I just watched these videos recently (actually I still have to watch #4):
Why Young Earth Creationists Must Deny Gravity, Part I
Why Young Earth Creationists Must Deny Gravity, Part II
Why Young Earth Creationists Must Deny Gravity, Part III
Why Young Earth Creationists Must Deny Gravity, Part IV
After those, at this point I am largely convinced that the universe shows evidence of great age. I was naturally drawn to this thread and I have to say that I am really drawn to Anochria's ideas, though currently in doubt.
I have some ideas how the universe could be old and the Earth young, but I am no longer so sure that desperately finding some way to allow the Earth to be young is really the best route to go.
Here's my take on it:
I believe that worldly science is improper, as it artificially constrains the exploration of truth to only those things that can be repeatedly tested via very narrow means. Its logic is tantamount to the command to "have no presuppositions; believe NOTHING that has not been scientifically proven." However, it all falls apart the moment you realize that does have foundational presuppositions and they cannot be proven scientifically! One cannot, using this kind of science only, support the idea that only science makes anything worth believing.
Instead, the kind of science I believe in is closer to the following:
- Bi-value excluded-middle logic is accepted without proof. Anyone who believes there is no meaning or that logic & reason are not the only tools we use to arrive at, apprehend, and examine meaning, may exit the discussion as I don't want to waste my time. Even spiritually or miraculously-given truth is apprehended through reason: the awareness of the sensation of spiritual receipt of a truth then gives reason for giving it credence, otherwise there can be no distinction from purely random and meaningless organic impulses.
- Have no unexamined presuppositions; reexamine one's presuppositions often; don't be loyal to presuppositions but rather to truth.
- The truth of a thing is grasped in a way appropriate to that truth. I don't learn whether there are any clouds in the sky in bed with my eyes covered, but by going outside and looking. I might get ideas about it from what I can sense inside the house, but I won't really know until I look. Similarly, if there is a supernature, it would be unreasonable to try to learn about it entirely through material perception, though material perception might in some cases hint at the existence of supernature.
I believe that this kind of science is ultimately nothing more than an exploration of God's truth (a.k.a. all truth) via rational means; and that rationality is one of the primary ways that we bear the image of God. In other words, God is a scientist of the latter kind because he is rational, ordered, coherent, logical, and believes only truth, so we also in our attempt to learn the truth of everything are automatically scientists as well.
So I believe that properly reasoned science is authoritative. Yes, I very firmly believe that the material that comes out of establishment science is almost always skewed sharply away from anything that would point to the reality of God or supernature. Establishment science cannot in fact address supernature at all, overlooks that it cannot support its own foundational presuppositions through itself, and does in fact secretly accept nonscientifically-proven things such as logic, truth, ontological permanence (things are the same each time we look at them, they don't randomly change), and so on.
When science conflicts with my religious views, due to my seeing them both as equally valid evidences, I suspend judgment for a time while staying in uncertainty, and I keep investigating. Yet, I think staying uncertain indefinitely is an error. Eventually, I think decisions ought to come, and I
don't give my religious views an automatic win over science. For example, some people believe in transubstantiation of the elements in the eucharist, while I think that all the scriptural
and scientific evidences completely militate against this belief, making it little more than crass superstition (with great apologies to Catholics who sincerely believe it for saying that so bluntly). From my perspective as an outsider looking at transubstantiation, I can completely understand an atheist's amazement at the credulity of people who believe in a young Earth and/or universe.
My view of the Bible has slowly been changing, mostly from listening to Steve. I don't esteem it less than before, but I have a much clearer idea now of what I think about it. I actually believe that not thinking of every word in it as magic esteems it more, because making the book into something it is not sets it up as a straw man for easy dismissal by nonbelievers, and that is a tragedy, not honoring to God's word but distorting it unfaithfully.
After watching those videos, I'm starting to think more and more that perhaps the Earth isn't so young after all. I will think about this for a long time—no quick decisions for me. But I am holding less and less to the Traditions I was unknowingly inculcated in (and uncritically accepted). I am more and more yearning for real truth that is supportable. Christians have so often made Christianity into something they shouldn't. Why should I assume that my cherished ideas were right? A ruthless willingness to correct self-delusion is one of the hallmarks of wisdom. I want to be wise.
So... is a young Earth absolutely necessary? Does coming to believe in an old Earth do actual violence to the Bible, or does it only do violence to my ideas about what the Bible was saying, and it really either said something else or was silent where I put meaning in? Is my belief that the Earth is young cherished but not solid rock?
I don't know.
Erik
P.S. If gravity distorts space, and space is curved, who is to say that time cannot also be curved? What if there is a steep, smooth time gradient centered around our solar system that makes time pass more slowly here than in the rest of the universe?
P.P.S. The appearance of age idea is often dismissed as far-fetched and even making God into a liar. But I am not so sure. If I created a world of people in my computer like The Sims™, I'd put stars in the sky for them to see. While I realize this is simply repeating the physical universe's model so I haven't automatically proven anything, I find the analogy useful in many ways. Not the least useful of which is the comparison of nature (wholly within the running program) and supernature (the reality-behind-the-reality of the computer hardware and my, the programmer's, existence). Could I not place stars in the sky and make the photons arrive in the eyes of my little computer people observers correctly, but also allow them, if they developed the means to actually travel to those stars, to do so? There is no problem to making the first computerperson an adult, with hair on its head that implies time passing which actually didn't. In this simulation, miracles stop being so amazing, because they are just the programmer directly altering things at runtime (rather than the physics engine continuously progressing from state to state). And the initial starting state of the simulation had most things intact, not beginning with a Big Bang.
However, on scientific issues, again, I'd point to the damage done in church history due to the church refusing to engage with science. If you are reminded at how often the scientific community has been wrong on scientific issues, how about how often the "church" has been wrong on scientific issues?
