“but there are some interpretations which are plainly preposterous because they add up to, say, light from stars being created mid-flight to look like they came from farther than where/how they were created. The heavens speak of His creation - do they speak truth of great age and distance? or lies of things being other than what they seem?”
Was Tolkien a liar? Or an author?
What is “plainly preposterous”?
Would God create a universe that REQUIRED belief in Him? Or would He give men the option of denying Him?
“18 But God shows his anger from heaven against all sinful, wicked people who suppress the truth by their wickedness. 19 They know the truth about God because he has made it obvious to them. 20 For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God.
21 Yes, they knew God, but they wouldn’t worship him as God or even give him thanks. And they began to think up foolish ideas of what God was like. As a result, their minds became dark and confused. 22 Claiming to be wise, they instead became utter fools. 23 And instead of worshiping the glorious, ever-living God, they worshiped idols made to look like mere people and birds and animals and reptiles.
24 So God abandoned them to do whatever shameful things their hearts desired. As a result, they did vile and degrading things with each other’s bodies. 25 They traded the truth about God for a lie. So they worshiped and served the things God created instead of the Creator himself, who is worthy of eternal praise! Amen. 26 That is why God abandoned them to their shameful desires.”
Stephen King wrote a marvelous guide to writing, where his prime directive was “tell the truth” (obviously it’s all fiction, but it must all be true within its own context).
I’ve been pissed off at authors who lie to the reader (Umberto Eco, I’m glaring at you).
Tolkien went thru a lot of trouble to write a “true” account of Middle Earth creation, which was NOT “and Bilbo sprang into existence, fully formed, at the creation of the world, including memories of having met Gandalf before anything ever existed”.
Stories which _do_ involve “false memory” beginnings, like Dark City or Blade Runner, are horror stories.
As scripture reiterates, the creation declares God’s majesty et al. Can it do that by falsifying the sensible interpretation of everything we see? How can we believe in Him when we cannot trust what we see just out of reach, and by extrapolation must disbelieve everything we experience? Look, a star a million light years away! no, wait, the _light_ we see it by travelled no more than 10,000 light years, so we have no reason to believe that star even exists ... and by that precept, everything we can know collapses into the utterly unknowable, leaving us with a God who created a grand illusion deceiving us and leaving us to wonder what there is in Him to believe.