Does Appearance of Age Render God a Deceiver?

I was trying to understand what Byers is proposing.
I know some reasons why Scientists would disagree with the idea.

I share some of your concerns here regarding the sophistry of the idea. Especially where it is claimed that both the Bible and science would be true in this scenario. I believe only one will be true.
However, most of the predictions with respect to age of the earth is dependent on extrapolations (whether from the percentage of radioactive elements, or other means). This makes sense in assuming natural processes. However if we assume God created all things,an extrapolation need not have to go back to the beginning. The initial conditions could be anything.
The main issues would be in physics as far as I can see. Like why should the universe expand in such a scenario.
However, if this scenario is true, scientists would be wrong because initial assumptions of science would be wrong.

I’d agree. In case there is any doubts, it is not my personal view.

There’s your problem. Nobody, including Byers, understands what he says, and it’s fruitless to inquire of him or of anyone else.

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This case wouldn’t be like the Trinity. There is no paradox involved. You missed out the initial assumptions of science. I.e of natural processes causing all things. This assumption is not true as far as theology is concerned.
In God’s creation, there is no constraint that the Initial conditions of the earth/life should be such and such. Not is there a promise that any enquiry by human beings (esp one based on naturalism) should arrive at the true history of the universe.

It’s an interesting idea. I don’t know how it works for a 6000 year old universe.(there might be issues in such a young earth). However it’s possible our dating methods have the wrong initial conditions, and the universe is far younger than it appears.

True. But in this case, the initial conditions would have been carefully set up to validate the geologic column, sort rocks into consistent ages, make different radiometric dating methods coincide, and so on. That’s intentional deception, and there’s no way around it.

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Sure, but is it even a coherent or self-consistent view? Does it save God from the accusation of deception? Can you answer “yes” to either of those? It seems that you think you can.

2 posts were split to a new topic: Atheists Opinionated on Theology and Hermeneutics

Not really. Some of it could be because of the Initial conditions. For example radiometric dating assumes initial levels of isotopes and gives a date accordingly. Though the assumptions of initial conditions are reasonable given what is known, they could be wrong. The method or logic behind radiometric dating would be correct though and based on the initial conditions assigned, they would coincide. It seems more a result of calibration than anything else to me.
There could be other historical events like a global flood which further confuse us.

If we leave a strict adherence to the 6000 year timescale, it’s possible that the earth is much younger than assumed.
Of course it would mean that scientists are dead wrong about ancient history. And the scientific method itself is not suitable to investigate ancient events.
I don’t expect this idea to be popular among scientists.

Ashwin, nothing you wrote there seems to be a response to what I said. I’m saying that initial conditions would have to be very carefully set up in order to convince us that the earth is old for them to result in the data we see. The setting up of such otherwise inexplicable initial conditions would itself be deception.

No, it is not possible that the earth is much younger than assumed unless God is a deceiver. A global flood doesn’t help this; is just creates additional features that can only be explained by laboriously created deception.

I just don’t accept that “natural processes cause all things” is a necessarily assumption of science. A great many Christians throughout history would not have been able to be scientists if that was the case.

I think we could say that science does not look for supernatural causes, but science doesn’t claim that there are no supernatural causes. If a person (scientist or not) says that natural processes cause all things, they aren’t using science to make that claim, they are making a philosophical claim.

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Why is this so? If the initial conditions were different, we might extrapolate a different age for the earth. Given that half life is a real concept, do you see a situation where the clocks cannot be calibrated to consistently give similar ages?
Or are you thinking of something else.?

Edit: The point being that in any case involving a mature creation, we would extrapolate a wrong much larger age. This is not a deception. It’s a limitation of our (human) methods of investigation.

Scientists don’t give supernatural explanations for any phenomenon. It’s part of the scientific method to assume natural causes.
So obviously any investigation using this method will find the best possible natural explanation. It will not consider possibilities involving supernatural intervention. So in cases where supernatural intervention happened, science will come to a wrong conclusion. For example if God created the world in a mature state, science would never be able to predict it.

But there are multiple methods used to come to the age of the universe/Earth, so either a) multiple areas of science have to be coincidentally wrong or b) God must have created the universe with apparent age. Given the success of science in so many other areas I don’t see why (a) would be true and if (b) is true then, well, we’ve got other problems.

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No it’s not, I teach science for a living, I have never seen “there are no supernatural causes” as a requirement.

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If the initial conditions were different, in most of the ways they might be different, we would not be able to fit different rocks and different decay chains into any sort of coherent estimates of age. The fact that the story is consistent is evidence that only intentional deception could explain the results, if the estimated ages were false. No, this is not a consequence of a “mature creation”, whatever you may mean by that. I don’t think you’re thinking this through very well.

It depends on how many of these methods are independent of each other. If you look at history, the evidence that cinched the age of the earth was radiometric dating technology. Till then the consensus from multiple areas of science was around 100000 years. The scenario changed with dating methods.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the root of all methods of dating coincides with radiometric dating. This method depends a lot on predictions of initial conditions.
I am not an expert. But it seems to me that given any fixed initial conditions, these dates will coincide because it’s based on real physical phenomenon…
Suppose in an alternate universe, God created the world in a mature manner , so that scientific methods predicted the earth was 5million years old. The various dating methods would match, but the scientific prediction would be wrong and .Much older, because wrong initial conditions are assumed.

This is how I imagine things would happen. I could have gotten things wrong.

@Ashwin_s, @Jordan is making a subtle disctinction that is compatible with my view of science. He is saying that science does not appeal to divine causes, but neither does it assume there are no divine causes. At least that is what it appears.

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I understand what you are saying. I am making a more limited point. The scientific method does not consider supernatural explanations. So results of the the scientific method would be wrong if applied to situations where something supernatural was involved.
For example, if God created the world in a mature state.it would be impossible to predict this through the scientific method. And the history arrived at through science would be wrong or different from what actually happened.
Do you disagree with this?

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I think you will have to articulate what you mean by “a mature state”, especially considering that you also claim that no deception would be involved.