question for YEC believers

[Mallon]

I guess I shouldn't have said Omphalos "theory" because it cannot be falsified.

 

[Hammster]

In that case, maybe God just made us all last week and implanted our brains with false memories. That's just as credible as the Omphalos theory.

False dichotomy. What I'm saying is that just because we don't know the purpose doesn't mean that there isn't one.

Fwiw, I think that there are YEC explanations for the things you mentioned that give apperance of age. But I'm saying that even if I didn't, it wouldn't matter. But I don't want to get sidetracked with that because it wasn't the point of my post. Just mentioning it because the OEC have tried to hijack the scientific high ground.

 

[Mallon]

False dichotomy.

I don't think what I presented is a false dichotomy. Last Thursdayism uses the exact same logic as Omphalos argumentation. What I'm saying is that if you accept one, you have no objective reason to reject the other. None of these "false creation" scenarios are falsifiable.

Fwiw, I think that there are YEC explanations for the things you mentioned that give apperance of age.

There aren't. At least, there aren't SCIENTIFIC explanations. The miraculous Omphalos scenario you brought up isn't a scientific explanation, for example. And the RATE project people have no scientific explanation for how to dissipate 500 million years worth of radioactive decay in just 6000 years -- they have to invoke miracles. These aren't testable, scientific explanations.

Just mentioning it because the OEC have tried to hijack the scientific high ground.

That the earth is billions of years old is supported by scientific evidence. Other alternatives are not. Period.

 

[Hammster]

I didn't put forth a false creation scenario. By calling it that, you've created a straw-man argument.

 

[gluadys]

I probably won't post in here much since I think there are other places that I am better suited to post in, but reading some of the comments made me wonder. Why would someone think that God is being deceptive if He made things with the apperance of age? If the YEC view is correct, yet things have the apperance of age, how is that deceptive? The YEC view looks at the same evidence as the OEC group does and comes to different conclusions. Yet if the YEC side is correct, they are also going off of a literal view of Scripture which says that the Earth is 6000-10,000 years old. So if that is indeed correct, God said how old things are. If man-made dating is different, I don't think we should hold God accountable for that.

It is true that both look at the same evidence. But they look at it with an entirely different attitude.

An OE creationist looks at the evidence with the attitude: "I am looking at what God created and learning to understand it."

A YE creationist looks at the evidence with the attitude: "It appears that I am looking at God's creation, but since it can't be as old as it appears to be, I must reject the evidence as it is and think of its appearance as an illusion."

The second is not really an attitude of looking at the same evidence and coming to a different conclusion. It is not a way of making conclusions from the evidence at all. It is a reason to dismiss the evidence.

 

[Hammster]

That's fine. But that wasn't the point I was making. But on that point, I think the YEC just doesn't want to believe the same lie as Eve did. "Did God really say...?"

 

[crawfish]

If God created Adam and Eve with the apperance of age, yet tells us that they weren't that age, how is that deceptive? It would seem to me to be much more deceptive to give a six day creation account, but really be billions of years.

On the "created with age" issue: If God created the universe over billions of years, or just created it to *seem* like it was billions of years old, what is the difference scientifically?

 

[Jig]

This is why I said that YEC prioritizes an interpretation of scripture over physical evidence. Thank you for confirming that.

I'm not sure if you can take my opinion and apply it to EVERYONE who subscribes to YECism. I, however, just made the point that we all have the same physical evidence. I just interpret the physical evidence under a different philosophical foundation than OEC's. Since I believe in God, how can I believe in a purely naturalistic philosophy?

Exactly. The problem with the YEC viewpoint is first, that we cannot take physical evidence with any seriousness, since it is intended to deceive by providing an appearance of age that is not real.

The physical evidence isn't deceptive, it is what it is. Appearance of age?? Nope, age is a subjective term. It has the appearance of maturity, which has nothing to do with age. Age is assumed based on our own philosophical interpretation of this maturity.

And more than just an appearance of age, but of history as well. For example, was Adam created with a navel, remnant of an umbilical cord, implying a gestation in the womb that he never experienced? Did his adult teeth show any wear from years of chewing food? Were there fossils already in the ground of animals that never existed? And so forth.

No one is saying that God created wear and tear. The wear and tear we see is based largely on the Flood and a mixture of geological catastrophes and uniform erosion.

Jig is certainly right that if one assumes supernatural causes were in play, timing is irrelevant. Miracles explain any apparent contradictions. This is exactly WHY science cannot use miracles as explanation. They explain too much to be useful. All of science is built on the premise that "This is probably what happened IF there was no miracle." But IF there WAS a miracle, all the scientific study flies out the window because there is no way to predict when a miracle will happen or what it will do.

Nice to see you understand my point. Thank you.

The problem is these are miracles of convenience. All Christians believe that miracles can occur and have occurred. We all believe, for example, in the miracle of the resurrection. But to believe in miracles only because they make my interpretation of scripture work is a different matter. YE creationists have to uphold certain miracles (like creating an already mature earth, adult Adam, light in transit, etc.) only because their interpretation demands it. The rest of us, without disowning the principle that miracles happen, don't have to believe in these particular miracles, because our interpretation of the creation accounts does not require it.

Yes, a literal interpretation of Scripture demands a YEC viewpoint. I agree, your interpretation of creation doesn't require you to deny miracles all together, but is there a good reason to abandon the idea that a supernatural being probably created in a supernatural way? Is there good reason to abandon this story as being literal truth?

If the only point of alleging a miracle is to save one's preferred interpretation of scripture, that indicates a pretty weak interpretation of scripture.

For me to deny any of these supposed alleged miracles, would be for me to abandon a literal interpretation of Scripture where a non-literal interpretation isn't require or necessary. Now, that would be weak.

If I am guilty of anything, it is of giving God too much credit. I can live with that.

 

[crawfish]

That's fine. But that wasn't the point I was making. But on that point, I think the YEC just doesn't want to believe the same lie as Eve did. "Did God really say...?"

God told Adam that "in the day he ate of the fruit he would die", yet he lived for another 900 or so years. The problem was in not understanding God's word, not only not believing it. In this case, the figurative meaning (spiritual death) was true and the literal meaning (physical death) was wrong. Which seems to line up very nicely with TE.

 

[crawfish]

No one is saying that God created wear and tear. The wear and tear we see is based largely on the Flood and a mixture of geological catastrophes and uniform erosion.

What about the wear and tear of the moon, the planets, and the universe at large?

Honestly, the flood answers very few questions about the age of things.

 

[Mallon]

I didn't put forth a false creation scenario. By calling it that, you've created a straw-man argument.

To say that God created Adam or the Earth with signs of a history that never happened would be a false creation scenario, I would think. If God is not the author of confusion (1 Cor 14:33), I doubt very much that He would implant a false history in His creation.

 

[Hammster]

That's how you interpret ut so that you can shoot it down. Straw-man.

 

[Calypsis4]

The Bible says that we can learn about the nature of God from the things that He has made (Rom 1:20). If God made an earth with a false history (e.g., implanted fossils, meteor craters, polarity reversals), what should we conclude about the nature of God?

Also, there's a good review of the RATE that C4 touted here:
http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/2007/PSCF6-07Isaac.pdf

Notably, from the last paragraph: "Any portrayal of the RATE project as confirming scientific support for a young earth, contradicts the RATE project’s own admission of unresolved problems." Essentially, the RATE project folks admit to there being at least 500 million years worth of nuclear decay in nature, but they have no way of cramming that much decay into a young-earth timeframe short of invoking miraculous heat dissipation. And invoking miracles is not science.

Don't pay any attention to Mallon. As usual, he misses the mark on the issue. The truth is that there are other independent labs that did the same study of 14C in rocks and came to the same conclusions about the dating that the R.A.T.E. scientists found.

Documentation: "Lately the world’s best such laboratory which has learned during two decades of low-C14 measurements how not to contaminate specimens externally, under contract to creationists, confirmed such observations for coal samples and even for a dozen diamonds, which cannot be contaminated in situ with recent carbon.27 These constitute very strong evidence that the earth is only thousands, not billions, of years old." Dr. Russell Humphrey's of R.A.T.E.

 

[Melethiel]

Um...aren't there other methods of dating stuff than carbon-14?

 

[Mallon]

Don't pay any attention to Mallon. As usual, he misses the mark on the issue.

Hey, it's not just me that doesn't buy into the RATE project. It's the entire geologic community. And the reasons why RATE project's arguments are not accepted by geologists are given in the article I linked to earlier:
http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/2007/PSCF6-07Isaac.pdf

Other articles that pick apart RATE's shoddy scholarship can be found here:
RATE and Radiometric Dating

 

[Mallon]

That's how you interpret ut so that you can shoot it down. Straw-man.

Feel free to put a happier, more Christian-friendly spin on God implanting false signs of history in His creation. I don't see a theologically sound reason for accepting the Omphalos argument, though.

 

[gluadys]

I'm not sure if you can take my opinion and apply it to EVERYONE who subscribes to YECism. I, however, just made the point that we all have the same physical evidence. I just interpret the physical evidence under a different philosophical foundation than OEC's. Since I believe in God, how can I believe in a purely naturalistic philosophy?

As I said in an earlier post, to say you are "interpreting the evidence" under a different philosophical foundation is really inaccurate. Your philosophical foundation is the reason you do not give any weight to the evidence and feel free to ignore it. That is not really interpreting it and using it to come to a conclusion.

I don't know why you raise the issue of a purely naturalistic philosophy. Accepting evidence as what God created doesn't rely on a philosophy that denies God's existence.

The physical evidence isn't deceptive, it is what it is. Appearance of age?? Nope, age is a subjective term. It has the appearance of maturity, which has nothing to do with age. Age is assumed based on our own philosophical interpretation of this maturity.

Maturity does have to do with age, since everything we have experience of takes time to mature. An appearance of maturity implies that something has existed in time long enough to acquire that appearance.

No one is saying that God created wear and tear. The wear and tear we see is based largely on the Flood and a mixture of geological catastrophes and uniform erosion.

We should probably open another thread if we wish to discuss the geological evidence that refutes the idea there was ever a global flood. Again, it is really a matter of whether evidence has meaning. The evidence we have cannot support a global flood. So adherence to this interpretation of the scripture requires a philosophical foundation that permits one to reject the evidence.

Nice to see you understand my point. Thank you.

You're welcome. I appreciate as well that you are forthright about why you hold to a YEC viewpoint.

Yes, a literal interpretation of Scripture demands a YEC viewpoint. I agree, your interpretation of creation doesn't require you to deny miracles all together, but is there a good reason to abandon the idea that a supernatural being probably created in a supernatural way? Is there good reason to abandon this story as being literal truth?

Yes, here we get to the nub of the issue. A literal interpretation of scripture demands a YEC viewpoint. Equally a YEC viewpoint demands a literal interpretation of scripture. They go hand in hand. At least philosophically.

I would phrase the question differently. Is there good reason to adopt this story as being literal truth? YE creationists generally assume it as a given that without strong reasons not to, all scripture ought to be interpreted literally. But I have never seen a reason to agree with that assumption in the first place.

Equally, I would not assume as a given that without strong reasons not to, all scripture ought to be interpreted figuratively. I don't think such a priori principles are helpful in interpreting scripture.

But you are making it clear what the basis for rejecting the evidence of creation comes from. It comes from an adherence to the principle that scripture is to be interpreted literally. But what is the basis of that principle? Why is it so authoritative that on that basis one can declare the actual physical creation we experience is an illusion of maturity and reject the plain evidence of a universe of immense age?

For me to deny any of these supposed alleged miracles, would be for me to abandon a literal interpretation of Scripture where a non-literal interpretation isn't require or necessary. Now, that would be weak.

Thank you again for reinforcing that it is a principle of literal interpretation that demands generating unattested miracles. Is it not clear by now that this is arguing in a circle. The literal interpretation demands miracles and the miracles cannot be denied because it would jeopardize a literal interpretation.

But should our focus not be defending truth rather than a principle of interpretation? Surely the interpretation of scripture that brings us nearest the truth of creation is the one we need to seek regardless of whether it means a particular passage of scripture ends up being interpreted literally or not?

I have no idea why you would consider a non-literal interpretation "weak". If it is the truest interpretation, it is also the strongest.

 

[Partaker of Christ]

I don't think what I presented is a false dichotomy. Last Thursdayism uses the exact same logic as Omphalos argumentation. What I'm saying is that if you accept one, you have no objective reason to reject the other. None of these "false creation" scenarios are falsifiable.


There aren't. At least, there aren't SCIENTIFIC explanations. The miraculous Omphalos scenario you brought up isn't a scientific explanation, for example. And the RATE project people have no scientific explanation for how to dissipate 500 million years worth of radioactive decay in just 6000 years -- they have to invoke miracles. These aren't testable, scientific explanations.


That the earth is billions of years old is supported by scientific evidence. Other alternatives are not. Period.

Only God Himself is uncreated.
When He created man (Adam) he created him from earth. So what did God use to create the heavens and the earth? He must have used something that was already created. Whatever it was that He used, it must have had a created beginning unless it was from of God Himself.

So it could be that the heavens and the earth were created 6,000 years ago, but the material used to create the heavens and the earth, may have been created billions of of years before.

If I was to make a table out of wood, the table could be ten years old, but the wood could be 500 years old.

 

[gluadys]

Only God Himself is uncreated.
When He created man (Adam) he created him from earth. So what did God use to create the heavens and the earth? He must have used something that was already created. Whatever it was that He used, it must have had a created beginning unless it was from of God Himself.

So it could be that the heavens and the earth were created 6,000 years ago, but the material used to create the heavens and the earth, may have been created billions of of years before.

If I was to make a table out of wood, the table could be ten years old, but the wood could be 500 years old.

If it were just a matter of how old the material is, no problem. But we still have to look at what we actually find in creation. Did God, 6,000 years ago create what appear to be ancient skeletons of animals that never existed? Did he create termites' nests and ancient river beds hundreds of feet below the surface of the earth to give the impression of a paleontological and geological history? Did he create the shells of trillions of marine animals to build chalk cliffs with even though the animals themselves never existed? What of coral atolls, made (apparently) of the skeletons of once living corals? What of ancient fossil clam shells that exhibit fine lines corresponding to the diurnal rotation of the earth, providing a time-line of ancient history that never was?

What of the archeological remains of human habitations which are more than 6,000 years old? Did God create them too?

We know materials can be older than the formations (natural or manufactured) they are found in. One reason radiometric dating is not used on sedimentary rock is because sediments are made of eroded rock which is necessarily older than the layer of sediment. But there is much more to account for than the material alone.

 

[Jig]

As I said in an earlier post, to say you are "interpreting the evidence" under a different philosophical foundation is really inaccurate. Your philosophical foundation is the reason you do not give any weight to the evidence and feel free to ignore it. That is not really interpreting it and using it to come to a conclusion.

You are correct, some YEC appear to ignore the evidence. However, that is not to say all do. There are some very honest and brilliant minds within the YEC camp, just as there is with the OEC camp.

I'll have to disagree with you when you say that it is my philosophical foundation that pressures me to ignore the evidence. I personal try my best to give proper consideration to all pieces of evidence that falls my way.

Again, we all examine and study the same body of physical evidence.

I don't know why you raise the issue of a purely naturalistic philosophy. Accepting evidence as what God created doesn't rely on a philosophy that denies God's existence.

True, but naturalistic philosophy also allows for the idea that there is no God. This cannot be said of my philosophical position.

Maturity does have to do with age, since everything we have experience of takes time to mature. An appearance of maturity implies that something has existed in time long enough to acquire that appearance.

True, my point here was to show that we come to different conclusions of this "amount" of time based on our philosophical bias. I may see certain geological formations being formed rather quickly through a series of catastrophes, where you may see the very same geological formation and interpret it's "maturity - or wear" in another fashion, such as through some long uniform process. Or we may hold that a mixture of both occured but vary on how much of each.

This is what I mean by us having the same physical evidence but come to wide ranges of conclusions all based on our philosophical assumptions. The physical evidence we have is is not objective, it is subjective.

We should probably open another thread if we wish to discuss the geological evidence that refutes the idea there was ever a global flood. Again, it is really a matter of whether evidence has meaning. The evidence we have cannot support a global flood. So adherence to this interpretation of the scripture requires a philosophical foundation that permits one to reject the evidence.

The only meaning the physical evidence has is the meaning we apply to it.

I would phrase the question differently. Is there good reason to adopt this story as being literal truth? YE creationists generally assume it as a given that without strong reasons not to, all scripture ought to be interpreted literally. But I have never seen a reason to agree with that assumption in the first place.

It's all based on biblical hermeneutics. The creation story exhibits a literary style that demands a literal interpretation. In fact, it is the most natural reading of the text. It is only when personal philosophy is introduced that various explanations are provided. In this way the text is forced to conform to ideas contrary to its plain meaning.

You'd have to provide a logical reason to interpret the text outside its natural and plain reading. And you can't say that science or the evidence requires it, because those conclusions are assumptions based on a fragile philosophical system. You must provide something objective.

But you are making it clear what the basis for rejecting the evidence of creation comes from. It comes from an adherence to the principle that scripture is to be interpreted literally.

I interpret the bible as a literary source that contains literary devices. I read poetry in light of its genre. The same goes for historical narrative, satire, law, biography, personal correspondence, prophecy, or allegory. Again based on biblical hermeneutics. I'm involved at this very moment in a seminary-level lecture on the topic of proper hermeneutics.

I think you've misunderstood what it means when YECs say they interpret the Bible literally. When Jesus calls Herod a fox, do YEC literally think Herod was a fox? No, we notice this is a literary device that has a literal interpretation. That literal interpretation is Herod was clever.

But what is the basis of that principle? Why is it so authoritative that on that basis one can declare the actual physical creation we experience is an illusion of maturity and reject the plain evidence of a universe of immense age?

To be honest, I don't see a problem with a universe being of immense age. I just don't believe in it.

Thank you again for reinforcing that it is a principle of literal interpretation that demands generating unattested miracles. Is it not clear by now that this is arguing in a circle. The literal interpretation demands miracles and the miracles cannot be denied because it would jeopardize a literal interpretation.

This conclusion is based on a faulty understanding of literal interpretation.

But should our focus not be defending truth rather than a principle of interpretation? Surely the interpretation of scripture that brings us nearest the truth of creation is the one we need to seek regardless of whether it means a particular passage of scripture ends up being interpreted literally or not?

Wait one second. You are phrasing your comment in a way that assumes my interpretation is false. This is unfair. Truth may very well be within my position.

I have no idea why you would consider a non-literal interpretation "weak". If it is the truest interpretation, it is also the strongest.

I consider it weak because the text does not require a non-literal interpretation nor is it necessary. It is only applied because of ideas within naturalism and conclusions about our universe and planet that can not be known for sure.