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Showing posts from July, 2021

Old Earth Aesthetics: The Duck Test

Prompted by something I heard in a Kent Hovind seminar, I recently asked a colleague what he thought was more absurd: to say I don’t believe in evolution, or to say I think the earth isn’t billions of years old. Now, I asked this particular colleague partly because I knew he was smart enough to give me the answer I was looking for - the correct answer - which is that it’s more absurd to claim the earth is you and not billions of years old. Suffice to say he didn’t let me down and explained why. He thought about the question for a little moment and said that the reason it’s more absurd to say the earth is old is because evolution is automatically untrue (to his mind) if the age of the earth is young. So if you kill the old age idea, you necessarily kill the evolution idea. If you disprove evolution you don’t automatically disprove the old age theory, but if you dismiss with billions of years, you at the same time disprove evolution. Therefore the claim that the age of the earth is only

Old Earth Aesthetics: Wrinkles in my Birthday Suit

I'm 32 years old. I don't have any wrinkles. Except when I smile or pull funny faces at the kids. So I'm 32 years old and I have wrinkles. I have a teeny flash of grey hair in my right-hand sideburn. You can see every vein that meanders through my hands, and I'm allergic to the rain. I'm allergic to gluten, pollen, mold, and furry animals. I've had a small piece of my lung removed and the left-hand side of my rib cage is still sensitive to the effects of that operation 14 years ago! I'm 32 years old and I'm well aware that my body is in decline. I'm dying. Like everyone else on the planet, sure. I'm wearing out. Entropy. Daily proving true the second law of thermodynamics. I will expire. You will expire. In short? I'm young, but I'm looking older by the day (despite being asked for i.d. recently). I'm not going to make 96 years old, that's for sure. My age will not triple. Even though the age of my greatest grandfather was triple

Old Earth Aesthetics: Why Wait So Long?

I usually get a bit of flack from people when I post on social media about the age of the earth. It really does seem to rub Christians up the wrong way. So I'll air my opinions in the more acceptable context of a private blog post. And I'm no scientist of course. I am, however, a lover of beauty and, being a graphic designer, I understand better than most how aesthetics work and feel qualified to offer a non-scientific, yet entirely legitimate perspective on how we could help determine something like the age of the earth or evolution. To my mind, the aesthetics of an old earth (and evolution for that matter) are all wrong. I mean, why would God want to create a process for creation that took billions of years? The heavens declare the glory of God means he always does things for a reason. Nothing that has happened has happened by accident, therefore the created order is somewhat revelatory. Less reliable than the special revelation of scripture, but nevertheless revelatory. Ther