I noticed today that google returns zero results for the exact phrase of the title of this post, which is unacceptable. So I'm posting about it to fix this.
First off, to put it in context, a word about normal young earth creationism. Young earth creationism, as I understand it, is the belief that the earth and more generally the whole universe were created by God approximately 6000 years ago in its present form. This view, promoted by groups like the Institute for Creation Research, sometimes (often) posits that God created the earth with the *appearance* of age, so that for instance, light from stars that are billions of light years away has already reached us. Etc. For further details see the wiki article
As you may know, I am a Pastafarian--that is, an adherent of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM). As such, I believe that the FSM created the universe. However, a few years ago I departed from FSM orthodoxy (if there is such a thing) and decided to embrace a hyperbolic version of young earth creationism which posits that the FSM created the universe sometimes in the last 3 seconds. All the back story which we have as memories, and so forth, were all placed there by the FSM to give the appearance of an age greater than 3 seconds.
I find this belief enormously empowering. I should point out that I believe that this belief, like all beliefs, is entirely make believe. It's arbitrarily chosen. I've chosen it and have been quite easily able to accumulate evidence for it since that choice. I believe that this is how all believes are in actual fact chosen--first the choice, then the accumulation of evidence, never vice versa. This latter belief is also of course entirely arbitrary/make-believe. =).
Hope that explains it.
It has taken me a long time, Benjamin, but I am coming around to this idea that one chooses what to believe.
ReplyDeleteI just don't know what to do with that now.
Joe. double awesomeness =). What do you want to do with it?
ReplyDeleteI think that the present interval is sometimes five seconds long, possibly longer if you pay attention to things like that, so a three second universe would mean I could have been aware of the beginning, which I don't remember ever having been.
ReplyDeleteWhat I am uncomfortable with is the 3 second idea, which also means you could eat anything you saw on the floor.