Why YEC can seem plausible

[bilby]

Trust is the exact opposite of science. If you are doing trust, you are asking to be bilked.

A scientific paper consists largely of detailed instructions on how to check the work done by the authors, so that you don't need to trust them - you can repeat their experiments and observations and see for yourself whether their conclusions are valid.....

Ken Ham would say that this kind of repeatable science is different from "historical" science (where you can't truly repeat history)
https://answersingenesis.org/what-is-science/two-kinds-of-science/

Sure. But he's wrong.

....Clever isn't science either. Rigorous, comprehensive, and repeatable are science. Clever is for debating society trophies. Science is for finding out about reality.....

Clever is related to how persuasive arguments can be.... and how plausible they seem

Yes. But it's not related to how true the conclusions are. Debating society prizes don't cure diseases, or put men on the moon, or build computer networks that span the globe. They just make liars look smart to ignoramuses.

- though the person might not have a solid foundation in science.... but be aware of many of the key evolutionist arguments....

It's not a debate. There are no 'arguments' worth a bucket of cold sick. There are facts, and there are falsehoods. The only way to reliably sort one from the other is science.

 

[excreationist]

.....Debating society prizes don't cure diseases, or put men on the moon, or build computer networks that span the globe.....
....There are facts, and there are falsehoods. The only way to reliably sort one from the other is science.

It seems the inventor of MRI is pro-YEC...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Damadian#Creationism
https://answersingenesis.org/blogs/ken-ham/renowned-creation-scientist-inventor-mri/
That would be an example of an expert in "repeatable science" not thinking critically enough in "historical" science....

 

[bilby]

.....Debating society prizes don't cure diseases, or put men on the moon, or build computer networks that span the globe.....
....There are facts, and there are falsehoods. The only way to reliably sort one from the other is science.

It seems the inventor of MRI is pro-YEC...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Damadian#Creationism
https://answersingenesis.org/blogs/ken-ham/renowned-creation-scientist-inventor-mri/
That would be an example of an expert in "repeatable science" not thinking critically enough in "historical" science....

No, just an example of an individual who doesn't apply a consistent epistemology in every area of knowledge. Like pretty much everyone who has ever lived.

People are inconsistent. That's why rigor, repeatability, and a lack of trust are central to science. No one person is an authority on anything, and no amount of reputation protects anyone from being wrong.

There's no 'repeatable science' and 'historical science'. There's just 'science' and 'not science'. And if you're not doing science, you're not going to learn facts about reality. Most scientific expertise is very narrow, and outside their fields of expertise, any individual is as prone to error as any other. Even within their fields, experts are frequently wrong (just less frequently than non-experts).

The scientific method doesn't produce or identify heroes or infallible authorities. It just allows humanity as a whole to sift out the genuine knowledge from the bullshit - and the key to doing that is not to take ANYBODY'S word for anything, no matter what reputation they might have.

 

[Lion IRC]

Thanks for the passionate effort you've put in. I'll copy it for now and read it off-line.

G'night

Focus on this part.

There's not enough water on or in the planet to cover the highest parts of the continental crust.

2/3rds of the globe covered in water.
The average depth of the ocean below sea level is 2.3 miles.

And yet we have scientifically illiterate flood deniers saying there's not enough water to muster up a wave big enough to swamp a few mountain tops. https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts...s 1.7 miles down!,ocean is about 12,100 feet .

 

[excreationist]

....The amount of additional water that would be required to raise ocean levels to the height of the highest mountains is literally astronomical....

I heard the counter-argument to this in high school...
https://creation.com/mountains-rose
Basically YECs say that after the flood God raised the mountains and lowered the valleys. That explains post #142:

there is evidence of long-ago ocean life embedded in the limestone at Everest’s summit: fossils....ancient underwater animals
Scientists have found fossils of whales and other marine animals in mountain sediments in the Andes, indicating that the South American mountain chain rose very rapidly from the sea

​

Psalm 104:8

The mountains rose; the valleys sank down To the place which You established for them.​

(Some translations are better than others)

 

[James Brown]

Claim CC364:

Seashells and other marine fossils have been found on mountaintops, even very tall ones. These indicate that the sea once covered the mountains, which is evidence for a global flood.

Source:

Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, 1985. Life--How Did It Get Here? Brooklyn, NY, p. 203.

Response:

1. Shells on mountains are easily explained by uplift of the land. Although this process is slow, it is observed happening today, and it accounts not only for the seashells on mountains but also for the other geological and paleontological features of those mountains. The sea once did cover the areas where the fossils are found, but they were not mountains at the time; they were shallow seas.
2. A flood cannot explain the presence of marine shells on mountains for the following reasons:
   • Floods erode mountains and deposit their sediments in valleys.
   • In many cases, the fossils are in the same positions as they grow in life, not scattered as if they were redeposited by a flood. This was noted as early as the sixteenth century by Leonardo da Vinci (Gould 1998).
   • Other evidence, such as fossilized tracks and burrows of marine organisms, show that the region was once under the sea. Seashells are not found in sediments that were not formerly covered by sea.

References:

1. Gould, Stephen J., 1998. The upwardly mobile fossils of Leonardo's living earth. In: Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms, New York: Three Rivers Press, pp. 17-44.

Claim CH570:

The earth was relatively flat before the Flood. Most of the world's high mountains were formed during the Flood. This explains how all the waters in the oceans could cover all the mountains at the time. It also explains how mountains formed (from the violence accompanying the Flood) and the existence of marine fossils on mountains.Source:

Whitcomb, John C. Jr. and Henry M. Morris, 1961. The Genesis Flood. Philadelphia, PA: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., pp. 127-128.

Response:

1. This claim originated before the theory of plate tectonics existed as an explanation for mountain building. Plate tectonics, however, solved the problem in terms of relatively gradual processes we see working (and still building mountains) today. All the major mountain ranges have been studied in detail, the plate movements that caused them have been mapped, and their histories have been worked out for millions of years in the past. The problem of mountain formation has been solved, and a flood had no part in the solution.
2. The catastrophic formation of mountains and subsequent return of the sea into its basin would have released tremendous amounts of heat and mechanical energy, enough to boil the oceans and metamorphose the minerals in the mountains. No trace of such a catastrophe exists.
3. Formation of mountains during the Flood does not explain why different mountains are different ages. The Appalachians are much older than the Rockies, for example, as one can immediately see just from how the two ranges are differently eroded.

Further Reading:

McPhee, John, 1998. Annals of the Former World. New York: Farrar Straus & Giroux. (This collects four previous books by McPhee -- Basin and Range, In Suspect Terrain, Rising from the Plains, and Assembling California -- which may also be obtained separately.)

 

[excreationist]

post....

Even if the arguments are invalid the point is that it seems convincing to YECs and seems like a good counterargument....

 

[bilby]

Thanks for the passionate effort you've put in. I'll copy it for now and read it off-line.

G'night

Focus on this part.

There's not enough water on or in the planet to cover the highest parts of the continental crust.

2/3rds of the globe covered in water.
The average depth of the ocean below sea level is 2.3 miles.

And yet we have scientifically illiterate flood deniers saying there's not enough water to muster up a wave big enough to swamp a few mountain tops. https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts...s 1.7 miles down!,ocean is about 12,100 feet .

A wave.

A few mountain tops.

That's fucking hilarious.

Anything is possible if you just make shit up.

 

[bilby]

....The amount of additional water that would be required to raise ocean levels to the height of the highest mountains is literally astronomical....

I heard the counter-argument to this in high school...
https://creation.com/mountains-rose
Basically YECs say that after the flood God raised the mountains and lowered the valleys. That explains post #142:

there is evidence of long-ago ocean life embedded in the limestone at Everest’s summit: fossils....ancient underwater animals
Scientists have found fossils of whales and other marine animals in mountain sediments in the Andes, indicating that the South American mountain chain rose very rapidly from the sea

​

Psalm 104:8

The mountains rose; the valleys sank down To the place which You established for them.​

(Some translations are better than others)

Anything is possible if you just make shit up.

 

[ideologyhunter]

Let's not forget Noah building the world's biggest bathtub boat at age 600. That's "plausible", innit?? With his well-documented drinking problem to boot. I am about one tenth of that age, just finished painting a top coat on my double garage doors, and I am one tired summa-mabitch. Don't ask me to pick up a hammer or gather ants, rabbits, and cormorants.

 

[bilby]

post....

Even if the arguments are invalid the point is that it seems convincing to YECs and seems like a good counterargument....

So the issue isn't whether or not a Young Earth is true; Just whether those making the claim are convincing.

This is, I hope obviously, a very poor methodology for determining facts about reality.

Every fraudster in history has been convincing. Still, their marks never did get the things they were promised.

YEC is a thing, not because there's evidence to support it, or a theoretical framework that fits it into the rest of our knowledge base. It's a thing because lots of people are very bad indeed at telling the difference between fact and fiction, truth and lies, knowledge and belief.

 

[James Brown]

post....

Even if the arguments are invalid the point is that it seems convincing to YECs and seems like a good counterargument....

Well, as a former YEC, I can attest that lots of things that seem convincing help ease the cognitive dissonance. Common sense and empirical science may say one thing, but if an anecdote lifted out of context helps something else seem convincing, then I can go on believing what I've been taught without much worry. It's no different when a child begins to question the existence of Santa Claus. Her parents' made-up and ad-hoc answers to her questions may soothe her skepticism for a time, but they don't do her any favors.

And I'm not sure if I'm reading your post right, but the concepts of "an invalid argument" and "a good counterargument" are mutually exclusive.

As for the OP, one might ask why YECs are so committed to believing in YEC. What's at stake that one would deflect so much counter-evidence?

Again, speaking personally, I can say it's because Creationists know a camel's nose in the tent when they see one. They know that if we can't take the first few chapters of Genesis literally, then that leaves other chapters in Genesis, and other books in the Bible, open to scrutiny. What else in the Bible is mere metaphor, or legend, or flat-out wrong? Israel's exodus from Egypt? The miracles of Elisha and Samuel? Perhaps even the Resurrection itself?

No, since St. Paul wrote that if Christ is not raised then your faith is in vain, then that raising, and the sun standing still in the sky, and a flood covering the highest mountains on Earth for months absolutely positively MUST be true, come what may.

Of course, such a belief may seem like the true Christian's default position. But Biblical Inerrantism is younger than the United States. Church fathers Origen and Augustine of Hippo read the Creation stories and Noahic deluge as metaphor. Why can't YECs?

"There have been long periods in the history of the church when biblical inerrancy has not been a critical question. It has in fact been noted that only in the last two centuries can we legitimately speak of a formal doctrine of inerrancy.

--Coleman, R. J. (1975). "Biblical Inerrancy: Are We Going Anywhere?". Theology Today. 31 (4): 295–303

 

[funinspace]

Focus on this part.



2/3rds of the globe covered in water.
The average depth of the ocean below sea level is 2.3 miles.

And yet we have scientifically illiterate flood deniers saying there's not enough water to muster up a wave big enough to swamp a few mountain tops. https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts...s 1.7 miles down!,ocean is about 12,100 feet .

A wave.

A few mountain tops.

That's fucking hilarious.

Anything is possible if you just make shit up.

Just remember to take a towel with you...

 

[bilby]

Focus on this part.



2/3rds of the globe covered in water.
The average depth of the ocean below sea level is 2.3 miles.

And yet we have scientifically illiterate flood deniers saying there's not enough water to muster up a wave big enough to swamp a few mountain tops. https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts...s 1.7 miles down!,ocean is about 12,100 feet .

A wave.

A few mountain tops.

That's fucking hilarious.

Anything is possible if you just make shit up.

Just remember to take a towel with you...

I don't think I'll bother. Every continent except Australia has a highest point above 5km; a 3.7km deep ocean isn't even half way to being deep enough to cover that. The largest Tsunami recorded was about 30m high; It reached roughly ten times that height when running ashore, so around one two hundredth of the height needed to inundate a 5km peak (and of course it was only that high in a very small area close to its origin). Of course, prehistory includes larger waves - but not enough larger:

According to Wikipedia:

The asteroid linked to the extinction of dinosaurs, which created the Chicxulub crater in Yucatán approximately 66 million years ago, would have caused a megatsunami over 100 metres (328 ft) tall. The height of the tsunami was limited due to relatively shallow sea in the area of the impact; had the asteroid struck in the deep sea the megatsunami would have been 4.6 kilometres (2.9 mi) tall.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megatsunami

So only three times as high in reality, but with the potential to be a lot higher if things had been different - and even in the worst case, still a full km short of high enough to swamp the mountains on any continent bar Australia, and again would be much smaller across most of the world away from the impact zone. And even a 4.6km high Tsunami wouldn't reach more than about 100km inland in the most ideal conditions, so anywhere in a continental interior would be completely untouched.

And of course, such an impact would have had consequences far more severe than mere flooding. The bible fails to mention the air temperature reaching hundreds of degrees as meteorite debris re-enters the atmosphere, and omits any information on the global freezing a couple of years later due to atmospheric dust.

Waves can't save the flood myth. Even with a megatsunami, it still needs the amount of water on the planet to more than double, and then more than halve, in the space of a couple of months, without leaving a trace outside a storybook, in order to come close to covering the entire land area of the planet.

But none of that matters to Lion, because anything's possible if you just make shit up.

 

[excreationist]

.....They know that if we can't take the first few chapters of Genesis literally, then that leaves other chapters in Genesis, and other books in the Bible, open to scrutiny. What else in the Bible is mere metaphor, or legend, or flat-out wrong? Israel's exodus from Egypt? The miracles of Elisha and Samuel? Perhaps even the Resurrection itself?

https://answersingenesis.org/the-flood/
Geologist Dr Andrew Snelling says:

...many Christians say "well it doesn't really matter - let the scientists deal with the science - we'll just focus on the gospel". But we need to remember that if Genesis cannot be trusted then how can we trust John 3:16? It is a question of all of scripture or none of scripture....​

"There have been long periods in the history of the church when biblical inerrancy has not been a critical question. It has in fact been noted that only in the last two centuries can we legitimately speak of a formal doctrine of inerrancy.

--Coleman, R. J. (1975). "Biblical Inerrancy: Are We Going Anywhere?". Theology Today. 31 (4): 295–303

Yeah this anti-YEC OEC tract basically agrees with that:
https://www.oldearth.org/tract/tract.htm

That tract involves a YEC with all-or-nothing thinking going straight to atheism.... that is also what happened to me....

.....I'm not sure if I'm reading your post right, but the concepts of "an invalid argument" and "a good counterargument" are mutually exclusive.

I wrote:

Even if the arguments are invalid the point is that it seems convincing to YECs and seems like a good counterargument....

​

I think a good example of this is post #205

I mean from the point of view of a YEC, that would seem like a good counter-argument....

 

[excreationist]

post....

Even if the arguments are invalid the point is that it seems convincing to YECs and seems like a good counterargument....

So the issue isn't whether or not a Young Earth is true; Just whether those making the claim are convincing.

Yes in this thread I'm starting with the conclusion that YEC is false while a significant number of intelligent people are convinced by it - including Dr Andrew Snelling (mentioned in my previous post) who is apparently an expert in geology. Though he puts the authority of scripture ahead of scientific evidence.

This is, I hope obviously, a very poor methodology for determining facts about reality.

Every fraudster in history has been convincing. Still, their marks never did get the things they were promised.

YEC is a thing, not because there's evidence to support it, or a theoretical framework that fits it into the rest of our knowledge base. It's a thing because lots of people are very bad indeed at telling the difference between fact and fiction, truth and lies, knowledge and belief.

I think a significant reason for their belief is that YECs have hundreds of counter-arguments, and the academic qualifications of many of their members can seem impressive. Their counter-arguments somewhat respond to the topic. Then there are all their slick home schooling materials and the Creation museum and the Ark replica....

https://www.skeptics.com.au/wp-content/uploads/Creationism-Aust-Perspective.pdf
A related quote:

‘Under the canopy of evolutionary theory nestle some strange bedfellows . . . If I had to be, I would prefer to​

be wrong in my belief in creation in company with the people of God down the centuries, than right with such​

an odd conglomerate.’​

J. Rendle-Short; Man: Ape or Image - The Christian’s Dilemma. Creation Science Publishing, 1981, p.126.​

 

[DrZoidberg]

The Roman epic poem Aeneid was written by Virgil.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeneid

It's a Pagan etiological poem explaining the founding of Rome, written in the same tradition the Old Testament is written in. The Aeneid was written slightly before the New Testament started being written.

What makes Aeneid different than either the Old Testament or Homer is that we know quite a lot about Virgil. We know his beliefs. His letters and diaries survive. We know about his teachers and affiliations. He was an Epicurean. Ie a precursor to modern Atheism and Scientism. He didn't believe in any afterlife of gods.

Yet he managed to write an epic poem glorifying the chosen people (Romans) filled with vengeful gods causing havoc. Compete with a journey into the land of the dead.

Why? Why didn't he crowbar is own beliefs into the Aeneid? Because he was a poet writing on commission. Poets wrote and sang whatever their patrons and audience were paying to hear. He was commissioned to write it by Caesar Augustus. Of course the same is true for the Old Testament.

So did Augustus believe all this? Answer is no. He was famously also Epicurean. He shared the same beliefs as Virgil.

It's actually funny to track how fate works in ancient Greek and Roman religious texts. Because it's all over the place. There's no coherent idea behind it other than to inject some drama into their epic poems.

The ancients were fully capable of holding to conflicting beliefs in their heads at the same time. And so were the people who wrote the Old Testament. They were cool with religious myths making barely any sense.

Once Christianity became the state religion of Rome and it became aggressively enforced, Romans became more stupid. Christianity is a very simplistic belief system. It's easy. I'm sure that's why it's popular. And it was made even simpler and dumber by Martin Luther and even simpler and dumber still by the modern Evangelicals.

It's a mistake to take modern Christian ideas and crowbar them into ancient Judaism assuming they think about religion the same way we do. When it comes to religion the pagan world was a hell of a lot more sophisticated than ours. And so would the ancient Jews be.

 

[Lion IRC]

The largest Tsunami recorded was about 30m high...

Erm...the bible records mountain tops being swamped.

You've also overlooked the fact that not only is average ocean depth far deeper than the average height of land above sea level, but that average depth covers a vastly greater surface area of the globe than the corresponding square kilometres of land area above sea level.

Simply put, if 70% of the Earth's surface is covered by (a volume of) water at a depth far greater than the corresponding height of the remaining 30% - land above sea level - then you have a twofold factor.

Depth (3700 metres) which is deeper than height/elevation ( 800 metres). 3700:800 ratio. And surface area which is a 70:30 ratio.

Is there enough water in Sydney Harbour to fill an Olympic swimming pool?
You do the math.

 

[Harry Bosch]

The largest Tsunami recorded was about 30m high...

Erm...the bible records mountain tops being swamped.

You've also overlooked the fact that not only is average ocean depth far deeper than the average height of land above sea level, but that average depth covers a vastly greater surface area of the globe than the corresponding square kilometres of land area above sea level.

Simply put, if 70% of the Earth's surface is covered by (a volume of) water at a depth far greater than the corresponding height of the remaining 30% - land above sea level - then you have a twofold factor.

Depth (3700 metres) which is deeper than height/elevation ( 800 metres). 3700:800 ratio. And surface area which is a 70:30 ratio.

Is there enough water in Sydney Harbour to fill an Olympic swimming pool?
You do the math.

Is there a compelling reason why we should take the Bible's account as scientific fact?

 

[ideologyhunter]

Ministers gotta eat.