NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #18/NN_1992_18.iso/spool/sci/skeptic/14801

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From: [e-mail] (Paul Neubauer)
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic,talk.origins
Subject: Re: Young earth creationist logic NOT!
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 21 Aug 92 20:59:26 GMT
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>  <[e-mail]>
Lines: 196

In article <[e-mail]>,
 [e-mail] (Drew Lawson) writes:
> Seth   == [e-mail] (Seth L. Kroger)
> Jim    == [e-mail] (Jim Loucks)
> Warren == [e-mail] (Warren Vonroeschlaub)
>
> Warren> If God's intention was to confuse us wouldn't he have
> Warren>made the tree rings, ice cores, lake bottoms, and coral reefs all disagree to
> Warren>some extent as a hint?
>
> Jim   >His intention was not to confuse us.
>
> Seth  >If he didn't intend to confuse us, then why did he do this?  Mr. Omnicience
> Seth  >surely would have known what what such things would have been taken for.
>
> There is at least one misconception and one BIG assumption running
> through this.
>
> The misconception is that omniscience implies that God is forcing
> actions upon us.  Simply knowing that we will do something does not
> imply that God intends us to do it.

This has been coming up almost often enough to qualify as a FAQ.
There is a major misconception here, Drew, but you are seriously
confused about what it is.  Noone is claiming that God is "forcing
actions upon us."  However...

> The flawed assumption is that our mistakes are the result of God's
> deception.  If you become confused while reading my postings, it does
> not mean that I have tried to confuse you.

Let's try to clarify the meaning of "deception" here.  Can we agree on
the minimal requirement that someone who [1] intentionally [2] does
something that he [3] knows will [4] result in your coming to believe
something that is [5] untrue is practicing deception?  That is, can we
agree that the 5 elements listed (intention, action,  knowledge of the
consequence, causation and false belief) is sufficient to assert
deception?  (I don't require that all of the above elements are
*necessary*.  I might be willing to allow a quibble, for example on
the question of whether failure to act to prevent misunderstanding is
deception or not.  But I do claim that these elements are sufficient
for a prima facie case.)  I do hope that you will agree to this much.
If you do not, then I will have difficulty believing that you speak
English.  This should be a clear case of deception.  Unclear cases are
usually characterized by questions of intention or of knowledge on the
part of the alleged deceiver, but if intention and knowledge are
known, then the case should be clear.

The difference between your analogy and Warren's (and Seth's) point is
that you are (as I am) NOT God.  If you or I write something (like a
usenet news posting), we are not certain about how our words will be
interpreted.  We may feel that we have a pretty good idea and we may
feel that no reasonable person could possibly misinterpret us, but we
(or at least I) have turned out to be wrong often enough in the past
that I cannot count on being right about other people's reactions.
Therefore, you or I can write something in all good faith that it
should communicate the ideas that we intend and some person who reads
our postings could nevertheless become quite confused.  If *I* knew
(for sure) that my words would be misunderstood, then I would attempt
to choose different words.  Indeed, I would be required to choose
different words.  Using forms of expression that I *know* will result
in misleading your honest efforts to understand me would be deceit on
my part.  I might still fail, but if I am attempting to communicate,
then it is my responsibility to *try* to choose my words in such a way
that I at least do not know that you will get the wrong message.  An
omniscient God, on the other hand, would *know* exactly how a
particular set of His words or actions would be interpreted.
Furthermore, an omniscient *and* omnipotent God would have a choice
about alternative words or actions, all having known consequences.
Therefore, if such a God chooses to act in a certain way, knowing the
consequences, it is bizarre to assert that the consequences were
unintended.

Your actions or my actions can produce unintended consequences.  If
you believe in an omniscient and omnipotent God, then you cannot
assert that His actions could produce unintended consequences, since
He would be in a position to both know the consequences of any action
and avoid such consequences if He did not want them to occur.

If God [1] intentionally [2] does something which he [3] knows will
[4] result in our coming to beleive in [5] evolution, then if
evolution is false, God would have deceived us.  Right?

> Likewise, allowing artifacts to be in the world which are now taken to
> indicate evolutionary origin is not the same as trying to lead us to
> believe evolution.

Most varieties of Christian theology that I am aware of (now there's a
mouthful of disclaimer) say that God in some way or other "allows"
evil (e.g., as one consequence of "allowing" free will).  However, all
varieties that I know of say that God is not "responsible" for the
evil (for one reason or another, e.g, our free will).  On the other
hand, creationists say that God personally designed both the world
(universe) and its inhabitants (including us), as opposed to merely
setting up initial conditions and letting nature take its course.
The inescapable conclusion from that position is that all of the
conditions that constitute evidence of greater age or of non-biblical
processes were personally arranged by God.  In that case, God
personally constructed the Green River formation or the bed of Lake
Hackensack with millions of apparently annual varves and, moreover,
arranged them in patterns that would correspond to multi-thousand-year
astronomical cycles and He arranged (merely) hundreds of thousands of
apparently annual layers in the Greenland and Antarctic ice caps and
400 "daily" growth cycles per "annual" cycle in Devonian corals.  In
that case, God personally arranged to make sure that so many
(molecular and macroscopic) features of living things would fall
together to form consistent cladograms.  In that case, God personally
arranged the isotopic ratios in numerous rocks and minerals to
correspond in apparent age to the other indications of age.  This is
all quite different from simply "allowing" a few anomalous objects to
exist.  The degree of "effort" that this level of highly consistent
"apparent" age and "apparent" history represents may be quite a bit
less for an omnipotent God than for mere humans, but it nevertheless
would represent specific actions on the part of God that are
unnecessary for simply creating a "current" world, or a "4004 BC"
world.  In other words, the world does not merely contain "a few
artifacts" that, by chance, happen to allow us to make an honest
mistake about the history of the world and life upon it.  The physical
evidence is pervasive and consistent in a way that is beyond what
could be discounted as accidental features that God declined to alter
and merely "allowed" to exist.

>                     You have the choice of interpreting the findings
> with or without the context of faith and revealed truth.  If you choose

Ah, so we finally arrive at the punchline, eh?  Not only is
_The_Bible_ "revealed truth", but it is *your* *interpretation* of it
that is the "revealed truth".

> to ignore God in the process and conclude that it happened without God,
> that is not evidence that your conclusion is correct.  It may be
> logically correct, but that is not the same as being true.

Many people who (provisionally) accept evolution, including a
significant number of the regular readers of and posters to this
newsgroup (talk.origins) are Christians who do not "ignore God" or
"conclude that it happened without God".  That is not the point.  The
point is that creationism is simply not tenable.  The point is that by
the creationist interpretation of Genesis, which the creationists
claim is the only straightforward interpretation, God *directly*
created the world (universe).  Let us assume that (A) God is (perhaps
indirectly) the author of Genesis, that (B) Genesis is to be
understood in a straightforward, literal (creationist) sense. Then,
with the additional assumption that (C) God would not lie (required to
guarantee that Genesis is true), it is clear that (D) God is
(directly) the author of the world.

However, a similarly straightforward reading of the world (which, by
(D) is a *direct* product of a truthful God) reveals strong evidence
of a history that is far longer, much more detailed and quite
different than indicated in (a simple, straightforward, literal
interpretation of) Genesis.  This physical, historical evidence is
available to be read by anyone who cares to read it and although we
have not managed to read all of it, it is quite clear on many points
that conflict with the creationist reading of Genesis.  It has already
been established (above) that an omniscient, omnipotent God would know
the consequences of His actions in creating this physical evidence.
(In fact, it would be essentially impossible for any being, omniscient
or otherwise, to arrange the evidence in the way it is arranged
without knowing how it would be interpreted.)

I am not going to list the physical evidence here.  I will merely
assert that it is quite strong and comes from *many* independent
phenomena.  If you want to argue about the evidence, just hang around
and you will have plenty of opportunity to do so.  Be warned, however,
that there is a lot of it and be warned that merely quibbling that
there might possibly be a way for each phenomenon to be as it is with
a different history is not enough.  The argument for a great age for
the earth and the argument for evolution depend more on the agreement
of the many independent lines of evidence than on the individual
lines.  That is, you would need an *explanation* for why they all
agree and not merely a claim that "well, this particular fact could be
merely the result of chance."  The probability that all the lines of
evidence would agree by chance makes the probabilities of "life
arising by chance" frequently cited by creationists look good.

Thus, assumptions (A), (B) and (C) lead to a contradiction when
confronted with the world.  Either the world really is old and life
did evolve or someone intentionally took specific actions to make it
look that way.  That someone, by assumption (B), could only have been
God, and if God did take such actions, knowing the consequences
(omnisciently), then God would be deceiving us.  But that contradicts
assumption (C).  Since no Christian is prepared to deny (C), something
else must go.  Assumption (A), that God is the ultimate source for
_The_Bible_ is also central to Christianity.  Without (A) and (C),
Christianity is simply not possible at all.  Assumption (B), however,
is far less clearly required.  Every Christian that I have ever known
has been willing to concede that _The_Bible_ contains passages that
are not intended to be taken literally.  If the first couple of
chapters of Genesis are among those passages, then Christianity is
still possible.  If not, then you would have to deny (A) or (C).  Take
your pick.

--
Paul Neubauer   [e-mail]  [e-mail]
                [e-mail]       [e-mail]