"For instance, there is the matter of second- and third-generation stars. There is the matter of the sheer numbers of layers of fossil rock. For all of those to have occurred in 6,000 years would shrink the era of the dinosaurs down to, I don't know, a day or two, probably. "
There was a thread last week where a star regenerated 100 times faster than scientists had thought possible. Mt. St. Helens laid down 25 feet of layered rock in just a few hours.
"I don't think you've studied Descartes' treatment of the notion that God is an evil deceiver."
I'm familiar with it. It goes like this. If God didn't make it impossible for man in his arrogance and in his limited knowledge to misinterpret his observations and conclude that God is wrong, then God must be evil. I think it's bullshit. God is under no obligation to save man from his arrogance. God told us the truth, if man want's to imagine the evidence says something else and that God is evil, that's man's problem, not God's.
God warns us in 2 Peter 3 that in the last days men will assume that everything continued as it has from the beginning and because of that assumption will forget the flood and the creation. And that's exactly what evolution and long age mentality has done.
What do you think of the idea of the Demiurge aside from that it is polytheistic?
"Asimov? As in the science fiction writer? That's your source? HaHaHaHaHaHa "
I suggest you look him up before you dismiss him as only a science fiction writer. Only a few of his 300+ books were SF. A number were hard science. Whatever the subject, he always brought scholarship, honesty, and rigor to the table.
"There was a thread last week where a star regenerated 100 times faster than scientists had thought possible."
Gee, so the universe would be only a few billion years old after adjusting for that?
"Mt. St. Helens laid down 25 feet of layered rock in just a few hours."
But geologists will treat that as a single layer, and will see that it was laid down at one go.
"I'm familiar with it. It goes like this. If God didn't make it impossible for man in his arrogance and in his limited knowledge to misinterpret his observations and conclude that God is wrong, then God must be evil."
Maybe you better look over those Cliff Notes again. Descartes showed that God cannot be an evil deceiver.
I am, as always, baffled that the literalists actually think all this is an important point.
In the face of the staggering datum that God created the heavens and the earth, just exactly how He did it, and how long it took Him (And what does that mean to a Being not bound by time, anyway?) dwindles into insignificance.
It doesn't matter a whit to me if He did it in an eyeblink or took eleventy bazillion years. I'm only here for a lifetime, anyway.
It is, however, rather painful to watch people trying to explain away geology, astronomy, and the fossil record.