[asa] Apparent age: current creationist views

Rereading Craig's page on Gosse, Ham and Morris
(http://www.asa3.org/ASA/education/origins/aa2-cr.htm) got me thinking again
about current views on apparent age among creationists. I've had some more
time to go through my paper again, making some fairly major updates
(http://www.hlfallout.net/~josh/apparent_age.pdf). Also, a thanks to Burgy
for his Gosse page (http://burgy.50megs.com/gosse.htm) which alerted me to
Ramm's comment. I've added a brief response to Ramm's point in the section
on falsifiability (under section VII).

Anyway, the main update is to the discussion of current creationist
viewpoints and how to proceed. Here's a summary of my thoughts (section IV):

Current discussion is often blurred either by unfounded aversions to
Gosse/deception or by overextending the concept of Morris' "functioning
completeness".

-The "appearance of maturity" (which seems to be the view of Hugh Ross'
Reasons to Believe) is based on the idea that certain features point to true
"ageing" and others to mere "maturity" -- and that God would have avoided
the ageing ones because they imply a false history. However, the distinction
is a false one as it is all part of apparent age (and AA is unavoidable
anyway).

-The minimal deception argument (AiG/Ham) which argues for the minimum of
apparent age, again based on an avoidance of deception. However, this
concept of deception is flawed. Apparent age is not deceptive if we can
count the possibility of creation (i.e. recognize AA for what it is) --
which we can, potentially, because of special revelation.

-Functioning completeness of Morris. I argue that, while perhaps correct,
this framework possesses very little content. The terms "functioning
optimally" and "complete creation" are so ill-defined as to permit a
multitude of views (including Gosse-like complete apparent age). The views
of ICR/CRS/AiG on various AA issues may be purported to be based on
functioning completeness, but the concept really can't decide any of the
crucial questions either way (e.g. radioisotope decay, created starlight,
created fossils) -- it's simply too vague.
        -> However, one can establish a loosely defined base of minimum
apparent age that is 100% unavoidable (e.g. Adam's DNA, skin etc.)

Thus, the existing arguments offer very little substantive content for
defining apparent age (apart from a vague minimum base) -- leaving the door
open for my Gosse-like view of general causal consistency. Anyway, I'd
appreciate any of your thoughts on this.

-Josh

Sent: Thursday, 15 June 2006 1:48 PM
To: Josh Klose
Subject: Re: [asa] The Apparent Age Strikes Back

Josh,
    Motivated by an email message from a friend about my "apparent age"
page (4 weeks ago) and moved into action by the thread you began (3 weeks
ago) and by reading your page (2 weeks ago, I procrastinated before moving)
I revised my page, http://www.asa3.org/ASA/education/origins/aa-cr.htm
One specific change was motivated by reading a quote in your footnote and
not liking what I was saying, which led to this revision:

    In an earlier version of this page, I said "if God is maximally honest,
then He will create an old universe without a false appearance of age," but
now I think more humility is appropriate because...

    There were quite a few major changes in the first page (it might be
worth re-checking this to see if it affects anything in your paper) and
also in the second page (aa2-cr.htm) but these are fairly minor.
    I finished this about 11 days ago and planned to immediately tell you,
but -- oops -- I didn't and then moved on to other projects, and didn't
think about it until seeing your post yesterday. Sorry.

    And you've probably seen that I added your paper to the links-page
"aa.htm" that you cite.

    I'm super-busy now with urgent projects so I won't post any comments on
the ASA-list, but I'll keep watching it to see if anything happens.

Craig

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Received on Thu Jul 6 12:23:25 2006