One of the common arguments in religious debates is what I call the “retroactive creation” argument. This argument attempts to reconcile the numerous contradictions between scientific conclusions regarding the vast history of the universe and Earth, and religious claims regarding their recent origin.<\/p>\n
In a nutshell: Science recognizes countless pieces of evidence supporting a history spanning billions of years – geological layers dating back hundreds of millions of years, ancient animals and dinosaurs, cave paintings tens of thousands of years old, and so on. “Abrahamic” religions (especially Judaism and Christianity), however, acknowledge a world created approximately 6,000 years ago.<\/p>\n
So, where did all this evidence come from? It is simple: The world (or the universe, if you prefer) was created with this evidence already embedded within it. Indeed, the old Hebrew Sages themselves state something similar: “All the works of Creation were created in their full stature…” (Tractate of “Rosh Hashanah” 11:a).<\/p>\n
-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-<\/b><\/p>\n
This argument faces numerous difficulties, many of which have already been discussed, three of the most prominent being: (1) the fact that the exact same claim could be made regarding the creation of the entire world just 20 seconds ago, including all of us, our memories, and so forth; (2) the question of God’s motivation for planting so much misleading evidence of an ancient world within a supposedly new creation; (3) the fact is that it ultimately makes no difference to us, since the only thing we can research is the evidence for the world’s antiquity, not the above “virtual” date of creation.<\/p>\n
However, there is a fourth difficulty with this argument – one that, for some reason, is discussed less often. In practice, the argument arose primarily from a desire to “justify” both<\/b>: Religious texts (which hold that the world has existed for only about 6,000 years) and<\/b> scientific conclusions (which are backed by a vast array of findings, evidence, and analyses pointing to a world millions of times older).<\/p>\n
But… if the scientific conclusions regarding events millions of years ago are correct (subject to the strange argument mentioned above), then there is no reason to doubt scientific conclusions regarding more recent events. For instance, if according to religious Judaism the world was created in 3,761 BCE, then scientific conclusions regarding its state a month later (still in 3,761 BCE) would also be valid. Yet, those conclusions describe a world completely different<\/b> from the one depicted in the “holy scriptures”: Millions of people across the globe, no “Garden of Eden,” no trace of snakes before they were deprived of their legs (“upon thy belly shalt thou go”), and so on.<\/p>\n
Folks, a better explanation is needed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One of the common arguments in religious debates is what I call the “retroactive creation” argument. This argument attempts to reconcile the numerous contradictions between scientific conclusions regarding the vast history of the universe and Earth, and religious claims regarding their recent origin. In a nutshell: Science recognizes countless pieces of evidence supporting a history […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43,5,34,24,27,10,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archeology-and-history","category-argument-and-preaching","category-bible","category-christianity","category-judaism","category-logic","category-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetruthiswrong.com\/indeed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetruthiswrong.com\/indeed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetruthiswrong.com\/indeed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetruthiswrong.com\/indeed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetruthiswrong.com\/indeed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=923"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thetruthiswrong.com\/indeed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/923\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":924,"href":"https:\/\/thetruthiswrong.com\/indeed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/923\/revisions\/924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetruthiswrong.com\/indeed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetruthiswrong.com\/indeed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetruthiswrong.com\/indeed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}