SteamDoc@aol.com wrote:
> In a message dated Fri, 6 Oct 2000 12:30:15 PM Eastern Daylight Time, Bryan Cross <crossbr@SLU.EDU> writes:
>
> << Burgy,
>
> it presents a completely tight case for the>
> >YEC position, one that CANNOT be refuted.
> >
> >(No -- I am not a YEC myself).
>
> If it cannot be refuted, then why are you not a YEC?
> Either you don't care about truth, or you think it
> can (in some sense) be refuted.
>
> - Bryan
> >>
>
> It can't be refuted in the sense nobody can "refute" the idea that God created everything last Tuesday and implanted all our memories.
>
> As Gordon Brown pointed out, it can be refuted if you make some assumptions about God not being a deceiver.
It is perhaps worth noting that the Omphalos-type claims have been discussed as a purely philosophical problem, "Russell's
hypothesis" without any explicit reference to theology. One treatment is Malcolm Acock's "The Age of the Universe", _Philosophy of
Science_ 50, 1983, pp.130-145. He concludes that the proposed attempts by philosophers to to dispose of the idea are unsatisfactory.
Gordon is right that theological considerations introduce something new and provide a basis for rejecting such thoroughgoing
apparent age ideas. I would add that the dodge which is sometimes attempted of making apparent age a consequence of the fall also
encounters serious theological problems. It amounts to the Manichaean idea of an evil creator of the world which we experience.
Shalom,
George
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