Following up on my last post, I wanted to share a link to another article—entitled Apparent Age: Craters on Mars—that appeared last month on the Natural Historian blog. The author eloquently demonstrates how an appeal to 'appearance of age' self-destructs in practice. He does so by addressing the origin of craters on Mars and the moon (as well as a handful of geological features here on earth). He states:
If you have time, take a look. The article is worth reading and is bound to constructively criticize your own thinking, wherever you may stand with respect to 'appearance of age' in the cosmos.
Several days ago, Dr. Peter Enns posted an article on the same topic. He specifically identified two problems with the 'apparent age' perspective offered by Al Mohler (which I linked in the last post). First, he says (emphasis original):
This goes back to my analogy with the portrait and the brush strokes. To the natural scientist, the cosmos appear as more than a beautiful picture to be adored. It is rich with brush strokes that explain how all the pieces formed and came together so as to function as a meaningful whole.
Dr. Enns further addresses whether Dr. Mohler has arbitrarily chosen which "portions of Scripture he reads 'plainly'". To be fair, hermeneutical consistency is a rare find. But Dr. Enns' criticism is concise and straightforward, and he raises questions that need to be answered by any person involved with the origins debate.
"Today, modern creationists would have us believe that these features really do have real histories and some have even gone as far as trying to make the craters on the moon and Mars the result of real events in time and space after the creation week. If this is the case and God created something in the space of 6 days, where then is the dividing line between apparent age and real age? This is a critical part of the creation debate that is rarely acknowledged or talked about but is very important in understanding the differences between some of the views even among modern creationists."
If you have time, take a look. The article is worth reading and is bound to constructively criticize your own thinking, wherever you may stand with respect to 'appearance of age' in the cosmos.
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Several days ago, Dr. Peter Enns posted an article on the same topic. He specifically identified two problems with the 'apparent age' perspective offered by Al Mohler (which I linked in the last post). First, he says (emphasis original):
"Mohler needs to account not only for why the cosmos looks old, but why the cosmos–including the earth and life on it–looks like it evolved."
This goes back to my analogy with the portrait and the brush strokes. To the natural scientist, the cosmos appear as more than a beautiful picture to be adored. It is rich with brush strokes that explain how all the pieces formed and came together so as to function as a meaningful whole.
Dr. Enns further addresses whether Dr. Mohler has arbitrarily chosen which "portions of Scripture he reads 'plainly'". To be fair, hermeneutical consistency is a rare find. But Dr. Enns' criticism is concise and straightforward, and he raises questions that need to be answered by any person involved with the origins debate.
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