Questions about/problems with YEC

[KerrMetric]

No. I meant like the flood story in Genesis.

Ah, so your definition of detail is a hand waving level of detail.

 

[OldWiseGuy]

You don't do a whole lot of reading, do you? Because that is a rather foolish statement to make.

You don't understand. I'm talking about the flood story, not a science fiction novel.

 

[Dannager]

All that is fine, and I agree. But I'm talking about the flood account of the bible.

So? It's allegory all the same. We were just showing that allegories can have plenty of detail. What was your point?

 

[KerrMetric]

You don't understand. I said the F L O O D S T O R Y, not a science fiction novel.

No we do understand. Just what level of detail (or lack thereof) do you consider relevant?

It seems if it is too sparse you reject and if too detailed you do to. You seem to want some contrived criteria of detail to be fulfilled and then - voila - it is bona fide fact.

How arbitrary!

 

[LoG]

There certainly was a lot of plagerizing of an allogorical flood story considering there are so many different sources other than the bible. You'd think these myth-makers would have had something better to do than write stories to confuse us literalist christians a few thousand years in the future.

 

[Willtor]

There certainly was a lot of plagerizing of an allogorical flood story considering there are so many different sources other than the bible. You'd think these myth-makers would have had something better to do than write stories to confuse us literalist christians a few thousand years in the future.

Plagiarism is a new concept. This is yet another modern lens being applied to something ancient. People say that Matthew and Luke plagiarized from Mark, too. It doesn't make it so. Nor do I think anybody was trying to confuse anybody else. You have to understand, myth was a useful vehicle for making statements.

Plagiarism is only useful to a society in which ownership is applied to ideas. This was not true in ancient societies. The closest they really got to any notion of somebody's ideas were that of a particular school of thought started by a particular person (e.g. Platonists).

 

[Dannager]

Plagiarism is a new concept. This is yet another modern lens being applied to something ancient. People say that Matthew and Luke plagiarized from Mark, too. It doesn't make it so. Nor do I think anybody was trying to confuse anybody else. You have to understand, myth was a useful vehicle for making statements.

Plagiarism is only useful to a society in which ownership is applied to ideas. This was not true in ancient societies. The closest they really got to any notion of somebody's ideas were that of a particular school of thought started by a particular person (e.g. Platonists).

Quoted and lime'd for truth.

 

[LoG]

There certainly was a lot of plagerizing of an allogorical flood story considering there are so many different sources other than the bible. You'd think these myth-makers would have had something better to do than write stories to confuse us literalist christians a few thousand years in the future.

My bad, forgot to mention that I was speaking allegorically.

 

[Willtor]

My bad, forgot to mention that I was speaking allegorically.

What was the purpose of your allegory?

 

[RightWingGirl]

Magma. The geologic record includes roughly 8 x 1024 grams of lava flows and igneous intrusions. Assuming (conservatively) a specific heat of 0.15, this magma would release 5.4 x 1027 joules while cooling 1100 degrees C. In addition, the heat of crystallization as the magma solidifies would release a great deal more heat

If there were a lot of water dissolved in the magma, then it could cool much faster, by hydrothermal circulation. Dr Andrew Snelling and John Woodmorappe presented a paper at the 4[SIZE=-1]th[/SIZE] International Conference of Creationism, Pittsburgh, PA, 1998, showing that granite can cool quickly. All granites are fissured, suggesting water involvement with their cooling. A popular version of their paper is “Rapid Rocks — Granites didn’t need millions of years of cooling”, from Creation 21(1):42–44, December 1998---True Origins

 

[KerrMetric]

If there were a lot of water dissolved in the magma....

Are you sure you meant this?

 

[RightWingGirl]

Can you find me anywhere in the Bible, except those things relating to the Genesis account, where an allegory is used, and the text does not indicate that it is an allegory? Other that the supposed allegory of the Creation accounts it seems to me that all other allegories are marked as such.

(ie. the kingdom of Heaven is like a husbandman)

 

[RightWingGirl]

Are you sure you meant this?

Aye, I think so, allthough I have been down for a few days and have not reseached this subject as fully as I would like.

 

[RightWingGirl]

KerrMetric, what, in your opinion, is the single most compelling evidence against YEC?

 

[RightWingGirl]

Well, I said he was a geologist, not a mathematician. All that aside, I agree with him. Even if I allow for all of your calculations (and I have no idea where you got your numbers), and even if I agree that long-lived animals could diverge so quickly (I don't; you can ask me about the reasons for this, if you like), and even if I agreed that 269 boxcars would be sufficient for the food alone (on very meager rations, to be sure), and even if I thought that space could be used that efficiently (there is no engineering project in existence, to date, that does), and even if I allowed that a ship of those dimensions in the shape required to allow that kind of efficiency could float on a large body of water (it couldn't), there are still weaknesses: 1. There were 7 (possibly 7 pairs) of each clean animal. 2. What about dinosaurs? 2a. Did they still exist? 2b. If not, how did they all die before the flood? 3. How did the animals distribute themselves across the (now) divided globe in that time frame?

1. There are very few clean animals compared to the unclean.
2. Most dinosaurs were the size of sheep, and even the large ones began as babies--most likley very young dinos were brought.
3. After the flood there would be warm oceans, and a heavy cloud cover, from evaporation as well as other causes, such as volcanic acitivty. The cloud cover would make the land masses colder, and in turn generate the Ice age. During the ice age there were land bridges to the various continents, as well as lower sea levels, and the cold would induce animals to migrate whether they would or no.

 

[KerrMetric]

KerrMetric, what, in your opinion, is the single most compelling evidence against YEC?

The concordancy of evidence from many disciplines that do not rely upon the same factual evidence. They all point to an Old Earth. Add in the astronomical evidence and it spells an Old Universe.

For all these things to point old but reality is young defies belief and means basically the entire edifice of physics is wrong which would lead to observational and experimental chaos.

It's not like there are 3 or 4 of these things but dozens upon dozens. Add in the fact that the YEC community seem as dumb as fence posts when it comes to science doesn't help their case either.

 

[RightWingGirl]

Incidentally, using the exact dimentions the Bible literally gives for Noah's ark, it is mathematically impossible to fit all the pairs of both clean and unclean animals in the ark.

And, mind you, according to the YECs interpretation, Noah would have to fit all other life in there too, since a Deluge like that would destroy pretty much all fresh water as well as land plants and fungi.

Sorry, but it doesn't compute.

Could you give me some sources for this? There are only 50,000 species of vertebrae known today.

 

[RightWingGirl]

The concordancy of evidence from many disciplines that do not rely upon the same factual evidence. They all point to an Old Earth. Add in the astronomical evidence and it spells an Old Universe.

For all these things to point old but reality is young defies belief and means basically the entire edifice of physics is wrong which would lead to observational and experimental chaos.

It's not like there are 3 or 4 of these things but dozens upon dozens. Add in the fact that the YEC community seem as dumb as fence posts when it comes to science doesn't help their case either.

IF science and Evolution are so important to eachother then why were almost all of the great scientists YEC?


Could you please give me the best proof for Evolution then?

 

[Dannager]

IF science and Evolution are so important to eachother then why were almost all of the great scientists YEC?

You mean the great scientists who were dead before the modern synthesis of the theory of evolution was developed? I'm afraid those don't count.

 

[KerrMetric]

IF science and Evolution are so important to eachother then why were almost all of the great scientists YEC?

What you mean by great scientists are people primarily several hundred years ago when science was in its infancy.

The average undergrad physics student today knows more physics after their freshman year than Newton ever did in his lifetime. 400 hundred years ago many areas of science today did not exist or were in their infancy. Technology had not developed where many commonplace high school experiments could even be performed.

Also, in the 17th century there were probably at most a few hundred people you would call scientists. Today in academia alone there are hundreds of thousands worldwide each of which has the collective knowledge of hundreds of years of predecessors.

Of course many were YEC back then. There was little in the way of evidence for or against it. However, even then some scientists knew YEC had problems. By 150 years ago it was basically a dead idea.

Could you please give me the best proof for Evolution then?

Observation. We see it.