May 16, 2007Young Earth Creationism and the appearance of age
I currently have a number of half-written articles to finish and publish here, including my continued thoughts on the direction of SI (from the now-irrelevant Chris Sligh hubbub) and the Joe Zitcherman lecture/testimonial. However, my responsibilities here at International Baptist College and work on my dissertation are eating up most of the time I might spend writing for this blog. Priorities.I did want to write a brief entry, though, on a question that's been running through my mind for much of this semester, as I think it could lead to some interesting discussion. I had the opportunity to teach a course this year called "Science and the Bible." As I told my class, I am neither a scientist nor the son of a scientist, so the course content tilted much more heavily to the Bible side of the "Science and the Bible" material.
As might be expected, a substantial amount of the course focuses on discussions of biblical creationism. Now, I hold to a six-literal-day, young-earth creationism. Like many other young-earth creationists, I find the "appearance of age" argument to be helpful in dealing with some otherwise difficult empirical evidence for an old universe. For instance, I believe that Adam looked up into the first (post-creation-of-people) night sky and saw light from stars that were millions of light-years away. Thus, God had created a universe that, at least in this one respect, seemed to have a multi-million year history.
I tend to think that the appearance of age is a very useful and flexible argument, and I'm personally willing to apply it quite liberally. My eyes were opened to the tremendous apologetic possibilities for the argument while taking a class from Vern Poythress at Westminster Theological Seminary. Poythress actually rejects six-day creationism in favor of his own view, which he calls the "analogical day" theory. (In my opinion, Poythress's theory is probably the strongest, most biblically-sensitive, conservative version of the various "long-day" theories, and it demands careful attention. Ultimately, I think it fails to carry its burden of proof, but that's another post.) In a course called "Theology of Science," Poythress suggested that advocates of young-earth creationism could argue, for instance, that dinosaurs never actually existed, but that their fossils were created by God as part of the backstory of earth.
At this point, I'm not convinced as to whether Poythress's particular example (dinosaurs not existing) is scientifically valid or not; I simply don't have the requisite knowledge of paleontology to make such a claim. However, his suggestion does open the doors to a host of evidences for an old universe that are merely other aspects of the backstory with which God created the universe. For instance, I'm pretty well convinced that Adam could have done various sorts of testing on the rocks of the Garden of Eden and concluded that, based on the rate of decay of certain elements, that those rocks appeared to be millions of years old.
Even those young-earth creationists who are not willing to go as far as I do with the appearance of age must have some place for it in their systems. Adam and Eve, for example, were obviously created in such a way that they appeared to have age. I would suggest (cautiously) that had Adam decided to cut down a tree in the Garden, it may well have had rings. At the very least, the trees and other plants were of fruit-bearing age.
(A quick aside: none of this can be considered deceitful on the part of God, because he revealed to Adam the truth. Adam could have run tests on a rock and seen that it seemed to be two million years old, but he had an obligation to believe God's word to him that it was actually created days ago. In fact, to me, this is a strong argument for the truth of presuppositionalism: evidence will mislead unless it is decisively interpreted from a Christian-theistic, submitted-to-revelation framework. For Adam to insist on the necessity of following the brute facts and evidences in the Garden without submission to God's revelation would be an act of rebellion. But again, that's another post.)
Here's the problem: while I find the appearance of age argument to be helpful, I am also interested in the various arguments and evidences for a young earth. Young-earth arguments often point to some feature of the earth that, if it were millions and millions of years old, could not exist in its current state. Again, I do not have the necessary qualifications to evaluate the validity of some of these claims, but I find them interesting nonetheless.
(Another quick aside: anyone who wants to defend any form of young-earth creationism must read this list of bad arguments for creation/against evolution. Trust me on this. You'll stop embarrassing us.)
My question is this: are we guilty of special pleading when we have a system in place that expects evidence that the universe is young and that it is simultaneously old? Doesn't that seem a bit too convenient for us? Is it right for us to expect that God created a universe that has an inconsistent backstory, some parts of which seem to be tremendously old and some of which seem very young? If I appeal to the appearance of age, do I then of necessity need to dismiss evidences that would point to a young earth, while at the same time maintaining my belief in a young earth?