I know you are speaking from your conviction here. YECs also approach this issue from their conviction.
It’s possible for either of us to be wrong (and I believe in an old earth too as you know).
Right belief is often not about analytical prowess. I know illiterate people who believe in God and Jesus. And we both have seen PHDs here who are athiest. Right belief has as much to do with our hearts as it does our minds. Perhaps more to do with our hearts.
So it’s important to stay humble and prayerful with regard to doctrine.
As the psalmist said:
Psalm 139: [ 23 ]Search me, O God, and know my heart: Try me, and know my thoughts;
[ 24 ]And see if there be any wicked way in me, And lead me in the way everlasting.
To anyone who examines the evidence. Have you ever tried that?
How do you imagine this side effect arising? At any rate, it doesn’t matter what his motivation is, or whether it’s a side effect. What matters is that he knew it would deceive us.
Why do you presume to speak for Christians, much less for most people on this planet?
Of course he is. He’s responsible for everything that happens. Now if you want to talk about free will, you should understand that coming to a conclusion from evidence is not a matter of will. You don’t get to choose what the data say.
What do you mean by that?
Of course they are, but in different ways. Those who conclude the earth is young aren’t looking at the physical evidence, which is what we’re talking about here. So they’re irrelevant.
Both, perhaps. Sorry, but we were talking about the physical evidence, not the bible. YECs do not look at the physical evidence.
Because you have never supported your claim with a rational argument.
Besides, your conclusions is an inference based on the data available to you.
Isn’t it possible that you are missing something and misinterpreted some things?
We are decieved by many things throughout history. Why should God be responsible for this even if he knew we would be decieved.
Do you really think the age of the earth is anything but a trivial subject for the vast majority of the 7 billion plus population of the earth?
Data doesn’t say anything. It’s the interpretation of the data that leads to the conclusion. This is why some hypothesis are wrong even when the data used to justify them are true.
As to God being responsible for your athiesm. That’s a ridiculous claim. You are an adult who made A free will choice based on your understanding of things. There are people who have access to the same information you have and have come to a totally different conclusion about the existence of God.
[quote=“John_Harshman, post:170, topic:1596”]
What do you mean by that?
Actually the context of this conversation is theological. It’s about YECs. Saying they, and how they come to their conclusions are irrelevant to the topic at hand is ridiculous.
This is why people are telling you that you are approaching a theological question with a materialist framework.
Anyway, if you believe God is responsible for your athiesm. Then by your logic, God is decieving some people while allowing others to come to the right conclusion. And people and their choices have nothing to do with this. It’s a very wierd take.
Any objective 3rd party would conclude there is far more physical evidence favoring an Old Earth than a Young Earth. Otherwise, there would be no scientific Establishment founded on this point.
Would God create the Earth with fossils already in the ground? If not, then the rocks and geology we are looking at was not part of the initial creation. It came afterwards. Maturity at the time of creation can’t explain the age of rocks that sit above fossils unless you have God creating the Earth with fossils already in the ground.
The difference is that the people who claim that the Earth is old actually have a method for measuring the age of physical objects. I don’t see how you can start with the empirical measurements and conclude that the Earth is young.
The question is which conclusions are backed by empirical evidence.
That could be said of every single scientific finding.
Yes… and If any scientific finding turns out to be wrong, one cannot blame God for it.
No, i don’t believe God would create the earth with Fossils in the ground. I dont kno many YECs who make this claim.
For YEC to be true, current estimations of the age of rocks/fossils will have to be false. Decay rates would have to non-constant… the speed of light would have to be non-constant etc…
Scientists have good reason to believe their estimates are right on all these parameters… However if they turn out to be wrong, they cant blame God for it.
For example, if the YEC idea that a global flood deposited various fossils below rocks turns out to be true, then, the fossils age may not be reflected by the layer in which they are found.
I recently read this paper in which a similar claim is made in cases of mass extinctions due to catastrophe. i am attaching the same.
Definitely.
And that is one of the first places to start a discussion regarding the Age of the earth with a YEC. The bible does not explicitly mention the earth’s age. The figure of 6000 years or 10000 years are speculations based on genealogies . Then there is the question of what day means in genesis 1.
In one sense that’s demonstrably true, if one takes seriously the disconnect between the macro world of sensory experience in which all human activity (including salvation) takes place, and the more fundamental world of quanta, field and so on - which has sometimes caused people to call the normal world an “illusion.” See Eddington’s two tables.
Now it would be plausible for someone to say that God has fooled us by making the Newtonian “projection” our reality - but that does not hold if his purpose is (as he states) that we should seek him and know true life.
I don’t hold to a young earth, but it seems to me the same consideration might hold, just as long as the reality is as old as human dealings with God - that is, last Tuesdayism would be deceptive (we believe we became Chrsutains or atheists in an imaginary past), but Young Earth Creationism would not.
Last Tuesdayism makes God out to be a deceiver. YEC does not. However, some of the arguments used by some YECs do make God out to be a deceiver.
In simple terms, the YEC rejects the standards of modern science, and prefers to use biblical genealogies instead as the basis for measuring time. However, I have more respect for the Amish, who live their lives based on a rejection of modern science. The typical YEC wants to use the automobiles and airplanes that depend on the science that the YEC claims to reject.
The circular way to reply to the second question is that we do live within what could be called an illusion (the Newtonian macro-world) and it’s not deceptive, because that is the world we experience daily.
In the same way if we watch a TV programme, we are caught up in the content, so that the fact that it’s all LEDs and vibrating speakers is forgotten - even when we know all that is happening. And that’s because we know the purpose of the technology is the conveyance of ideas and experience.
The first question is easier: if we use our imagination to envisage that God puts us into the Big Brother House in order that we learn to love our neighbour (if you have that dreadful programme out there), then if someone chips away at the walls and says, “Hey, this isn’t a real house at all, but a film set,” then they’re missing the point of why they’re there: nobody told them the house was anything in particular.
On the other hand, if everyone in the B B House was implanted with false memories and personalities last Tuesday, then the interactions would be a sham.
Which is not to say that that’s the way the world is… except for that annoying fact that none of our experienced reality is of the world as it is at the quantum or relativistic levels. But no less real for all that.
Quite so - the point at which the “illusion” is explained away as “non-illusion” is when self-deceit enters in.
Though the point about planes and so on is silly - they could fool themselves about the Big Brother House being a film set, whist being quite correct that the cooker and TV are real cookers and TVs.
I find that to be disingenuous. The motive for deception is not relevant to whether it’s deception. And “nobody told them” is not relevant to deception either; we’re talking about the deception inherent in data that makes the world (or the “house”) appear to be something it isn’t. Now if there were a reason that the set had to look like a house in order to function for its intended purpose, that would be another matter.
Nor is our Newtonian world an illusion. It’s a consequence of the scale at which we live. That there are things at other scales we find counter-intuitive doesn’t change that.
When considering an analogy, one should not lose sight of what it’s intended to be an analogy for. How is appearance of age in the world other than deceptive?
Well, once more I was extrapolating from the “scale at which we live” argument to the question under discussion in a speculative way - it’s not a view I hold myself - see following paragraph. In the case of the Big Brother House, the reason for the stage set would be because it’s a TV show - and as a studio set it would not be deceptive unless the contestants had been assured it was NOT a TV show. And God has not told us why the the world is made the way it is - nor, actually, instructed us to find out how it’s made.
As for the appearance of age itself, Joshua’s distinctions are useful. The old philosophers, interpreting Genesis without having to consider evolution or starlight in transit, discussed whether Adam would have been created as an adult, or would have gone through the usual stages of a human life. Aquinas’s conclusion, for various reaons we needn’t discuss here, was that it made more sense for him to be created as an adult.
Clearly, he would have appeared to have had, and replaced, milk teeth and all other appearances of maturation - but the question of deception was not even under discussion, because naturalism was not the paradigm.
I don’t think that’s correct at all. The proper analogy would be that the contestants didn’t know in advance that it was a TV show and were left to infer what they would from their surroundings. What you’re talking about is more like The Truman Show than Big Brother. Would you agree that The Truman Show involved deception?
Why? He makes three distinctions. The only one you allude to here is necessary appearance of age, i.e. what’s required for function. Adam needed teeth. But presumably he would not have been created with evidence of wear on those teeth. The teeth, being necessary, are not deceptive. Appearance of wear, not being necessary, would have been deceptive. And we shouldn’t be concerned with the ideas of old philosophers here except as they might be relevant to current questions. So: why is unnecessary appearance of age not deceptive?
Not the point - if the question is whether appearance of age is deception, then it can be useful to see what was said within other conceptual frameworks, in which it was no less possible to infer deception. The major difference now is that it is expected that all processes will follow causal pathways back to - well, in many case to an infinite regression of multiverses, or at least to the big bang.
And so to the people of 28AD, transforming water into wine was either a miracle or a conjuring trick. Now, it might instead be seen as a divine deception of age and process. The problem is a problem caused by a particular philosophical framework.
As for the Truman Show, since nothing in my experience in the UK gives me evidence of its existence, I hold it to be an illusion.