Up from Literalism

As always, their struggle wasn't to learn the facts. Instead it was a struggle to overcome the will and determination to believe nonsense. Few if any creationists we encounter on this or similar sites suffer from insurmountable ignorance or stupidity - most of them are quite intelligent, and all of them are quick and apt pupils of what they want to believe.

So I think it's seriously missing the point to talk about how close attention to mounting evidence slowly eroded away a false contextual structure. The very evidence Godfrey and Smith found ultimately convincing is ignored or misrepresented with unshakeable determination by the willful believers. Neither the footprints in sedimentary rock nor the poetic tropes in Genesis would have the slightest effect, in ANY quantity, against the defenses of the Committed Creationist. Whoever will not listen, cannot hear. Neither volume nor content matters at all if the signal is tuned out.

And so I expect this book will be compelling to relatively few people. Those NOT the victim of deceit and brainwashing can't extract much that's useful here, and those who remain victims will see no reason to pay attention. And some of us can nod and observe that nothing can be sufficiently obvious to anyone who doesn't want to know it.

Flint, I don't think that is entirely fair. There are a large number of people who are creationists by default. It's what they'v been told, and I don't think it's necessarily an issue of refusing to examine the evidence, but just never having been exposed to it. They spend their lives content to accept the myths because they've been misled, and occupy their time doing other things than study science. I'm not saying I understand this attitude, as I love to learn about everything, but I think that books like these, if we could get those people to read them, can make a difference.

Braxton,

In defense of Flint's comments, he spoke of "creationists we encounter on this or similar sites" which are the ones fervent enough in their beliefs to come here and challenge us. As has been said many times before, they are not the target. The folks you speak of are the target, and our comments, our posts, and books such as the one in question are aimed at your "large number" and not at Flint's "creationists we encounter on this or similar sites," who very well may be beyond hope.

And it occurs to me to point out (if indeed it is necessary) that the "creationists we encounter on this or similar sites" are a self-selecting group if ever there was one. Statisticians and survey-takers regularly point out that drawing general conclusions based on such groups is not valid.

Having read Godfrey and Smith's book (twice), I can say that I found it to be a compelling read, as a Christian. It does an excellent of job of putting into words why evolution need not be in contradiction with the timeless message of the Bible -- something many YECs don't know yet. And not because they are all willingly ignorant, but because they simply haven't been exposed to alternative viewpoints (many have admitted this to me). I think books like 'Paradigms on Pilgrimage' (written by Christians, largely for Christians) will help remedy that situation. Gordon Glover's excellent new book 'Beyond the Firmament' does much the same thing.
I agree with Flint that those who refuse to listen won't bat an eye at this book. But I think that many (most?) YECs out there are open to different interpretations of Genesis if they are presented in a non-confrontational manner like Godfrey and Smith have done.

My journey was very similar to those described above. The main difference is that a total inability to account for the biblical flood narrative has forced me to reject the Bible entirely. It really came home for me when I was reading Herodotus, and he was trying to explain (without the benefit of modern science) why fossiliferous limestone was at a high elevation somewhere in Egypt. (His explanation was that Egypt was rising.) It occurred to me that marine fossils are the reason why cultures all over the world had flood stories. I could not explain why God would make up a plainly false flood story for the Bible, but it was easy to explain why people would make up such a story. Thus parsimony required that I reject everything I had believed for 30+ years.

Bill Gascoyne: Braxton, In defense of Flint's comments, he spoke of "creationists we encounter on this or similar sites" which are the ones fervent enough in their beliefs to come here and challenge us. As has been said many times before, they are not the target. The folks you speak of are the target, and our comments, our posts, and books such as the one in question are aimed at your "large number" and not at Flint's "creationists we encounter on this or similar sites," who very well may be beyond hope.

And so I expect this book will be compelling to relatively few people.

Good points, provoking me to think (for a change!) I think I understand that there are at least two flavors of creationist - those who simply don't know any better, haven't made any sort of anti-science commitment, and whose daily life doesn't intersect with the relevant scientific disciplines. They aren't particularly interested and see no need to be; they're miseducated but essentially indifferent (and there are people I know who don't know the rules of baseball! Unforgiveable!)

And then there's the flavor we meet on the net, who are the creationist evangelists, the followers of Morris and Hovind, or Dembski and Johnson. These folks have spent a lifetime perfecting their defenses, memorizing their errors, and practicing the arts of lying, changing the subject, ignoring difficult questions, misrepresenting even the most obvious claims, waving their hands, and recycling all of this. And these remind me of one definition of a fanatic, as one who redoubles his energies once he's forgotten his aims.

I suppose perhaps a book like this one could make a difference not so much in the worldview as in the knowledge of the accidental creationist, if he's simply someone victimized by a boring misguided education he never paid much attention to anyway.

Those we keep playing whack-a-mole with on these sites, now, are probably beyond the brute-force powers of brain surgery, lobotomy, electric shock therapy, water torture, or any other techniques. If the creationism could be sucked straight out of these folks, they'd be lucky to have enough mind left to be vegetables.

I have not read their book but the brief description here tells me more than enough to conclude that it is based on unmitigated ignorance of Hebrew and the ancient Hebrew of the Bible in particular.

If the authors had any knowledge of the matters they discuss they would know, for example, that the ancient talmudists also struggled with the light of the first 'day' before the sun of the fourth day problem. These folks lived not much after the author(s) of the Hebrew Bible and should have suffered from the same lack of knowledge. Yet they noticed the problem and attempted to address it.

Also, there is not a shred of support to the idea that the Hebrew of Genesis sounds poetic. It is simple, straighforward narrative, no more, no less.

The light of the first day problem is convincingly resolved in Judah Landa's work "In the Beginning Of" and he accomplishes that on the basis of a literal interpretation of the text!

For those who have read Godfrey and Smith's book (I haven't yet): What is their stated position -- if any -- regarding...

1) the origin of life?

2) the origin of the first humans?

3) apparent-age miracles?

FL

The light of the first day problem is convincingly resolved in Judah Landa’s work “In the Beginning Of” and he accomplishes that on the basis of a literal interpretation of the text!

thus chimeth the Clouserbot.

isn't there something on PT about posting spam?

I know you haven't read the book, Carol, but for what it's worth, most of the ideas espoused by Smith concerning the literary structure of Genesis were taken from the work of his professor, Meredith Kline. More than anything, the Framework view of Genesis 1 is pushed, rather than treating the whole chapter as poetry, per se (although there may be some poetic elements here and there).

FL: For those who have read Godfrey and Smith's book (I haven't yet): What is their stated position -- if any -- regarding... 1) the origin of life? 2) the origin of the first humans? 3) apparent-age miracles? FL

Carol: given your willful ignorance -- prompted by obvious religious bigotry -- regarding the scientific achievements of polytheists such as the ancient Greeks, why should we take your words seriously?

FL: by "apparent-age miracles," do you by any chance mean "God creating a planetful of deliberately-deceptive evidence and still expecting us to trust him as the source of all Truth?"

And if we can't trust the evidence your God planted all over the Universe he created, how can we trust one book created in the same Universe (without a bibliography) and purporting to be the truth?

And if we can't trust the evidence your God planted all over the Universe he created, how can we trust one book...

Braxton Thomason's comment and Flint's rethinking of his comment are consistent with what I see in our community. I know a number of people who are ID/Creationists simply because that is what their ministers and the political activists among them tell them to be.

I seriously doubt that any of these folks know any facts about evolution (it is not taught well in the public schools, and Pandas and People is used in their Christian schools). Nor do they know about the complete lack of evidence for ID/Creationism. They really believe there is research being done that throws evolution into doubt. They are basically good people who want to do the right thing, but are very subservient to what they perceive as authority; and for them, authority is primarily their church.

On the other hand, the ones who constantly write letters to the editor of our local "newspaper" (which is run by religious conservatives) are obviously reciting the well-practiced phrases we see in all the political activists in this group. These are ones who are impervious to evidence, much like that young, seemingly articulate individual who managed to dodge every attempt to get him to look at the evidence here on Panda's Thumb a few months back. It is the members of this latter group who apparently see themselves as the legitimate authority figures in society and are constantly gunning for the positions of leadership not only in their churches, but in secular society as well. They are the ones who always take gratuitous, over-the-top offense at evolution in order to assert their self-perceived authority. Their followers see them as bold warriors for their faith.

Quite a story. Perhaps we should recommend this book to our friend Mark when he comes back here claiming that no creationist was ever persuaded by the evidence.

As others have pointed out, there are indeed different reasons why creationists are not persuaded by the evidence. Three possibilities are: ignorance; apathy; and dishonesty.

Many people lack sufficient science education to be familiar with the evidence or be in any position to analyze it and draw conclusions for themselves. That's fine, as long as they realize their limitations and don't try to convince real expert scientists that they know better just because they somehow think that they are more objective.

Many people are also just too lazy to get educated and so they take the word of some authority figure as to what conclusions should be drawn from the evidence. Of course, taking the word of someone with a vested interest in your beliefs, (who is passing the offering plate as they speak), is not likely to get you to any objective truth.

Many people do claim to know the evidence and have had every opportunity to famaliarize themselves with the real evidence, but simply choose not to. These are the people who lie about the evidence and try to get you to buy their lies because they think that you are too stupid or lazy to learn the truth for yourself.

Now here is the thing, when one of these types of people really does encounter the real evidence, how do they respond? If they are intellectually honest with themselves, they will learn from the evidence and revise their world view, regardless of the consequences. If they don't, it's probably not due to ignorance or apathy. It might be due to lack of courage or fear of social consequences, but most likely it's due to plain old dishonesty. If your religion is more important to you than the truth, it's time for a new religion.

His professor further introduced him to the idea that the opening chapters of Genesis are poetry, because they include purposeful repetition of vowel and consonant sounds (alliteration and assonance), and display the “rhyming thoughts” characteristic of Hebrew poetry.

I see Carol's here, lying for Jesus(TM). Well, it's the 15th of October and I'm too tired to list the hundreds of books and scholars (who aren't her husband with his "special" Bible) who say that entire swaths of Genesis is, in fact, poetry in the ancient Semitic form found in Ugaritic and Akkadian writings.

Not that the entire book is poetry. But that significant portions are poetry, while the rest is written in a high style.

Just sayin'

Quite a story. Perhaps we should recommend this book to our friend Mark when he comes back here claiming that no creationist was ever persuaded by the evidence.

Quite a story. Perhaps we should recommend this book to our friend Mark when he comes back here claiming that no creationist was ever persuaded by the evidence.

Re: David Stanton

Possibly other reasons why creationists are not persuaded by evidence is egotism and fear. Egotism being symbolized by things like the geocentric universe, etc. but also reflected in writings that say that all other life forms were put here to serve our human needs. Fear might be as powerful, or more so, in that if the Universe is not directed by an intelligent force (for our well-being) then, well, who knows just what might happen.

Food for thought.

Note: Great report by Matt Young on the book Paradigms on Pilgrimage, by Stephen J. Godfrey and Christopher R. Smith. I enjoyed reading Matt's review, and if the book is as good as it sounds, I wish Public Schools would have a book like this vs. that Panda book.

Quite a story. Perhaps we should recommend this book to our friend Mark when he comes back here claiming that no creationist was ever persuaded by the evidence.

Moses and Jordan,

There are small sections of the Hebrew text (at the end of Genesis, in the middle of Exodus and near the end of Deuteronomy) that clearly are meant as poetry and are easy to recognize as such. The beginning of Genesis is most definitely not in that style.

Also, as I have said on many occasions here, the Hebrew Bible was written by Jews and for Jews within the context of the oral tradition that was passed along with it from generation to generation. In addition, the text is clearly addressed to them. Think of it as an internal corporate memo written by and for "insiders" of a corporation who are familiar with the subtext and lingo and are thus in a position to fully understand its message. The Johnny-come-lately-to-the-Bible Christians, most of whom can barely hold their own in Hebrew conversation and know little to nothing of the tradition, are generally just not qualified to tell us much about the text. Certainly the ancient Jewish sages of the Talmud, Midrash and commentaries are far better qualified to do so and they always treated Genesis as narrative and not as poetry.

Carol Clouser: There are small sections of the Hebrew text (at the end of Genesis, in the middle of Exodus and near the end of Deuteronomy) that clearly are meant as poetry and are easy to recognize as such. The beginning of Genesis is most definitely not in that style.

Also, as I have said on many occasions here, the Hebrew Bible was written by Jews and for Jews within the context of the oral tradition that was passed along with it from generation to generation... Certainly the ancient Jewish sages of the Talmud, Midrash and commentaries are far better qualified to do so and they always treated Genesis as narrative and not as poetry.

I've met a few fundie xians who really don't care whether the earth is 6,000 years old or 4.5 billion years old. For them, the Voluntary Suspension of Disbelief is enough along with some lame creo arguments that don't make any sense.

They don't care because it is a minor side issue.
The bible was never meant to be a science text. It is far more about how to live and why to live and what it all means. Philosophy, law, and culture.

A few pages of genesis creation myth have little to say about the central purpose and meaning of the religion.

IMO, a lot of the creation controversy has been kept going by the leadership of the cults for their own purposes. Something like in group out group tribal identification or something. It is far more about politics and sociology than faith.

The Johnny-come-lately-to-the-Bible Christians, most of whom can barely hold their own in Hebrew conversation and know little to nothing of the tradition, are generally just not qualified to tell us much about the text.

— Carol

Ms. Clouser appears to be outside of her area of expertise, and she provides no credentials of training in biblical studies from any secular academic institution. I have failed to find her listed as a member of the Society of Biblical Literature, the largest organization of academic biblical scholars in the world. [OT] Her statement that “ we have extensive records of these traditions going back many centuries in the form of the Talmud…” is also quite misleading. The earliest Hebrew manuscripts for the Bible are the Dead Sea Scrolls which date no earlier than about the third century BCE, and so about 1000 years after the supposed events related in Deuteronomy. There is also the inscription from Ketef Hinnom, but that is of disputed date. For a standard treatment of biblical manuscript traditions, see See Emanuel Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible (Ausburg: Fortress, 2001).

— Dr. Hector Avalos

I wish Public Schools would have a book like this vs. that Panda book.

I have not read their book but the brief description here tells me more than enough to conclude that it is based on unmitigated ignorance of Hebrew and the ancient Hebrew of the Bible in particular.

If the authors had any knowledge of the matters they discuss they would know, for example, that the ancient talmudists also struggled with the light of the first ‘day’ before the sun of the fourth day problem. These folks lived not much after the author(s) of the Hebrew Bible and should have suffered from the same lack of knowledge. Yet they noticed the problem and attempted to address it.

Also, there is not a shred of support to the idea that the Hebrew of Genesis sounds poetic. It is simple, straighforward narrative, no more, no less.

1) I don’t think they discuss it much, off the top of my head. 2) They support human evolution from apes. 3) They reject Omphalos ideas.

FL: by “apparent-age miracles,” do you by any chance mean “God creating a planetful of deliberately-deceptive evidence and still expecting us to trust him as the source of all Truth?”

When I first encountered YEC’s in the 1980’s I was shocked that well educated Christians actually believed such things.

FL: by “apparent-age miracles,” do you by any chance mean “God creating a planetful of deliberately-deceptive evidence and still expecting us to trust him as the source of all Truth?”

Certainly the ancient Jewish sages of the Talmud, Midrash and commentaries are far better qualified to do so and they always treated Genesis as narrative and not as poetry.

FL: Why don't you at least try to sum up Wise's arguments? If you actually understood them yourself, and were at all confident in your ability to represent them, then briefly describing and discussing them shouldn't be a problem.

Besides, I don't have time to read every book recommended to me. You need to offer some proof that this one is worth my time.

FL:

FL: by “apparent-age miracles,” do you by any chance mean “God creating a planetful of deliberately-deceptive evidence and still expecting us to trust him as the source of all Truth?”

Raging Bee, Dr. Kurt Wise has already refuted the "deceiver argument" in his excellent book "Faith, Form, and Time", but just like I haven't yet read "Paradigms on Pilgrimage", you haven't yet read Dr. Wise's book (even though it's been available for quite a while.) So let's stop there until we've had a chance to read our respective books, mmmm? FL

"He chooses to leave the creation in that state, without physical proof of the true age. To use a term from chapter 2, He provides sufficient ambi in the creation for humans to conclude erroneously a history that never actually occurred... if they so chose. This is apparantly because God requires faith of us (Heb. 11:3)

In closing, I must add a personal caveat. My soul shuddered while I was reading this book. Twenty years ago I began a similar apologetic and evangelistic crusade. I wanted to become a creation scientist to take on the evils of evolutionary biology. However, I sensed a calling to study the early chapters of the Bible before beginning a program at the Institute for Creation Research. It was at a leading evangelical graduate school that my fundamentalist hermeneutical foundations were shattered. It became abundantly clear to me that the Bible is not a book of science.

— Lamoureux

MA,

Thanks for the response. Of course you are right. Egotism, the belief that one is the center of the universe and that everything was created especially for you is a big motivator. And fear of dying is a big motivator as well. But then again, there is no reason that you to have to give up your religion in order to believe in evolution, unless your religion demands this of you. Evolution certainly does not.

Still, the things that you most desperately want and need to be true are often the things that are the least likely to be true. Facing up to reality, regardless of the consequences, can require a lot of courage and intellectual honesty. I certainly don't demand that others answer these questions for themselves. But if they try to convince me that they already have the answers, then I believe that it is fair to ask the hard questions.

wise uses the miracle of healings and the loaf and fish to argue that God leaves impressions of age, such as with the wine he created out of water.

If that's the substance of Wise's argument, then it's rubbish based on a VERY bad analogy. The miracles described in the Bible were very narrow and specific in their scope -- i.e., only one man was raised from the dead in a given instance, only a relatively small amount of water was turned into wine, only one Messiah is born from a virgin, etc. etc. And it is that very narrowness and singularity that makes them miracles worthy of praise -- it's not something God does regularly, and when he does, it's amazing because it's a break from the pattern of what everyone expects to happen! Drawing conclusions about the whole Universe based on these miracles is simply nonsense; it's as childish as getting a big expensive toy for Christmas and then, as a result, expecting such toys to materialize out of nowhere on a regular basis.

Raging Bee: wise uses the miracle of healings and the loaf and fish to argue that God leaves impressions of age, such as with the wine he created out of water. If that's the substance of Wise's argument, then it's rubbish based on a VERY bad analogy. The miracles described in the Bible were very narrow and specific in their scope -- i.e., only one man was raised from the dead in a given instance, only a relatively small amount of water was turned into wine, only one Messiah is born from a virgin, etc. etc. And it is that very narrowness and singularity that makes them miracles worthy of praise -- it's not something God does regularly, and when he does, it's amazing because it's a break from the pattern of what everyone expects to happen! Drawing conclusions about the whole Universe based on these miracles is simply nonsense; it's as childish as getting a big expensive toy for Christmas and then, as a result, expecting such toys to materialize out of nowhere on a regular basis.

I have been told that if you drink a largish quantity of rough wine and follow it with water, the water will taste like fine wine. Does anyone know if this is correct?

Perhaps the author of this article could cite scientists who did the opposite direction, meaning from Darwiniam and uniformitarianism to Biblical Creationism and catastrophism.

Oh wait! This is a Darwiniam blog. In them, the wind blows only one direction. :-)

In them, the wind blows only one direction

— Mats

Mats the troll: Perhaps the author of this article could cite scientists who did the opposite direction, meaning from Darwiniam and uniformitarianism to Biblical Creationism and catastrophism.

Mats wrote:

"Oh wait! This is a Darwiniam blog. In them, the wind blows only one direction."

That's right Mats. That's why you have been banned and not allowed to post here. That is why your comment was immediately deleted. That is why you are not completely free to give even one example to support your assertation.

Well Mats, let's hear it. Can you give even one example of an atheist, Darwinist, uniformatarianist who was convinced by the scientific evidence to believe in a 6,000 year old earth and the biblical world-wide flood? What evidence convinced them? Was it some creationist web site with no scientific references and no real evidence? Was it some ill-conceived argument that evolution could not do this or that? Why didn't this evidence convince anyone else? Is it all one big conspiracy? Come on Mats, here is your chance to blow some of your wind in the other direction.

The fact is that virtually no one believes in creationism because of any evidence, since there isn't any. Mats has been asked repeatedly to supply some. Instead, all he does he does is complain about censorship. Obviously, he's wrong about that as well.

It’s your obligation to produce that refutation.

By FAITH we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible.

FL:

It’s your obligation to produce that refutation.

We've already discussed Dr. Wise's book before in this forum, Popper. That's how I knew Raging Bee hadn't read the book, and still hasn't. The Scriptural fact is that both God and Jesus perform several outright time-altering apparent-age miracles in the Bible.

So if you suggest (as the deceiver argument clearly does) that God is a deceiver if he were to execute a literal Creation Week of seven 24-hours, you are also calling Jesus a deceiver too, for doing precisely the same kind of time-altering miracle multiple times within the NT.

**** Notice something important, folks: What Dr. Wise said--- "He provides sufficient ambi in the creation for humans to conclude erroneously a history that never actually occurred… if they so chose. This is apparantly because God requires faith of us (Heb. 11:3)" --- is directly reflected and supported in the New Testament account of Jesus turning water into wine. The wedding-governor was familiar with empirically testing wines via tasting and knew the difference between first-class and last-class. Yet his natural empirical facilities were LIMITED (as is ours), and he could not tell the TRUE age or origin of the wine just by empirical means alone, because in fact an apparent-age miracle had taken place.

But God did NOT deceive the governor, because there WAS a source of information provided who could give the governor the CORRECT origins and age information (the eyewitness servants, of course.)

Now, the governor COULD stubbornly choose to stick to his own natural empirical abilities against the correct information provided by the servants believe a wrong answer, but that would yield an incorrect age and an incorrect origin every time. OR he could put his faith in the correct information given by the servants and believe the CORRECT origins and age that was provided by the information source. Likewise God has provided us with correct historical origins information too, IF we want to believe Him. IF. IF.

Nothing wrong with using whatever empirical abilities you have when examining the physical world, because God created this universe to be intelligible, measurable, and understandable by mere human reasoning and science. The scientific method is NO sin. BUT -- Hebrews 11:3 is the real deal anyway, just like Dr. Wise said. Consider this profound truth:

By FAITH we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible.

Needless to say, Denis Lamoureax has got NO refutation against that powerful Bible verse!!

How do you know? **** I didn't mean to post all this much; but you did say something about obligation, no? You evolutionists honestly need to understand that this is an area in which the Bible seriously supports Dr. Wise's position and NOT YOURS. Check it out for yourself already.

**** (If you disagree with me, then come up with your OWN clear upfront Bible texts that support the deceiver argument. Or else show me how Godfrey and Smith come up with such texts, or Lamoreaux. Don't just sit there and scowl, let's git on with the Bible homework!

However, the fact is that You cannot do a refutation on this one, because the Bible plainly supports apparent-age miracles and NOT the deceiver argument. Double Dog Dare ya, boys!)

**** (Final note: Since Jesus is specifically identified as THE Creator of the Universe and all therein-- see Colossians 1:16--ANY attempt to use the deceiver argument effectively calls Jesus Christ a deceiver as well. Is THAT what you "Christian evolutionists" want to see happening around here?) FL

Mats: Perhaps the author of this article could cite scientists who did the opposite direction, meaning from Darwiniam and uniformitarianism to Biblical Creationism and catastrophism. Oh wait! This is a Darwiniam blog. In them, the wind blows only one direction. :-)

wise uses the miracle of healings and the loaf and fish to argue that God leaves impressions of age, such as with the wine he created out of water.

Matthew 24:4-5. "Take heed that no man deceive you. For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many."

“Father, Father, why have you forsaken me?”

Surely Jesus in his last words expressed doubt and a feeling of being deceived and abandoned?

Well enough biblical quotes.

Nope, water altering, muscle altering but not really time altering in the sense that he add unnecessary detail that explicitly would indicate an old earth.

So explain why God had to add fossils and all these other evidences that are unnecessary to create the earth and portray an unusual discordant age for the earth?

FL:

Nope, water altering, muscle altering but not really time altering in the sense that he add unnecessary detail that explicitly would indicate an old earth.

Oh no no, PvM. Ain't no "not really" to it. We both know that wine production means specific time requirements. Especially the finer wines. Can't buck the reguired chemistry, can't buck the normal time requirements. Yet Jesus wiped 'em out in one quick shot. Normal time requirements WERE knocked out. Just that fast. Apparent-age miracle. The object in question was left looking (and tasting!) way way way older, in fact impossibly older, than its actual age. If the Colossians 1:16 Creator Of The Universe can knock out physical, chemical and temporal time requirements on the small scale, what stops Him from doing so on the Big Scale if He so wishes? (Please answer that question specifically PvM.)

Your premise is flawed, Jesus did not do 'apparent age' miracles and planted false data. It tasted like wine because it was meant to be wine. When God created the earth, why did He decide to create it with all the appearances of an old earth when these additions were not needed. He could very well have created the earth without the fossils and the earth would still be functional for its purpose, just like the wine. Now if he had added the wine to bottles which stated that they had matured 12 years in oak barrels then that would be an apparent age issue like the one we are addressing right now.

I need not go further than expose the logical fallacy in your argument. Why would God plant all the evidences of an old earth when none of these are required for the earth to have been created?

It's not that the wine was given an 'apparent age', it was a miracle meant to create a good wine. Age is a requirement for flavor, so the flavor matched what an old wine would taste like. However, the earth needed not be created with all the fossils for the earth to serve its purpose. Why would God place these countless examples of an old earth when none were needed?

That my friend is what you and Wise fail to explain, and that is what would make God deceptive. And since we know from the Bible

"Take heed that no man deceives you", we obviously need to reject the argument of man that suggest that God created a deceptive age for the earth.

A better "argument" would be that the Devil created the fossils to confuse but that suggests that the Devil did a lot of creative work...

Braxton Thomason:

FL:

Nope, water altering, muscle altering but not really time altering in the sense that he add unnecessary detail that explicitly would indicate an old earth.

Oh no no, PvM. Ain't no "not really" to it. We both know that wine production means specific time requirements. Especially the finer wines. Can't buck the reguired chemistry, can't buck the normal time requirements. Yet Jesus wiped 'em out in one quick shot. Normal time requirements WERE knocked out. Just that fast. Apparent-age miracle. The object in question was left looking (and tasting!) way way way older, in fact impossibly older, than its actual age. If the Colossians 1:16 Creator Of The Universe can knock out physical, chemical and temporal time requirements on the small scale, what stops Him from doing so on the Big Scale if He so wishes? (Please answer that question specifically PvM.)

Idiot, no one is saying that he couldn't do it, it's a question of would and why. You have failed to understand PvM's argument -- it is necessary to create "apparent age" when creating wine, therefore it is not a necessarily "bad" or deceptive creation. However, it is completely unnecessary to create "apparent age" for the Earth, Solar system, or the universe, therefore, if it was created with apparent age, it was done deceptively. Get it?

What worries me even more is that people considered Wise's argument a 'rebuttal'. Its logical fallacy was so self evident that even I could detect it by just browsing the relevant pages. Now that surely is as much as an indictment as anything... :-)

The Scriptural fact is that both God and Jesus perform several outright time-altering apparent-age miracles in the Bible.

No, the miracles were not "time-altering;" if they happened as the Bible describes them, they were effected by supernatural force acting on material bodies to alter their behavior. The passage of time was not affected, either generally, or for particular objects.

“He provides sufficient ambi in the creation for humans to conclude erroneously a history that never actually occurred...if they so chose..."

So your God's not at fault for systematically planting misleading material evidence (knowing in advance that we would thereby be deceived), it's our fault for "choosing" to believe it? Sorry, that sort of victim-bashing does not belong in any doctrine of any decent religion; and certainly not in the one that tells us "The truth shall set you free" and "They shall know God by his works."

This is like saying that I can tell a huge lie at a live prime-time televised press conference, but it's not really a lie if I tell my closest friends the truth off-camera, or plant evidence for the truth where very few people are likely to find it or understand what it means. A lie is a lie is a lie.

The wedding-governor was familiar with empirically testing wines via tasting and knew the difference between first-class and last-class. Yet his natural empirical facilities were LIMITED (as is ours), and he could not tell the TRUE age or origin of the wine just by empirical means alone, because in fact an apparent-age miracle had taken place.

He knew that he could not use his normal means of discerning the age of that particular wine because he had seen something happen that he knew was physically impossible, and was therefore a miracle.

Now, the governor COULD stubbornly choose to stick to his own natural empirical abilities against the correct information provided by the servants believe a wrong answer, but that would yield an incorrect age and an incorrect origin every time.

Only because the particular event in question was a clear and singular violation of well-known laws of nature, and its miraculous nature was attested to by trusted sources.

Here's where Wise's thesis fails utterly: miracles are singular events, and one cannot use them to draw conclusions about the nature of the Universe in general. If this governor had tried to draw a conclusion about the properties of wine based on this miracle, he would have been grossly misled.

Likewise God has provided us with correct historical origins information too, IF we want to believe Him. IF. IF. Nothing wrong with using whatever empirical abilities you have when examining the physical world, because God created this universe to be intelligible, measurable, and understandable by mere human reasoning and science. The scientific method is NO sin.

Yes, and the "correct historical origins information," combined with empirical reasoning and the scientific method, tells us, in no uncertain terms, that the Earth is MUCH older than a literal reading of Genesis implies, and that that creation-story is, at best, an oversimplified part of a book whose primary subject was something else entirely anyway.

BUT – Hebrews 11:3 is the real deal anyway, just like Dr. Wise said. Consider this profound truth:

"By FAITH we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible."

This quotation is a complete non-sequitur. There is nothing in it that says that "faith" consists of ignoring the physical evidence God gave us to observe. Any Christian (or other theist) with any sense can tell you that "faith" means believing certain things that can't be proven -- not things that are flatly disproven.

(Final note: Since Jesus is specifically identified as THE Creator of the Universe and all therein– see Colossians 1:16–ANY attempt to use the deceiver argument effectively calls Jesus Christ a deceiver as well. Is THAT what you “Christian evolutionists” want to see happening around here?)

Cut the self-righteous bollocks, boy -- YOU are the one saying God is a liar and plants deceiving evidence. WE are the ones who reject your thesis precisely because it leads to the conclusion that your God is a liar.

One more question, FL: if you accept that your God knowingly plants deceiving evidence in the Universe he created, for whatever reason, how can you be sure that the Bible is free of such deceptions? It is, after all, just a book, another thing created by the same God who created all that misleading fossil record...

Dang. I keep waiting for FL to address all these misleading and superfluous fossils, since every questioner has asked and all FL's answers simply ignore it. How about the radiometric evidence? The geological evidence? The biological evidence? The astronomical evidence? All of these evidences exist in unambiguous (and if God isn't out to deceive us, totally unnecessary) abundance. FL carefully sidesteps all of it, every time.

Dang. I keep waiting for FL to address all these misleading and superfluous fossils, since every questioner has asked and all FL's answers simply ignore it. How about the radiometric evidence? The geological evidence? The biological evidence? The astronomical evidence? All of these evidences exist in unambiguous (and if God isn't out to deceive us, totally unnecessary) abundance. FL carefully sidesteps all of it, every time.

Flint: FL did address those questions: "God lied to you but told me the truth 'cause he loves me more than you, and I'm going to Heaven and you're not, NYAH NYAH!"

I really don't see how you could possibly have any more questions...

Idiot, no one is saying that he couldn’t do it, it’s a question of would and why.

FL:

Idiot, no one is saying that he couldn’t do it, it’s a question of would and why.

Ahhh, good! You acknowledge that Jesus CAN do those apparent-age miracles that the Bible reported about. That's what is most needed here. AND, there's no limit that anyone has demonstrated concerning the scale on which He can do those apparent-ape miracles. Let's start with those admissions.

Here's what is going on. With those two unrefutable admissions, Dr. Wise is in the game. What you're looking for now is some way to sneak out the back, on a "would" or a "why" issue. (I know that sounds unflattering, but make no mistake: that's where you and PvM are at---looking for escape hatches.) But check this out: If you say "the water to wine miracle was NECESSARY to meet a human need", I can equally say "the literal 24/7 creation week was NECESSARILY executed that way to meet ANOTHER human need", (that need being for humans to learn to physically operate on a six-day-work-one-day-rest/Sabbath schedule as He commanded in Exodus).

No, the miracles were not “time-altering;” if they happened as the Bible describes them, they were effected by supernatural force acting on material bodies to alter their behavior.

Um.. just wondering... how does your adherence to bronze age mythology disprove empirical investigations?

It's takes some serious pretzel logic to try to reconcile (or contest) your Aristotlean mind-wanking with what has been discovered by those who actually get their hands dirty. You know, men and women who actually do the work of discovery. The ones who gave you central heating, electric light, computers, antibiotics...

You cannot git more time-altering, more apparent-age, than INSTANTANEOUS. And Jesus got it going in that area!

What you’re looking for now is some way to sneak out the back, on a “would” or a “why” issue.

It is you, FL, who are sneaking out the back, by refusing to address the clear refutations of Wise's case, and trying instead to divert our attention with a lot of hand-waving about "time-altering" miracles (as if this label changes the nature, or applicability, of the alleged miracle).

You have explicitly said that the God you worship knowingly plants fake evidence all over the Universe; then you try to justify it by pretending it's not really LYING lying, then you tell some lies of your own, by accusing US of calling your God a liar. You don't deserve respect, and your pitiful little goalpost-moving God doesn't deserve worship -- he's a false God who traffics in falsehoods, and nothing his followers say can ever be trusted.

Maybe FL's god can't be trusted, but look at the good side. FL's god also never tells anyone praying to it that their opinion is wrong, and never EVER provides them with any information they didn't already have, about anything whatsoever.

"Who said anything about “unnecessary”? Keep in mind that you’re talking from the ole uniformitarian evolutionist stance. You don’t believe in a global Noahic flood. (Jesus yes, PvM no.)"

Which still doesn't answer the question: Why belive in any gods, let alone yours? Why is "god did it" a better default position that "We don't know yet"?

Seems kinda lazy to me.

that=> than

FL: As far as I can tell, the way a person views the fossils and other items depends on what presuppositional lenses (uniformitarian or catastrophic, Flood or No-Flood) one chooses to look through. That's a key issue when asking about "Why would God do this or that...?"

I believe that if one chooses to believe that the global Biblical Flood is historically accurate, THEN one does have a plausible reason for believing that a Super-Catastrophe of that unimaginable level might have something NECESSARILY to do with the way fossils and other geological things are on the table.

FL:

Maybe you'll have a go at my question:

Did God leave scientifically verifiable fingerprints on creation? If yes, does this make faith superfluous? Why or why not? If no, what's the point of trying to prove anything about the flood, fossils, etc.?

FL: your last post isn't even coherent. You've lost the argument, and now you're just spewing diversionary BS because you can't admit you've been proven wrong, on both scientific and theological grounds.

As far as I can tell, the way a person views the fossils and other items depends on what presuppositional lenses (uniformitarian or catastrophic, Flood or No-Flood) one chooses to look through. That’s a key issue when asking about “Why would God do this or that…?”

No, the key issues are: what's the best means of understanding, explaining, and predicting the material universe we're in? And is the Bible supposed to be read as a literal document? Your "belief or non-belief" BS is nothing more than a cowardly attempt to pretend there's only one way to interpret the Bible -- and your interpretation is both morally and practically inferior to others that smarter Christians have offered.

I believe that if one chooses to believe that the global Biblical Flood is historically accurate, THEN one does have a plausible reason for believing that a Super-Catastrophe of that unimaginable level might have something NECESSARILY to do with the way fossils and other geological things are on the table.

First, why should we "choose" to believe an assertion that is not backed up by the facts? And second, the mere act of choosing to believe such a groundless assertion does not force anyone to accept any of your other assertions. After all, if we ignore reason and believe in one unsubstantiated assertion, why should we be expected to follow reason thereafter?

But if you DON’T believe that the global Biblical flood occurred, if you’re into that naturalistic uniformitarian religion, then you’ll see things another way….and trust me, it’s reflected in the way folks are framing the deceiver argument question. For example, Raging Bee’s wording: “if you accept that your God knowingly plants deceiving evidence in the Universe he created, for whatever reason…” Behind all that phrasing is the religion of uniformitarianism.

Even if you were to define "religion of uniformitarianism," which you don't, the above paragraph would still make no sense. Which doesn't surprise me at all, coming as it does from someone who worships a God who plants fake evidence.

You really can't handle adult debate, can you?

I believe that if one chooses to believe that the global Biblical Flood is historically accurate, THEN one does have a plausible reason for believing that a Super-Catastrophe of that unimaginable level might have something NECESSARILY to do with the way fossils and other geological things are on the table.

And I believe that if one chooses to believe in a global Jewish conspiracy to take over the world and undermine Christianity, THEN one does have a plausible reason for believing that Hitler had the right idea after all. It all depends on your presuppositional lenses and all that.

See where ignoring the obvious gets you, creo-boy?

FL wrote:

"You cannot git more time-altering, more apparent-age, than INSTANTANEOUS. And Jesus got it going in that area!"

Of course you can. Once again you deliberately miss the point. You say that if Jesus wanted to make water into wine he could do so, fine. But, when the wine appeared, did grape vines suddenly appear in the vineyards that had been picked clean of grapes? Did the remains of grapes that had been picked suddenly appear in buckets at the winery? Did the left over dregs of the grape crushing suddenly appear in the bottom of the container where the grapes were crushed? Did other casks of wine from the same batch suddenly appear in the wine cellars? Now that would have been the appearance of age and the appearance of history! But of course the Bible doesn't say any of those things now does it? So it seems that the occurance of miracles does not require the appearance of age or history at all.

If God put the evidence for an old earth there to test our faith he is a liar and a deceiver, period. You may choose to worship such a God but many do not and I for one cannot blame them one bit.

Good grief. The "presuppositional lens" is either that reality is as we observe it, and can make coherent sense as we study it, OR that some magic invisible sky-daddy POOFED it all into existence entirely arbitrarily, according to preferred interpretations of fables in a Magic Book. In which case, as with Kurt Wise, evidence simply does not matter. In which case, why argue? If evidence matters, FL's entire belief system is flat insane by any rational definition of sanity. If evidence does NOT matter, then we are ALL insane.

Yeah, I understand the philosophical position that natural phenomena have natural causes and that reality is internally consistent and doesn't contradict itself. And even FL follows this philosophy in every other aspect of his life, because otherwise he could not feed himself. So he has the "god compartment" isolated off in his mind, protected by lies, doubletalk, hand-waving, subject-changing, selective reading and interpretation of selective texts, and other self-delusion.

I wonder if this is a bug in human circuitry, or whether it's simply a price we must pay (isolated insanity) as a species, for general benefit.

It’s your obligation to produce that refutation. We’ve already discussed Dr. Wise’s book before in this forum, Popper. That’s how I knew Raging Bee hadn’t read the book, and still hasn’t.

He provides sufficient ambi in the creation for humans to conclude erroneously a history that never actually occurred… if they so chose. This is apparantly because God requires faith of us (Heb. 11:3)

In which case, as with Kurt Wise, evidence simply does not matter. In which case, why argue? If evidence matters, FL’s entire belief system is flat insane by any rational definition of sanity. If evidence does NOT matter, then we are ALL insane.

I believe that if one chooses to believe that the global Biblical Flood is historically accurate, THEN one does have a plausible reason

I needed to repeat, (and complete), the following paragraph so you guys don’t get any chance to duck it:

“if you accept that your God knowingly plants deceiving evidence in the Universe he created, for whatever reason…” Behind all that phrasing is the religion of uniformitarianism.

As far as I can tell, the way a person views the fossils and other items depends on what presuppositional lenses (uniformitarian or catastrophic, Flood or No-Flood) one chooses to look through. That’s a key issue when asking about “Why would God do this or that…?” I believe that if one chooses to believe that the global Biblical Flood is historically accurate, THEN one does have a plausible reason for believing that a Super-Catastrophe of that unimaginable level might have something NECESSARILY to do with the way fossils and other geological things are on the table. But if you DON’T believe that the global Biblical flood occurred, if you’re into that naturalistic uniformitarian religion, then you’ll see things another way

Idiot, no one is saying that he couldn’t do it, it’s a question of would and why.

Please keep the discussion civil. I will remove or send to the bathroom wall any further personal attacks on anyone. I have no time for such puerility, and I doubt anyone else has either.

in the case of the apparent age miracle in which Jesus fed the 5000 from one boy’s fish and bread, Dr. Wise calculated that something like 99.9 percent of the fish and bread that was distributed was EX NIHILO, created from nothing at all. Instantly.

There are a lot of problems with the liar and trickster model of god.

1. How could you trust anything he was involved with? Like the bible. Especially the bible. It could all just be made up fables and he was rolling on the floor laughing while the xians killed each other over various interpretations of a hastily written fiction.

2. Rather insulting isn't it? Fortunately the Yawheh god isn't into lightening bolts or a few people would have gotten fried by now.

3. You might fear such a being like you would fear a shark or rampaging hippo but worship? Why bother worshipping someone you wouldn't want for a neighbor?

This fake universe that looks old but was created 6,000 years ago (or yesterday) idea has been around for centuries. Most Xians took one look at it, made the above deductions and tossed it in the trash as Bad Theology.

I have no time for such puerility

The Scriptural fact is that both God and Jesus perform several outright time-altering apparent-age miracles in the Bible. So if you suggest (as the deceiver argument clearly does) that God is a deceiver if he were to execute a literal Creation Week of seven 24-hours

, you are also calling Jesus a deceiver too, for doing precisely the same kind of time-altering miracle multiple times within the NT.

thus chimeth the Clouserbot.

Carol: given your willful ignorance – prompted by obvious religious bigotry – regarding the scientific achievements of polytheists such as the ancient Greeks, why should we take your words seriously?

I see Carol’s here, lying for Jesus™.

If evidence matters, FL’s entire belief system is flat insane by any rational definition of sanity. ... And even FL follows this philosophy in every other aspect of his life, because otherwise he could not feed himself. So he has the “god compartment” isolated off in his mind, protected by lies, doubletalk, hand-waving, subject-changing, selective reading and interpretation of selective texts, and other self-delusion.

I believe that if one chooses to believe that the global Biblical Flood is historically accurate, THEN one does have a plausible reason for believing that a Super-Catastrophe of that unimaginable level might have something NECESSARILY to do with the way fossils and other geological things are on the table.

— FL

FL:

FL: by “apparent-age miracles,” do you by any chance mean “God creating a planetful of deliberately-deceptive evidence and still expecting us to trust him as the source of all Truth?”

Raging Bee, Dr. Kurt Wise has already refuted the "deceiver argument" in his excellent book "Faith, Form, and Time", but just like I haven't yet read "Paradigms on Pilgrimage", you haven't yet read Dr. Wise's book (even though it's been available for quite a while.)

Since when did humanity become inerrant?

Plus Pi is 3, which makes circles smaller than that Euclid guy claimed they are... :p

Plus Pi is 3, which makes circles smaller than that Euclid guy claimed they are… :p

Henry J--
Now, this is when I get irritated with biblical inerrancy. Figuring out that there was a constant relationship between the radius of a circle and its circumference was pretty good for the time. And the ancients did manage to calculate pi to the nearest integer.

But people who insist on biblical inerrancy are the ones who make pi=3 look ridiculous. Presumably, if the bible were inerrant, it would have the EXACT value of pi. (which, because pi is an irrational number, would make it a much, much, MUCH longer book.)

Going back to the original article, I find the disassociation between twilight and sunlight interesting, as it seems to appear in other mythologies. In Vedic and Shinto mythology, there are goddesses of the dawn, named Ushas and Uzume, respectively. These are considered to be separate from the solar deities (Surya and Amaterasu). Sorry if it's a bit off the topic, but I thought it was cool.