[If you know me, you know that what
really happened is
that I forgot what I was going to say and simply can’t
remember it. But I have to save face, somehow, so the writer’s-block
dodge. Thankfully, most of you probably don’t know me, so you won’t
know what really
happened to my promised-but-non-existent short series on the spirit
of inquiry/rebellion.]
What is the primary argument
of those who do not believe the Creation and fall account of Genesis
1-3, but who do claim to be believers? It is not the so-called
“figurative language” of Genesis 1-3. Believe me, the “figurative
language” does not miraculously appear until science backs you into
a corner. There’s not much more straight-forward narrative in
Scripture than that of the first three chapters of Genesis. So what
is the primary argument of believing unbelievers?
The science does not support the
Genesis account of creation.
Please forgive me if I am unimpressed
with this argument. It is the ultimate ‘well, duh!’ of the
creation debate. Of course science doesn’t support the Genesis account, and what’s more, it
never will! Science is not competent to pass
judgment on the supernatural intervention of God, and whatever else
the creation event might be, it is certainly that. One can not go
from nothing—no matter, no
space, no time, no dimensions—to something (space, matter, time)
without a little divine assistance. And science by definition does
not do divine
assistance.
God’s
intervention in space and time is not predictable, not repeatable,
and not falsifiable. Never was, never will be. You can not use
science to determine the age of the universe, because you are off the
rails of science when you go there. A creation event stands in the way, one that science is incapable of detecting.
Unless, of course, matter is
eternal and God is not. But if you believe that
you can no longer truly claim a belief in the God of the Bible.
But what about the many features of
the cosmos that demand eons of time, such as radiometric dating,
light from distant stars, and the geologic column?
What
about them? As believers, we clearly have two options: scientists are
making assumptions about natural processes that are inaccurate, or at least, incomplete,
and/or God created with the appearance of age.
God creating with the appearance of
age? That’s silly! That’s special pleading!
Oh,
really? Silly, is it? Let's see how this works. If you were creating Adam, would you create him
as a newly fertilized embryo, or as a fully functioning adult? Oh,
wait, if you made him as an embryo he would need a womb in which to
develop. Oh, wait, if you need a womb, you need to create a sexually
mature woman. So even if you don’t create Adam with the appearance
of age (Adam is an embryo), you must create something else which will
necessitate the appearance of age (an adult female—his momma). So
you either create Adam with the appearance of age, or you have to
create his momma with the appearance of age, or you have to drop the
entire notion of creation and just admit that matter is eternal and
God is not.
If you
try to say that, well, God specially guided evolutionary
events, including the development of the cell, all you have done is
remand the problem to an earlier point in time, but you still ultimately wind
up with precisely the same problem (especially regarding the
mysterious bridge from the inanimate to the animate). You are still going to wind up with an appearance of age issue.
The
point is that any special creation whatsoever, at the
origin of life, will necessarily involve the appearance of age, even
if it is on a simple cellular level.
No freshly created matter, organic or inorganic, at the point of
creation is going to look like
freshly created matter. Rather, it is always going
to appear as though it has a past, so unless you want to make the
claim that God created nothing in order to get the current something,
you are going to bump into the appearance of age
problem.
This is even true in inorganics. For
instance, suppose God creates any particle that has motion. We’ll
call the time of creation n.
Let’s suppose you were an observer who came on the scene an instant
after creation, maybe at time n + 1.
You could measure that particle’s motion and then predict with
certainty its location at time n + 2.
You could likewise predict with certainty that particle’s location
at time n – 5. You’d
be wrong, of course, and never know it. You would not know that the
particle did not exist
at time n – 5. Why?
Because the very regularity of its motion gives it the appearance of
age and erases any evidence of a beginning point.
Move
with me from a philosophical argument to a historical one. Did Jesus
feed multitudes from five loaves of bread? He did, in Luke 9. What
was required to feed five thousand people bread and fish? Answer?
Lots and lots of bread and fish. But He had only five loaves and two
fish. So what did he do? He obviously was creating bread and fish as
He handed it out. But wait! Bread has a history!
Well, so do fish, for that matter, but we’ll ignore them and
concentrate on the bread.
Where
does bread come from? Krogers, right? A bakery, right? So you have to
bake bread. It takes—wait for it—time
to bake bread. And the bread has to be made from dough. Where do you
get dough? Flour, yeast, and mysterious things only my wife
understands (I don’t cook, sorry). Where do you get flour from?
It’s ground-up wheat. It takes—wait for it—time
to grind up wheat. And where do you get wheat from? Well, you have to
plant a crop, and—wait for it—wait
for that crop to grow over an entire growing season. More time.
Do you see the point? We
already know that many of Jesus’ miracles in the Gospels have
the appearance of elapsed time, or age.
So
unless you plan on throwing out Jesus’ miracles in the Gospels
while you are trashing Genesis 1-3, you are going to have to admit
that God has a clearly seen track record of making things
with the appearance of age.
And
once you admit that, the only problem with the Genesis account is
your refusal to believe it.
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