Why I (Personally) Dislike the "Appearance of Age" Argument

[go4tli]

So here's the basic q uestion: Is the Earth/Universe old, or does it
just *look* that way?

Here are some basic premises, if I understand correctly, of the young-
Earth creationist stance:

(1) The Earth/Universe look *exactly as if* it's old. Experimental
results that agree (with remarkable precision) that can be found along
multiple lines of independent inquiry ("billions" is an
understatement) mean nothing. Experiments which consistently falsify
loopholes that might still permit a young Earth/Universe mean nothing.

(2) Scripture is accurate.

(3) The young-Earth creationist interpretation of early Genesis is
accurate.

Note that a disagreement of faith based on faith alone would be so
trivial as to not be worth mentioning. It's also worth noting that
this is *not* a disagreement of faith based on faith alone, since they
incorporate statements about the natural world, and the natural world
is testable. But let's explore these notions to see where the
implications lead.

The reason (1) can continue to gain traction regardless of *any*
attempt to find out what the Earth/Universe is really like is because
human perception is always limited. No matter how much confidence we
can place in a given answer to the question of the Earth's age, since
we live in a continuous Universe, science must always -- if it is to
be honest -- leave *some* room for doubt.

Of course, that ought to leave open (3) as well. If human
understanding is limited, how do we know that our interpretation of
these chapters in Genesis is correct? History alone shows us that
people who made claims on the nature of the empirical Universe based
on their understanding of Scripture *have been wrong*, and have caused
great suffering as a result of their convictions. Compassion for
other people demands that we need some way to make sure we're not
fooling ourselves with (3).

But there's a more subtle question afoot. If these premises are true,
what does that imply about the nature of God? If we are to imitate
Him, what does that imply about *ourselves*?

My working definition of a lie goes like this: Something intended to
get people to believe something that's not true. (We should be sure
we're talking about the same things here. If unraveling my
definitions shows my stance to be shaky, there's no reason to believe
that my conclusions are valid.)

This covers lies of commission ("My dog ate my homework") as well as
lies of omission ("It depends on what your definition of 'is' is").
This is the reason you're told as you're growing up that silence
implies agreement (or, at least, you *should have been* told). If
everyone believes that little Timmy stole money from the bake sale,
but you have evidence that he didn't, it's important that you speak
up. If you remain silent and let people continue to believe that
little Timmy is a thief, *you are still guilty of lying*.

Consider the person who notices that there are many different
religions out there with different claims. In order to eliminate some
possibilities, she decides to test the empirical data at her
disposal. If God really created the Universe, she reasons, then she
can find some things about God by looking at what He has made.

Romans 1:20 is worth considering in this context. God's invisible
attributes are described in this verse as being "*clearly seen*, being
understood through what has been made" (NASB, emphasis mine). If (1)
is true -- if the Earth/Universe are clearly made to appear some way
that they are not, according to countless empirical tests -- how can
*anything* be "clearly seen"(*)?

Premises (1) and (3) make God out to be a liar, even if that lie is by
omission.

Consider, too, the Christian who works in a field which uses empricial
findings in order to make useful predictions about things. There are
many that depend on an understanding of an age and history for the
Earth that is substantially accurate, or an understanding that descent
with modification is substantially accurate(**). I can easily list
dozens, but let's look at three: epidemeology (the study of the spread
of disease), agriculture, and hunting for natural resources.

It should be fairly obvious that a focus of epidemeology is attempting
to *stop* the spread of disease. In order to do this, the
epidemeologist needs to know how diseases *change* as they move
through a population. This knowledge needs to be *very accurate*,
since it is used to manufacture new vaccines and new antibiotics.
These have to be manufactured *ahead of time*, so that they're ready
when we need them (the idea is to try to remain one step ahead of the
disease). An inaccurate understanding of these phenomena means that
the new vaccines/antibiotics could well be useless. Moreover, common
descent allows her to determine the characteristics of a given
pathogen much faster than direct observation -- characteristics that
would reveal critical information like how it spreads and what its
vulnerabilities are. Even if common descent and descent with
modification are false, the epidemeologist is forced to *pretend* that
they are true in order to help people effectively in her job.

Similar difficulties confront the person attempting to find ways to
increase crop yields so that more people can be fed. Studies are
published and widely disseminated to allow people to take advantage of
evolutionary mechanisms in order to maximize yield (e.g., the FAO/
IAEA's "Manual on Mutation Breeding", a how-to guide on inducing
beneficial mutations). Even if evolution isn't true, the
agriculturalist must *pretend* that it is in order to help people
effectively in her job.

Likewise the person who looks for natural resources. Since valuable
petroleum products are the remains of long-dead organisms,
biogeography -- the study of which living things occupy which parts of
the planet and when -- is critical in terms of making sure we don't
waste our time drilling where there's nothing to be found. The
predictions of biogeography are very specific about what one can
expect to find where. Even if the Earth isn't that old, the person
looking for natural resources must *pretend* that it is in order to
make accurate predictions in her job.

All of these fields can be used to help people in the hands of a moral
agent. Here's my point: It's entirely possible that God made the
world so that it isn't as it seems to all appearances to be. But
there is a very real sense in which if that is true, a Christian must
*reject what she knows about the world* in order to do her job
effectively. In other words, if (3) is true, then there are some
times during which it is permissible to ignore what God tells us about
the world so that we can effectively do our jobs.

If that's the case, it opens up some disquieting questions. What
things can I reject that God tells me in order to accomplish something
I think is good, and why?

Even if we can leave aside the people leaving our faith because the
claims of young-Earth creationism to be consistent with science don't
hold up (and a lot of poor people are left with nowhere else to go)
for the purposes of discussion, the implications of young-Earth
creationist theology are disturbing. They posit a God Who lies, and
Who makes it permissible for *us* to lie under certain circumstances.

I see two logically consistent ways out of this conundrum; others may
be able to come up with more.

(1) Perhaps young-Earth creationism *does* yield an accurate
understanding of the early chapters of Genesis. But this is something
that must be accepted on faith, since the real world doesn't reflect
answers consistent with these ideas when we poke it.

(2) Perhaps Genesis *is* consistent with science, and young-Earth
creationists have the wrong idea. Based on examining other parts of
Scripture, studying what ancient Hebrew and Christian teachers had to
say about the passage in question, and the fact that young-Earth
creationism is a *recent* hermeneutic, I think this is the more
reasonable conclusion. Your mileage may vary.

But I trust it's plain why continuing the claim that young-Earth
creationism is compatible with "real science" must be abandoned.

----------

(*) The question has come up: Based on the nature of the Universe as
revealed by science, what can we conclude about God? Here are some
things I've concluded over the past six years or so, as I've allowed
my conclusions to become pliable to actual findings; doubtless, more
insightful people, or people who've been at this longer, may have
better conclusions.

+ God is much bigger in time, space, and power than the human mind
can ever hope to encompass. This means that God is more than a mere
"superman" -- that is, He is more than a human personality with a few
extra or a few amplified abilities. If we assume that He still exerts
control over creation, the fact that this Universe is evolving over
time means one of two things -- either (a) the Universe is equal to
Him, so He is incomprehensibly vast, but still limited and changing;
or (b) He is bigger than the Universe, so the only way a Universe
smaller than Him could ever hope to approach reflecting Him accurately
is to *change over time*. It seems ridiculous to think that (a) is
true; what creation is equal to its creator? Accepting (a) also means
that it's a toss-up whether one worships the Universe or its Creator,
since both are equal -- which seems intuitively an odd thing to
assert.

+ God has made a Universe that is, apparently, understandable to some
extent with applied human effort. This implies that He *wants us* to
find out what we can in an effort to get to know Him, as Creator,
better.

+ For the only creative species we can observe, the act of creation
is an act of love. We also note that suffering is widespread.
Therefore, one might conclude that being loving is not merely being
"nice". Loving something and allowing it to suffer are not mutually
exclusive things.

+ When a craftsman Who claimed to be God tried to get people not to
worry, He exorted them in His sermon to "examine the lilies". The
implication is clear: God made you. He also made the lilies. You can
find out things about the way you should act before the God Who made
you by examining the things He made.

+ Science often shows us that some surprising and powerfully non-
intuitive things are true about the Universe. (Who would ever have
guessed that solid objects are mostly empty space, or that space
itself is curved?) This shows us that if we want to find God in His
creation, it would be self-defeating to point to what we *don't know*
and conclude that we have discovered something about God through our
ignorance (e.g., "No one knows how a plant makes a flower(***) --
therefore, God"). Simple logic tells us this kind of thinking is
unwarranted and prone to error, but the surprising nature of reality
*confirms* it.

+ Since science cannot assign either meaning or purpose to creation,
our understanding of its meaning and purpose must logically come from
something *beyond* it. Thus, logically, science is enriched by faith;
and science can also serve as a periodic check for our faith, making
sure that it is not misguided in the areas science touches.

+ Science assumes that nature is not "crippled" -- i.e., that it does
not require periodic supernatural intervention just to keep running
(probably places where God is hiding in things we can't explain). If
intelligent creatures within this creation are to face *authentic*
choices between good and evil, where principles of cause and effect
are *predictable* and *matter*, then this *must* be the case. In
other words, if systematic inquiry into the universe is possible, then
so are decisions with consequences. If God has to interrupt cause and
effect every once in a while, then the consequences of our decisions
are not our responsibility.

+ From astronomy: the Universe had a beginning. This implies all
sorts of stuff (I've mentioned "God and the Astronomers" before --
Jastrow explores these things through the eyes of scientists who
discovered them far more eloquently than I could).

+ From physics: the future is open and can never be perfectly
predicted by human effort. Some things will always be unknown and
unknowable, thanks to special relativity and the uncertainty
principle. Thus, science is not an *end*, but a *means*.

+ From geology and paleontology: life is a process of change and
metamorphosis. In other words, God created life to be a journey, not
a destination.

+ From biology: life is not accomplished through "vital magic", but
through complex and intricate interaction. In other words, life is
not usually brought to what God wants through inexplicable,
supernatural intervention; it is usually accomplished through the
complex interrelationships that different parts of the creation
possess. (Maybe it's a testament to the limited imagination of humans
that "magic" is the only way many can imagine the accomplishment of
divine will -- so God created the Universe with reminders *everywhere*
to remind us that *that isn't the way He works*.)

----------

(**) Strictly speaking, descent with modification and the age of the
Earth are different topics. I'm incorporating them since common
descent on an Earth that's only a few thousand years old creates even
*more* logistical problems.

----------

(***) This, by the by, isn't true. We know how plants make flowers --
the floral induction genes do it. But this is the nature of the
argument from ignorance -- it sounds good until someone figures out
what's going on, and suddenly, God isn't there anymore. He's in this
*other* thing we don't have an explanation for yet. In other words,
these arguments are only good for as long as our ignorance holds out.
This sort of thinking makes God smaller and smaller as gaps in our
understanding are filled by investigators, when our increased
understanding about His creation *ought* to make Him seem bigger and
bigger.

Science has also proven remarkably adept at finding explanations for
baffling things. Creationist teachers who insist on the scientific
accuracy of their words have embarrassed themselves countless times by
telling scientists what they'll never be able to figure out -- or, at
least, they *should* be embarrassed, if they felt any need for
honesty. Creationism is much more damaging to Christianity than to
science, since their arguments pretend to tell atheists exactly how to
disprove the existence of God -- and even Christians can fall for
those arguments. It also teaches Christians to fear the acquisition
of knowledge, or that learning somehow diminishes our view of God.

One would think that new understanding should lead us *closer* to a
God Who is the source of *all* truth, not further away.

[go4tli]

There's something more fundamental I completely missed in this lengthy
missive. Something that, I think, lends greater insight into the
problem.

The entire argument for "apparent age" *assumes that the Bible is
prepared to tell us how old the Earth is*.

And doesn't stance that seem a bit... odd?

It lays bare the way that "apparent age" is an arbitrary claim made in
an attempt to force the facts to fit the theory (an unfortunately
common bug in human thinking, especially in theology). It makes it
obvious that "apparent age" is not about *discussion*; it's about
*ideological preservation*. (One could reasonably ask how many ad hoc
explanations are needed before an explanation is abandoned.)

Which is kind of petty, really. Christians -- and Christianity --
should be better than that.

"Apparent age" is also a non-explanation. Did God create the Earth
with "apparent roundness"? Did He create the Solar System with
"apparent heliocentricity"? Did He create the heavens with "apparent
outer space"?

Lest you think I'm being facetious, these were all official stances of
the majority of Christians at one time. Even though they didn't use
our buzzwords, they believed that Scripture was describing something
different from the Universe we perceive with our senses and reason, so
therefore, our senses and reason must be faulty.

But all of these seem to labor under the delusion that the Bible is
prepared to describe the Earth's shape, or the structure of the Solar
System, or the realm beyond the Earth's atmosphere.

The Bible isn't written to address these things. It's written to
address men's hearts. Which, I would argue, would be in the state
they're in -- needing God -- *regardless* of the Earth's shape, the
structure of the Solar System, and the realm beyond the atmosphere.
And the age of the Universe.

[go4tli]

The thing with the "appearance of age" argument isn't *just* that it's
a terrible patch-job; it's also that it creates more problems than it
solves.

To illustrate what I mean, consider one argument for the Earth's age:
crater counting.

The Earth tends to obliterate evidence of impact craters through
erosion and tectonic activity, but the Moon doesn't have those.
Conveniently, too, on the scale of the Solar System, the Moon is
*very* close by, so its cratering rate should be pretty similar to
Earth's. (Earth's would actually be somewhat *greater* on account of
its deeper gravity well; I'm deliberately cooking the books to be
favorable to the young-Earthers.)

A quick glance at the far side of the Moon shows that it's *covered*
in craters.

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap070225.html

So if we assume a pristine Moon poofed into existence ten thousand
years ago, the number of craters on the Moon indicate that we should
be expecting meteoric impacts that excavate an area roughly the size
of New Hampshire(1) once per decade or so.

The fact that no historical document -- including the Bible! --
mentions anything this catastrophic rasises some interesting
questions. One way out of the conundrum is to posit a much older
Moon. (You could even estimate an age for the Moon by observing how
often craters like this *do* occur. Remarkably, an age derived this
way agrees with other methods of determining the Moon's age.)

"Aha!", says the young-Earther. "The problem is with your *starting
assumptions*. What you say is true only if you start with a pristine
Moon. What if the Moon were created ten thousand years ago with heavy
cratering already in place? Your crater-counting strategy to
determine age would be completely undone!"

Leaving aside for the moment that there are methods of telling age
that are much more precise than counting craters, as well as the
fabulously unlikely datum that all these various, independent ages
(including counting craters!) *agree with one another* in details
concerning age *and history*, the young-Earther has a point. If we're
going to posit instantaneous creation, we have no idea in what form
God would create the things He has made(2).

We can call ad hoc justifications like the creation of a pre-cratered
Moon "starting problems".

But "appearance of age" creates another family of problems that *only
show up if you assume the young-Earth timetable is correct*.
Following the timetable that young-Earthers posit leads to absurd
conclusions that are obviously out of whack with reality. One might
call these "timetable problems" -- and there are many more of those
than "starting problems".

Consider, for example, the number of species brought aboard Noah's Ark
-- a vessel built to contend with a flood that occurred (according to
the young-Earther's timetable) about 4,400 years ago. In response to
critics who have pointed out the limited capacity of a boat with the
dimensions listed in Genesis (especially if it's tasked with carrying
all the species on the Earth), young-Earth pundits have observed that
some species are quite similar to one another, and that the only thing
that would really need to be preserved is some ill-defined "kind" of
each animal(3). They estimate that only 8,000 to 20,000 species need
to have actually boarded the ark.

Let's be generous to the young-Earth model by supposing the maximum
number of species were brought aboard (20,000), and that no species
went extinct on the ark. This means that approximately seven million
species would have to arise from the initial 20,000 in Noah's day --
two million that have gone extinct since Noah's day, and five million
that are currently exist.

To get from 20,000 to 7,000,000 in 4,400 years requires roughly 1,600
speciation events -- that is, the creation of 1,600 brand-new species
-- per species per year.

Think about that for a moment. Well over a thousand new species
arising from *every single species*, *every single year*. Every year,
year after year, for thousands of years. How many speciation events
would one person see in a normal seventy-year lifespan? How about one
of the lifespans listed in Genesis that went for well over a century?

This is especially peculiar given the creationist insistence on fixity
of "kinds". If animals can and do change this rapidly, why does *any*
lineage distinct and stable enough to be called a "species" even
*exist*? If animals can change so rapidly, why do modern animals
resemble those from before the Noahic flood (preserved in the fossil
record) -- e.g., why does a Cretacous opossum look like a modern
opossum? Why do we not see this speciation rate whenever we measure
it? Where are the barriers to change that prevent the fixity of
"kinds" from being violated?

Most importantly, why is this kind of speciation different from
evolution?

And that's not all. How did marsupials get to Australia and manage to
leave all the placentals behind? Why were some parts of Earth
completely made over (e.g., the breakup of Pangea, the creation of
crustal faults, the formation of the Grand Canyon, the establishment
of petroleum deposits, the laying down of the entire fossil record),
but other areas were virtually untouched (e.g., the rivers that formed
the boundaries of Eden *still exist*) -- that is, how was the flood
selective enough to utterly rip apart the crust on one end of the
Earth and carefully preserve things on the other?

Where do we look to find the massive amounts of evidence that ought to
exist of all species radiating from Ararat over the past few
millennia? What did the animals eat after the planet had been
devastated? How was Noah able to plant a garden so shortly after
global catastrophe? How did trees grow robustly enough to have
branches mere days after the flood waters receded? Where did the
flood waters recede *to*, if they covered the whole planet?

Where's the evidence -- empirical or Biblical -- for *any* explanation
you cite or concoct?

Note, again, that these problems *only* show up *if you assume the
young-Earth timetable is correct*.

It should be clear that "appearance of age" is not an argument. It's
a frantic scramble to collect piles of "what-if" scenarios in a
deranged attempt to gloss over the planet-sized holes in the young-
Earth "model", combined with a desperate hope that no one applies any
*logic* (lest even more implausible patches be required to keep it all
seemingly intact) -- the only apparent benefit being that adherents
can continue to embrace their preferred understanding.

In other words, explanations that can be considered scientific
theories must, at a minimum, be consistent with the facts.
Explanations like "appearance of age" are an attempt to get around why
the facts don't match *other* young-Earth explanations. It's not an
attempt to explain available facts so much as to try to invent *new*
facts to keep the explanation afloat.

----------

(1) I pick on New Hampshire out of fondness for my old home. I have
no desire to obliterate the place. It's just that it's close to
25,000 square kilometers, and that's a number that's easy to plug into
figures on cratering frequency and such.

----------

(2) Though I'd personally prefer to think He wouldn't create them in
such a way as to misdirect honest seekers about their origins and
history. Misdirection is functionally equivalent to lying, and I
don't believe God does that, or even *can* do that (Numbers 23:19;
Titus 1:2; Hebrews 6:18).

----------

(3) "How did all the animals fit on Noah's Ark?" in "Creation" 1997 by
Sarfati, or "How Could all the Animals Get on Board Noah's Ark?" by
Morris in "Back To Genesis" 1992, republished on the Web here:
http://creation.com/animals-fit-on-noahs-ark
http://www.icr.org/article/how-could-all-animals-get-board-noahs-ark/

[go4tli]

Uncomfortably, the human genome project reveals that we can't all have
come from eight people who lived about 4,400 years ago. That is, we
can't have come from the handful of people rescued on the ark, if that
happened when young-Earth creationist teachers say that it happened.

It's trivial to see why. According to the biology regularly doled out
in *high school*, eight people can have a maximum of sixteen alleles.
In reality, there'd be fewer than that in Noah's family, since three
of those eight individuals came from one man and one woman (who were
also in the group) -- and it's highly unlikely for a small collection
of people who live close to each other in space and time to be
completely heterozygous (have alleles as different as can be) anyway.
But to be generous, we'll assume they were. Call it divine providence
or something.

There are human genetic loci that have over *four hundred* different
alleles; some have over *seven hundred*. To get from 16 to 400 in
4,400 years, we need one beneficial mutation every eleven years -- for
*each* genetic locus. This is greater than *any* recorded mutation
rate. Why this high rate from then to now? Why don't we ever see it
when we look? What stopped this high beneficial mutation rate?

It gets worse. Since beneficial mutations are rare -- less than 1% of
all mutations -- we ought to be seeing a *bare minimum* of *nine
deleterious mutations per year*, or at least *three hundred per
generation*. For *each* genetic locus. (Keep in mind that we each
have an absurdly large number of these genetic loci -- look up
"linkage maps" if you want to know where they are. Another word for
"genetic locus", in the broad sense, is "gene". Humans have a lot of
genes.)

The Bible mentions no miracle we can interpret as supernaturally
increasing allele count. So what we need, if this is still to be
considered scientific, is a mechanism that would allow this high a
rate of mutation; that could sustain it without killing people; and
that would only allow it to affect sperm and eggs (so that you're not
genetically different, but your kids are). If you could do this, a
Nobel Prize in medicine would easily be yours; the model would be
*amazingly* useful to cancer research.

So, as I see it, here are the options:

(1) Young-Earth creationist teachers are, as they claim, fully
consistent with "real" science; they have a mechanism to explain all
of this. It's just that they're being selfish with their data,
callously allowing countless cancer victims to die as they watch
conventional science wallow in its ignorance.

(2) Young-Earth creationist teachers have no idea what "real" science
claims, but pretend to in order to appear to their adherents to be
authorities on the matters about which they speak.

(3) Young-Earth creationist teachers are lying when they claim to be
fully consistent with "real" science.

None of these paints a pleasant picture of young-Earth creationist
teachers, I'll admit. Which is why I tend to rant about their claims
that their teachings are "Christian". Callous disregard for human
life, falsely exaggerating one's own depth of understanding, and/or
falsely presenting the nature of one's own stance are not qualities
one would desire in Christian leadership.

As with any other "appearance of age" argument, it's possible to
invent a miracle for God to do to keep it all together. But I must
admit to resisting any miracle for which we have neither Scriptural
nor empirical evidence. The fact of the matter is that if God is
omnipotent, you can invent *any* miracle for Him to do to defend *any*
line of thought you'd like. You can make God into a being with any
personality and performing any actions that please your preferences,
as long as there are enough miracles in your explanation to account
for what we see in the world around us.

This, I would argue, is dangerous. It threatens to become idolatry,
to become making the God we prefer instead of discovering the One that
is.

A reasonable way to make sure you're not doing this is to find out
what you *do* have evidence for, and to try to understand God in light
of what He has revealed about Himself. Making up stuff for Him to do
so that He can fit into your preconceived notions of how He works and
Who He is insults Him *and* the gifts He gave you.

(With this in mind, I'd like to inject a reminder that even if we
accept the young-Earth timetable, creation was the primary way God
communicated about Himself to humanity for roughly half of human
history. There was no Scripture *at all* until Moses started
scribbling stuff down a millennium or so before Christ. I really
think we show tremendous disrespect for this gift of creation when we
denigrate its ability to communicate powerfully and deeply to us about
the Creator.)