[BibChr]

There's a lot of sense in what you say, and I agree that God doesn't put misleading clues in creation. But I think that if we're misled, because we set aside His testimony, we have only ourselves to blame.

Suppose I decide to clean my wife's and my bedroom. First stage in cleaning often is total demolition. So I get just far enough that I've pulled everything apart, and then I get called away to something urgent. I close the bedroom door and leave a note on the door saying, "Honey, I know it looks like trash, but I'm in the middle of cleaning. I'll finish it up with I get back. Love, Dan."

Then further suppose that my wife arrives, reads my note, walks into the bedroom, and blows her stack. Then, when I get home, she reads me the riot act for being so thoughtless and irresponsible and selfish as to tear the whole bedroom apart for no reason, and just leave it for her to clean up.

Whose fault would her explosion be? And what would it say? If she concluded that I was selfish and abusive, is it because I left misleading clues? Or did I not myself leave a framework for understanding the OTHERWISE-misleading clues? Are they not only misleading if my explicit word is ignored?

God says explicitly that He created everything in a six-day timeframe, and more recently than billions of years ago. The approach the modern materialistic priesthood takes says in effect, "OK, forget that, and assume that all processes have always played out just as we see them today, and -- hey, look! We come up with different conclusions!"

Ignore the note, screw up the interpretation -- and don't blame the note-writer.

Dan
Biblical Christianity BLOG

[atlaw]

There are two problems with your analogy. One, there is no conflict between your note and the mess in the bedroom. Only if you utterly ignore the existence of the note will the evidence be subject to misinterpretation. These threads alone demonstrate that the dilemma presented by "Genesis vs. the physical evidence" involves an express acknowledgment of both by a great many folks, and that it is the apparent conflict between the "note" and the evidence that is the source of contention.

The second problem is that the evidence presented in your analogy is, by your own pretext, subject to a perfectly reasonable alternative interpretation, to wit, you are in the process of cleaning (as you said, "[f]irst stage in cleaning often is total demolition.") To interpret the evidence otherwise is to deliberately misconstrue your motivations and wrongly assume the worst of you without justification (assuming that you are not, in fact, in the habit of making a mess without reason).

This second problem with your analogy demonstrates as well (1) the dangers of preconceptions when construing physical evidence, (2) the need to construe physical evidence in a manner consonant with known facts that are external to the evidentiary site itself, and (3) the need to weigh reasonable alternatives when they are presented by the evidence.

And therein lies the rub. What preconceptions are we bringing to the evidence of evolution; are we construing that evidence in a vacuum or with due consideration of other known facts; and what are the reasonable alternative interpretations of the evidence?