Young-Earth Creationists (YECs) will often use the “appearance of age” argument to completely dismiss any scientific evidence of an old earth.  It’s actually a very difficult thing to argue against.  After all, imagine Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.  They would have immediately appeared as fully-formed adults.  A forensic investigation into their apparent age would not have given actual results (young), but apparent ones (old).  And the trees in the garden probably had their full compliment of rings, again giving the illusion of age.  None of this necessarily makes God a liar or a deceiver since these illusions are all necessary consequences of creation ex-nihilo. 

The first miracle of Christ is another good example.  Having just turned water into wine by divine fiat, there would not have been any scientific way to distinguish the miracle wine from the ordinary wine, formed via a natural process that usually takes months.  In fact, the Bible tells us that the wine Jesus made was better than what had been previously served, so it must have appeared to be well-aged!  And no responsible theologian would accuse Christ of intentionally deceiving the guests at the wedding just because He created wine that appeared to be older than it actually was.  Why is that?  Because once again, some appearances are necessary consequences of the miracle.  There is simply no way around it.

But what if Adam and Eve had detailed memories of childhood events that never took place?  Would that be weird?  What if the first couple could tell you all about their human parents and how they were raised and who they went to school with?  Along these same lines, what if Jesus also created empty wine-skins and put them in the kitchen trash, and put sales receipts for purchased wine in the house ledger?  And what if He also implanted a detailed memory in the kitchen staff of them buying the wine and delivering it to the house?  This sort of “appearance” would go far beyond that which is required by the miracle.  In fact, such things would raise some very serious questions about the authenticity of the miracle, would they not?  Why perform a miracle only to cover it up with carefully-crafted evidence that calls the miracle into question?  Is that they way our God works?  Does God really say, “Thou shalt believe A” and then pepper the cosmos with evidence of B and not A?  I’m no theologian, but something tells me God doesn’t work like that.

For anybody who has studied the overwhelming evidence for an old earth, and how the many independent lines of scientific evidence all conspire to give consistent results with a very small margin of error - the vast majority of the data falls well outside the bounds of what a creation miracle reasonably requires.  For instance, why give the illusion of exploding supernova 10 billion years ago?  Was that really necessary?  We wouldn’t even have noticed it were it not for our powerful telescopes.  Or why create a detailed baby-picture of the primordial universe (Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation) showing the exact distribution of energy shortly after the Big Bang?  I can accept the creation of distant starlight en-route so early man can have “signs for seasons” - but why the CMBR?  Why millisecond pulsars?  And why give the illusion that the more distant galaxies are receding faster than are the closer galaxies?  And why even have apparent light from other galaxies when the actual light from everything outside of our own Milky Way Galaxy will never even reach us?  Why put radioisotopes in the exact parent/daughter proportions so that the age of our solar system can be accurately determined by several independent methods?  The list goes on and on. 

So what about Adam and Eve’s childhood memories of mom and dad?  What about the kitchen staff at the wedding who can accurately recall driving to the local winery, picking up the wine, emptying the water out from the vessels and pouring the wine in right before Jesus walked in the kitchen?  What if they even had receipts for the exact amount of wine purchased that morning?  Hopefully this drives home the point that while a certain amount of “appearance” is necessary to augment a miracle, you can’t just use this argument to freely dismiss any data that might contradict your claim.  Sooner or later you will raise more difficult questions than you can answer.  If the other biblical miracles came with a tenth as much unnecessary scientific detail as the creation of the cosmos and earth, they would hardly qualify as miracles - completely defeating the purpose of God working contrary to ordinary providence.  Yet, there are many believers content to use this line of reasoning in the name of Christ.

Even so, such a position is not totally outside the realm of possibility.  It’s possible that since God’s ways are not our ways, there are reasons for the creation of extraneous illusions that are far beyond our finite understanding.  I can accept that.  But what I can’t accept is to follow this argument up with creation science.  What is the point of that?  If any naturalistic investigations into the available data will only give you the apparent truth and not the authentic truth, then why bother with trying to find scientific evidence for a recently created earth?  Just stick to your story and forget about the scientific apologetics!  All the pseudo-science does is make Christianity appear to the rest of the world about as trustworthy as astrology and fortune-telling, and it also isolates an entire group of people (professional scientists who take their work seriously) from the much needed Gospel message.  Can you imagine how absurd it would have been for some of the wedding guests to argue scientifically that the wine is not old?  Do you see how absurd discussions of uniformitarianism vs. catastrophism would have been when the wine tastes so smooth and aged!  To conduct a scientific investigation into the age of the newly created wine would have completely missed the point of the miracle! 

So my advice to YECs (not that they’re asking me), take the evidence for an old earth seriously.  But if you can’t in good conscious believe the earth is old, then just rest on the fact that God created the universe to look old, and forget about trying to use science to prove a miracle.  Let science do what what science does - explain the available data as it appears!

-GJG

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008 at 4:34 pm and is filed under Random Things. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.