Young Earth Creationists

[PedroPonyLikesCrisps]

I know Young Earth Creationists exist, I've seen them on telly, but never met one in real life, so I'm just wondering if anyone here is one or knows one or whether they are actually just incredibly rare and reserved for extreme tv debating!

Thank you, juule. Yes, I meant carbon-14 and no after about 50,000 years a diamond should not have any carbon-14 left. It is the hardest substance known on earth so contamination is ruled out as a possibility.

Another flawed argument. Hardness of a material has nothing to do with contamination. Diamonds are not pure carbon, they have contaminations, the most common being nitrogen, around 0.1% in gem quality stones. Nearby radioactive material could easily trigger the C14 production process.

Aside from that, it is basically impossible to get a zero reading of C14 and the contamination and the non-zero levels cited by creationists are well below the measurement error tolerance.

"I'll say it again there is no evidence, none at all, which suggests a change in the velocity of light and certainly not since we've been measuring it. It is a universal constant."

Obviously Pedro, you are too blinded by your own dogma to even watch the video. Anyone who is really interested in truth would not behave as you do. I will not respond to your questions any further. I have presented plenty of evidence to support my views and you have presented none to support yours. It is obvious to me that your rejection of this has little to do with the evidence and much to do with your ego. I don't know if you are an atheist but I certainly suspect so. As the old saying goes an atheist can't find God for the same reason a bank robber can't find a policeman.

Not all diamonds are 1- 3 billion years old. You can make them in the lab (from peanut butter, the video is on youtube).

Not all Christians are Young Earth Creationists.

"The big bang model is not arbitrary, it is backed by an overwhelming amount of evidence."

I did not say the big bang model was arbitrary. I said the starting assumptions that the universe has no centre and no edge are arbitrary. I believe in the big bang. The Bible predicted it at a time when most others believed the universe was eternal. The expanding universe is eluded to 14 times in the Bible.

Arno Penzias who won a Nobel Prize for co-discovering the CBR (cosmic background radiation) said: "The best data we have [concerning the Big Bang] are exactly what I would have predicted, had I nothing to go on but the five books of Moses, the Psalms, the Bible as a whole."

(Note: There is a growing list of scientists who reject the big bang model. Many of its tenets go against known laws of physics. For example, Boyle's gas law would prevent a swirling gas cloud from coalescing into a planet. Incidentally, Robert Boyle, the father of modern chemistry was a Christian.)

"Not all Christians are Young Earth Creationists."

That is true. In fact, probably most aren't. I wasn't for nearly 40 years. But I would say (and this is going to be controversial), if they aren't it's usually because they don't know either science or the Bible very well. (At least that's been my experience with the ones I meet.) Likely they just haven't given it much thought like me. It's not a salvation issue. You can believe in evolution and an old earth and still be a Christian. But then again, you can still believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and be a Christian too so that's not saying much. ;^)

This is a very interesting thread!

Can I just ask - do YEC believe that the universe is young too or just the earth/our solar system/our galaxy?

Sorry - some x-posting!

Thanks Best :)

The no centre position is not an assumed starting position. It's a conclusion drawn from the evidence obtained through measurements made of the speed at which galaxies move away from one another.

In terms of evidence, I could point you to plenty of youtube videos as you have done but I suspect the you would find them as uncompelling as I find yours.

I've been liking but it seems to me that what you're saying best is that changing the basic assumptions through which you view evidence facts will support any theory. Which I agree with. However it means that given time and resources I can make a very good argument using facts to support the truth of pretty much any religion.

But if you really want something, this article explains why a decaying light speed theory is a ridiculous position to take.

I dont see the point in attacking people or their beliefs personally. Open debate is the best way forward.

Please Best could you answer some of my points. If you believe light has slowed down so things are not as far away as we think. What kind of rate of slowdown do you think has occured. Why is this rate not continuing and if the furthest visible object away from us is actually only 6000 lightyears away from us why cant we see it bettter?

I also find it interesting that unlike many scientists three is not one shred of unexplainable data in your theory. Nothing that you have to work around or account for that doesn't fit in nicely. This is not how I have seen other scientists work. There always seems too be some"rogue"or uncooperative data that has to be asterisked. Your theory is very tidy. More like a legal argument that a scientific one...

I watched the video Bestvalue refers to about light speed. There's quite a lot of and this is what I've found so far.

He complains that science is influenced by a world view that is essentially "materialism" Which is basically seeing what is there rather than what you'd like to be there.

He has 10 things that he thinks we say that we are wrong about.

#1 'The universe is machinelike'. He is objecting to cause and effect. I suppose it would be interesting if you dropped a stone and instead of falling to the ground it turned into a bowl of Petunias (thank you Douglas Adams). I'm afraid that our view is supported by evidence and experience.

#2 'Matter isn't conscious". He would have us think that trees for example are conscious which doesn't sound too bad, but then by his argument so is that pencil, that toilet roll and that small rock. He should have invited a small pebble along to speak on his behalf. Might be a problem for people that as it would mean your skin and your thumb had it's own consciousness

#3 "Laws of nature have never changed since the big bang". Not my area, but probably best if gravity doesn't stop working on Wednesdays and it hasn't so far. Hands up anyone who has noticed physical laws changing.

#4 "Total of matter and energy is the same". I'm no expert but if he is saying energy goes away where does it go?

#5 "Nature has no purpose or plan". Well as much as he might like to think that the clouds rain on you on purpose it doesn't work that way.

#6 "Everything you inherit is in your genes". What else would you inherit? Even Christians don't claim you inherit your soul from parents.

#7 "Memories are stored in your brain". Where else? in a cloud? In God's notebook?

#8 "Your mind is inside your head". Well clearly his is lower down so I guess we are sometimes wrong.

#9 "Psychic phenomena don't exist". I wouldn't rule out say 'Telepathy', but if it existed then it would one day be explainable in terms of energy fields and therefore wouldn't be 'psychic' (which is just a more respectable sounding term for 'magic'). Also we do investigate such things. We don't dismiss them out of hand.

#10 "Mechanistic(physical) Medicine is the only kind that works". Alternative medicine just doesn't (aside from the placebo effect which is not really the medicine working). Trials are conducted all the time and if any do work they are no longer alternative. And btw we do have therapy and such, but I guess he doesn't know that.

After listing those he says that he looked up old books and the speed of light was different. He thinks this is a revelation, but it's not news to most people.

The speed of light has been measured many times with increasing accuracy, Gradually we got better at it and it got closer and closer to the speed we know today.

I don't have a link handy, but I vaguely recall reading that if it really had been increasing at that rate then 'Adam' would have been able to outrun it.

He complains that all these things that he disagrees with are the default position of all educated people. I can only suggest that this is a hint he might want to consider carefully.

Ah good. Pedro found a proper link to the speed of light thing. I see I was remembering it backwards. The silly claim is that it is decreasing not increasing.

Okay finished watching the video and I see he caps it off by claiming that looking at a star may affect it.

I loved superman comics when I was a kid, but I soon learned that eyes are receivers and don't really send out beams.

"Not all diamonds are 1- 3 billion years old. You can make them in the lab"

Those are called artificial diamonds. We are talking about diamonds that are formed in earth over hundreds of thousands of years, and frequently are over a billion years old.

It is absolutely nonsensical to claim that the Earth is only a few thousands of years old, since it contains substances that are over a billion year old.

It is absolutely nonsensical to claim that the universe is only a few thousands of years old, since it contains stars that are billions of years old and we see the light of stars that are billions of light-years away.

The only way that the Earth is 6000 years old would be if its Creator is a trickster who has put billion year old substances in a 6000 year old Earth to fool us. (Very funny )

cote, I think the point they were making is that if it is possible to make diamonds in a lab in a few days/weeks then perhaps they don't take hundreds of thousands of years to form in the earth...

That is not a "point". That is a misconception.

Laboratory conditions are artificial (obviously). In nature, diamonds take over a billion years to form.

We know this process. We know the age of tested diamonds to be around or over a billion years.

Unless your "point" is that it is all a web of lies it seems to me that there is no point there whatsoever.

It's not my point - just the point I think is being made. I could be wrong.

Do they take hundreds of thousands of years or over a billion years cote? You've said both...

Iirc it was a minimum of 900,000 years, which is "hundreds of thousands of years" and most diamonds we find are over a billion years old. Many are several billions of years old.

I can't remember where I read the 900,000 figure, but if you are interested in not only catching me in a mistake but actually learning something the age of diamonds should be easy enough to Google.

The point is that they are so much older than 6000 years that it doesn't matter if most we find are over 900K years old or several billion years old. It is preposterous to say the Earth is a mere 6000 years old when there is stuff in it that takes hundreds of thousands of years to make, which we then date and find are about a billion years old.

Unless, as I said, God is a trickster that has created the Earth 6000 years ago, with much older stuff already in it.

Cote, why are you acting so defensive? I'm not trying to 'catch you out'. You said both, I asked you to clarify

unscientific question here, but reading the Torah, how does one arrive at the whole young earth thingy anyhow. Reading it in hebrew that is. I've never managed it. Does the latin/English translation change it somehow or do you need to read it as a young earther?