Appearance of Age in Creation

Although I'm currently open-minded as to whether six-day young earth creationism is correct or not, I'm pretty sure that if God created the universe in six ordinary 24-hour days, then he certainly created a mature creation in that time. 

In other words, God created Adam and Eve as mature adults, not as babies, so if a scientist had been able to see them on the day they were made, every indication would be that they were 20-30 years old. The same would seem to hold for all the rest of creation: mature birds, fish and animals, full-grown trees in Eden, and so forth.

One of the main arguments against a young creation with a mature (i.e. much older) appearance has always been that this makes God deceptive in His creative acts.

I have to say that I find this one of the least convincing objections imaginable.

If God did create the universe that includes mature animals and plants in the way described in Genesis, how can God be accused of any deception? If this interpretation is correct, God has plainly stated the timescale of creation both in the Genesis accounts of chapters one and two and in the genealogies that follow in Genesis, and He has plainly stated that he made Adam and Eve as grown adults. Quite how this can be viewed as deceptive since God has explicitly explained creation in a way that demands a variance between appearance and actual chronological age I have never understood.

Deception would be to say he literally created in ordinary six days, but in fact took billions of years. (Note, this is not the same as arguing that the days are to be taken other than as literal history or are not ordinary 24-hour days). 

It is no deception to reveal He literally created in six days thousands of years ago if in fact He did so, even if the creation included an appearance of a history it never in fact had. How could a mature human being be created in an instant be otherwise? It is no more a deception than Jesus' miracle of turning water into wine at Cana could be considered deception, since the wine instantly created had all the appearance of having once grown as grapes, been picked, pressed, fermented, stored and matured, when it never had.

If I were going to be a young earth creationist, this would be where I would probably construct at least part of my argument for how it is possible to take the creation account literally without rejecting the claims of mainstream science. This is not a popular approach, even among young earth creationists, but I think the appearance of age must be at least part of the answer and can be arrived at on the face of the text in Genesis just as much as the days being 24 hours long.

I think the appearance of age view is a useful approach if a literal view of Genesis 1 and a young earth is advocated.

Peril in Paradise

Peril in Paradise: Theology, Science and the Age of the Earth
Mark S. Whorton
Authentic Media 2005

This is the second book I've read recently advocating an old earth creationist (OEC) position. The author is an engineer who has worked for NASA and is also well-known as a Christian apologist.

Whorton takes a stronger line against Young Earth Creationism (YEC) than Snoke in his book I would say. As well as advocating the day-age view and arguing against YEC on a number of grounds, he spends much of the book contrasting what he calls the "Perfect Paradise Paradigm" (basically YEC) with another theological position he calls the "Perfect Purpose Paradigm". He comes close to saying at some points that the Perfect Paradise Paradigm is actually teaching a sub-biblical view of God, creation and especially evil. For me this part of the book was not a great success.

Other parts of the book are more successful. All in all I think he both hits and misses his targets in the course of the argument. Without doubt, he shows up many of the weaknesses of YEC teaching, and establishes a number of important OEC points. Just occasionally I think he oversteps the mark and gets a bit confused in his thinking. This is especially evident in his treatment of how suffering was (in Whorton's view) always part of the created order and part of the creation God saw was "very good". 

In my view Snoke's book is a better constructed argument and succeeds in its aims without resorting to the occasionally odd bit of theology that Whorton allows to creep into his argument.