the main thrust of this thread, but I
would like to point out that Genesis 2:9 says that the trees in the Garden
of Eden did indeed grow. In fact the wording seems to me to be consistent
with growing from seeds.

Gordon Brown
Department of Mathematics
University of Colorado
Boulder, CO 80309-0395
Received on Tue May 23 11:10:31 2006