Is there a rule anywhere that says God has to create everything new?

[Riverwalker]

Forgive me for stirring the pot, but what if God created the world 4.5 billion years old, 6000 years ago?   Would not all the tools we have point to an old earth?

Why would God do that? Because an old world, would be far more amenable and conducive to supporting life than a brand new one (speaking developmentally.) And its not the only instance where that happened in Creation.  Adam and Eve were created mature as were all the plants and animals, and later when Jesus made wine out of water, it was a fine aged wine not a raw new wine, the Wedding guests marveled at it.

How big of a stretch is to accept that the one who made time, could transcend time, just as he transcended the nature of water when He walked on it? And what of the fossils?  Part of the history God gave the old earth when it was created. Now many will say why would God want to fool people like that. But only those who do not accept what God has said, instead accepting what man has said are fooled.  

God was not at all ambiguous about how and when He created things, He spoke them into being  (God said let their be light and there was light, an instantaneous occurrence is implied)  and He said He did it in six days. Now why would God want to lie and fool us that way? Seriously to accept evolution is to say God is a liar.

Also if evolution is true then Modern man has been around for 200,000 years. All the same intelligence, curiosity and creativity as us, but they did nothing impactful for 194,000 years.   The Egyptians burst on the scene in 3000 bc and with simple tools, master of fire and the simple knowledge that if you plant a seed it will grow, they built an EMPIRE.

Did it really take modern man 194,000 years to figure out how to plant seeds, use an incline plane and a lever and make fire?

And finally the 6000 years (which we can know was the beginning of Adam due to the genealogies) which Creation claims, is pretty much what History also declares, there is no real historic record of man prior to that.

 

So the Ability to accept that God is not tied by the rules we are bound by is all you need to see that the creation of God and the "apparent" age of the world, are not at odds

 

[The Barbarian]

On 1/10/2021 at 4:52 PM, Riverwalker said:

Did it really take modern man 194,000 years to figure out how to plant seeds, use an incline plane and a lever and make fire?

No.   That seems to have happened nearly a million years ago.   It wasn't all dumb savages and then suddenly Egyptian civilization (which isn't the oldest civilization, anyway). 

Agriculture was being practiced at least 11,500 years ago.

The oldest large stone buildings are about 13,500 years old (South Africa).

In order to build the megaliths, they would have to have been familiar with most or all of the simple machines.

 

 

[enoob57]

Yes God does what He says He will do:
 

Rev 21:1-5

21 And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.

2 And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

3 And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God.

4 And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.

5 And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write: for these words are true and faithful.
KJV
 

[Uber Genius]

On 1/10/2021 at 4:52 PM, Riverwalker said:

Forgive me for stirring the pot, but what if God created the world 4.5 billion years old, 6000 years ago?   Would not all the tools we have point to an old earth?

Great question.But not an easy answer. Lots of bad teaching since the early 1960s on this subject. I will try to unpack it as best I can on my 15-minute break.

firstly why would God use such a deceptive practice given that in Romans 1:19&20, Paul argues that God uses his Creation as a testimony to God's own invisible attributes, namely his omnipotence, omniscience, his externality, his Godimmateriality, his goodness?

Paul suggests that the testimony is so powerful that "all men are without excuse!"

Jury is in, you all are obviously guilty. 

But wait there is a claim of false evidence. God has offered fabricated evidence and just created "The appearance of age," so the judge throws out the evidence and the guilty are free and can claim they didn't know there was a God.

excuse the dramatic presentation but the ramifications of this view are incoherent with other scriptures.

Now for the "short" answer. It is not possible to create a faked 4.5 yr old earth because God could plant false evidence en mass. But did he also do this for Big Bang cosmology with over 40 lines of evidence, and what about red shiftwhere light traveling over time increases its wavelength. The phenomenon has been measure since the 1920s I think and may have been discovered by Hubble (?). Anyways it takes photons three million years traveling at light speed (a constant) ))in order to produce cosmological redshift!

But wait, God could fake that evidence. 

So add that last sentence to all statements requiring evidence. That is all non-properly basic beliefs. 

Your memory of the past could be false if, God planted false evidence in your mind.

Your senses that perceive the external world could be falsely God faked the sights, smells, tastes, sound, and touch sensations between your brain Andy your soul.

The ramifications of the last two inferences leads one to doubt any testimony (most of scripture), and even the scripture hand-written (30 or so word in the original Ten Commandments) of a small percentage of the prophetic writings that were dictation (No scholar supports the notion that God just dictated all the scriptures while mindless men copied what they heard (well, except for Joseph Smith)).

and why trust God even if there was dictation since he has a storied history of forging evidence?

[Riverwalker]

On 1/14/2021 at 8:52 AM, Uber Genius said:

 

But wait, God could fake that evidence. 

So add that last sentence to all statements requiring evidence. That is all non-properly basic beliefs. 

Your memory of the past could be false if, God planted false evidence in your mind.

Your senses that perceive the external world could be falsely God faked the sights, smells, tastes, sound, and touch sensations between your brain Andy your soul.

The ramifications of the last two inferences leads one to doubt any testimony (most of scripture), and even the scripture hand-written (30 or so word in the original Ten Commandments) of a small percentage of the prophetic writings that were dictation (No scholar supports the notion that God just dictated all the scriptures while mindless men copied what they heard (well, except for Joseph Smith)).

and why trust God even if there was dictation since he has a storied history of forging evidence?

The logic of men fails here.

For instance red shift, is evidence of Redshift. And that is all, if youtake it any further you have left the realm of evidence, and ventured into inference

Same with Fossils.  The existence of fossils, is evidence of fossils.  Nothing more. Anything beyond that is inference.

We can base our inference on what man has said, or what God has said. One fails, one succeeds

My inference is based on the undeniable facts that fossils exist and Yet God said He created it by speaking it into being, and it took 6 days.  Thus they were created as part of the history of the whole world. If we have allowed satan or others into deceiving us that this means more than the evidence supports, shame on us.

 

And Finally there is the evidence that the lost fail to see (either willingly or unwittingly). An evidence that cannot be dismissed because it will not be seen

Hebrews 11: 

11 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. 2 For by it the elders obtained a good testimony.

3 By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible.

[Uber Genius]

On 1/16/2021 at 11:59 AM, Riverwalker said:

The logic of men fails here.

This is the very issue I'm bringing out.

if God says, "All men everywhere are without excuse (because the created things give clear evidence that any sinful human with the bare minimum of intelligence inside the functional range, could understand using only men's fallible logic."

These men are reprobate.

these men are trapped in their sin.

They have a very limited non-saving revelation by the HS.

So are you arguing that Paul is wrong about that inference?

[Uber Genius]

On 1/16/2021 at 11:59 AM, Riverwalker said:

For instance red shift, is evidence of Redshift. And that is all, if youtake it any further you have left the realm of evidence, and ventured into inference

So I think we need to back up and explain relations between evidences and inferences and arguments.

evidences such as redshift have various explanations.

Science works by gathering evidence of phenomena such as redshift and then tries to explain how that phenomena could occur. Several hypotheses are formed to explain cause had effect. They are then tested to see if they can predict causal relations. 

All science moves from evidence in support of causal inferences that are then tested that lead to theories or are abandoned as false. 

So we are not moving from evidence to opinion, which is one definition of the word inference. We are moving in a process from a phenomena to a description of one or more hypotheses that could cause that phenomena. 

So definionally, hypothesis can be used in a technical sense to be a general inference (causal explanation of the data or evidence or phenomena, etc., or as a reasoable guess. 

So redhsift is the phenomena, interaction with spacetime interacts with photons to shift their light to the red spectrum over long periods of time.

[Riverwalker]

A reasonable guess, with no authority.

 

[Uber Genius]

On 1/16/2021 at 11:59 AM, Riverwalker said:

And Finally there is the evidence that the lost fail to see (either willingly or unwittingly). An evidence that cannot be dismissed because it will not be seen

Seems to be a typo here.

the reason they fail to see it is it can't be seen. 

Therefore it can't be dismissed.

Evidence by definition has to be known otherwise there is no evidence. Therefore it can't be dismissed. But it never existed. 

Here we need context and word study, especially for the Greek word pistis. 

But we can make some sense of the passage on faith.

It is a function of testimony, and men's memory of their experience of God. Things unseen are thoughts we have about how God made the world from nothing by his word. (GEn 1-3) So based on testimony dating back 1500 years by the elders (probably a reference to authors and those testifying about God in OT, and in combination with our God-given faculty of rationality telling us the universe must have had a beginning (thoughts, testimonies, God's creative act via his words, are all unseen, but not unrational.) and a beginner that transcended the Creation.

[Riverwalker]

1 minute ago, Uber Genius said:

Seems to be a typo here.

the reason they fail to see it is it can't be seen. 

Therefore it can't be dismissed.

Evidence by definition has to be known otherwise there is no evidence. Therefore it can't be dismissed. But it never existed. 

 

Did you miss the bible quote?  Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the EVIDENCE of things unseen

It is how we perceive God, which the lost cannot or will not do