God Created this world with apparent age.
When doing so, He possessed incredible foreknowledge of what billions of years of natural processes interacting with materials would bring about.
God Created this world a few thousand years ago, but made it look naturally produced when made, like Eve.
If a person was able to go up to Eve the day after she was made and ask her how old she was they would think she was lying to them when she said one day. Her appearance would not represent one day.
In making a world look as if it was naturally made over billions of years, God foreknew an incredible amount of intricate details, as if they naturally happened.
You've said quite a bit about God's knowledge. But you haven't addressed the overwhelming problem of God's
honesty and integrity. What you are saying is that God is an incredibly smart and accomplished
liar!
Isaiah 55:7,8
For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.
Do you really want God's thoughts to be those of a liar? Especially after telling us not to lie? 9th Commandment, in case you've forgotten.
Creationists have tried this before. In 1844 a pamphlet entitled
Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, espousing an evolutionary viewpoint, was published. In response Philip Gosse, a minister in the Fundamentalist group called the Plymouth Brethren, wrote
Oomphalos, published in 1857. In it Gosse made the first written argument that creation only LOOKS old. You've just made that argument again. In it, Gosse even argued that Adam and Eve had navels because that is what one would expect in God-created creatures. And here you are, saying Eve looks "old".
Gosse expected
Oomphalos to be attacked by scientists. What he should have expected, but didn't, was the denunciation by the
religious community. Asked to write a review of
Oomphalos, his friend Charles Kingsley, a minister and author of
Westward Ho! refused and wrote the following letter to Gosse.
"You have given the 'vestiges of creation theory' [the pamphlet discussed above] the best shove forward which it has ever had. I have a special dislike for that book; but, honestly, I felt my heart melting towards it as I read Oomphalos. Shall I tell you the truth? It is best. Your book is the first that ever made me doubt the doctrine of absolute creation, and I fear it will make hundreds do so. Your book tends to prove this - that if we accept the fact of absolute creation, God becomes God-the-Sometime-Deceiver. I do not mean merely in the case of fossils which pretend to be the bones of dead animals; but in ...your newly created Adam's navel, you make God tell a lie. It is not my reason, but my conscience which revolts here ... I cannot ...believe that God has written on the rocks one enormous and superfluous lie for all mankind. To this painful dilemma you have brought me, and will, I fear, bring hundreds. It will not make me throw away my Bible. I trust and hope. I know in whom I have believed, and can trust Him to bring my faith safe through this puzzle, as He has through others;
but for the young I do fear. I would not for a thousand pounds put your book into my children's hands." Garret Hardin, ""Scientific Creationism'" - Marketing Deception as Truth" in Science and Creationism edited by Ashley Montagu, 1982.
Speaking now as a Christian, I can't tell you how much I agree with Kingsley. Heissonear, what you have proposed is one of the most dangerous things to God anyone has ever proposed. If we accept your argument, you have destroyed Christianity in your quest to preserve creationism. Or perhaps your quest to preserve a literal Bible. You've thrown God under the bus. Think for a minute. We
require God to be honest and truthful at all times. We must trust God when He tells us things we cannot check for ourselves: that His was the power behind Jesus' miracles, that He raised Jesus from the dead, that He will forgive our sins, that He will grant us eternal life. But if God lies about
anything, then everything is suspect.
So, Heissonear, is a young earth, creationism, and a literal Bible so valuable to you that you will create a god that we can't worship? A god that is indistinguishable from Satan in his ability to tell the truth?
