Why should we use one inch per year? Why should we use any other number? You have not presented any evidence whatever that Saturn’s rings are expanding at all.
And the 4.5 billion years is the currently accepted age of the earth, not Saturn.
That’s what I said.
I have no such hopes. I have no interest in whether or not the Bible is correct about most issues. However, I don’t have to hope that the Genesis account of the origin is inadequate. To me that is manifestly the case.
You got any examples?
Probably true. Just the same I fully intend to be the last surviving WWII veteran. And I expect the world to continue merrily on without me in any case.
No. The original promoters of ID were all Old Earth Creationists, to begin with. A few YECs have jumped on the ID bandwagon in the hopes of re-inserting religion into biology classes, but the actual early writings of ID proponents expected a world very much shaped by the evolutionary process, just one in which their “designer” could tinker with individual events enough to get God back into the discussion.
Here’s one from 2Tim3:1-5 (Amplified version)
But, understand this, that in the last days there will set in perilous times of great stress and trouble – hard to deal with and hard to bear. For people will be lovers of self and utterly self-centered, lovers of money and aroused by an inordinate desire for wealth, proud and arrogant and contemptuous boasters. They will be abusive (blasphemous, scoffers), disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy and profane, [They will be] without natural (human) affection (callous and inhuman), relentless – admitting of no truce or appeasement. [They will be] slanderers – false accusers, trouble makers; intemperate and loose in morals and conduct, uncontrolled and fierce, haters of good. [They will be] treacherous (betrayers), rash [and] inflated with self conceit. [They will be] lovers of sensual pleasures and vain amusements more than and rather than lovers of God. For [although] they hold a form of piety (true religion), they deny and reject and are strangers to the power of it – their conduct belies the genuineness of their profession.
OK, so what are we supposed to do when lots of evidence turns up demonstrating processes that have been going on a lot longer than the YEC timeframe permits? I’m thinking about such things as dendrochnology, varve analysis, ice cores, not to mention the obvious ones like radiometric dating and observation of astronomical bodies more than ten thousand light years distant.
The answer to those processes lies in the fact that God created them in an already completed or mature stage of development. For instance, Adam was formed as a physically mature human being, God having bypassed the normal maturing process. If we were to go back and look at Adam from a “scientific” perspective we would not accept that he was one day old because the natural processes we normally use as our reference point would not apply to him. It’s similar to other long term processes we see today like light from distant stars that takes billions of years to reach earth right now. Their light has been seen from the earth from the 1st day they came into existence because that was God’s design
So God is trying to fool us?
All the evidence points this way but he leaves us one little booklet that has the ‘Truth’ which points that way.
And it’s up to his intelligent creation to figure out that all the evidence is wrong, all other religions have it wrong and this obscure booklet from someplace in the Middle-East had it right all the time.
I bet the answer to the obvious question; ‘Why The Fuck would an Intelligent Designer do such a weird thing’ would be ‘God moves in mysterious ways.’
So the fossils of organisms that can be accurately dated to more than 6K years ago are fakes? They never actually lived? The starlight arriving from supernovae more than 6K light years away is depicting events that never really happened? They never actually exploded?
What you’re proposing here is a lot more than just ‘appearance of maturity’, it’s ‘false appearance of history’ - in other words, the same as if Adam had false memories of his childhood, a fake scar on his knee to match the fake memory of falling out of a tree when he was twelve, etc.
And more to the point, if everything in the universe that appears older than 6K years is just part of God’s elaborate fiction to make it look very much older, what exactly is your beef with science for taking that fiction exactly as written?
You stated yourself that God’s ways seem bizarre to us. Why then would you judge “billions of years of fine tuning” as “incompetence”? What is time to God?
Biblically, God is far from averse to tinkering with his creation. He created Eve for Adam because it transpired Adam needed a companion, rather than than creating her at the same time. Initially he created Man all speaking the same language, whereas later he deliberately altered that decision. Then there’s the business of the Flood, and the old Covenant and the new Covenant. Biblically God does things, sees the results and makes further decisions based on those results. Seems quite compatible with billions of years of fine tuning to me.
“He accomplishes great things with what we consider weak” is applicable to evolution through natural selection, if you are prepared to accept evolution as a mechanism of God!
Could you please name one thing in that passage from 2 Timothy that was not just as true in 100 C.E. as it is now? The fact that good people see the world going to hell in a handbasket is nothing new and does nothing to demonstrate that a prophecy of the End Times is coming any closer.
Based on that passage, the End Times should have arrived when the pagan Marcus Aurelius made a very similar observation fewer than 150 years after the life of Jesus. I’m afraid that your “evidence” for the fulfillment of prophecy is as manufactured as the rather horrible distortions of fact you have presented regarding Niagara Falls and other physical phenomena.
The IDites are probably cringing over DARDorothy’s line of argument. The whole point of ID is that it is allegedly a scientific approach, ergo it is permissible to include it in the scientific curricula of the schools. Dragging in God is counter to that whole approach.
Unfortunately, it seems to me that such an answer lies directly contrary to the entire (original) intent behind ID (and it’s forefather, Paley’s Natural Theology): that the character and qualities of God can be ascertained through the study of nature. We see (supposedly) that God Is Good because of all the wonderous ways in which he has crafted his creations, and given them just the right traits to survive in their particular environments, and so on. In other words, God’s ways aren’t so mysterious after all; one need only look to Nature to know God!
So IDists & creationists would really like it both ways: God is mysterious and inscrutible when they can’t answer a question about “why” or “how”, but He is Wonderful and Beneficent and Any Other Quality You’d Care To Ascribe Him when it suits their argument.
Either He is knowable, or He is not. If He is not, then really, you can’t even take the Bible at its word. A trickster God, who will create everything with the illusion of age and damn those who use their God-given brains to come to the obvious conclusion that the Earth & universe are as old as they appear, surely cannot be trusted to tell the truth about Himself in some ancient text, now can He? If He is knowable, then one can’t hide behind “God moves in mysterious ways”, or “God has a plan, we just don’t know what it is”.
And ID depends on God being knowable, because it relies on it being fact that God both tinkered with his creations and left his mark for all to see.
QUOTE=Latro]So God is trying to fool us?
All His communications to us are for the purpose of revelation but we have to come His way to receive it (humbly).
All the evidence points this way but he leaves us one little booklet that has the ‘Truth’ which points that way.
The “evidence” gained with our methods won’t help us to know God intimately. One book with the entire Truth given to a chosen people is better than a library filled with books that contain partial truths at best, which must be sorted through.
And it’s up to his intelligent creation to figure out that all the evidence is wrong, all other religions have it wrong and this obscure booklet from someplace in the Middle-East had it right all the time.
God is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him and it doesn’t matter what culture or religion they start from. He is faithful to give us light and if we respond to it, He gives us more light.
