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!

"Wasn't tissue found inside dinosaur bones recently?"

Yes dozens of times, bumble. And possibly DNA this past January. They also find frogs - still alive - that are supposedly millions of years old in a state of suspended animation. They start moving around and die shortly after. Weird, huh?

"While I dont actually care what individuals think inside their own heads, some of this stuff is affecting schools and being taught to children. That does bother me."

It bothers me too, bumble. I don't advocate teaching creationism in public schools. At least not in science class.

"Cote, I think the idea being presented is that the dating is wrong. I'm sure BV will be back later to confirm..."

Yes, bumble. I like how you get me. If I believed in soul mates I'd think you were mine. (You complete me.) :^)

"But fear not. BestValue is right. And he has arrived to help us!

"

You're welcome, Cote. Glad I could help. ;^)

"4. God wants to make it difficult to the point of impossibility for any sane person to believe that He exists.

Even if 1,2, and 3 are fair assumptions, 4 seems a little far-fetched to me. But God works in mysterious ways..."

Aww, bean, you had me going there. For a second I thought you were on my side. Some of the things secular scientists believe in seem pretty insane too - like quantum mechanics - and yet they are true. At one time, secularists thought it was an insane idea for the earth to revolve around the sun. But it turned out Galileo, the Christian, was right.

"Hey, I don't think that is fair Cote."

Thanks, SCSF, for backing me up. I apologize to you for my tone in my first post to you. I was wrong and I'm sorry.

"Interestingly enough, even 1500+ years ago there wasn't a complete consensus about whether to take the creation story completely literally."

That's true, Night. I believe Thomas Aquinas talked about an old earth. But I disagree with what some theistic evolutionists have said that creationism and a literal interpretation of Genesis is a recent phenomenon of only the past 100 years or so. If that were true and I couldn't trust that God meant what he said in the Bible, I would throw it away tomorrow.

Hemi, what I was talking about before came from this site in the comments below the article:

creation.com/age-of-the-earth
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Someone writes:

"I am also a chemist, and will speak to radiocarbon dating listed here. Carbon-14 found in coal, oil, and fossil wood may be generated by nearby uranium deposits producing carbon 14 from nitrogen 14. Thus, ?new? carbon 14 is being formed, long after the organism has died. When measuring carbon 14 in any sample, we scientists need to take into account any contamination the sample may have been exposed to, including uranium. That?s why we double and triple check the age of the samples using a number of different techniques. If we suspect uranium contamination, we can test that hypothesis, and if found, we can throw out carbon dating as a reliable technique for dating that particular sample. Science wins on consilience, the ?jumping together? of many different forms of analysis, methods, techniques, and studies. If you would read the articles you cite, you would find the authors have very good explanations for why some of the radiometric dates don't match what we think they ought to be."

Jonathan Sarfati responds:

"I am a chemist too, so an argument from authority?such as ?we scientists??won?t work on me. Indeed, I dealt with this very claim in my article Diamonds: a creationist?s best friend: Objections.

In summary, it would need a neutron flux many orders of magnitude stronger than observed today. Even more seriously, this theory would predict a very strong correlation between nitrogen content and 14C activity, so high-N samples should be ?dated? far younger. Indeed, this would be serious enough to invalidate radiocarbon dating completely.

About ?consilience?, the above 101 evidences are very consilient, I would have thought ;)"
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What say you, Hemi? Why not Google the article Sarfati references and write back. I'm very open to learning and you seem knowledgeable about this. If I'm wrong, I'll stop using it.

Best, no probs. I don't agree with you on pretty much anything, but there is no reason for this to be anything other than civil.

It bothers me too, bumble. I don't advocate teaching creationism in public schools. At least not in science class.

What an odd thing to say when you've just spent days providing an argument for the scientific proof of creationism. Sounds like you actually think it's a crock of shite after all..... welcome to the club!

If you arent arguing the distances you are agreeing that the light would have taken billions of years to get to us and thus the universe must be billions of years old. Or if you think light has slowed down from the extent we cannot distinguish between 6000 and several billion we are talking about a rate of slowdown that would be obviously measurable in living memory. And I mean obviously measurable by halving ect rather than tiny proportions which could be easily explained by the fact that our analysis is getting better.

"Best, no probs. I don't agree with you on pretty much anything, but there is no reason for this to be anything other than civil."

Agreed, SCSF. I'm not asking you to answer this in detail here but, after reading this thread, do you at least have a better understanding of WHY you disagree with me and do you feel you are better able to articulate your point of view using logic, reason and evidence? If so, I will feel my time here has been worthwhile.

My mission in life, more than anything else, is to encourage people to think critically about their worldview, ensure that it conforms to the laws of logic, can withstand tough criticism and can ultimately be communicated without ambiguity or fear.

I hope you can agree with me on THAT. :^)

dh is formulating a response. He's a research physicist and knows excatly why you are wrong regarding the speed of light etc.

but I will stick to asking you, you do realise that biblical historians are still debating much of the translation of the biblical hebrew? As well as the authenticity of the whole Torah. Its tribal myths. Myths to explain both the origins of the universe and the origins of the tribe.
Have you ever read it in the original hebrew? yourself? not relying on christian translations?

"What an odd thing to say when you've just spent days providing an argument for the scientific proof of creationism. Sounds like you actually think it's a crock of shite after all"

Not at all, Pedro. There is a time and place for everything. Science must remain naturalistic. Because creationism starts with God and the Bible, it has no place in the science classroom. But that doesn't mean it's not true.

If I bought into your scientistic view that science is the only purveyor of truth, then my statement WOULD INDEED be "an odd thing to say." But because scientism is self-refuting and irrational (like saying there are NO ABSOLUTES) it is a perfectly valid view to hold (and one that I would think you of all people, Pedro, should commend me for holding.)

I don't call atheism a religion (I realize it is just the lack of belief in any deities) but I would say that expressing the opinion that atheism follows logically from science should stay out of the classroom as well but there are a lot of teachers and professors who refuse to do that.

• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism

P.S. I never claimed to provide "scientific proof" of creationism. Science does not - and cannot - provide absolute PROOF of anything (as every scientist knows) and your use of the word 'proof' demonstrates to me your total lack of understanding of the scientific method.

"Have you ever read it in the original hebrew? yourself? not relying on christian translations?"

I've studied some of it in Hebrew lexicons a few years ago - specifically the words 'nephesh' (soul) and 'ruach' (spirit) - which, in part, caused me to reject the concepts of the immortal soul and eternal hell as unbiblical.

For my understanding of the days in Genesis, I rely on scholars of Hebrew who are in near-unanimous agreement that they are literal 24-hour days. Any ambiguity is made clear when God gives Moses the 4th commandment in Exodus. In commanding rest on the Sabbath, He says, "I created the world in 6 days and rested on the 7th so I want you to work 6 days and rest on the 7th." It doesn't get much clearer than that.

You'd have a very tough time changing my mind on the days. It would take more evidence than I believe you've got but I am open to hearing what you have to say.

"dh is formulating a response. He's a research physicist and knows excatly why you are wrong regarding the speed of light etc."

Infamous, I'm willing to listen but frankly I would take the word of Rupert Sheldrake and the guy who is in charge of measuring the constants for the entire world over your anonymous friend. Even if the speed of light thing is wrong, I rarely use it anyway. I mentioned it here casually. It only became an issue after someone challenged it and because the banning of Rupert Sheldrake's talk was so prominent and so recent. I prefer the gravitational time dilation model. (And ultimately I have the word of God so that trumps all.)

dh = husband. Not an anoymous friend. Only been a physicist for 30 years at a leading university but dont let that get in the way

As for hebrew scholars, no, there isnt near-unananimous agreement. Not even close. Not among the liberal, conservative, reform, progressive or even orthodox rabbis and scholars. The vast majority of jews, like Christians, do not take the 'days' literally.
Even Maimonides, the most revered jewish Rabbi and scholar argued against a literal interpretation.

One more thing about the speed of light. (Remember that it is a distance, not a time. And it is measured in a vacuum.) Isn't the whole point of a black hole that its gravity is so strong that even light cannot escape it? So as light is travelling through space (which is not a true vacuum*) wouldn't it be attracted by all sorts of things as it passes them and thus slow down?

If I'm wrong here let me know. Again, I don't have anything invested in this argument whatsoever but I'm willing to learn.

• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum#Outer_space

Regarding the Torah and the days of Genesis, the year 2013-2014 is the Hebrew year 5774. So they're off by a few hundred years. I forgive them. But that counts as evidence for my view. :^)

These debates are pointless, as there are internet links that can back up any position under the sun, and a layperson with no detailed knowledge of science has no way of knowing what's relaible or not.

Ultimately it has to come down to whether you think geologists, biologists, astrophysicists and scientists form a whole bunch of related disciplines have got everything hideously wrong for at least the last hundred years, or if a group Bible literalists are distorting the scientific evidence to fit with their Biblically inspired belief in a young earth.

If you're a neutral here, that's what you have to choose between. Everything else is basically noise.

"One more thing about the speed of light. (Remember that it is a distance, not a time. And it is measured in a vacuum.) Isn't the whole point of a black hole that its gravity is so strong that even light cannot escape it? So as light is travelling through space (which is not a true vacuum*) wouldn't it be attracted by all sorts of things as it passes them and thus slow down?"

Well first off, the speed of light is neither a distance or a time, it's a speed. I think you're confusing it with a light-year.

Secondly, in special relativity the speed of light in a vacuum is a constant, c. The actual speed of an individual photon need not be c - interactions with matter can cause photons to slow down. However, I'm not sure this helps your theory, as you're proposing that photons travelled much faster, not slower, in the past. In relativity, c acts as a kind of universal speed limit, so no photon can ever exceed c. For your theory to work, you would have to propose that the constant c was much larger in the past (and hence not a constant).

Science - noun - the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment

Is this not what you are doing with your evidence for creation?

These debates are pointless . . . Everything else is basically noise.

NDT, you remind me of the chess-playing pigeon who swoops in, knocks the pieces over, craps on the board, and flies back to its flock to claim victory. After not even making so much as one previous comment you interrupt and inform us that what we are doing here is totally pointless nonsense.

I suppose you would rule out a priori any evidence that doesn't support your view but that is not how the world works. If you have read the thread from beginning to end, you know that I put forth 3 starting assumptions. Those assumptions are backed by an abundance of evidence that is available in every half-decently-sized library in the world but they are too broad in scope to go into in depth on this forum.

Once you accept them, you must look for internal consistency and errors in my chain of reasoning. No one has, as of yet, pointed out a flaw in my logic or to any violations of the law of non-contradiction. I contend that just about any worldview (except the Christian worldview) is easy to dismantle using logic alone. (Atheism is the easiest. It implodes in about a minute and half.*)

"Ultimately it has to come down to whether you think geologists, biologists, astrophysicists and scientists form a whole bunch of related disciplines have got everything hideously wrong for at least the last hundred years, or if a group Bible literalists are distorting the scientific evidence to fit with their Biblically inspired belief in a young earth."

NDT, presents us with his first logical fallacy (not bad for a first post) - a false dichotomy. Perhaps "geologists, biologists, astrophysicists and scientists from a whole bunch of related disciplines" haven't got "EVERYTHING" wrong? If that were so, I wouldn't be able to claim any of their research as evidence (which I've done ad nauseam). Perhaps Bible literalists are not "distorting" the evidence but honestly believe what they believe and are just sincerely mistaken?

Or what is most likely is that the truth is somewhere in the middle. Perhaps I am wrong on some things and they are wrong on some things. But I have one piece of evidence they do not have - the reliable, eye-witness testimony of Someone who was there, knows what happened and caused it to be written down.

"Is this not what you are doing with your evidence for creation?"

Yes, that is one definition of science. The word "science" literally means knowledge. But science rules out a priori any supernatural explanations. I accept this restriction as the way things should be.

Because creationism and atheism both have theological implications which science is impotent to comment on, they must be kept out of the science classroom and perhaps taught in a course on religion or philosophy. This is my view and I think it is yours too. So why make an artificial disagreement argument where none exists?

I can always see both sides of an issue so I can attempt to make a case for teaching creationism in the classroom if you'd really like me to. But I think that would be counter-productive on this forum and a waste of both your time and mine.