«Alec … your universe is about twenty-three billion years old.»
I started to retort, closed my mouth. I will not flatly contradict my hostess.
She added, «And your universe was created in four thousand and four BC.»
I stared at the water long enough for Sybil to surface and splash us.
«Well, Alec?»
«You’ve left me with nothing to say.»
«But notice carefully what I did say. I did not say that the world was created twenty-three billion years ago; I said that was its age. It was created old. Created with fossils in the ground and craters on the moon, all speaking of great age. Created that way by Yahweh, because it amused Him to do so. One of those scientists said, «God does not roll dice with the universe.» Unfortunately not true. Yahweh rolls loaded dice with His universe … to deceive His creatures.»
«Why would He do that?»
«Lucifer says that it is because He is a poor Artist, the sort who is always changing his mind and scraping the canvas. And a practical joker. But I’m really not entitled to an opinion; I’m not at that level. And Lucifer is prejudiced where His Brother is concerned; I think that is obvious.»
Job: A Comedy of Justice» by Robert A. Heinlein
There are a lot of reasons why I am not a Christian. The age of the universe was never among them. Yes, there are some people who believe that the universe was created about six thousand years ago (young earth creationists). So what? But they might even have an argument, if it was created old. In that case, god is frequently portrayed as a god who is a deceiver. But I find the assertion that it is «to deceive His creatures» odd.
Because is it deceit? No human being can create whole worlds (yet), but we have other art forms. Painting for example. Would we criticize a painter for drawing an image of a fictional person as she looks in his mind, and not first drawing all the ways she looked from fertilized cell onwards? Or how about a painter who draws a fictional landscape? He also paints the landscape as he sees it in his mind, and does not start with a big bang, only to draw over it again and again until he gets to the desired landscape. A landscape that contains elements that make it necessary that things happened beforehand.
In this sense, if you create worlds, why wouldn’t you create it old, i.e., in a time where interesting things happen? Or would you really want to watch billions of years of interstellar dust? Or millions of years of dinos eating leaves or each other?
But do I believe that there is a god and the earth was created old? Nope. Still agnostic, I simply don’t know. But I would be careful with attributing malice, even to a god.
Just a thought.