Stxitxchxes (From another thread)
Here's a slightly different view that I espouse:
Okay, let's look at the creation story of Adam. Hashem made Adam in a state of maturity, yes? That is, when Adam was created, he was around the age of twenty or so, not in an infantile state.
If, at that time, Adam had registered with a secretary for Social Security, he would have told the secretary that he was one day old. Which would have been literally true, except that he was physically twenty years old.
I believe that science and scripture do not conflict. If science can prove it, it must be true, but that does not mean that it is what really happened.
As such: I also believe that like Adam, the world was created in a state of maturity. Humans and animals evolved, continents shifted around on tectonic plates, hell, maybe there was even a Big Bang. However, is it not possible that, admitting that Hashem made the world, he did not make it in a state of maturity, where the world, for all scientific and
true intents was millions of years old, but in truthful actuality it was quite younger? (Note: I don't think the world is ~5700 years old, since the old Hebrew years wear measured differently than years are now)
That's something I"ve heard of referred to as the "Last Thursday" theory of Creation.
In essence, what you're saying is that God could've created the Universe however He wanted, in whatever fashion and at whatever point in time. This is a neat little was to explain away the Carbon dating on dinosaur bones or the mathematical explanations on how long the Sun has been burning.
This implies deception by God, because he willfully placed these things to decieve us into thinking that the Universe is older than it actually is, and if that's the case, God could just as well have created the Universe last Thursday, and just created everything in a state of "maturity". Hell, he could've created everything 5 minutes ago, and by this theory of Creation, there's no way to prove or disprove it, only ways to reason around it.
