Critics object to mature creation (or “apparent age”) on the grounds that this would implicate God in a web of deception. Deceptive appearances.
YECs typically counter by citing paradigm-cases of mature creation–such as Jesus turning the water into wine.
I’d like to consider a different kind of example. Consider the healings of Jesus. These healings tend to restore the sick to state of health such that you couldn’t tell by examining them that they were ever sick.
Take the case of Jesus healing the man born blind (John 9). The blind man had some congenital defect which left him blind all his life.
When Jesus restores his sight, this doesn’t merely affect the future. It also, or so it seems to me, erases any physical trace of his past affliction. An ophthalmologist, examining the man after Jesus cured him, would be unable to detect the fact that this man ever had that particular birth defect. So it doesn’t merely change the present. It also changes the evidence of the past.
In addition, many Christians believe that God continuous to miraculously heal people throughout church history. To the extent that this actually happens, you have many instances of miniature mature creation throughout the last 2000 years of world history.
I don’t cite this as a positive argument for YEC. I merely cite this to question a facile objection to YEC.
I find the objection to be ridiculous. Although you amply deal with it, it occurs to me that we can make another analogy.
ReplyDeleteSay you bring home a pet dog from the store and show him his new dog house. Does he complain to you that he should have been present to observe you cut down the tree, cut and shape the wood and finally assemble the thing? If he does, wouldn't you say, "What did you want me to do? Bring you home to live with me and not have anyplace for you to actually live? Make a new home for you without actually building the home ahead of time?" Does he then accuse you of deceiving him?
Likewise, it can be argued, what was God going to do? Create all kinds of inhabitants for His new world and not provide them with all the support systems in their environment that they would need to survive? He's going to put His creatures on a planet that is nothing but surface goo--no highs, no lows, no mountains or great bodies of water to reflect His glory?
I know this is not a scientific argument, but neither is the objection a scientific one.
I agree.
ReplyDelete"I merely cite this to question a facile objection to YEC."
ReplyDeleteThanks for citing it.
I've never thought of this in these terms - makes good sense. Great illustration from Pilgrimsarbour, as well.
ReplyDeleteI'm afraid I do not see the connection. In your example the effects of the past are eliminated by a miracle from Jesus. In studying creation, the effects of the past are still there for all to see. Did I miss something in your illustration?
ReplyDeleteJohn Sellman
""Deception" and healing"
ReplyDeleteWell, if we throw off the deception of creationism, we can be healed by, and heal the world too, by "evolutionary Christian spirituality.
See this blog post about "Christian" theistic evolution titled "Spirituality and Faith in the 21st Century."
Excerpt(But do read the rest):
"The vision of the congregation that I am currently serving is to “teach and practice evolutionary Christian spirituality”. Following in the footsteps of Jesuit priest and paleontologist, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, we are carrying out a grand spiritual experiment that is an inquiry into what Christian community, mission, and spiritual practice looks like when it emerges out of an explicit belief in evolution as a sacred or divine impulse. As a scientist, Teilhard de Chardin accepted the evolution of matter and of life on earth as fact. As a theologian and mystic, his strong intuition and personal experience was that the push and pull of the evolutionary impulse was infused with the presence of Christ, at both the exterior level of forms and the interior level of consciousness.
He celebrated the human being as an occasion of evolution awakening to itself – the subjectivity or interiority of the cosmos – and that this awakening represented a momentous leap forward for the human species. Yet, the liberal church, let alone fundamentalist Christianity, is either slow to integrate the sacred dimension of evolution or actively hostile to this notion.
Evolution is perhaps the fundamental characteristic or dynamic of reality. Either “God” or “Spirit” is involved with reality as we now know it to be, or It/She/He is largely irrelevant. Somewhere between the ideology of scientific materialists, such as Richard Dawkins, and the proponents of young earth science, lies rich theological soil to be tilled. We can, without too much metaphysical baggage, posit that God is present in the evolutionary processes of nature, consciousness, and human society as a non-coercive or persuasive bias for increased unity, differentiation, and subjectivity – (an evolution towards increasing compassion). This kind of conversation between science and spirituality represents just one facet of what you refer to as the transdisciplinary environment of the 21st century. If spirituality is to play a role in the transformation of the human species, its leaders must allow its theology and spiritual practice to influence and be influenced by the entire range of social systems – an orientation that theologian, H. Richard Niebuhr, called “Christ in culture” (as distinct from the traditional stance of Christ against culture).
(cont.)
But beyond whatever theology of evolution we employ, for me there is a direct mystical dimension to evolutionary spirituality. When I center myself deeply and regularly in a practice of identifying with the sacred evolutionary impulse, I gain an expanded sense of myself that is cosmic in scope, at one with all of creation, and with Spirit. This practice gives rise to a Christ that is cosmic in scope and yet intimately related to all of life. As well, I experience an undeniable mandate to realize my full potential for freedom and fullness of life – a sense that there is a unique future that cannot be born without me. Barbara Marx Hubbard calls this “vocational arousal”, and when an entire community collaborates to act from this energy, tremendous creativity to shape the future is released. From this Big Self, (the heart and mind of Christ), personal agendas give way to a cosmic agenda of being the new thing Spirit is doing, individually and collectively, as an act of service. Or, to evoke the 2nd person face of God, to being vessels of emergence for the new thing Spirit is doing.
ReplyDeleteI imagine an evolutionary Pentecost, not unlike the first Pentecost that gave birth to the church. This outpouring of Spirit that comes with adopting an evolutionary spirituality, will not only breathe new life into the church, but will also activate the world’s two billion Christians to join forces across denominations, with other faith groups and with non-faith communities, in a transcendent project to consciously collude in birthing a new species of human, fit for the complexities of 21st life on our beloved planet."
Steve,
ReplyDeleteIn your opinion, what aspects of creation appear legitimately mature?
To take just one example, why would God have given the Grand Canyon the appearance of having been carved out naturally via erosion by the Colorado river over the course of hundreds of thousands of years, when he could have as easily carved it out mechanically, much like, say, Mount Rushmore, thereby giving it an appearance of age consistent with its actual age?
ReplyDeleteFor someone who finds Flood Geology a woefully inadequate explanation for the GC, wouldn’t the charge of deception have at least some bone fide traction (not withstanding your wine-to-water and miraculous healings counterexamples)?
All that's left that I don't understand is the connexion between YEC and ID. Why, if the evidence of the past leads to false conclusions, would we expect evidence for Creation apart from divine revelation? Should we expect the hypothetical ophthalmologist to correctly describe the miraculously healed patient's medical history? Not unless he or she is privy to the miracle!
ReplyDeleteThe "apparent age" objection is indeed facile and fallacious against YEC itself, but it is effective, I believe, against the combination of YEC and ID. If the age of the Earth is younger than it appears, then even the theory of evolution may be the correct interpretation of the physical evidence (i.e. leading to its conclusion in the same way that the lack of defect in the healed eye leads to a conclusion that the patient did not have a congenital defect). The only argument that can be levelled against it is an appeal to revelation. (I am not claiming this is a bad appeal.)
So why are some who believe that God created trees with rings when no growth had occurred hesitant to allow that he may have created life forms with just the right kind of genetic similarities and biochemistry to imply a common ancestry where no ancestors even existed at all?
SELLMAN SAID:
ReplyDelete“I'm afraid I do not see the connection. In your example the effects of the past are eliminated by a miracle from Jesus. In studying creation, the effects of the past are still there for all to see. Did I miss something in your illustration?”
The point of the comparison is that once the blind man is healed, it looks as if he was always sighted. So present appearances are “deceptive” in relation to the past reality.
JEN H. SAID:
“In your opinion, what aspects of creation appear legitimately mature?”
Since creation ex nihilo is inherently abrupt (i.e. unprecedented), I don’t think one point along the continuum is more or less legitimate than another.
“To take just one example, why would God have given the Grand Canyon the appearance of having been carved out naturally via erosion by the Colorado river over the course of hundreds of thousands of years, when he could have as easily carved it out mechanically, much like, say, Mount Rushmore, thereby giving it an appearance of age consistent with its actual age? For someone who finds Flood Geology a woefully inadequate explanation for the GC, wouldn’t the charge of deception have at least some bone fide traction (not withstanding your wine-to-water and miraculous healings counterexamples)?”
i) Your second objection is in tension with your first objection. YECs generally attribute the Grand Canyon to the flood, not mature creation.
(Of course, the Bible itself is silent on the origin of the Grand Canyon).
iii) Your first objection would only be applicable to pure omphalism.
iv) Apropos (iii), I’ve already discussed the stock objection to omphalism:
http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2010/04/hometrees-and-supernovae.html
http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2010/05/last-thursdayism.html
SRNEC SAID:
“So why are some who believe that God created trees with rings when no growth had occurred hesitant to allow that he may have created life forms with just the right kind of genetic similarities and biochemistry to imply a common ancestry where no ancestors even existed at all?”
In principle, that seems to be a logically coherent combination.
Steve,
ReplyDeleteBrilliant observation, and I'll tell you why. It may seem silly to say as a premise, but all of creation was created by God.
However, the strains of existentialism that pollute western thought in recent times causes us to search for naturalistic solutions to Biblical events - even among miracles. What I mean is that we would relegate all apparently false history as a lie as though God's intent was to deceive. However, what we call "false history" may be precisely that which reveals God's causality.
So I say, brilliant!
Jim Pemberton
ReplyDeletethis caught my attention: "...However, the strains of existentialism that pollute western thought in recent times causes us to search for naturalistic solutions to Biblical events - even among miracles....".
Yes and more so as I came along in the early 50's and by the time the sixties were in full swing I was a wannabe!
Needless to say, my naturalistic instincts overruled my existentialism and so then as now, my corruption still stinks! Yuck, yuck, yuck!
My halo glowing?
1Pe 1:3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,
1Pe 1:4 to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you,
1Pe 1:5 who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.
Besides, whether or not this is the one, I will not have any trouble with this being my last generation! :)