ASArs,
I have recently been involved in a protracted discussion on another group
discussing Creation Science and frequently I encounter the argument of
"appearance of age" to cover whatever difficultly another person is having
explaining the data I am presenting. This caused me to reflect on whether
there was any merrit to the overall argument behind "appearance of age."
My conclusion was that it was pausible to hold to all things being created
with appearance of age but there are several important consequences not
fully appreciated by those who use this argument in their defence. I find
few Creation Scientists are willing to deal with. I believe that if you
want to appeal to appearance of age you will be caught up in many
contradictions if you assess that concept further.
I have spliced together two long posts that I wrote examining the
consequences of holding to an "appearance of age" concept. Note that I am
writing as if I am trying to defend this woldview . Oddly enough the
responses I got were all supportive of my hypothesis even though I there is
something of a sarcastic tone to the text and I clearly don't hold to the
concept myself!
My thesis essentially is that if God created with the appearance of age
then flood geology is not tenable. In addition, not only is is not tenable
but may actually be working to counteract what God's real intent in
creating the geological record was and thus is (ignorantly) working against
God.
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Begin coppied material: (GM: warning you might recognize some of the
material:-), your book is a great source!
Might I suggest a completely different response than mine (OEC)
or yours (YEC) to some
of the data I have presented. Why not just say that God created all rocks
and fossils as they are (except the very top portion) and that he has
revealed in those rocks evidences of tremendous age and even possibly
evolution. Wait! don't abandon me yet before hearing me out.
The idea here is that He had a PURPOSE in doing so. The purpose is that we
can use the knowledge found in this record given to us to help us predict
events in the future. We use technology to understand the weather and thus
predict storms etc.. why couldn't God have given us a 100,000 year record of
climate in ice and deep sea sediment cores for the purpose of showing us
past climate patterns as a way of helping us predict future climatic
patterns? In the same way he has given us records of ash fall from
particular volcanoes, including ways of determining what volcanoes the ash
came from etc.., that are in sediment columns that can be dated so that we
know how often a volcano has erupted and thus know approximately when it
will go off again. Many volcanoes probably are on 500-several thousand year
cycles which if you only have two data points in recorded human history
don't allow for any predicitive value but if you have 20,000 years of
records then there is some predictive value to the data. If you suspect
that 100 layers of ash that are even found over distinct intervals were
actually the result of rapid multiple explosions with unusually high
sedimentation or some sort of miraculous sedimentation then the record of
ash falls is basically worthless data in terms of a predictive source of
information. By assuming that God created a long history for us it opens
all sort of real avenues for better understanding the world that haven't
been possible under the type of science (and scientific assumptions) done by
creation scientists.
The result of this would be that instead of having to say that everything
that all these scientist have done has been some kind of grand conspiracy or
that all of this is the result of inappropriate assumptions, one would find
that in fact most of the data is accurate and the conclusions are consistent
with that data. The problem is with the scientists not giving proper credit
as to the source of the data. Rather than saying that the world must be
old, one could say that the young earth interpretation of the Bible is the
correct one of the Creation of the Universe, but that God has created as
part of that creation information to understand and take dominion over the
future of the world. This need not necessarily be seen as dishonest, if God
gave us this information for a purpose. Scientists are simply not
acknowledging the true God and are misapplying the data as a way of
interpreting a physical history.
Surely this can't be all that objectionable since everyone believes in
creation with the appearance of age to some degree. Adam appeared to have
some age no doubt. He already had the ability to communicate so God gave
man speech for a purpose. It may have appeared that he had to have learned
it based on what we know about language development but it is something that
was useful in the future but had no past.
Followup:
My suggestion was that the geological record was "created" as it is today
except maybe the top layer. By top layer I meant an extremely small
portion of the total record. I suggested that the evidence of a dry
Mediterranean basin was created by God to help us understand the
environment of the Mediterranean region and thus understand future
developments in the climate and ecology of the area. Although I didn't
mention it I thought I had mentioned earlier that the even below the
tremendous salt deposits below the Mediterranean sea there are thousands of
feet of fossiliferous rock and thus I was implying that the fossils were
also created (ie. did not represent formerly living organisms - plant or
animal).
I haven't any problem stating that God created with the appearance of age
for the reasons I stated earlier. I agree that, in fact, there MUST have
been some appearance of age in Creation. What I have trouble with is
creation of appearance in age in strata that are the result of the flood.
I don't see the purpose in God's giving us a history in that. Apparently
some agree that starlight could be created in transit and that most
extraterrestrial objects were created as they appear (e.g. all the planets
were created basically as they appear today). It doesn't seem to be a
problem to believe that the plants and moon were created with volcanoes and
craters that didn't actually have past history. I can accept this but I
don't think that many people here have thought about the consequences of this.
At one time I here statements that God made them
that way but then requiring other things to be brought about by natural
processes. These can't be mixed as easily as one might think. I will
attempt to explain why.
More evidence for the appearance of age as background:
Look at radioactive elements that occur naturally
in the on the earth. Only elements with
half-lives longer than 80,000 years are found. NO elements of which many
are known with shorter half lives are found naturally (most can be
made in the laboratory from other atoms). You might be thinking of C14
with only a 5700 year half life but C14 is constantly being created and
thus replenished. Just looking at the list of radioactive elements is
suggestive that the world has been around
long enough for all elements with short half-lives to have completely
decayed. If the world were only 7000 years old one would certainly expect
that at least some of these other elements would still be present. God
apparently created a world with elements suggesting that it must be at
least 500 million years old. No problem, you might say, God can
create light in transit he can certainly create a world devoid of short
half-life elements.
But what do we learn from this: If God created the world with appearance of
age as we are saying then our calculations of age from rocks is not
incorrect, just as our calculations of the distance to a star isn't
incorrect based on its light. The light didn't actually travel that far
just as the decay products of uranium were created in the rocks in the
ratios that give the appearance that they decayed to that point.
Here is the question: What do we do with rocks that are dated to millions
of years that contain fossils. IF you assume fossils must have come about
after the fall of Adam then you must assume they were not part of the
original creation yet the rocks are dated as being very old. If you want
to say that the ORIGINAL rocks in the earth were created with the
appearance of age then you are in a bind. What happened, did radioactive
rates suddenly speed up during the deposition of the rocks with fossils in
them and then slow down again. If this is the case then my whole idea of
purpose behind God's creating with the appearance of age is hogwash. Many
rocks with fossils are dated at 100s of millions of years, in order to
postulate there being the result of different rates of decay in the past
would require rates to be well over 100,000 times faster in the past than
in the present. This would also mean that the weak and strong nuclear
forces were radically different as well.
I am perplexed, it seems that if God created with the appearance of age,
then we are coming to accurate conclusions about the apparent age of a rock
but then I have to make up reasons why other rocks are not giving the right
ages. Remember my example of the supernova and radioactive decay rates.
If we are right about God creating light in transit then we would say that
he put the information in the light about that supernova. It would seem to
me that what I can learn from that light is that radioactive decay rates on
the other side of the universe are the same as they are in my back yard.
This light was created during the Creation week I would presume. Doesn't
this strongly suggest that radioactive decay rates were the same at
Creation as they are now?
Even Whitcomb and Morris are forced to admit that in the case of radioactive
elements that God must have created with the appearance of age but they
don't deal with the consequences of such an admission:
***** "This means that, with each mineral containing a radioactive
element, there were also at the original Creation all the daughter elements
in the decay series, including some of the final stable end product. Such
a concept is undoubtedly shocking to the mind of a consistent
uniformitarian, but there is nothing impossible or unreasonable about it. In
fact, short of denying the existence of any Creator or original Creation at
all, one must logically come to some place in the long chain of secondary
causes where something was created. If so, that something at the instant
of its creation, must have had an "appearance of age." And the only way we
could then determine its "true age" would be through divine revelation. An
"apparent age" might of course be deduced for that something on the basis
of any processes of change which were observed in connection with it, but
this would not be the true age." _Genesis Flood_ pg 345 *****
Hmmm, well now with our little hypothesis I agree. What I don't understand
here at all is why then do many metamorphic rocks and volcanic rocks that
lie above and within rocks that contain fossils (which we are going to
assume are post-fall for this argument) contain ratios of daughter products
which IMPLY a very old age for these rocks as well. It's all fine and dandy
to say that the ORIGINAL rocks were created with the appearance of age by
why do rocks clearly formed at some later point have the appearance of age.
Shouldn't these rocks be lacking the large amounts of daughter products.
I'm sure I sound repetitious about now but I think it's worth repeating. If
rocks were created with the appearance of age then I do find it rather odd
that rocks formed later by "natural" processes should be given
characteristics of "age." I think that Morris is shooting himself in the
foot on this one by admitting an original creation of age.
Continued in "Appearance of Age, part II)
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Joel and Dawn Duff / | ' \ Spell Check?
Carbondale IL 62901 ( ) 0
e-mail: duff@siu.edu \_/-, ,----'
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