Are Young Earth Creationists Generally Stupid?

[Tom Cohoe]

Omphalos and YEC are two distinct entities, the former may be part of the latter but not by necessity. '...that may be perfectly logical' is what I said in reference to Omphalos, not in reference to YEC.

Heh? So you are saying that I was proposing the category Omphalos, or ? ... but no, I'll drop it at that as non-productive.

What you are proposing definitely is opmphalos, you just can't bring yourself to admit it.

You can call it what you want Fijian. Nothing follows from what you call it. You have not yet engaged me.

What if I'm an illusion? You are interacting with all these posts on an internet forum but perhaps there is no 'theFijian' ( maybe that's preferrable), perhaps there is no ChristianForums.com?

OK, right here, I can illustrate what is wrong with how you are dealing with me. Atheists use exactly the same method to ridicule our God. First I will describe the method, and then I will illustrate it.

The method is to categorize a concept under a general category and then ridicule something else that falls under the same category, something which is inherently ridiculous which is supposed to somehow make everything in the category ridiculous.

The category used by atheists is "entity with supernatural powers". In the context of Christianity they ridicule the tooth fairy or the Easter bunny. This is supposed to somehow make our God ridiculous, but, of course, that it does is fallacy. I have seen this done often enough to be sure that it is commonly done.

I am not proposing that you could be an illusion. I am not proposing that there might not be 'theFijian'. (I am not even proposing that 'theFijian' is nothing more than a computer program.) That these ideas would be foolish is not relevant to the scheme I have suggested.

You have illustrated that "Omphalos" includes some ridiculous ideas. It does not follow that everything you wish to categorize "Omphalos" is ridiculous.

How daft would you feel if that were true?

Daft indeed, but I am not worried.

YEC 'could' be true but only if evolution (amongst many other scientific fields) was bad science, hence Omphalos.

No. As I have repeatedly said, evolution is good science, the best science, correct science. Is God supposed to be a testable hypothesis? No, not according to the bible (we can only know God through faith), and not according to logic (since the only part of God that is not nature is supernature, and supernature is beyond the realm of science). In the scheme which I outlined, science is and does everything we can ask of it, whether the scheme is true or false. The scheme I am talking about would be a supernatural arrangement of things, and as such, it would not be detectable by science. Science is about testable hypotheses. Two schemes, evolution from the big bang, and sophisticated YEC would have no testable difference. That makes evolution the correct scientific hypothesis by Occam's razor, which is as far as science can go.

There are atheistic, untestable, metaphysical theories of reality as well. Hugh Everetts "many worlds" interpretation of quantum mechanics is an example. In this scheme, wherever there is a "wave function collapse" the universe splits into multiple universes, so that there is a new universe for each possible collapse. This would mean that the universe splits into a virtually uncountable number of universes for every single thing that happens. It is a way of avoiding the supernatural implications of the Copenhagen interpretation. These innumerable universes are as indetectable as God, so the theory, which helps these people come to grips with the indeterminacy of the universe as we now understand it, adds not one whit of predictability to what we can observe. Serious, important physicists, such as John Wheeler, chose to believe it. Others do not. It is metaphysical. Few physicists would disagree with that.

 

[sfs]

I have not had the patience to read every word in this thread, but I will make a few comments anyway.

Tom is discussing a "sophisticated YEC" position, one that seems to be an "appearance of age" model(*). Is such a model actually held by any human being? I've seen it proposed on any number of occasions in my years of dealing with creationists, but I've never encountered one who really believed it. Sometimes, someone will adopt it as a fallback position when confronted with a difficult piece of scientific evidence, but they never adopt it consistently; they always turn around and point to some other piece of physical evidence, or supposed weakness in the science, as support for YEC. So my suspicion is that this isn't so much a sophisticated position as an imaginary one.

I think there's a good reason that no one adopts this model in practice. The model requires an utter rejection of reason and of our ability to know anything about the world. Lots of people may toy with that kind of idea, but commonsense notions of reality are too strong for most people to reject. I would agree that someone who did accept this model need not be stupid. If, as philosophers used to say, the good of the intellect is truth, then this model requires not the loss of intellect, but the loss of the good for which the intellect exists. (I'll also note that Dante described the damned precisely as those had lost, not their intellect, but the good of the intellect. Make of that what you will.)

It is also not clear to me what exactly the point of the model is, since as Tom himself notes, it does not remove the contradictions between a literal reading of Genesis and the Bible. For example, no model that includes a massive recent population bottleneck will be consistent with the observed genetics of most organisms, without additional appeal to massive supernatural activity to restore the appearance of age.

Which leads me to my own suggestion, which I make when this kind of model comes up, one that meets the same goals as Tom's, that is simpler and that does not involve the kind of residual scientific problems that his does. My suggested model I call the "appearance of youth" theory. According to this model, the Bible in reality provides a detailed, scientifically accurate account of the Big Bang and the origin of the Earth, and of the three-billion year history of the evolution life on Earth. It's all there, written down in black and white. But whenever anyone reads the creation account, the text appears to be describing a theologically reworked ancient Near Eastern cosmology, and to describe the recent, direct creation of all living things. One could speculate about why God would want to create this appearance, but that's beside the point. The point is that this model provides the sophisticated fundamentalist a logically unassailable way of making science and his beliefs about the Bible consistent.

(*) Note that I say seems to be an appearance of age model. It's possible that Tom's model is actually completely different from these models, but has merely been constructed to be indistinguishable from them. One can't know for certain from appearances.

 

[Tom Cohoe]

Anything can be mocked my friend. I already gave the example where atheists commonly mock God by ranting about the tooth fairy or the Easter bunny.

Since anything at all can be mocked, all that can be concluded from a good round of mockery (it was rather good sfs) is that the mocker doesn't like what he is mocking (or he could be just having mischievous fun).

Well ... ?

Why not tell us what's actually wrong with what you are mocking? Why not attack it for something inherently wrong with it rather than by comparing it with something ridiculous which is only similar ... to no logical effect at all?

Why is it that so few seem to know the difference between rhetoric and logic?

On short thought, I guess I believe that most really do know the difference, but they have developed a bad habit. Anyone who develops such a habit is allowing the reasoning ability to atrophy. One substitutes the easy pleasure of approval from others with the same position - through rhetoric, for the more difficult joy of discovering or clarifying something previously not understood - through reasoning.

Hmm, I think I was reading about that just the other day in Augustine's Confessions. He was a smart guy, which is why he is still such a giant after so many years. As with so many other smart guys, you never realize it from summaries of his works in encyclopedias etc. You have to read the original stuff (or a good translation, at the least) to see how he has good answers for so many problems we still have today. Augustime had already thought them through and answered them 1600 years ago - problems we think are modern problems. If you are interested in answers to some thorny problems, read Augustine. Pusey [The Great Books of the Western World] is a good translation, but his English is mighty archaic.

So where was I ...

Oh, yeah ...

Rhetoric is useful when you want to rally a crowd, right or wrong (or perhaps even yourself, if you are afraid of what you confront). Logic OTOH is what you need if you actually want to critically examine ideas.

TheFijian caught me in a rhetorical moment when he complained about me writing "I thought not" in reply to my own question about him. He wouldn't stand for it, and he was right.

Have you studied Gödel? This is pretty simple stuff by comparison.

I'll admit there's a good deal of rhetoric in this post. But what have you given me to work with sfs?

 

[sfs]

Anything can be mocked my friend. I already gave the example where atheists commonly mock God by ranting about the tooth fairy or the Easter bunny.

Since anything at all can be mocked, all that can be concluded from a good round of mockery (it was rather good sfs) is that the mocker doesn't like what he is mocking (or he could be just having mischievous fun).

Well ... ?

Why not tell us what's actually wrong with what you are mocking?

In my case, you can also conclude that I think your idea is, to put it in sophisticated intellectual terms, pretty dumb. I do think your model is as ridiculous as one that you recognize instantly as mockery. That's my point. Can you tell me any logical reason why yours is preferable, or why mine does not serve your proposed ends as well as yours? To someone who is used to reading but not used to studying the natural world, a deceptive appearance to the entire physical world may be intuitively more appealing than a deceptive appearance to a single book, but to a scientist they're equally offensive, and logically equivalent.

Your proposed model is, to me, indistinguishable from insanity. Your model assumes that we cannot trust anything at all about what we see in the world around us. This is not how any sane person operates in the world. The sole exception to this assumption, an exception that is left completely unexplained, is that we can trust a naive interpretation of Genesis, as read by a modern Western-educated layman. That reading alone is trustworthy -- even though we use the same senses to read Genesis as we do to look at the world, and the same brain to interpret what we see. I consider this to be an incoherent worldview. Which may be why, as I noted, no one actually holds it. I notice that you did not answer my question: do you know anyone who actually believes the way you propose? And if not, what exactly is the point of your proposal?

 

[Tom Cohoe]

In my case, you can also conclude that I think your idea is, to put it in sophisticated intellectual terms, pretty dumb. I do think your model is as ridiculous as one that you recognize instantly as mockery. That's my point.

Obviously, but being rude does not make your case my good man.

Can you tell me any logical reason why yours is preferable, or why mine does not serve your proposed ends as well as yours?

I don't know why showing anything about your model would lead to any conclusion about mine at all, but I can tell you the essential difference from mine that makes yours ridiculous where mine isn't. Yours requires deception of the senses whereas mine doesn't. You have to understand that we did not sense the theory of evolution, or any other theories of science. We sensed the data.

In sophisticated YEC, the data is exactly the same as it is in the scientific theories. What is different is the solution that is worked out. The only difference in the solutions is in what a scientist would call boundary conditions. Sophisticated YEC has a very complex boundary. Science, therefore, must choose the 13 billion year old universe and evolution, because Occam's razor requires the simple solution. Occam's razor requires it, not because applying it leads necessarily to the correct choice of the true solution, but because it leads to the best solution, i.e. the most useful solution. As far as making predictions about what will be discovered today, sophisticated YEC and science make exactly the same predictions. There is no way to tell them apart. The differences are in the unobservable past. You choose whichever one you like. The essential proviso is that sophisticated YEC is not science, because it fails to apply Occam's razor. Anyone who chooses sophisticated YEC acknowledges that it is not science, and, since sophisticated YEC and the science solution cannot be differentiated by observations today, he ceases trying to prove it through "creation science". Because sophisticated YEC cannot be distinguished by observation from science's 13 billion year old universe, sophisticated YEC is not a scientific theory.

To someone who is used to reading but not used to studying the natural world, a deceptive appearance to the entire physical world ...

Whatever you are talking about, it isn't sophisticated YEC because in sophisticated YEC what you see is what is.

Your model assumes that we cannot trust anything at all about what we see in the world around us.

Actually, no it does not. In sophisticated YEC we can trust everything that we see. You have to distinguish observation from theory to understand this.

I notice that you did not answer my question: ...

Sure, when you've done me the courtesy of reading the whole thread ... but, oh, I'll do you the courtesy of answering your first question anyway

... do you know anyone who actually believes the way you propose?

No I do not.

And if not, what exactly is the point of your proposal?

This is explained in the thread, which, as a kind of comment on my idea, you've boasted that you haven't read. So, no, I'm not going to answer this until you've read every last word.

 

[theFijian]

You know Tom i had a look back through this thread to see if I had missed something or perhaps overlooked a particular reply which you clarified things and tied up the loose ends in your arguments. But alas no.

but if nature is an illusion as you insist

I have insisted no such thing

Science is about what it looks like, about the appearance of things. What reality actually is doesn't have to correspond with what it looks like at all. It is logically possible that God created the Earth 6,000 years ago and that it and the rest of the universe were created to look like it all began with a the Big Bang over thirteen billion years ago, and that the species evolved slowly over hundreds of millions of years.

I can even think of reasons why God might make the appearance different than the reality.

You have to take into account that creation is so tightly knit together that if you pull out one thread --or dinosaur bone--it all falls apart. The bone has a specific place in creation that includes its space-time coordinates.

That's not a problem. Everything at 4004 BC would be in place and functioning exactly as it would have been if it had evolved in 13,000,000,000 years. There would be no difference in the world after 4004

All Young Earth Creationists should come to grips with the simple fact that it really does look like the Earth is billions of years old and that the species have evolved from common ancestors over a period of hundreds of millions of years....

...The sophisticated YECer can believe on a 6 day creation.

Sorry Tom, but 'illusion' is precisely what you have argued for. Omphalos is exactly what you have been advocating.

What he (the YECer) cannot do is tell the scientist to speak as though science is about the illusion God created....
...and beyond that, if they do not want to read Genesis as anything but a literal account of creation, then they must do so in a way that keeps it out of science, and that the way to do it is the way I've outlined.

Why should he? After all according to your plan, his 'sophisticated YEC' model is perfectly 'logical' and theologically and scientifically sound, since there is no difference between the two scientifically and both 'sophisticated YEC' and evolution look the same. Why should you tell him that he cannot speak on scientific grounds? Ironically your plan gives his that exact right! honestly , has any YEC you've told about this actually taken you up on this plan of yours?

OK, right here, I can illustrate what is wrong with how you are dealing with me. Atheists use exactly the same method to ridicule our God. First I will describe the method, and then I will illustrate it.

The method is to categorize a concept under a general category and then ridicule something else that falls under the same category, something which is inherently ridiculous which is supposed to somehow make everything in the category ridiculous.

No Tom, it's called taking your argument to it's logical conclusion. And please stop using these labels to dismiss my perfectly valid points.

Live and let live with your YEC bretheren. Keep your favourite origins theology

Underpinning things seems to be a kind of scientific relativism. We can each have our own scientific 'truths' so long as Creationists keep theirs to themselves? Can I ask what kind of model you have in mind for Old Earth Creationists? Gap theorists? Am I right in thinking that they too can be confident that their own scientific models will now meld perfectly with evolution and common descent?

As I have repeatedly said, evolution is good science, the best science, correct science.

You actually have no basis for saying this since you have advocated that we cannot trust the methodologies and tools which underpin evolution.

Science is about testable hypotheses. Two schemes, evolution from the big bang, and sophisticated YEC would have no testable difference

What testable hypotheses does 'sophisticated YEC' offer? Could you please demonstrate how evolution and YEC have no testable differences.

 

[sfs]

Obviously, but being rude does not make your case my good man.

If you think I've been rude, you have far too tender a skin to be engaged on the internet, and please, stay away from science. If scientists think an idea is dumb, they say so. (And I've now read every one of your words in this thread. Doing so altered my response to your proposal not at all.)

I don't know why showing anything about your model would lead to any conclusion about mine at all, but I can tell you the essential difference from mine that makes yours ridiculous where mine isn't. Yours requires deception of the senses whereas mine doesn't. You have to understand that we did not sense the theory of evolution, or any other theories of science. We sensed the data.

I'm afraid you don't understand my model, then. In my model, the sense are not deceived: the eye correctly registers and accurately processes the photons that it receives. All that is incorrect is the theory that these photons were produced at some point in the past (about 2 nanoseconds, for the typical reader) by patterns of ink on a white page. Occam's Razor would, of course, favor the choice of that theory, but the sophisticated (not to say sophistical) YEC has no obligation to embrace Occam's Razor. Instead, he postulates a different set of initial boundary conditions for those photons.

I still don't see the difference with your model. Sure, all of your boundary conditions occur a few thousand years ago (ignoring those pesky aspects of your model that don't fit observation). Why should that matter to the relative plausibility of the models?

In sophisticated YEC, the data is exactly the same as it is in the scientific theories. What is different is the solution that is worked out. The only difference in the solutions is in what a scientist would call boundary conditions. Sophisticated YEC has a very complex boundary. Science, therefore, must choose the 13 billion year old universe and evolution, because Occam's razor requires the simple solution. Occam's razor requires it, not because applying it leads necessarily to the correct choice of the true solution, but because it leads to the best solution, i.e. the most useful solution.

As I've already pointed out, this isn't true. No set of initial conditions that conforms to the literal Genesis account can account for current observations.
If that is genuinely your model, it's been falsified already, and you can drop it.

As far as making predictions about what will be discovered today, sophisticated YEC and science make exactly the same predictions.

How, exactly, is the sophisticated YEC to make these predictions? Your current procedure seems to be this: wait until science (which the soph. YEC knows to to be wrong) predicts something, and then echo that prediction. Would you call that an epistemologically sound inference procedure?

Whatever you are talking about, it isn't sophisticated YEC because in sophisticated YEC what you see is what is.

Of course I'm talking about sophisticated YEC. In sophisticated YEC, what you see is what is, but not what was. A fossil femur is exactly what it appears to be, except that it's actually neither a fossil nor a femur. If you don't think that's a deceptive appearance, we have very different notions of deception.

Actually, no it does not. In sophisticated YEC we can trust everything that we see. You have to distinguish observation from theory to understand this.

One of the more basic truths about human perception is that it is impossible to fully distinguish observation from theory. All observation, beyond the rawest of sense-impressions, is theory-laden. You wrote earlier about seeing dinosaur bones, rocks and trees, and that these observations are not deceptive. But we don't see dinosaur bones, rocks and trees. We see patterns of color. The dinosaur bones (which apparently were never bones and were never in dinosaurs), rocks and trees are mental models that we construct out of our sense perceptions. The text of Genesis is just as much a mental model as the evolutionary history of metazoans.

This is explained in the thread, which, as a kind of comment on my idea, you've boasted that you haven't read. So, no, I'm not going to answer this until you've read every last word.

I've read every last word, and I still don't know what you're trying to accomplish here. And I do mean here, in a forum dedicated to non-YECs. I can understand you trying to convert YECs to your view, although I'm convinced you'll never succeed to any meaningful extent, but why should we sign on to your crusade? After all, YECs really do change and come to accept evolution, and even more of them come to accept that alternative viewpoints on origins are legitimate within Christianity, but none of them ever convert to your viewpoint. Why should we abandon arguments that sometimes work, and that we actually believe, for ones that don't work and that we don't believe?

 

[gluadys]

And if someone hit you with that bone, you would still say it was an illusion?

Of course. You think illusions can't be tactile?

You'd better be careful here if you want to stick with science. Have you heard of the holographic principal which "resolves the black hole information paradox within the framework of string theory? [from the Wikipedia article, the Holographic Principle - I am not allowed to put in links yet]". This theory, worked on by physicists from Gerard 't Hooft to Leonard Susskind, some of the dozen or so most famous physicists of our day, would describe the entire universe as a hologram on the surface of a sphere with a radius equivalent to the radius of the horizon of a black hole of the mass of the universe. That is, this theory has that everything, including you and me, is a gigantic holgram.

Other physicists (Steven Wolfram of Mathematica fame) analyze the systems of scientific study and even the entire universe as computational systems.

I can't follow physics well enough to comment, but it is not the first theory to link physics with Buddhist/Hindu/Taoist views of reality.


The question still comes down to whether the reality is what God created or an illusion that is not consistent with that reality. That is--did God create a reality with the intention that we know what he created, or did God create a reality with the intention of veiling it from us under an illusion that is not consistent with reality as it is?

As I see it the Christian doctrine of creation requires that the world we discover is the world that God created, not a surface that hides the real thing. If we can't believe the world God ostensibly created, how can we believe God cares about truth?

I cannot see your statement that if God put the bone in the ground and arranged it so that the creation was indetectable by science that it would be "not a creation" as anything but your fiat. I see nothing logically necessary about it.

Scripture points again and again to creation as a witness to the Creator. That would not be possible if the creation was indetectable by science. After all science is nothing other than humans using their God-given gifts of sense and reason to know creation better. If creation is indetectable to us, scripture is a pack of lies.

That's not a problem. Everything at 4004 BC would be in place and functioning exactly as it would have been if it had evolved in 13,000,000,000 years.

IOW 13 billion years of the history of the universe would be an illusion. The evidence that helped us establish that date has no actuality in it. The rocks that testify to the age of the earth are illusory. They did not form in the way physics and chemistry say they had to form. The genes that bear testimony to the history of life are illusory. The historical changes that help to date when different species separated from each other never happened; it's all illusory. The supernovae we have pinpointed in the sky never occurred, because there has been no time for their light to get here. As history they are pseudo-events. We could go on and on. Every datapoint that indicates a history preceeding 4004 BCE is an illusion. That includes your dinosaur bone, because it is impossible to separate that bone from the data that tells us its age.

In such a scenario, the world we live in, the world of our experience, our perception, is not a real world. What then did God create if not an illusion?

The heavens, which according to scripture God created, tell us they are 13.7 billion years old. Moon rocks, which according to scripture God created, tell us they are 4.5 billion years old. Ancient fossil cyanobacteria and stromatolites tell us life existed on this planet 3.5 billion years ago. Hominid fossils tell us we had ancestors physically much like us 2 million years ago and our own species has been here about 200,000 years.

Either this is what God created or it is not. If it is not, we cannot know what God created because we have no way of finding out. And it cannot be a revelation of any sort to anyone because it can't be known.

I am all but on your side. The only difference is that I know that I cannot logically disprove sophisticated YEC.

I don't much care if one can logically disprove YEC. My point is that it is theologically untrue to one of the fundamental doctrines of Christian faith---namely that the world is God's creation. One has to stop and think if the illusions which YEC must appeal to take it beyond the realm of legitimate Christian teaching about creation and about God. One has to think of that word "create". What does it mean to say God "creates" the heavens and the earth? Does it mean God creates an actual universe which we inhabit and experience every day? Or does God just create a stage setting that looks real but isn't?

A dinosaur bone in a stage setting can be touched and handled and even used to hit somebody with, but in a fundamental way, it is not real because its history is illusory. It has no roots in reality.

Where I speak of YECers embarrassing Christianity, as for you, that is trying to force it to be taught in schools (in science classes). It is more than that. It is YECers participating, from a "creation science" point of view, in public debate at all. When YECers denounce TOE scientists in public, or even from the pulpit, they do harm to Christianity. "Creation science" institutions are harmful too (so is all the intelligent design stuff, BTW).

Agreed. But it is not just the public ridicule of Christianity which creation science promotes that is harmful. At a deeper level they harm Christianity because--though they can't admit it even to themselves--they are denying some of the foundations of Christian faith. What they teach about the nature of creation (and therefore about the nature of God) goes directly against historic Christian teaching. That is far more harmful to Christianity than public scorn.

All I want is for YECers to understand that they can believe what they want about creation without any need to denounce science at all, and beyond that, if they do not want to read Genesis as anything but a literal account of creation, then they must do so in a way that keeps it out of science, and that the way to do it is the way I've outlined.

That's a step in the right direction, but they also need to be challenged on whether they can believe what they want about creation without denouncing Christianity.

 

[Tom Cohoe]

What you have demonstrated here, Fijian, is the difficulty of communication. Where I have said things like, "What reality actually is doesn't have to correspond with what it looks like at all" the words "looks like" have been vaguely defined (my fault, except, not really, because words are inherently ambiguous). For someone who thinks I am talking about illusions, well, it, uhh, looks like that is what I am talking about. "Looks like" could refer to our senses, or it could refer to what we infer from our senses, with no deception to our senses at all. "looks like" is inherently ambiguous.

The detective, finding the body hanging from a rafter with nothing the victim could have stood on nearby, said, "It looks like we have another homicide". What he didn't know was that the dead man, aware that his family could not collect an insurance payout for his death by suicide, had fashioned a chair out of ice, put the noose around his neck, and then shattered the chair by jumping on it. The ice had melted and run down the drain by the time he was discovered, as he had planned.

The detectives words, "looks like," referred to his theory, which was wrong. His senses, however, were not deceived.

You know Tom i had a look back through this thread to see if I had missed something or perhaps overlooked a particular reply which you clarified things and tied up the loose ends in your arguments. But alas no.

I really do appreciate that you are trying to understand me.

Originally Posted by Tom Cohoe

I can even think of reasons why God might make the appearance different than the reality.
​

Again, here "appearance" refers to inference about the past, not about what the senses perceive.

Why should he [keep it out of science? After all according to your plan, his 'sophisticated YEC' model is perfectly 'logical' and theologically and scientifically sound, ...

No, sophisticated YEC is not scientifically sound because the sophisticated YECer has refused to apply Occam's razor. Occam's razor is an absolutely indispensible part of science. We select as the correct model the one that explains the facts with the fewest arbitrary assumptions. The sophisticated YECer is sophisticated precisely because he is aware that he has departed the course of science in making the literal words of Genesis specify a complex past boundary. A whole bunch of supernatural stuff has to have happened which Occam's razor would have to cut out of any scientific model. The sophisticated YECer is able to reconcile himself to knowing that his choice is unscientific with his understanding that Occam's razor is not a rigorously certain guide to the truth but a definitionally correct guide to the best scientific model.

Why should you tell him that he cannot speak on scientific grounds? Ironically your plan gives his that exact right!

I hope that I have clarified that he understands that he can't do this. What sophisticated YEC is all about, really, is about getting people who insist on reading Genesis literally to actually understand what science is. Trying to do this by pounding away at their literal reading of Genesis results in massive resistance. What teaching sophisticated YEC really is, is about teaching the essential role of Occam's razor in science, and how, as a result, YEC cannot logically be a part of science, even if it were true.
It is about teaching that if they must, the can believe YEC, but by the very definition of science, they cannot have it be part of science.

honestly , has any YEC you've told about this actually taken you up on this plan of yours?

I have debated with a Baptist pastor who is a friend and a YECer. We have talked about whether or not a literal reading of Genesis is necessary, with me taking the part that it is not. I have also depicted sophisticated YEC to him as an alternative, if he insists that Genesis must be read literally. He ends up agreeing that I make sense, but, as sfs has suggested, he ends up reverting to unsophisticated YEC.

This is not as bad as it sounds. I could hardly expect otherwise. I would have these meetings with him infrequently. In the meantime, he is exposed to the expectations of his flock, the fervent anti science stand of his colleagues, and the bias of the literature he has already accumulated and which he continues to accumulate. He is, in short, bombarded by the anti-evolution, young Earth message.

Underpinning things seems to be a kind of scientific relativism.

No, the science is unambiguous.

We can each have our own scientific 'truths' so long as Creationists keep theirs to themselves?

No, the sophisticated YECer understands that sophisicated YEC is not scientific. He could even be an evolutionary scientist by understanding that he is working on what God made the past look like (as clarified above). He can see this, not as the deceiving God, but as the hiding God who cannot be found through the sceptical scientific approach, but who must be found through faith. The sophisticated YECer knows that if he is going to have anything to do with science, he must keep YEC out of it, because it cannot logically be part of science, by definition. He understands that he cannot look for God in scientific research because science requires an open mind without preconceived notions. Someone who sets out to prove, through science, something that he believes by faith, is neither acting as a scientist nor acting as a person of faith.

Can I ask what kind of model you have in mind for Old Earth Creationists? Gap theorists? Am I right in thinking that they too can be confident that their own scientific models will now meld perfectly with evolution and common descent?

I am not sure what you mean by Old Earth Creationist or Gap theorist. My concern has been Creation science which is first, a contradiction in terms in that it refuses to accept the simplest model as the correct model, and second, a huge embarrassment to Christianity. Creation science, as a putative science, is not a faith, and in attacking it, which I have done vigorously on science forums, I attack no ones faith. OTOH, I refuse categorically to attack YEC if, by that, we mean reading Genesis literally.

sfs referred to YECers 'falling back' to a position like sophisticated YEC. Well, note that my approach is different, because I am not 'falling back'. I have never had a need to read Genesis literally. Rather than 'falling back' from a YEC position, I am reaching out from the other side. If a YECer 'fell back' to sophisicated YEC, I would not start saying 'God is not a deceiver', or 'this means we cannot trust our senses', etc in attempt to drive the YECer from this 'fall back' position. I would say 'Glory Hallelujah' because the YECer has begun to understand that YEC is unscientific, by definition, and he has found that he still has ground to stand on. I would be absolutely encouraging at this point.

What testable hypotheses does 'sophisticated YEC' offer?

There is no testable difference between sophisticated YEC and the currently accepted models of science. That is why sophisticated YEC cannot, by definition, be science. It makes exactly the same predictions as the scientific models, but it must be cut, by Occam's razor.

Could you please demonstrate how evolution and [sophisticated] YEC have no testable differences.

Sophisticated YEC would hold that God designed it that way. That God could do this would follow from God's omnipotence.

 

[Tom Cohoe]

If you think I've been rude, you have far too tender a skin to be engaged on the internet, and please, stay away from science. If scientists think an idea is dumb, they say so. (And I've now read every one of your words in this thread. Doing so altered my response to your proposal not at all.)

Oh you weren't hurting my feelings. If you think saying my ideas are 'dumb' instead of 'wrong' is not rude, I'm hardly interested in disputing what's 'rude'. My point was not about hurting my feelings, it was about 'making a case', as was obvious from my words. Calling my idea 'dumb' doesn't make a case for anything. Now you are talking about my 'tender feelings'. Why?

Occam's Razor would, of course, favor the choice of that theory, but the sophisticated (not to say sophistical) YEC has no obligation to embrace Occam's Razor.

He does if he wants to call what he's doing science. Since he isn't, he can't call it science.

I still don't see the difference with your model. Sure, all of your boundary conditions occur a few thousand years ago (ignoring those pesky aspects of your model that don't fit observation). Why should that matter to the relative plausibility of the models?

Boundary conditions occuring a few thousand years ago are not observable today, they cannot be in anyones memory, or in a family or cultural tradition that does not go back into legend or myth.

As I've already pointed out, this isn't true. No set of initial conditions that conforms to the literal Genesis account can account for current observations.

And here I thought it was me who pointed that out. No, a lot initial conditions would have to be set after the Genesis account. Genes would have to change at a supernatural rate as people migrated from the location of Genesis. People would have to settle into pre-existing human settlements. It is undeniably ugly.

A fossil femur is exactly what it appears to be, except that it's actually neither a fossil nor a femur.

That would depend on how you define 'fossil' and 'femur'. When I say you see what is there, I am not talking about definitions which might or might not exclude something that was created 6000 years ago. I am talking about the object which lies before you, waiting to be picked up. It is there, it is real. Whether it is the remains of an animal or it was created 6000 years ago is not something which is an inherent part of it.

One of the more basic truths about human perception is that it is impossible to fully distinguish observation from theory.

I am fully aware of this soph. 'truth'. I would correct it to it is impossible to fully distinguish observation from brain processing. I would make that correction because most observation involves no theory at all, but it does involve unconscious brain processing of sensory data of sensory perceptions. This really has nothing to do with what sophisticated YEC is about.

I've read every last word, and I still don't know what you're trying to accomplish here. And I do mean here, in a forum dedicated to non-YECs.

I'm a non-YEC myself. Am I breaking some rules here?

I can understand you trying to convert YECs to your view, ...

I am interested only in having them stop attacking science. The one YEC pastor I've talked to about this, I've offered him both sophisticated YEC and metaphorical reading of Genesis as alternatives that are better than trying to push a phony creation science into public policy decision making.

although I'm convinced you'll never succeed to any meaningful extent, but why should we sign on to your crusade? After all, YECs really do change and come to accept evolution, and even more of them come to accept that alternative viewpoints on origins are legitimate within Christianity, but none of them ever convert to your viewpoint. Why should we abandon arguments that sometimes work, and that we actually believe, for ones that don't work and that we don't believe?

Whatever works is good. I tried no less to convince my Baptist pastor friend that a literal reading of Genesis would not condemn him to Hell than I did to convince him that if he could not give up YEC, he could embrace sophisticated YEC. It is just a way to be less hostile and threatening. If I could convert people to whatever view I wanted, I would try to convince them that they do not have to be hung up on whether they should read Genesis literally or metaphorically. It is not what is important about Genesis.

If a person converts to sophisticated YEC, he is still a Christian, and he is now someone who is not an embarrassment to Christianity for attacking scientists and trying to affect the teaching of science. So if that works as an alternative to giving up YEC, it could not be anything but good.

 

[sfs]

Oh you weren't hurting my feelings. If you think saying my ideas are 'dumb' instead of 'wrong' is not rude, I'm hardly interested in disputing what's 'rude'. My point was not about hurting my feelings, it was about 'making a case', as was obvious from my words. Calling my idea 'dumb' doesn't make a case for anything. Now you are talking about my 'tender feelings'. Why?

No, it was not at all obvious from your choice of the word "rude" that your concern was about logic, rather than, well, rudeness. To recap things from my perspective: I made my case in my first post. You dismissed my case as nothing but mockery. That struck me as a both non-responsive and rather hostile (especially when combined with comments about me "boasting" that I hadn't read the whole thread, and about my inability to distinguish rhetoric from logic), and that has set the tone since. My only real goal is to get you to address the logic of the case I originally made. I've had very limited success so far.

He does if he wants to call what he's doing science. Since he isn't, he can't call it science.

Right, but no one has suggested that the AoY (Appearance of Youther) is doing science. I just suggested that he is logically equivalent to your SophYEC. I still think he is.

Boundary conditions occuring a few thousand years ago are not observable today, they cannot be in anyones memory, or in a family or cultural tradition that does not go back into legend or myth.

In neither your nor my model do we directly observe the boundary conditions; we observe the state that results from the evolution of the system from those boundary conditions. What we cannot observe is the state before the boundary conditions; there we draw incorrect inferences from the current state. That is true for both models. Again, why does it matter when the boundary conditions occur? You can no more examine the "real" state of the Biblical text in my model than you can examine the real state of the universe prior to 6400 BC (or whenever) in your model.

Please, please tell me why your model is intellectually respectable and mine is ridiculous. The points you raise in response seem quite irrelevant to the central question.

And here I thought it was me who pointed that out. No, a lot initial conditions would have to be set after the Genesis account. Genes would have to change at a supernatural rate as people migrated from the location of Genesis. People would have to settle into pre-existing human settlements. It is undeniably ugly.

You said that there were difficulties, but that they could be handled. You didn't mention that handling them required massive, ongoing miraculous interventions. Your interventions are on a much larger scale than mine, I would note.

That would depend on how you define 'fossil' and 'femur'. When I say you see what is there, I am not talking about definitions which might or might not exclude something that was created 6000 years ago. I am talking about the object which lies before you, waiting to be picked up. It is there, it is real. Whether it is the remains of an animal or it was created 6000 years ago is not something which is an inherent part of it.

I just use the definitions that are already in use. Fossil: "A remnant or trace of an organism of a past geologic age, such as a skeleton or leaf imprint, embedded and preserved in the earth's crust." Femur: "(a) A bone of the leg situated between the pelvis and knee in humans. It is the largest and strongest bone in the body. (b) A functionally similar bone in the leg or hind limb of a vertebrate animal. Also called thighbone."

You've got an object there, but it's not really a femur and it's not really a fossil.

I'm a non-YEC myself. Am I breaking some rules here?

No. In any case, I'm not a very rigid follower of rules.

Whatever works is good.

Well, maybe. Whatever works and is true is better than whatever works. One of my points, in any case, is that this particular approach seems (to me, based on considerable experience) not to work.

If a person converts to sophisticated YEC, he is still a Christian, and he is now someone who is not an embarrassment to Christianity for attacking scientists and trying to affect the teaching of science. So if that works as an alternative to giving up YEC, it could not be anything but good.

I'm afraid that the sophisticated YEC, while no longer an impediment to good science education, would still be an embarrassment. No scientist is going to view anyone who dismisses the entire observable universe as a mock-up of a history that never happened, solely to preserve a naive reading of a religious text, as anything other than a deluded fool. Given the choice between someone who deludes himself about what physical reality looks like, and someone who rejects that reality entirely, I don't know which I'd prefer.

 

[gluadys]

I'm afraid that the sophisticated YEC, while no longer an impediment to good science education, would still be an embarrassment. No scientist is going to view anyone who dismisses the entire observable universe as a mock-up of a history that never happened, solely to preserve a naive reading of a religious text, as anything other than a deluded fool. Given the choice between someone who deludes himself about what physical reality looks like, and someone who rejects that reality entirely, I don't know which I'd prefer.

And in either case it is a denial of the reality of creation, which makes it ironic that those who espouse such views call themselves creationists.

 

[theFijian]

I'm afraid that the sophisticated YEC, while no longer an impediment to good science education, would still be an embarrassment. No scientist is going to view anyone who dismisses the entire observable universe as a mock-up of a history that never happened, solely to preserve a naive reading of a religious text, as anything other than a deluded fool. Given the choice between someone who deludes himself about what physical reality looks like, and someone who rejects that reality entirely, I don't know which I'd prefer.

Quoted for truth. In this plan the sophisticated YECer will be like Christianity's skeleton in the closet, holding to such an odd hotch-potch of literalism, omphalos, and pseudo-science that if that skeleton were to get out then they'd be just as damaging and embarrassing as the outspoken fundamentalist YEC.

It also seems to me to be rather condescending to say to somebody, what you believe is perfectly true and acceptable in your own little world but don't think about trying to join in with the adults doing science. And why would you try to convince somebody of such a messy half-way house type belief when you could be trying to convince them of something much more logically consistent?

 

[sfs]

And in either case it is a denial of the reality of creation, which makes it ironic that those who espouse such views call themselves creationists.

Yes. I'm not one to press for doctrinal purity (probably because I'm pretty mushy about most doctrines myself), but I do see the deep disconnect between this view and traditional Christians views of the world and of creation that you have pointed out.

 

[Tom Cohoe]

OK, sfs.

The photons could change on the way to your eyes.

Neither I nor anyone else can disprove it.

Do you propose this? If you believed it, I would not try to convince you otherwise so long as you, in a way somehow motivated by Christianity, did not try to force consideration of it into schools and public policy.

Who would care? Every kid thinks stuff like this.

I cannot disprove it.

Which is my whole point.

There are people proposing YEC, they have scriptural support which gives them great vigour and great tenacity, and, obviously motivated by Christianity, they are working hard at forcing it on everybody else as science.

We cannot disprove YEC, just as I cannot prove that photons are not changing on the way from the book to your eyes, exactly as you say.

I have said, about sophisticated YEC, several times, "could be." That is saying exactly the same thing as "I cannot disprove it". "Could be," is as far as I have gone, and it is as far as I will ever go.

YECers are not stupid (see the title of the thread). They know darned well that nobody can prove that Genesis is not literally true. If they cannot be pried away from it at all, or if they cannot be pried away from it without converting them into atheists or deists, they might be taught that it is unscientific, by definition (and since truth about reality cannot follow from a definition, that YEC is unscientific is not any way judgemental of the truth or falsity of YEC).

I will not pretend to know whether an increased awareness amongst other Christians that there is no rigorous argument against YEC or whether an increased willingness by other Christians to tolerate something like sophisticated YEC would help protect the good name of Christianity by weakening support for the bogus creation "science". I do not see how it could hurt, and I think we all understand that intolerance has a long history of hurting Christianity.

sfs, you say "based on considerable experience" that this approach seems not to work. What history is there of non YECers trying to show YECers that they can logically believe what they want about creation so long as they understand that science, by definition (rather than by the 'evil influence of atheists') cannot and will not ever support them. Has anyone ever tried to shove them off creation "science" while at the same time being completely tolerant of their interpretation of Genesis?

Again, in response to "seems not to work", ... so what has?

 

[Tom Cohoe]

I do see the deep disconnect between this view and traditional Christians views of the world and of creation that you have pointed out.

There is no disconnect whatsoever. It extends the traditional view, just as there is no disconnect between Newtonian gravity and general relativity.

 

[Tom Cohoe]

holding to such an odd hotch-potch of literalism, omphalos, and pseudo-science ...

No, we have the pseudo science now. Sophisticated YEC is all about getting rid of the psuedo science.

... that if that skeleton were to get out then they'd be just as damaging and embarrassing as the outspoken fundamentalist YEC.

Perhaps, but YEC is not particularly damaging. What is damaging is creation "science". Do you seriously propose that the existence of a sect whose beliefs are incompatible with science, but who have withdrawn from trying to force the teaching in schools of their bogus "science" - who have stopped trying to disturb public policy - would be as damaging as YRCers with all their interference and vehemence about science are today? It is not what they believe that hurts us, it is what they do.

It also seems to me to be rather condescending to say to somebody, what you believe is perfectly true and acceptable in your own little world but don't think about trying to join in with the adults doing science.

It is tolerance, not condescension. Tolerance can, of course, be expressed with condescension or without it. Only associated with pride is tolerance condescending.

And they can do science. From their point of view they are researching what it looks like, just as we all are. The only difference is that they believe that the true boundary conditions are derived from Genesis, but they understand that God created a reality that can be consistently examined by science, which uses Occam's razor, and they would enjoy doing so because it is interesting, just as we suspend our beliefs to enjoy a movie even though we believe that it is false. I said this before.

And why would you try to convince somebody of such a messy half-way house type belief when you could be trying to convince them of something much more logically consistent?

The point is not to convince then of the messy half-way house. It is to get rid of creation "science". If you can get them to read Genesis metaphorically, do it.

 

[Dark_Lite]

No, we have the pseudo science now. Sophisticated YEC is all about getting rid of the psuedo science.

And replace it with...? Non-science?

 

[Tom Cohoe]

And replace it with...? Non-science?

One way to answer this is ... it doesn't matter. Science is not our concern.

Maybe you would be more satisfied with ... they have to have a more rigorous philosophy of science than every one else. We have the luxury of being able to believe that science's investigation of the past reveals the truth. They would have to believe that science's investigation of the past reveals a consistent but false history extending into the past from the true boundary implied by Genesis. It would be no more difficult for them than watching a movie would be for you or me.

There would be mutual tolerance among scientists, just as there is among scientists of different religious faiths, just as atheist and Christian scientists tolerate each other, just as John Polkinghorne and Leonard Susskind tolerate each other.

The experiments and reasoning used to draw conclusions would be identical. The only difference would be an underlying philosophy that has no bearing on the actual conduct of the science.

 

[theFijian]

That is why sophisticated YEC cannot, by definition, be science.

The experiments and reasoning used to draw conclusions would be identical. The only difference would be an underlying philosophy that has no bearing on the actual conduct of the science.

And they can do science.

Umm... so can they, or can they not do science?

From their point of view they are researching what it looks like, just as we all are. The only difference is that they believe that the true boundary conditions are derived from Genesis, but they understand that God created a reality that can be consistently examined by science, which uses Occam's razor, and they would enjoy doing so because it is interesting, just as we suspend our beliefs to enjoy a movie even though we believe that it is false. I said this before.

So you're telling me (with a straight face I presume) sophisticated YECers are going to do their own kind of science and find it 'interesting' even though they have to suspend their own beliefs (ie. as in a movie.) and know that it's false? This 'plan' of your creates far more problems than it solves.