If, as scientific creationists claim, Earth is only a few thousand years old:
"...then our astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, and archaeology must be false." (p. 456)
Anderson responds both emotionally and logically to the idea that God created the universe recently but planted false clues to its greater age. Emotionally, he thinks that this idea insults the Creator. Logically, the idea is untestable and unfalsifiable, therefore empirically meaningless.
However, in "The Barrier Moment," collected in the fourth NESFA volume, Anderson does imagine a way to test the idea: time travel.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
And I agree with Anderson, having tried to make similar arguments with "evangelical" Protestants that the scientifically proven ages of the Sun, Moon, Earth, etc., contradicts their too naive interpretation of Genesis. And most such persons still insist on interpreting the Book of Jonah LITERALLY, refusing to think of it simply as a midrash, an edifying story making theological points in a fiction.
This obstinate denial of accepting scientifically proven facts ends up making some of the best and kindest Protestants, and by extension Christianity, look idiotic.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
A Jesuit priest addressing a school retreat spoke approvingly of a man who not only accepted that the "whale" (sic) swallowed Jonah (accepted it because it was in the Bible) but would also have accepted that Jonah swallowed the whale if that had been in the Bible.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
And I disagree with such naive interpretations of the Bible, as did ANOTHER Jesuit, Brother Guy Consolmagno, in his booklet INTELLIGENT LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE?
Ad astra! Sean
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