>>Appearance of age (maturity) is not the same as appearance of history...
It is one thing for God to have made Adam mature and fully functioning.
It
is altogether different to imbed a creature with testimony to a history
that never happened. The situation with the age of the Earth is not just
like Adam being fully mature, it is like Adam being created with his High
School yearbook, pictures of his grandparents, fillings in his teeth, and
a
scar on his knee from a childhood accident. The testimony of Creation is
not just to maturity, it is to a whole history that either really happened
or is an elaborate hoax perpetrated by God. As Earl would have said, if
God went to so much trouble to fix the evidence, we might as well go along
with the joke.>>
First of all -- apologies for being less than timely with a response to
this.
I am not at all sure that there is a difference between making Adam "mature
and fully functioning" and making Adam with a history. Let me pose this
question:
Suppose God HAD created Adam (and the earth and all) in a "mature and fully
functioning" state. Let us, as scientists, examine everything we can -- it
is exactly 10 minutes after Adam's creation.
Here is a tree. Cut it down -- are there tree rings? If not, how is it
standing? Those are necessary for stability. OK, there are tree rings. Are
they perfectly round and uniform? Or do they exhibit a "history" that never
happened?
Our colleague, a doctor, is examining Adam's gut (don't ask me how!). In a
mature human there is a requirement that the stomach/intestines system be
primed for the next meal with remains of the previous one. A "history"
again.
Other examples could be used; let me dwell on these. Two possibilities:
1. Absolutely NO history evidence
2. A lot of history evidence
Option #1 has God creating trees-that-are-not-quite-like-trees and an
Adam-not-quite-complete. Our examinations show an unfinished creation -- or
worse, a not-quite-accurate creation. The difference between a model and
the real thing.
Suppose you decide to make a model airplane. You want to make it as
accurately as you can. You do your very best but it still looks like a
model. So you decide to make it the same size as the original. Still looks
like a model -- unless you duplicate the original EXACTLY. Under the
"sudden creation" assumption, did God create a model -- or the real thing?
Has to be the real thing.
None of the above is new, of course; Gosse says it all better in OMPHALOS.
The point is that a "history-of-events-that-never-happened" HAS to be part
of any sudden creation. Can't be avoided.
One may argue, of course, that there is "too much false history," that all
those fossils are not really necessary. But that's another argument
entirely, and the one making it has to be pretty sure of himself/herself
about which parts of the false history are really superflous!
Burgy