God - a liar?

Buz, we went over all this before. It is not the appearance of age that is the problem. It is the appearance of unnecessary age and the appearance of a history that is the problem.

and,Buz the point is that He can be taken as a liar if he creates things with the appearance of unnecessary age. It is NOT the appearance of age per se. Why is this so hard?

Of course that's has far as you want to go. As soon as you make the next step, which has to be answered, you get into theological trouble.Fact? I don't see that. God didn't have to make Adam and Eve all grown up. He could easily care for them till they did. And the same can be said for anything at all. He could set the sun up with no age and keep everything warm with something else untill the sun was ready. He could do anything at all.But we have agreed to give you the necessity for the appearance of some age. What we really don't see is all the age and history that is there.And you don't want to touch it.

Well, it turns out that the posters here choose not to address the age of the earth issue. They can manage to cut and paste from various creationist sources but none of it answers some very clear pieces of evidence posted in the dates and dating forum.The facts are that the so-called creation model has no scientific evidence to show that the earth is as young as some think it is. They are unable to handle the evidence of an old earth.Under these circumstances they are left with a look of complete bewilderment as to what it is all about or must conclude that God is very good at fooling very smart people.You wishful thinking that creationists can answer the challenge is put in doubt by the lack of posting to the dateing topics.

PaulK, there is one little point that I think Mike is trying to make (and maybe not too clearly).If there is any defence of a young earth with an appearance of age it seems to come down to something along the lines of the unknowableness of God.That is, the suggestion is that somehow or another the appearance, while false, is not intended by God to be deceptive. Somehow it is necessary. This is an argument that Buz has tried to make.The other defence seems to be that what we consider to be an appearance of age is simply a result of your pig headed stupidity. That we aren't getting the interpretation correct.I think those are the only two defenses I can see.The only way that I can see a YEC putting them forward is if they are spectacularly ignorant of the actual evidence (surprise, surprise).In the first case it comes down to simply saying that one doesn't understand why the appearance is necessary but that it somehow must be. A semi-rational explanation for varves, ice layers or any of the direct counting methods being necessary is not yet forthcoming. If someone attempts this I think that the utter ridiculousness of the arguement would be apparent.In the second case it requires ignorance of the details of the dating methods. To somehow suggest that counting (you know, a-one, a-two, a-three) is subject to wrong headed interpretation not just in one case but in several correlated cases is pretty quickly darned silly too.All this is why, IMNSO, why the YEC'ers stay far from these topics. They might say they don't have the knowledge for dealing with radiometric dating but somehow they also don't want to deal with counting (a-one, a-two, a-three, a-gosh-a-lot). I guess numbers over 6,000 are too big to deal with when counting.

So god is about 6,025 or so years old?? WHat a silly thing to say!I understand the anthropomorphising of God to some degree but this is waaaay over the top.Are you saying that a baby or child is not in God's image? An odd thing to suggest.(re quotes see the informatin at the link on the left UBB Code is on -- you may also just attempt to Edit someone's post to see what they entered (but you can't change it ) )

An individual can have an appearance of age (or any other attribute). Say I appear to be 45 (just for now let's go with me on that ok? ) Now I may actually BE 45 but that doesn't mean I don't also appear to be 45. Yes we usually use the word to indicate some uncertainty but that doesn't alter the fact that I appear that way.Miriam Webster says:
3 : to have an outward aspect : SEEM

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Now then is it deceptive? Well who is doing the deceiving?

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As has been noted Man wrote the Bible and certainly interprets it and God wrote the rocks.

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To figure out who is lying (or is at least seriously mistaken) we have to figure out where the fault lies.

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Where is the error? Our reading of the rocks? No onehaven't shown that yet, heck no one has really tried to show that. Our reading of the Bible? Or did God write the wrong message into the rocks?

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Where is the error?

I finally get a bit of what you are getting at. Ok we are saying false appearance of age and you say it is an appearance of false age. And I think you have something there. Let me try to use that.In thinking about it as I write. I'm not sure that it should make that much difference to the argument but I do thing that your word order might be better.If we (you and I ) agree that the Earth (young or old) does have an appearance of age AND if we agree that it is, in fact, young then we have a real (true, whatever) appearance of false age.If however, we adopted some of the YEC views where they say the Earth does not have an appearance of old age then they are saying the OEC view is a false appearance of age.Now we have to get back to discussing whether the Earth does have an appearance of great age. Whether it does not in actually fact is a separate question.I think that the view of the scientific side here is that the "truth" is only the best conclusion we can come to and we are always discussing what the "appearance" is, that is what we observe.Therefore, we say that there is a huge amount of correlated observable evidence that the Earth appears to be very old indeed. None of the YEC'ers have done anything to dent that evidence.If they don't dent the evidence they have to agree that the earth appears to be old. In this case a YEC would argue that this is an apearance of false age. If it is not old then who put that evidence there?

Well, we agree on AOA being non-deceptive. It is when YEC'ers say that it IS deceptive that the whole thing becomes bad theology as well as bad science. It seems to be the last resort used when they really try to deal with the science.Look at 'whatever' in the age correlations topic today. He was off on tangents about transitionals, dismissed the correlations with an arm wave and ran for cover. That is the common approach - avoidance.When they actually get held to looking at it then the old "appearance" thing is brought out. To avoid the obvious problem with this it becomes Satan who is the deciever for some. I've actually heard this and I'm sure you have.This, of course, isn't really doing what they want but the desparate clutch at staws. Now we have this evidence woven through the universe. It, they agree, looks like age but it isn't cause Satan did it. There they stop. They think there is just a fossil here or there. But they have now made Satan the creator of the universe since the evidence is so woven into the fabric of it. Somehow I'm pretty sure that is not what they intended but it sure as hell is very, very funny. [This message has been edited by NosyNed, 04-09-2004]