Pappy Jack

...or even, 'that in which I stubbornly believe despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary.'

It strikes me that, given a belief in any deity at all, the YEC OT-driven world-view is more likely to be based on the mischievous work of a lucifer rather than of a loving god: why would such a god seek to trick us into doubting the inerrancy of the OT by ensuring that the evidence we can uncover about the working of his/her/its creation points to a Universe and an Earth whose ages are measured in billions of years, that the theory of evolution elegantly and wonderfully explains the development of life, where cosmology opens the marvels of unbelievably distant stars and galaxies, where archaeology and palaeology reveal to us the long history of humanity, and that the 'science' and 'history' available to us in the OT is, for the most part, rubbish?

-Jay-

I've thought precisely the same thing for a long time. Yet, a common reply to this is that God built the universe to look old, and so forth, as a test of mankind's faith. This is very often, but not always, linked to a notion that modern scientific and historical understanding are tainted by the devil (The Adversary, or The Enemy, if the speaker is trying for some added drama). The logical response to that, namely, "How can you be so certain that the science and history aren't accurate and the Bible's version of things is the deception?" usually gets met with apoplectic silence.

regards,

NinJay

Keith&Co.

Heard that. It strikes me as the same as all those conspiracy theories.
The government is good enough to convince millions of Americans that we went to the moon, but a select few have intuited the entire hoax based on...pretty much no evidence.
It's a hard sell unless you already agree with the conclusions.

ericmurphy

Do the people who advance this argument ever stop to wonder why they, themselves, continue to have faith in a being who consistently lies to them?

Pappy Jack

The ultimate faith-head argument from illogicality, of course, which is no different from believing in as many as six impossible things before breakfast and begs the question of why once upon a time god was apparently prepared to demonstrate his powers far and wide for the most trivial of reasons - although I've always thought it was a bit over the top for the Philistines to have been smitten with haemorrhoids :devil1: .

Pappy Jack

Indeed, but then we can all be led astray by the siren song of the false lover.

ck1

Or more importantly than this belief, why do these people chose to honor and worship such a deceptive being?

-Jay-

To return to the "creationist mindset" subthread, I don't think they see it that way at all. I think they see it as "God gave us the truth in the Bible, and by steadfastly holding on to that truth, we've kept the faith. He's not lying to us - He's testing us. All you other miscreants have failed the test." The implication here is that the Bible somehow supersedes the creation itself. (Just for fun, raise the issue of whether the Bible is the fourth person in the Godhead and see what kind of response you get...)

regards,

NinJay

Keith&Co.

Exactly.
Much like the conspiracy theorist that sees it all so plainly that he must pity the majority that fall for the obvious lies.

If only we'd accept the Books on the face of it, all would become clear and we coudl easily sort the acceptable evidence from the distractions.

And more, we obviously CHOSE to buy the lie. It's our failure to discern the truth, and hew to it, not God's failure in making the distractions more compelling than the truth.

Toto

Due to popular demand, this thread has been split from the "Book of Genesis: Written Record? Or Oral Tradition?" thread.