Okay thom319, here we go.
I think it will be best to limit this to the mentioned, but yet to be identified, view of Creation and Origins.
As I said briefly before, since the varying views are all dealing with the same broad problem; trying to harmonize, to an acceptable degree, scripture and science, most are admittedly going to have some common threads. This is as we should expect.
You asked if this view was something different from old earth creationism or intelligent design. Being fairly well familiar with the premises of each I would have to say, again rather paradoxically, yes, and no. That is, there are some elements of it in both, but I think it is different, and probably simpler.
My approach here will be to spell it out in a nutshell first and then elaborate on some important points that I believe many, through the years since the thought was set forth in an organized fashion, were not considering. This is probably my main fascination with it.
I’m guessing you’ll be familiar with the idea that seems to surface here and there, in both views you’ve mentioned, of Apparent Age. It is a common enough and fairly well known term but the view itself is not really the main thrust of what intrigues me.
It is an arena of thought that came about gradually among those who were recognizing that what some geologists and biologists of the early/mid 1800’s were beginning to report in terms of origins and age of the earth were not in step with literal explanations if Genesis.
Simply put, it was, as you probably know, the idea; the growing realization in the minds of some, that, in the face of many new observations of that time, God must surely have created with an appearance of age; an “apparent age.”
The idea was, as I’ve read, probably what a large majority of people generally thought prior to the era anyway, but with the growing divergence between scripture and the science of the day, the ‘old view’ was being challenged. More attention was turning to the subject.
To summarize (a lot) it all came to a head when a well respected British Naturalist named Philip Gosse wrote a book called Omphalos (1857) that dealt with this view and suggested that it must certainly be the case on a very large scale (though he had ‘some’ reservations about applying it to some aspects of Creation). His belief in the Bible and a literal understanding of it, where it seemed to be appropriate, were obvious.
(Note: I may have taken some liberty here by saying “where it seemed to be appropriate” but I doubt it. Most Bible students who say they “take the Bible literally” understand the use of metaphor, etc., I gather he was of this position.)
Anyway, to again over-summarize for the sake of room, the book was published and read by both Christians and scientists and the amazing response, to my mind, was this:
While some, apparently recognizing the far reaching implications of Omphalos, did immediately reject it, some also immediately applauded the work. As one publication (The Natural History Review) noted:
“We have no hesitation in pronouncing this book to be the most important and best written that has yet appeared on the very interesting question with which it deals. We believe the logic of the book to be unanswerable, its postulates true, its laws fairly deduced, and the whole, considered as a play of metaphysical subtlety, absolutely complete…”
Then, after the glowing comments of how impressed they were with Gosse's book, they switched gears (into reverse) and went on to basically say they didn’t accept the book's views and they didn't think anyone else would either.
Amazingly, close on the heels of the very complimentary comments just cited, the article continued:
(with regard to the views forwarded in Omphalos) “…They are idle speculations, fit only to please a philosopher in his hours of relaxation, but hardly worthy of the serious attention of any earnest titan, whether scientific or not...we do not think that the cause of religion is served by these attempts to remove difficulties by metaphysical subtleties.”
There’s the science world of that era’s rejection; now the 1857 Christian world response (at least some apparently prominent ones). The following is from a short article: Apparent Age and its Reception in the 19th Century DAVID J. KRAUSE Science Division Henry Ford Community College Dearborn, Michigan 48128:
“Charles Kingsley, for example, the Anglican clergyman, writer, and early supporter of Darwin, was a good friend of the elder Gosse, for whom he had hoped to obtain a favorable reaction toward prochronism (as it was called), but it was not to be. Kingsley, while never losing his admiration for Gosse as a scientist, indicated that "I would not for a thousand pounds put your book into my children's hands, " - and wrote to him:
If we accept the fact of absolute creation, God becomes a Deus quidam deceptor. I do not mean merely in the case fossils which pretend to be the bones of dead animals, but in the one single case of your newly created scars on the paudanus trunk, and your newly created Adam's navel, you make God tell a lie. It is not my reason but my conscience which revolts here.
…and added further in a footnote to a new edition of his Glaucus:
It is with real pain I have seen my friend Mr. Gosse make a step in the direction of obscurantism, which I can only call desperate, by publishing a book called Omphalos.
-It seems to me that such a notion is more likely to make infidels than to cure them. For what rational man, who knows even a little of geology, will not be tempted to say - If Scripture can only be vindicated by such an outrage to common sense and fact, then I will give up Scripture, and stand by common sense.”
So there are both group's views, in general, rejection.
(Worth mentioning at this point; "Omphalos", the name of the book is the Latin word for navel, the point being, that most assumed Adam was created (as the Bible seems to clearly indicate) as a grown man, exhibiting to all future men, the apparent evidence of having once been an infant, then a child, and so on, when he actually had never been. So Gosse used that one feature to summarize the view. Kind of clever, and it never hurts to use a Latin word when appealing to students of science or scripture!)
Further reading of other commentaries seem to reveal that basically the science community, while some acknowledged the logic and irrefutability of Gosse’s position, rejected it because they were, after all, scientists and seemed to have a commonly observed lack of ability to accept anything not scientifically verifiable.
On the other hand, apparently some Christians (as in Kingsley’s view above) jumped, seemingly without much in depth consideration, to the view that if God chose to create, and apply the added twist in his creative signature of an appearance of antiquity, an apparent age, to all he created, he was acting deceptively toward us.
(It is worth mentioning that it also seems that there is (was) a mixing of the feelings of one group that carried over to those of the other group, and vice versa. So it's not as if everyone on each front held the exact same position on the matter. That, as with most controversial things, would be expected.)
Moving back to the present and my thoughts on the matter, to this, both the scientists and the supposedly educated clergymen of the era, I say, all things considered, why?
Just so I'm not instantly lumped into a category of "uninformed or uneducated" on the issue, I want to clarify that I do have a BS degree in Geography which, as you would expect included many Earth Science studies in the curriculum (Biology, Chemistry, Physical Geology, Historical Geology, Physical Geography, etc.). Following graduation I have worked in a government position now nearly twenty two years in the field of conservation of natural resources. I don't provide that information to brag, but to build some credibility for the basis of my position on the topic.
Getting back to the point, in the final analysis, the main objections for each of the two broad groups (according to what they say (or said)) seem to be:
For objecting scientists: Apparent Age can't be verified it in the lab, so we reject it, AND
For objecting Christians: Apparent Age can be viewed as making God seem deceptive, so we reject it.
Again, in the final analysis, the real question each group should ask themselves is:
For objecting scientists: Can we accept something that we can't verify in the lab even if, perhaps especially if, it conflicts with a large body of perceived evidence? Yes or no, is that possible?
For objecting Christians: Can we accept that God could create in whatever manner he desired, and then tell us selected details about the creation (even if there would be problems when we begin to study and question it), and then still not be viewed as deceptive? Yes or no, is that possible?
The answer to both questions, (and this is critical) for anyone willing to think outside the smaller box of man's knowledge (as compared to God's), is "Yes, in each case, it is possible."
Let me explain.
For the scientist who would object on the basis of not being able to analyze a view held via the scientific method, it certainly becomes a faith issue. Is there anything too great or unknowable for science? I believe there is. Do you? Certainly, according to scripture there is. The mechanics of not one miraculous event can be explained, (if truly a miracle), by scientific method. That's the whole point of a miracle, that they are beyond human explanation, supernatural and "of God" always occurring in scripture primarily to verify God's reality and authority. Unfortunately, some of the science world will just excuse this line of thought away, by simply saying I don't believe in God. If they want to think in "the little box" I guess that's the end of discussion for them.
To this I can offer that scripture speaks of men who would take that position. Ironically, Romans 1:20 says that "the invisible things of him (God) from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse;"
Verses 21 and 22 go on to make further statements on the subject: "Because, when they knew God, they did not glorify him as God, neither were they thankful, but became vain (implying 'empty') in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools…"
Pretty strong and 'to the point' words.
Verse 25 of Romans 1 continues saying that such men "exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator…"
This is interesting. By totally devoting a life to science alone and, as many choose, totally disregarding the Bible, do they not do that very thing? I think it's a fair analogy.
Verse 28 states: "And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them up to a reprobate mind…"
It's certainly obvious that many scientists do not like to "retain God in their knowledge." Look at the famous evolutionary authors of our time. One such example, Stephen Gould took opportunities to strongly criticize even a belief in God.
(If the name is not familiar, Gould was one of the founders of the Punctuated Equilibrium School of Evolution. His most famous argument for punctuated equilibrium was the panda's "thumb." This is a modification of the wrist bone that allows the panda to strip leaves from bamboo shoots which, Gould argued, must have occurred all at once or it would not have been preserved by natural selection.)
Gould died in 2002 at the age of 60 after a prolonged bout with cancer.
I have not read anything that indicates that Gould, at any point late in life, or even late in the illness that claimed his life, saw fit to "retain God in" his "knowledge."
Moving now to the Christian (or even perhaps the occasional scientist) struggling with the view that an appearance of age is deceptive on God's part, one really should ask, why so?
Assuming we believe God exists, and that our intelligence is God given, it was not God, but man who decided at some point to question and ultimately disbelieve the Creation account presented in scripture.
If God had 1)created in six days, 2)made it appear to have taken billions of years, and then 3)given us a brain and a Bible that lacked an account of creation, then it might be legitimately argued that he was acting, in a way, deceptive, but he did not.
The difference to the 1,2,3 scenario just described, is that the Bible does include a creation account and God never asked us to question the age of it all or to invent ways of proving how it all came to be that were in conflict with what he had revealed. We did all that on our own.
In fact, in the New Testament, Paul writes this in 2 Cor. 10:5 about how we are to treat knowledge that seems to war against God: "Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.
A teaching or body of teaching that "exalts itself against the knowledge of God" is certainly descriptive of the evolutionary framework and belief in tremendous age for creation if one takes the Bible to mean what it says about creation literally where concise grammar and the language dictate.
To answer this man Charles Kingsley (the Anglican clergyman mentioned earlier) given the opportunity, I would have taken exception with his words when he criticized his friend Philip Gosse (as quoted above) speaking of his book:
"For what rational man, who knows even a little of geology, will not be tempted to say - If Scripture can only be vindicated by such an outrage to common sense and fact, then I will give up Scripture, and stand by common sense."
Amazing! As a "clergyman" of all things, you would think he would have weighed in heavily his biblical knowledge to any commentary on Gosse's views. Why were Kingley's thoughts not affected by Paul's?
Kingsley's comments could just as easily be viewed as absurd.
It’s not really a case of vindicating scripture, but rather, vindicating geology, depending on where you stand. The statement Kingsley made, as one who should have revered scripture first, one would think, should read:
“For what rational man, who knows even a little of scripture, will not be tempted to say - If geology can only be vindicated by such an outrage to scriptural sense and fact, then I will give up geology, and stand by scriptural sense.”
Why have even some Christians insisted that selected aspects of scripture, with it's straightforward inclusions of the miraculous, be subject to selected degrees of finite testing?
God, most often in scripture, seems to test faith with things that require it. How else would he? I'm sure there are some who just haven't thought of it in these terms, but who would, on the one hand, ascribe to the thought that God creating a universe with an age different than it may appear to us, may be considered deceptive and at the same time, say they believe in the virgin birth of Christ.
Let's think about that. If our human observation of every human ever born is that it takes a human male and a human female to produce a human baby and God comes along and informs a group of people (whatever size, in this case just a couple of individuals) that a baby would be born to a virgin and then brings that about, is he acting deceptively? No. And why? Basically because he told them, in some detail, about it.
He altered science (in this case, Biology) to exclude what our human observations tell us absolutely must be to produce offspring.
Can we accept that? Some will say yes, some will say no.
If yes, then why would Apparent Age be a problem. In this case, he really didn't alter anything. We, while eliminating the knowledge of God (as presented in scripture) from our thought parameters came up with "geology" and "evolution" (less observable due to time than straightforward biology) so it seems, to us perhaps, he is tinkering with them when he really isn't. Again, the key is that he told us in the Bible how creation came about in some detail. Certainly not every little thing, but enough for a solid framework.
So either objection can be logically answered. People are just apparently less likely to want to exercise faith. I've heard it said that the Christian faith is not a blind faith, but rather, it is a reasonable faith. I've always liked that statement and it is certainly supportable.
It really comes down to how much confidence we have in the validity and accuracy of scripture. There's more than ample evidence to exercise a reasonable, confident faith in the Bible as we have it. And validating it all are the clear stamps of approval of Old and New Testament by Jesus Christ.
Validating his authority is the evidence for the resurrection. And I'll add that most people who don't believe that pivotal event of history have never studied it at length.
So there it is. Poor old Philip Gosse made his observations, shared them, and very likely, was basically correct, but the world he lived in said "I don't think so!"
He suffered deep depression over the large scale rejection among his varied readers. Too bad.
Consider the endless Question & Answer session:
…Where'd that thing come from? (Answer: from smaller components),…So where'd they come from? (Answer: from smaller components),…So where'd they come from? (Answer: from smaller components), etc., etc.
This Q and A session lends some food for thought. If apparent age is unacceptable, keep answering that question as far back as you can with regard to universal origins.
Eventually, there would have to be some minute "component" of the first glimpse of anything, and that component, once, by some means, in existence, would have to have some appearance of age. There can be no argument against that.
Why not start where the Bible does and question science rather than starting where science does and questioning the Bible?
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
Two critical final points to consider:
1) The beauty of Apparent Age was intended to be that it frees those who subscribe to it to no longer have the sometimes bitter argument with certain portions of science. It allows one to, compliment some theories (though not all) and really not even disagree with popular dating methods (for example) but still reject them while in no way putting themselves in the position of being accurately accused of intellectual suicide (just as the scientists of Gosse's day did to him basically in reverse). Acknowledge, compliment, reject.
My appreciation of one such example ( Dr. Craig Rusbult – see Google if interested) who, in more current writings acknowledges the logic and complete possibility of Apparent Age even though he apparently doesn't, after considering all views of origins, agree with it. At least he acknowledges the absolute possibility rather than jumping on the wagon with the ultra-critical.
This is similar to two people both rejecting the gospel message. One, out of almost total ignorance, and the other, following a detailed, in depth, exhaustive study of it.
At least, for the one who seriously studied and considered the evidence, I have some respect, though they chose not to believe it.
Dr. Rusbult, at least seriously recognizes and acknowledges the logic and complete possibility of Apparent Age rather than insulting the intellect of anyone who does believe it.
(Move to next reply to continue - post was a little too long!)
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SixtyFourX55
17 years ago
2) Testing our faith and building our faith - THIS IS PROBABLY THE MOST IMPORTANT POINT I WILL MAKE and I didn't read this somewhere, it has just all dawned on me over time.
No one seems to consider the possibility that God could reasonably and, I believe honestly, be testing our faith (and building our faith) in his word through aspects of creation.
Consider this: By allowing enough observable information and granting us enough intelligence to doubt the Genesis account based solely on human observation of the earth and the universe, it seems completely possible that God may have allowed all of the necessary factors to achieve that specific purpose.
Though God, according to scripture (1Cor14:33), is not the author of confusion, it's not uncommon in scripture, that he presents impossible odds to his people to test faith and to build faith and to show his presence and power to those who followed him or would come to follow him.
Some examples? He did, (if we can, for a moment in such a discussion, accept the biblical account of Adam and the fall in Genesis) allow one "off limits" food on the menu in the garden. Why did he allow that? A faith test and a faith builder.
Even though, in this case, those who were tested failed, God still used the opportunity to teach and, in a sense, rebuild their faith (or perhaps better said, restore their fellowship with him, though significantly altered) in that while there were tremendous negative ramifications to the failure, he continued to provide for Adam and Eve in various ways as time progressed.
Consider Gideon (see Judges 7). God reduced the size of Gideon's warriors several times to a smaller number that would make it evident that God was behind their success (defeating the Midianites). By observation, once the army had been reduced, "attack" was not the humanly wise tactic to employ. But that's what God had Gideon do; and they prevailed. Why did He do it that way? A faith test and a faith builder.
Do you think Gideon's men's faith was tested? I do. Do you think their faith was increased? I do.
Consider the shepherd boy, David and the man of war, Goliath (1Sam.17). God allowed David to defeat Goliath in an entirely uneven match (by human observation alone). Why? A faith test and a faith builder.
Do you think David's faith was tested? I do. Do you think his faith and the faith of the army of Israel was increased? I do. David knew and made it clear where his strength to prevail would come from (see verses 45-46). He also makes clear the purpose of the whole event (v.46): "….that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel."
So there again, faith building through a test of faith for the one going through it as well as for numerous witnesses of the test.
What about the faith, toward God, of those in the Philistine army? There just may have been a few converts that day. They witnessed the unthinkable, their champion struck down by a boy, and that boy had made clear the details of the matter prior to the outcome.
And finally, the already mentioned virgin birth, certainly a test of faith for Mary and for Joseph. And a faith builder for both as it all unfolded.
So; physically unlikely events, by our human observation, but God choreographed them all and set them before individuals to test their faith and to build their faith and to reveal himself, his power, and his character.
In a life that by one indisputable human observation, leads ultimately to death and finality; his reality exhibited by so many things and the promises of life beyond the grave should be, a comfort.
Applying the same basic idea to whole of creation should really be no different. Perhaps we've just "messed up" so to speak on a grand scale in this area. Perhaps a huge factor in this equation is the testing and building of our faith.
In Luke 18:8 the question is put forth (Jesus words) "…when the Son of man comes, will he find faith on the earth.?"
I too, wonder. Maybe, if I share this often enough, I and my thoughts, like Philip Gosse and his, will be rejected and laughed at by some. But I think the argument is solid enough.
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