Reference no: EM133278006

Assignment:

I. Engage in the following discussion exercises.

1) One of the early creationist theories advanced in opposition to Darwin's theory of natural selection was put forward by the nineteenth-century naturalist Philip Gosse. According to this theory, God created the world in about 4000 b.c., and he did so in exactly six days, per the account in Genesis. To reconcile this story with indications that the world is much older, Gosse argued that God created the world with the appearance of a history. Adam was created with a navel, trees were created with rings, and fossils were implanted in geologic formations and in sea beds. Is Gosse's theory plausible? Does his theory make God out to be a deceiver? Is a world with a fake history intrinsically better than one with no history?

If we were to update Gosse's theory, we would have to add that God created the world complete with light rays that appear to have been emitted by distant galaxies more than 10 billion years ago, as well as with fossils having ratios of carbon-12 to carbon-14 that indicate (by carbon-dating techniques) the fossils are millions of years old. Given these provisions, is there any way of disproving Gosse's theory? In other words, is the theory disconfirmable? If not, does this fact make the theory unscientific?