Going back to Kent's explanation of god creating the world with the appearance of age, with a backstory, as a modern author would do, there is a very large problem with it. Or several.

Firstly, writers, or games developers, are making their worlds in imitation of the real one (no matter here how the real one arose). God would not need to do that. He could start anywhere he wanted. No need to bury fossils or greywackes (see other thread). No need to arrange for stars to have the appearance of great distance, so far that their light could not reach the Earth in 6000 years. The world could look its real age, no problem.

Secondly, the creation of that backstory raises serious questions about the nature of god. (BTW, I take care to use capitals when I write of the God I worship. I do not, as you will see, have any respect for the short history creator.) I'm not sure that Kent is right to claim that authors do not lie in creating their worlds - I've known that Exclusive Brethren abjure fiction because it is not true. It is a specialised form of lie, accepted by writer and reader in the suspension of disbelief. In the case of the creation of the world in the manner of Genesis, it is not suspension of disbelief that is demanded, but belief, and the price of disbelief is damnation. Not the same game, is it? This creator has planted in the world the appearance of age, in incredible detail, knowing, being omniscient, that many people will be convinced by this that it is of great age. Perhaps, as Gosse suggested, to test people's faith. But it is not exactly fair.

This artist god, careless of people's souls, is not exactly the one revealed in Christ. If the world is young, then it is a lie, and the liar unworthy of respect, let alone worship, honour, or being considered holy.

And his world, with its intimately interconnected webs of life, the beautiful, but also the nasty, the parasites such as malaria, schistosomaiasis, the devouring such as the mantis, is not that wonderful. And should some YEC claim that the nasties are all our fault because of the Fall, bear in mind that the potential for those nasties had to be present in the pre-Fall lives of those creatures. Or else, they had to be changed afterwards. If that is slipped away from the creator to a demonic opponent, then that had to be allowed. By the creator. It's another story that did not have to be built in to the narrative, if such it is.

The literal creator is not nice. I realise that I am dabbling with Marcionism, here, but I'm not going down the path to believing in an actual, different, Old Testament deity who is other than the New Testament God who is the father of Christ, and who loved his people enough to save them. The writers of Genesis did not see clearly. Not face to face.

Penny