> This point of view also implies, at least to me, that God has no intention
> of us trying to understand natural processes at all.
>
Bill Hamilton wrote:
<quoting Job>
> In other words, study nature to learn something of what may be known of
> God. That hardly makes sense if nature is full of misleading objects and
> phenomena.
>
At 10:13 AM 4/2/96, Steven Fawl is rumored to have typed:
<concerning "in transit" light>
> This means that all of astronomy is based on a lie
> fabricated by God in starlight on the first day of creation.
>
> It seems to me that it is simpler and much less destructive to simply say
> that the universe is old and that things lived and died prior to the fall of
> man. This way, what we observe is easily reconciled with what we know of
> God's essential being.
>
It seems to me that what we are saying is that natural theology and the
reasonability of science are completely intertwined.
That is, we observe the order in nature and learn from it the orderliness
of God. The Bible endorses this effort. However, if God has created a
"false history" then all bets are off on in our ability to observe and
describe nature (i.e. science) and we are put back into a prescientific
state where pretty much all phenomena are just taken to be miracles that we
have no ability to describe. We can have no trust in causality.
Steven also wrote:
> If someone were to ask me if God could create a world that looked old but
> that was actually young I would have to point out the natural consequence of
> such a statement and say that God could not do this because it runs contrary
> to his essential nature. Much to the surprise of many, God cannot do just
> anything, he cannot lie, cheat, steal, nor give his glory to anyone. He
> places limitations on himself and I think that creating a young earth to
> look old is one of those limitations. He cannot do it.
>
In other words, we also have no natural theology since we can observe
nothing in nature with any assurance that it is real. In fact, what we do
learn is that we either can't learn anything about God (a defensible
position, but not a Christian one) or what we learn about Him is not
consistent with what the Bible tells us about him.
Finally, we must ask, Why in the world would God want to do such a thing?
To save time?