Mature creation and illusion

The stock objection to young-earth creationism is that mature creation implicates God in a web of deception. Ironically, even Jonathan Sarfati agrees with that objection. But let's take a comparison: a major interpretation of the B-theory of time appeals to illusion:

Consider the following quote by Robin Le Poidevin:

We are indirectly aware of the passage of time when we reflect on our memories, which present the world as it was, and so a contrast with how things are now. But much more immediate than this is seeing the second hand move around the clock, or hearing a succession of notes in a piece of music, or feeling a raindrop run down your neck. There is nothing inferential, it seems, about the perception of change and motion: it is simply given in experience. (Le Poidevin 2007, 87)

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We just see time passing in front us, in the movement of a second hand around a clock, or the falling of sand through an hourglass, or indeed any motion or change at all (Le Poidevin 2007, 76).

[B-theory] Illusionists think that we have perceptual experiences as of time robustly passing, even though time does not robustly pass. Veridicalists think that we do not have perceptual experiences as of time robustly passing, and that time does not robustly pass.

Some illusionists have turned to cognitive science to try to explain away what they think of as the perceptual illusion of the robust passage of time. One example is Laurie Paul (Paul 2010). Paul suggests thinking the perception of change and motion in a B-theoretic universe as analogous to perceptual illusions of change and motion. The illusions she has in mind include flipbooks, as well as our perception of continuity rather than a series of still images in movies. But her central example is what in the philosophical literature has become known as the color phi phenomenon. Here, a subject is presented with a series of flashes of a differently colored dot on opposite sides of a screen (red dot top, green dot bottom, red dot top, etc.). If the flashes are timed and spaced appropriately, the subject can have an illusion as of a single dot moving back and forth continuously and changing its color abruptly, somewhere along the trajectory.

Paul's idea is that we should understand the veridical perception of motion and change in a B-theoretic world along similar lines. Consider a change in an object O, understood as the B-theorist thinks of it: O has property P at t₁, and a different, incompatible property Q at t₂. When we perceive these tenseless facts, our brain "fills in" information due to its limited powers of discrimination. So what we end up perceiving (or having perceptual experiences as of) are tensed facts, namely, first, the object's presently being P and then the object's presently being Q and having been P. Life as a whole, then, is a kind of film, on this view. Because of that, we are subject to a constant perceptual illusion of robust passage. But when we are undergoing a color phi experiment, or watching a film, then we are undergoing a second perceptual illusion, in addition to that of robust passage, namely that of change or motion. In both cases, the brain "responds to closely spaced inputs that have sufficient similarity (yet have qualitative contrasts of some sort) by accommodating and organizing the inputs," thereby creating a sense of "animated change," which is change that involves robust passage (Paul 2010, 22).

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For example, many illusionist B-theorists think that due to the pervasive illusion of robust passage, we perceive the world to be very different from the way it really is. Some even think to a significant extent, we project motion and change onto the world (Le Poidevin 2007). On such a B theoretic view, the appearances are deceiving – reality is rather less changeable and dynamic than it seems ordinarily. This is somewhat similar to the eternal present* view, in the following way. On the eternal present* view too, reality is very much unlike it seems, because the second temporal* realm consists of something like a single time* point – a single eternal present*. If this realm is more fundamental than our ordinary temporal realm, then this, in a way, is how things really are. In a way, temporality – in the sense of a succession of times, as well as of a past, present, or future – is an illusion. I've argued that this view of time can, to an extent, offer comfort in the face of loss even to atheists (Deng 2015).⁸

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⁸ Shortly after the death of his friend Michele Besso, Einstein remarked: "Now he has also gone ahead of me a little in departing from this peculiar world. This means nothing. For us believing physicists, the division between past, present and future has only the significance of a stubbornly persistent illusion." "parenthesis". Should read as: "Illusion."

Natalja Deng, God and Time (Cambridge 2019), 12-13, 29.

The immediate point at issue isn't whether you agree with the B-theory of time. The point, rather, is that it would be anti-intellectual to discount the B-theory if it entails a perceptual illusion. The B-theory should be accepted or rejected if it's a better overall explanation regarding our evidence for the nature of time. It can't be ruled out a priori on the moralistic grounds that reality mustn't deceive us.