Walter L. Newton / Gehazi

It is not hard to give a quick proof (though not conclusive) that a god created the world and that the god did not create everything to look like it was billions of years old.

IF:
1. Man’s reason is capable of epistemological knowledge of the nature of reality even if imperfectly.
1a. sensory data and life experience indicate to us true, if imperfect, knowledge.
1b. man’s conscience, even if imperfectly, informs him of the nature of reality.

2. if a god exists, then the god’s existence will be reflected in the nature of reality.

3. a god’s existence is reflected in the nature of reality
3a. man has an innate and unlearned concept of “a god” within his mind.
3ai. one of the fundamental hallmarks of any ancent civilization is belief in a god.
3aii. a purely atheistic view of reality is acquired by being taught to reject the innate concept.
3b. causality shows the existence of a god.
3bi. creation appears as an effect and not its own cause
3bii. creation shows and unfolding and a progressing towards that which is not creation.

4. man’s empirical and rational and intuitive etc. reflection on reality indicates the existence of a god.
4a. the perfections of creation affirm what the god is like.
4b. the imperfections of creation affirm what the god is not like.
4c. from the limited perfections of creation it can be deduced what the god is like.

5. the god is the good, in its relationship to itself and to creation.
5a. this extends to moral goodness so that the god’s actions are not good because it is done by the god, but rather stemming from its being are in fact good.
5ai. the god cannot do an evil action.

GIVEN:

Man’s empirical knowledge of the world indicates that it is several billions of years old.

THEN:

1. If man is correct in his empirical knowledge, the god did not create a world and make it look several billion years old because such an action would be an evil action as 1.) it would indicate that man is incapable of epistemological knowledge of reality 2.) would indicate that capricious arbitrary trickery is part of the god’s nature 3.) that the god is not good.

One of my biggest pet peeves is when people assume that Faith and Science are separate things that have nothing to do with each other. Since the Reformation we have been buried under the notion that Faith is “fiducial faith” or a species of trust/hope. It resulted in this war between faith and reason so that people who are believes cannot be true scientists and vice versa. Faith is rather a species of knowledge as Augustine taught (specifically a form of knowledge of another person gained by being in relationship with that person). This is why faith and science cannot contradict – they are both forms of knowledge that tell us things about realty but from different points of view that relate to each other. To say that science says that the universe is several billion years old and then to say that faith teaches that God made the universe only to appear to be several billion years old is to completely have NO concept of how God and the creation relate to each other. It is one thing to say that we perhaps do not understand the science or perhaps we do not understand our scriptures but it is completely unacceptable to say that reality is nothing but a trick and a lie to test us for that posits a very evil and controlling God. God did not create us to simply obey him as some Baal god, but God created us so that we might love Him – which is only possible if we can trust that He created creation to truly tell us about Him.

As for O’Donnell – if someone has issues with the conclusions of science, they had better have a strong grasp of the science and what it actually says so that they might discuss the problems with the science instead of revealing themselves to be filled with nothing but opinion. Same thing with theology and its conclusions – whether one is speaking from the position of a believer or a disbeliever.