Saturday, April 27, 2019

Blank canvas

1. I've discussed this before. It's a perennial issue in apologetics. I'm going to use a different example to illustrate a point I've made before.

To my knowledge, there's overwhelming scientific evidence for the antiquity of the universe, from multiple interlocking data points. 

From what I've read, the most impressive scientific objection to conventional dating is the preservation of soft tissue in dinosaurs. I'm not qualified to assess that, but it's intriguing. 

That generates a paradox: due to the interlocking nature of the scientific evidence for the antiquity of the universe, if it turns out that there's no scientific explanation for the preservation of soft tissue in dinosaurs, over tens of millions of years, then that invalidates the entire dating scheme. 

If, however, YEC chronology is correct, it's odd that nearly all of the scientific evidence points to the antiquity of the universe while precious little points in the opposite direction. You'd expect the evidence to be more consistent one way or the other.

In general then, I think the effort to defend YEC chronology on scientific grounds is probably a losing argument. That doesn't mean it's necessarily a lost cause–just that if you try to make the argument from scientific evidence, I expect that's doomed to fail. Nevertheless, the anomaly of soft tissue in dinosaurs is fascinating. 

2. A limitation on appeals to scientific evidence is that science operates within a particular framework. But the act of creation lies outside that framework. The scientific framework is the result of creation. So beyond a certain point, you can't extrapolate from the framework to the set up. 

To take a comparison, a painter begins with a blank canvas. There are almost no limitations on what he can put on the canvas. There's no natural starting-point. Rather, he's working from scratch. 

Likewise, a filmmaker begins with a roll of blank film. There's nothing on the frames. He can film whatever he wants. 

The medium imposes almost no restrictions on his range of options. The medium offers no direction. What the artist paints or films is wide open. There's nothing in the medium to indicate where to begin. 

Different painters with a blank canvas paint different scenes. Indeed, the same painter paints different scenes. Give him 50 blank canvases, and he'll paint 50 different scenes. 

Hand different filmmakers a roll of blank film, and they will make different films using the same roll of blank film. Indeed, the same filmmaker will make different films using  rolls of blank film. Nothing in the medium constrains the choice of plot, setting, characters, or dialogue. And in the digital age, it's even mere flexible.  

What's put on film or put on the canvas doesn't derive from the medium but from the mind of the artist. It comes from outside the medium. In that regard, the choice is arbitrary.

That doesn't make it absolutely arbitrary. In a movie with a good plot, there's dramatic logic to where the story begins and where it ends. However, that's internal to the narrative. The medium itself doesn't point in any particular direction. 

Mature creation has antecedent appeal because it parallels the nature of human creativity. And the comparison is even stronger in reference to the divine creator, because God is freer than human agents. He creates the medium. Not only is this an argument by analogy, but an argument from the lesser to the greater. So I find the idea of mature creation powerfully appealing. 

11 comments:

  1. My response will sputteringly try to work with some of the metaphors and analogies you use here and have used in the past when discussing the same concept.

    So, starting with the film analogy: if you're going to create a movie it is fitting that there be some history assumed by the film that isn't actually part of the story told (unless we stipulate that our movie is about the first point of history itself).

    But given God's artistic extravagance, unconstrained by limitations in power and time. . . why not just do the actual history instead of assume the history? It seems just as fitting and even simpler to say that God didn't just "antique" the furniture to give it an appearance of history, he went through the trouble to actually give it that history.

    Now if we bring in the evidence of Scripture it may be that assumed history is the better explanation. But just going from the sorts of analogies you offer, it seems simpler to see God as actually fleshing out the backstory analogous in some feeble way to Kubrick's 2001.

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    1. why didn't God create the world x second sooner, or later? Why didn't he make a world with intelligent penguins that could speak and build cities? Why didn't he do a lot of things?

      Maybe God makes creation ambiguous because its part of saving some and condemning others. It's part of divine hiddenness. I have no problem with an Old Earth but I think most of the objections to mature creation suck pretty hard.

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  2. Regarding the dinosaur soft tissue:

    1. I think it was Mary Schweitzer who famously found the soft tissue in T. rex bone. Interestingly, she's also a Christian, formerly a YEC, but she changed her mind after becoming a paleontologist. I assume she's a theistic evolutionist now.

    2. It's not just dinosaur soft tissue that was found, but also cells and molecules like proteins too. Such as collagen, elastin, red blood cells with heme.

    3. What's more, it's not just dinosaur soft tissue, but there are some rare instances of other animals too (e.g. ancient fish nerves, ancient "shark" mineralized brain).

    4. In fairness, some scientists argue the soft tissue and the like were only able to be discovered due to advanced technological methods which didn't exist in the past. However, if so, are there are recent soft tissue finds?


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    1. Mary Schweitzer who famously found the soft tissue in T. rex bone. Interestingly, she's also a Christian, formerly a YEC, but she changed her mind after becoming a paleontologist. I assume she's a theistic evolutionist now.

      How do you know she is not OEC? why jump all the way to "theistic Evolution"?

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    2. Ken Temple

      "How do you know she is not OEC? why jump all the way to 'theistic Evolution'?"

      1. Based on her published papers in top notch scientific journals (e.g. "A role for iron and oxygen chemistry in preserving soft tissues, cells and molecules from deep time").

      2. Based on her interviews. For example:

      "Hi Jack, I'm Mary," Schweitzer recalls telling him. "I'm a young Earth creationist. I'm going to show you that you are wrong about evolution."

      "Hi Mary, I'm Jack. I'm an atheist," he told her. Then he agreed to let her sit in on the course.

      Over the next 6 months, Horner opened Schweitzer's eyes to the overwhelming evidence supporting evolution and Earth's antiquity. "He didn't try to convince me," Schweitzer says. "He just laid out the evidence."

      She rejected many fundamentalist views, a painful conversion. "It cost me a lot: my friends, my church, my husband." But it didn't destroy her faith. She felt that she saw God's handiwork in setting evolution in motion. "It made God bigger," she says.

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    3. Wow. thanks for the info and helping me. So sad she lost friends and her church and her husband (wow !! double sad)

      What would she say is the difference between OEC and Theistic Evolution?
      "transitional forms" ?
      symbolic Adam and Eve ?
      understanding of hominids and the "image of God" ?

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    4. Thanks, Ken.

      I'm not sure if these are rhetorical questions, but in any case it might be best to ask her yourself? Her email is mhschwei @ ncsu.edu and she blogs here (there's hardly anything on her weblog but maybe she's contactable via her weblog).


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  3. I note that YEC concerns are dismissed without any actual reason given for why other than basically an appeal to authority.

    https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/dinosaur-shocker-115306469/

    --That generates a paradox: due to the interlocking nature of the scientific evidence for the antiquity of the universe, if it turns out that there's no scientific explanation for the preservation of soft tissue in dinosaurs, over tens of millions of years, then that invalidates the entire dating scheme.--

    Indeed one of the YEC arguments - that certain conventional dating methods start with presuppositions, then other methods rely on those methods, resulting in circular reasoning.

    For example, if it is assumed (or wrongly determined, say by faulty radio-dating - itself reliant on many presuppositions) that certain types of rock were formed 68 million years ago, ergo any fossils found in that rock must be 68 million years old. From there, any other rock found with those kind of fossils also get dated to 68 millin years... And so on, and so forth.

    Personally I've bounced from one side to the other several times. I'm content to let the discussion work itself out for now.

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  4. Steve or any others:
    Why do YEC's insist that all Dinosaurs (original "kinds") were on the ark?

    Genesis 6:19 could be understood as "every living thing" was alive at the time of Noah, if some other kind of catastrophe made the dinosaurs extinct. The only good argument for a few dinosaurs left is if Leviathan and Behemoth in Job 38-41 are some kind of dinosaur that survived. If humans lived to 900 years etc. (as it says in Genesis 5), then lizards like crocodiles, alligators, tortoises, snakes, and other lizards, if they lived a lot longer by analogy with humans, that would explain the size of many reptiles that lived so long; and after God shorted lifespans (as in Genesis 6:3 (down to maximum 120 years +/-), then it may explain things.

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    1. My guess would be that any sort of catastrophe catastrophic enough to wipe out all dinosaurs likely would have wiped out most other living creatures as well.

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    2. "Why do YEC's insist that all Dinosaurs (original "kinds") were on the ark?"

      Might be good to ask a YEC like Todd C. Wood or Kurt Wise if you want a direct answer from a YEC. Otherwise creation.com provides stock answers from a YEC perspective.

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