Considering Solipsism: Deception, Creationism, Reality and God

[shernren]

Found in Creationism:

I think I mostly agree with you. This deception idea is a tender spot for me, because it leads to what I think are spurious TE claims. They say frequently that our theology makes God a liar because God would never leave a geological record that "lies" to the modern scientist (though he would lie to all mistaken scientists that preceded us.) There are a few truly frivolous arguments in this forum. That is one of them.

On one hand,

Num 23:19 God [is] not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do [it]? or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good?

1Sa 15:29 And also the Strength of Israel will not lie nor repent: for he [is] not a man, that he should repent.

on the other hand,

Luk 10:21 In that hour Jesus rejoiced in spirit, and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes: even so, Father; for so it seemed good in thy sight.

I am guessing that this leaves us in agreement. I would not use the word deception, personally. Does this sound right?

As for making the earth look old,

Could God make the earth look young?

What would a young earth look like?

How exactly could he construct a planet that would satisfy an evolutionist on this question? I have a hard time imaging that would be possible. Rock must appear to have cooled. Rock must be hard. Dirt must be aggregated in areas sufficient to plant. Planets must have achieved stationary orbits.

To an evolutionist order itself and habitability implies age. I think God is willing to allow someone to go that way if they choose to.

All of the foregoing ignore catastrophes that follow the fall, which also gives an appearance of age to some..

I want to respond in-depth to this, not just in reaction to some things busterdog says which I think are wrong but also to some things which I have thought about before and I think he is right on (to some extent).

This post will specifically answer some points he raises in his post above, because I am impatient. The next post will be much more in the spirit of an OP and deal with realism as I conceive it and some issues with solipsism and why I think it reflects a wrong theology of God. The post (or two, or three) after that will be concerned firstly with solipsism as I see it in creationism, and then what the argument against deception is and what the argument against deception isn't.

So hang on tight!

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I continue to think that this use of Luke 10:21 is quite irresponsible. For again, look at the context:

At that time Jesus, full of joy through the Holy Spirit, said, "I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure. All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows who the Son is except the Father, and no one knows who the Father is except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him." Then he turned to his disciples and said privately, "Blessed are the eyes that see what you see. For I tell you that many prophets and kings wanted to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it."
(Luke 10:21-24 NIV)

Firstly, the passage is quite clear. Jesus is talking specifically about the miracles the disciples have just performed in the towns of Israel. None of those things have been hidden from anyone who was alive at that time. The people from whom these things have been hidden are "prophets and kings", and they are only forbidden from seeing these things because of their place in history: namely, they are in the past relative to these events, and of course they cannot physically access the future.

Furthermore, the dynamic that busterdog often suggests (God making the scientists' measurements invalid because they aim to discredit the Bible with those measurements) is completely opposite to the dynamic suggested here. The kings and prophets from whom these things were hidden desired to see them! They were men of faith, writers of the Bible, people who looked forward to the Messiah (and how could they desire to see something, unless they had faith that it would happen?), and there is no wilful hiding of the truth from them - just the historical necessity of their place in history; they cannot help but be in the past relative to the Messiah, and thus can only see Him prophetically instead of physically.

This is worlds apart from the proposed deception / blinding of science that busterdog sees.

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"Could God make an earth that looks young?"

I think about that sometimes, especially in the context of cosmological ideas. We know what floods look like, and what places that aren't flooded look like, and so there is substantial room for geology to comment on the possibility and plausibility of a global flood. But we don't have any 6,000-year-old universes, solar systems, or planets to play around with. How could we know?

I think part of the TE response to this is that evidences for the Earth's age are most of the time found in features that are non-essential to the Earth's hability, to the best of our current knowledge. For example, two strong pieces of evidence for the Solar System's age are the radiometric dating of meteorites and the absence of (non-naturally generated) short-lived radioisotopes coupled with the presence of long-lived radioisotopes. Now, does Earth need meteorites to be habitable? Does the Earth need the absence of short-lived radioisotopes to be habitable - and if there is an issue with radiation, why should long-lived radioisotopes be present?

Or again think about tree rings. Tree rings are not necessary for a tree to be large or to bear fruit: some trees' rings are too light to discern growth rings properly, and trees that grow in tropical regions would not have discrete growth rings (IIRC) because the seasonal variation here is not that large. Furthermore, there is no necessity for those rings to correlate positively with radiocarbon dating: God could distribute C-14 throughout those rings so that rings that appear older are on the outside, or inside, or the middle, or simply not have any C-14 present at all.

So, no, I don't think order and habitability itself implies age, and I will elaborate more on this - I think the omphalos argument actually carries a bit of weight there, though not much. It is in the coincidental age-markers that we find problems with YECism, or at least a scientific formulation of it.

 

[busterdog]

Firstly, the passage is quite clear. Jesus is talking specifically about the miracles the disciples have just performed in the towns of Israel. None of those things have been hidden from anyone who was alive at that time. The people from whom these things have been hidden are "prophets and kings", and they are only forbidden from seeing these things because of their place in history: namely, they are in the past relative to these events, and of course they cannot physically access the future.

It is not about "miracles". It is about who can see, who can't and who suffers the judgment of Sodom (or worse) as a result.

Luk 10:13¶Woe unto thee, Chorazin! woe unto thee, Bethsaida! for if the mighty works had been done in Tyre and Sidon, which have been done in you, they had a great while ago repented, sitting in sackcloth and ashes.
Even if it about "miracles", it is about the power of God and who can see it and respond to it and who can't. What did they say of Jesus and his ability to heal? A violator of the sabbath. A man possessed.

I have a hard time see how you compartmentalize this.

The proposition is not specifically that God has hidden anything from Penzas and Wilson. That is an entirely separate argument. The proposition is that you can't argue that the witness of God that comes through a telescope and as vetted by review and revision is necessarily a record through which no possible lie or deception could be communicated. If apparent age arises from telescope it would not be a "lie" for God to allow the observer to draw the wrong conclusion.

Drawing the wrong conclusions from Jesus is quite analogous. The first part of the mistaken conclusion is that those who draw them are prejudiced by 1. observation of every day phenomena and some 2. by religious tradition. The former is clearly on the table through the New Testament. The question is clearly, why should it matter that what God can do doesn't square with your experience?

Furthermore, the dynamic that busterdog often suggests (God making the scientists' measurements invalid because they aim to discredit the Bible with those measurements) is completely opposite to the dynamic suggested here.

That is not my argument on the basis of this scripture. (Although I feel that argument arises from the entire witness of scripture and its teaching on inerrancy. But, that is another thread.) What I posted was intended to dispose of the argument that a "deceptive God" is the upshot of YEC theology, and that evolution and an old universe alone square with a God who cannot lie (through his creation). I did not intend it to prove any of the tenets of YEC or convict science. This is defense not offense.

The kings and prophets from whom these things were hidden desired to see them! They were men of faith, writers of the Bible, people who looked forward to the Messiah (and how could they desire to see something, unless they had faith that it would happen?), and there is no wilful hiding of the truth from them - just the historical necessity of their place in history; they cannot help but be in the past relative to the Messiah, and thus can only see Him prophetically instead of physically.

Indeed, the truth was not hidden. Thus, his reference was to those unable to receive his truth, not the men of faith you refer to.

If you don't like this verse, there are many available. God hardened Pharaoh's heart. The proposition is simple: God hides things from people. For those who are dull of hearing, He takes away even what they have. For those who are deceptive, He does not forbid the deceptive spirits to compound their deception.

1Ki 22:22
And the LORD said unto him, Wherewith? And he said, I will go forth, and I will be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets. And he said, Thou shalt persuade [him], and prevail also: go forth, and do so.

Or again think about tree rings. Tree rings are not necessary for a tree to be large or to bear fruit: some trees' rings are too light to discern growth rings properly, and trees that grow in tropical regions would not have discrete growth rings (IIRC) because the seasonal variation here is not that large. Furthermore, there is no necessity for those rings to correlate positively with radiocarbon dating: God could distribute C-14 throughout those rings so that rings that appear older are on the outside, or inside, or the middle, or simply not have any C-14 present at all.

I think I am least qualified to say what would make sense or wouldn't. The C14 argument is a bit different than the possible argument that maybe they need tree rings. I assume that you are speaking of bristle cone pines or some such thing that is alleged to be thousands of years old?

We agree that some of the omphalos arguments have some legitimacy. Trying to distinguish them according to purpose is to me a very speculative and perhaps dangerous exercise. Not that it isn't an interesting exercise.

 

[shernren]

... in a philosophical context, is not what you try to drill into a naive idealist's head. It is simply the belief that the physical world is real. This is a philosophical belief, and not necessarily* scientifically testable.

"But why do you say that? Surely the physical world is real. There is no reason to believe that it isn't, is there?"

Well, what do you mean by the physical world? You can't prove to me that the physical world exists. Right now, for example, I am typing on a computer - or that's what I might think. In actual fact, all I can verify is that my fingers feel the sensation of pressing down computer keys, my ears hear the whirring of a computer fan, and my eyes see the computer screen in front of me as well as the room around me. But why should my senses are trustworthy? Just because my fingers feel keyboard keys does not in and of itself guarantee that the keyboard actually exists.

Descartes, when he first explored this, needed to postulate some kind of demon or evil demigod that could manipulate him into a false reality. We don't need that today; after all, we've all watched The Matrix, or at least heard of it. And there is a scene where a gifted child holds out a spoon for Neo to bend (IIRC). He tells Neo to remember that: "There is no spoon." Why? Because even though his brain receives a visual signal that corresponds to the presence of a spoon in front of him, there isn't actually a spoon in front of him. And if he holds the spoon, and his brain receives a tactile signal that feels like metal, he isn't actually holding any metal. Illusions happen. If I close my eyes and put pressure against an eyeball I see strange patterns of light; surely that does not mean that at that moment a little dim bulb turns on behind my cornea. But if my eyeballs are untrustworthy then, why should they be trustworthy now? Or maybe I'm imprisoned in a giant machine which has flayed open my brains and has convinced me that I'm doing everything I'm doing now, even though I'm "really" not.

But instead I am convinced that I live in a physical universe; which is somehow real external to my perceptions of it. What can that mean? Unfortunately, The Matrix tries to give an answer that is deeply dissatisfying to me: Neo can ultimately wake up into the "real world"; part of the artifice of the movie is that viewers must assume that the Matrix world is false, while the machine world with Zion as its last human bastion is real. But if the Matrix world, so carefully constructed (and in which people can be killed, even), is not real, why should the machine world be? Maybe the Matrix world is real and the machine world is the video game, something people jack out into to get their kicks. Or maybe the machine world is just another level of prison by even higher machines. No, that isn't an answer.

My personal answer is synchronicity of measurements, and it is an answer best expressed in scientific terms: Two independent measurements of the same physical property of a physical object will yield correlated answers. When I measure the length of a spoon as 10cm, my friend who measures its length and uses the same units as me will also obtain 10cm. Now, that would not be necessarily true in an anti-realist situation. If both me and my friend are in actuality plugged into a giant machine that controls both our brains, it may well be that I might measure the spoon to be 10cm while my friend measures it to be 15. A machine feeding both of us our sensory inputs is not obliged to make them correlate. On the other hand, if both of our measurements are actually indicative of some kind of real world that is external to our experiences, and which exists and lives independent of them, then it is not surprising that our measurements correlate.

(This is where my philosophical foray stops. It should be patently obvious that there will be many forms of anti-realism that are consistent with what I have thus far described. For example, the giant machine may feel inclined to make all independent observations correlate - indeed, that is what the machines in The Matrix tend to do as far as I can see; or maybe, if it is all in my head, why shouldn't I expect an experience that is all in my head to be entirely self-consistent? Right down to illusory independent observers who are really saying to me again the things I have said to myself. I think that is exactly why realism is a position of philosophy and faith - because it is in some sense unfalsifiable - but at the same time I don't think I need the entire apparatus of full-blown realism to proceed, just the correlation of measurements.)

Now, why should a Christian feel obliged to be a realist? For many reasons. First of all, a Christian believes that there is a God external to this world; how can s/he believe that there is a God external to the world if s/he does not even believe in a world external to his or her own experiences? Furthermore, God is said to have created the world; this would be quite a pale statement if all it really meant is "I have given you humans logically consistent, persistent sensory delusions". Furthermore, God is said to operate through history, in the objects of this world, and this provides a compelling motivation for us to view those objects as being real.

So I take it as granted that a Christian should accept the correlation of measurements, or in a cruder sense the correlation of observations. Assuming you do not disagree with me: where can we go from there?

*I say "not necessarily" because on a quantum level, realist vs. anti-realist philosophies turn out to have important experimental ramifications, and thus far the evidence has leaned heavily towards anti-realism. However, those rules just don't apply to our everyday, macroscopic experiences; furthermore, even quantum mechanics does not deny the 'consistency of measurements' approach that I am taking here. Therefore, I will not make such a big deal out of QM and some of its schools e.g. the Copenhagen Interpretation in this series.

 

[shernren]

It is not about "miracles". It is about who can see, who can't and who suffers the judgment of Sodom (or worse) as a result.

Luk 10:13¶Woe unto thee, Chorazin! woe unto thee, Bethsaida! for if the mighty works had been done in Tyre and Sidon, which have been done in you, they had a great while ago repented, sitting in sackcloth and ashes.
Even if it about "miracles", it is about the power of God and who can see it and respond to it and who can't. What did they say of Jesus and his ability to heal? A violator of the sabbath. A man possessed.

I have a hard time see how you compartmentalize this.

I have a hard time seeing why you are amalgating 10:13 with 10:21, when they are clearly from two different paragraphs (the first from Jesus's preparing the disciples, the second from Jesus's debriefing). Furthermore, I propose that the people Jesus was calling "wise and learned" were the kings and prophets. You propose that He was saying that about Tyre and Sidon. Which do you think is more appropriate?

And in any case, even if you were right, the people of Tyre and Sidon were again simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. The "hiding" is not predicated on their moral nature or their deservingness - indeed, Jesus is essentially arguing that they deserved to witness those events (and could not), while Chorazin and Bethsaida did not!

The proposition is not specifically that God has hidden anything from Penzas and Wilson. That is an entirely separate argument. The proposition is that you can't argue that the witness of God that comes through a telescope and as vetted by review and revision is necessarily a record through which no possible lie or deception could be communicated. If apparent age arises from telescope it would not be a "lie" for God to allow the observer to draw the wrong conclusion.

Ahh, but firstly:

The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they display knowledge.
There is no speech or language
where their voice is not heard.
(Psalms 19:1-3 NIV)

In any case, I am not even talking about creation's ability to witness about God; I am talking about creation's ability to witness about itself. We have to distinguish between the following two creationist hypotheses about an observation X that appears to demand an old age of the universe:

1. Observation X has no correlation whatsoever with an objectively verifiable attribute of the physical universe.

2. Observation X is correlated with an objectively verifiable attribute Y of the physical universe, but this attribute is not necessarily correlated with the actual age of the universe.

Hypothesis 1 falls foul of my proposed realism; Hypothesis 2 doesn't, although to me it becomes quite questionable in most cases when it is employed. I'll be elaborating more on that as the thread progresses, so I won't say too much about Hypothesis 2 right now.

Hypothesis 1 however just doesn't work, to me. If we believe in a real universe, we believe that our observations must tell us something about the universe, and that something it tells us must correspond to some physical feature of the universe which can be further probed. (That physical feature, of course, might be a flaw in our observational systems.) But I remember how you were once talking about how light has to cross the vast light-years to us, and thus how can we know for sure what its properties are? That is clear solipsism to me.

Drawing the wrong conclusions from Jesus is quite analogous. The first part of the mistaken conclusion is that those who draw them are prejudiced by 1. observation of every day phenomena and some 2. by religious tradition. The former is clearly on the table through the New Testament. The question is clearly, why should it matter that what God can do doesn't square with your experience?

No, not quite. Note that there was never any confusion about the physical results of Jesus's ministry. He performed miracles and signs; that much was unanimously agreed to. The healed blind men really could see, and the healed lepers really had restored skin, and the healed cripples really could walk.

Of course, the interpretation differed; but two (or more) people who observed the miracles saw the same physical things. The blind man really could see; therefore the Pharisees investigated, the parents vacillated, and the blind man testified joyfully - but these three are reactions to the same set of physical facts which all parties acknowledge. I am not talking about the spiritual conclusions; I am talking about physical observations and their invariance with respect to observers.

That is not my argument on the basis of this scripture. (Although I feel that argument arises from the entire witness of scripture and its teaching on inerrancy. But, that is another thread.) What I posted was intended to dispose of the argument that a "deceptive God" is the upshot of YEC theology, and that evolution and an old universe alone square with a God who cannot lie (through his creation). I did not intend it to prove any of the tenets of YEC or convict science. This is defense not offense.

Fair enough. I don't think a "deceptive God" is necessarily the upshot of YEC theology either, at least not of all of it (though certainly of some). But I hope that you agree with me that a "deceptive God" is a bad place for any kind of theology to end up at.

Indeed, the truth was not hidden. Thus, his reference was to those unable to receive his truth, not the men of faith you refer to.

But the men of faith were precisely unable to see those things - if only because they lived in the wrong time, and even though they looked forward to them, they could not see them.

If you don't like this verse, there are many available. God hardened Pharaoh's heart. The proposition is simple: God hides things from people. For those who are dull of hearing, He takes away even what they have. For those who are deceptive, He does not forbid the deceptive spirits to compound their deception.

1Ki 22:22
And the LORD said unto him, Wherewith? And he said, I will go forth, and I will be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets. And he said, Thou shalt persuade [him], and prevail also: go forth, and do so.

But what kinds of things? And how are they hidden? Pharaoh's heart was hardened, and the false prophets were filled with a lying spirits; but never were they told that their physical senses would heretofore be untrustworthy in receiving physical information about the world.

Indeed, if you wanted to look anywhere in Scripture for a description of how God hides things from people, you would look at Romans 1:18-32, in which men's "thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened" (v. 20). But what happened when they "became fools" (v. 21)? They "exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images ... " (v. 22). They didn't, in other words, change their science. They changed their religion. Again: "They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator--who is forever praised." (v. 25) The lie was to worship and serve created things; the truth, therefore, was to worship and serve God, not mere scientific facts about the physical attributes of nature.

Yes, God hides truth from the unrepentant. But what sorts of truth? Does God stuff up atheists' telescopes? Or does He harden their hearts?

I think I am least qualified to say what would make sense or wouldn't. The C14 argument is a bit different than the possible argument that maybe they need tree rings. I assume that you are speaking of bristle cone pines or some such thing that is alleged to be thousands of years old?

We agree that some of the omphalos arguments have some legitimacy. Trying to distinguish them according to purpose is to me a very speculative and perhaps dangerous exercise. Not that it isn't an interesting exercise.

Oh, I don't think it's speculative and dangerous at all. You tell me, for example, for what purpose God should have synchronized multiple parent element / daughter element ratios in all meteorites that have thus far reached Earth so that they give the same age (4.5 billion years) to a few percents' accuracy. How speculative and dangerous can it be to admit that you have no good reason for it?