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Sunday, February 03, 2013

Evidence of nonevents

Adam Omelianchuk

I share your point about the culpability of "lying," because to lie is to know the truth and intentionally mislead an inquirer. But, as I've said elsewhere, the young-earth view is committed to a whimsical ontology replete with baffling supernatural acts that yield curious results. For example, gamma ray bursts that would normally travel billions of light years to reach us are thought to be created in transit, yet still providing evidence of events that never occurred. The same is true of supernovas the collisions of galaxies, and stars being sucked into black holes. When you have evidence of events that never occurred, you have something awfully strange on your hands.


Let’s consider some potential counterexamples:

i) The general principle underlying Omelianchuk’s objection seems to be the disconnect between effects and secondary causes. You have an effect which would normally be the result of a secondary cause, but in this case there is no secondary cause corresponding to the effect.

An obvious problem with his objection is that it rules out creation ex nihilo, as well as miracles that bypass second causes.

ii) For instance, since humans normally have two biological parents, the existence of Adam and Eve would be evidence of a nonevent, for they didn’t have parents.

Likewise, the existence of Jesus is evidence of a nonevent: a father impregnating a mother.

ii) Or take the multiplication of the loaves and fish. The instant bread is evidence of a nonevent: sowing grains of wheat, germination, sun and rain, ears of wheat, harvesting, threshing, baking bread with water, flower, and fire,

Likewise, the instant fish are evidence of a nonevent: insemination, laying eggs, maturation.

I don’t know if Omelianchuk subscribes to theistic evolution. If so, then instant fish are evidence of a nonevent: an age-long evolutionary process resulting in fish.

iii) Omelianchuk’s principle rules out progressive creation as well as fiat creation, for, according to progressive creationism, God introduces new natural kinds by direct intervention. Effects without secondary causes.

iv) To consider this from a different angle:

10 Then David said, “O Lord, the God of Israel, your servant has surely heard that Saul seeks to come to Keilah, to destroy the city on my account. 11 Will the men of Keilah surrender me into his hand? Will Saul come down, as your servant has heard? O Lord, the God of Israel, please tell your servant.” And the Lord said, “He will come down.” 12 Then David said, “Will the men of Keilah surrender me and my men into the hand of Saul?” And the Lord said, “They will surrender you.” 13 Then David and his men, who were about six hundred, arose and departed from Keilah, and they went wherever they could go. When Saul was told that David had escaped from Keilah, he gave up the expedition (1 Sam 23:10-13).

Here David is choosing what to do in light of a nonevent: if David remains in Keilah, the citizens will turn him over to Saul. So he leaves before that eventuality plays out. God gives David evidence of a nonevent: what would happen to him if he took that fork in the road, as a result of which he turns that hypothetical into a nonevent by pursing an alternate course of action.

v) What about praying for a past event? Suppose you apply to college. Suppose you receive a letter in the mail. Before you open the envelope, you pray about it.

Of course, at the time the letter was mailed, the admissions office had already decided to accept or deny your application. If God answers your prayer, your prayer may affect the past, rendering the alternative a nonevent.

7 comments:

  1. "The general principle underlying Omelianchuk’s objection seems to be the disconnect between effects and secondary causes. You have an effect which would normally be the result of a secondary cause, but in this case there is no secondary cause corresponding to the effect".

    That isn’t the general principle underlying my objection, because, as you rightly point out it would be to assume that every effect has a secondary cause, which of course is false if Christianity is true (which I believe it is). My point was that it is strange to think that these rather common and mundane astronomical events are the result of primary causation. This oddness is inherent to the young-earth position, though it is not logically incoherent or morally unacceptable. Mine is an aesthetic judgment about the metaphysics of young-earth creationism used to explain scientific phenomena, and the implication that God created effects that constitute common and mundane events. What I do assume is that miracles and the like are usually to be taken as revelatory, which tell us something about God or God’s purposes (of course, they don’t have to be). With that in mind, I am not sure we can determine what any of his purposes would be behind creating light-in-transit of supernovas, but we can determine at least some of his purposes in the miracles you list above. We may not share these same judgments, and that’s fine, but that is why I think you have something strange on your hands if you go the young-earth route.

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    1. Atheists find any version of Christian creation (fiat creationism, progressive creationism, ID theory, theistic evolution, deistic evolution) inelegant. They find a universe which is self-contained more elegant than a universe which requires an external agent to explain it.

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    2. Adam,

      "With that in mind, I am not sure we can determine what any of his purposes would be behind creating light-in-transit of supernovas, but we can determine at least some of his purposes in the miracles you list above."

      Gen 1:14-17:

      And God said, “Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times, and days and years, 15 and let them be lights in the vault of the sky ***to give light on the earth***.” And it was so. 16 God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. 17 God set them in the vault of the sky ***to give light on the earth***.

      If God created the stars without the light reaching us, they would not give light. God's stated purpose was for the stars to be lights.

      God be with you,
      Dan

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    3. Dan,

      I suppose one could accept that but still object to things like supernovas and black holes. Stars have a purpose in giving light, though not all stars give light visible to us on earth, but supernovas and black holes are supposed to be things that happen to stars but allegedly never did. Maybe we could co-opt the old earth IDers aesthetic extravagance appeal at this point. Many things in life exhibit a sort of beauty and elegance that doesn't serve any apparent function or perform a function that could be done by a less beautiful or complex system.

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  2. Adam,

    "My point was that it is strange to think that these rather common and mundane astronomical events are the result of primary causation."

    What makes them common and mundane astronomical events in a way that doesn't apply to the fish or bread or Adam?

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  3. "With that in mind, I am not sure we can determine what any of his purposes would be behind creating light-in-transit of supernovas, but we can determine at least some of his purposes in the miracles you list above. We may not share these same judgments, and that’s fine, but that is why I think you have something strange on your hands if you go the young-earth route."

    I could be wrong about this, but most YECs that I have read reject big bang cosmology, and choose to interpret the Red Shift data as something else entirely, so that would seem to do away with an argument for age, because maybe God decided to create a universe as vast as this one, because the parameters had to be the way they are for this world to exist. That seems to be a possible explanation. Oh, and God isn't lying, because if YEC's are correct, then God told us exactly how old things are. Just playing Devil's advocate, I am not 100% sure about this debate. Why think that a theory needs to be "aesthetic" for it to be true? Maybe they just haven't developed an adequate model just yet to deal with the problem.

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  4. It should also be pointed that Creation is a miracle with a meaning, so the product(the earth and creation of man so Christ could redeem it) would be all that matters, and all the other stuff would be similar to the "apparent history" of the wine, bread, or whatever else. I actually find it aesthetically pleasing, so I think the "aesthetic" criterion is a little overly subjective to be worth much. It could be because everyone ridicules the point of view that you find it aesthetically ugly.

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