Young Earth Frustration

[_Hoops]

For those that believe God assembled a world with all the canyons, lake beds, oil shale, etc already in place as if it had existed for hundreds of millions of years, I have a question. Why would God do it that way? Why go to such extremes when the natural laws can run it's course in it's own, beautiful way? Do you mean to say God would go to such extremes just to speed things up or to show off his power and ingenuity? You mean he placed every grain of sand, silt, and clay in just the right layers, pressurized it, weathered it with a time machine, and then warped them with a twist of his hand?

I think I realize what the belief is all about. They believe this life is literally a computer simulation. That is the only way it could make sense. That drops the meaning of our lives down a few notches, and elevates the meaning of the afterlife. Perfect fodder for a religion.

You'll have to ask them. If you can find anyone, cuz I don't know nobody who believes what you just wrote.

[_keithb]

The arguments for YEC that I have read seem to be in a few different camps.

I have seen the supernatural power argument. That is to say that God just made everything the way it is without needed to follow the natural laws as we know them. Everything that looks old just really isn't. The stars were powered by some other means than what they currently are (I may be misunderstanding this argument, sorry) thus allowing them to be visible on Earth before the Sun would have kicked in. All the Earths systems and patterns are misunderstood (like erosion). These typically lack source citations from anything other than scripture.

I have seen arguments that cite supposed scientifically unexplainable artifacts that have "disappeared." These articles always lack source citations and have the look of the National Inquirer.

Then, there are some arguments that have had a lot of thought put into them and include citations from scientific studies and articles and such. These, to me, are the only ones worth exploring or showing wrong using scientific evidence.

I think that if I could just bring people to realize that science doesn't happen in a vacuum in this thread, I would have accomplished something here.

Science believes that the universe is old because there is a massive amount of data supporting this theory. It's not as if a bunch of scientists got together in a smoke filled room one day and said, "Let's go make up a story about the Big Bang and get people to stop believing in the Christian God." The reason for the current model is that it's the one supported by the data, period.

All that the YEC's have to throw back at this are nebulous arguments along the lines of questioning how much science knows, how we can never be 100% certain of anything, etc. And, when those fail, they resort to childish distractions, like questioning someone's ability to read or using "lol" a lot.

The fact is that a YEC model of the universe where god (or Thor) created the universe and then made it look old doesn't make a single useful prediction and is basically indistinguishable from a model where ____________ deity created the universe ____________ time in the past and covered up all of the evidence.

Also, the idea of the YEC's trying to write articles filled with seemingly credible citations from different "scientists" that support their viewpoints is another joke that is only designed to bamboozle the untrained. There are literally thousands of scientific journal articles that have been published over the last hundred or so years supporting a model of the universe that is much older than 6-10K years. People just don't know about research tools like Google Scholar or how to do a database search (for example on something like EBSCO or Web of Science) in order to find these articles.

I hope that you are able to convince your hubby of the folly of YEC, just me. Good luck with that :)

[_just me]

But it's worth considering that if Genesis were to be taken literally, how would that be manifest in the creation? That's what I'm driving at.

What is the answer given to us by YEC?

I guess my thing is there are things that are manifest that shouldn't be if the account in Genesis is a literal one. Hopefully that makes sense.

[_Hoops]

I think that if I could just bring people to realize that science doesn't happen in a vacuum in this thread, I would have accomplished something here.

Oh, yes! If only the rest of us had your powers of perception...but, alas, there can only be one "you". Such a pity.

It's not as if a bunch of scientists got together in a smoke filled room one day and said, "Let's go make up a story about the Big Bang and get people to stop believing in the Christian God."

like questioning someone's ability to read or using "lol" a lot.

Also, the idea of the YEC's trying to write articles filled with seemingly credible citations from different "scientists" that support their viewpoints is another joke that is only designed to bamboozle the untrained.

Absolutely priceless.

[_keithb]

Everything that looks old just really isn't.

You seem to be attaching some kind of cosmic underhandedness to this. I'm not sure that's warranted. Nonetheless, this is why I asked the question before, and for which I would have expanded into other things. That question being: doesn't the light from space have some function, some utility, for a working complete universe?

Take that to the next possiblity. I suppose God could have made the first tree with just one ring, but what would be the consequence of that? The easy answer would be, "well, we would know when the universe was created." I'm not so sure. But that's not even what I'm after here. Is there some scientific, falsifiable utility to tree rings?

Anyway, you get the point. I'm interested in how all of this works together. If it does at all.

Now you're just writing nonsense Hoops ...

[_Hoops]

I guess my thing is there are things that are manifest that shouldn't be if the account in Genesis is a literal one.

That's the crux of my question. Why shouldn't they be? I don't know the answer.

[_Hoops]

[/quote]

Now you're just writing nonsense Hoops ...[/quote]
Of course.

[_just me]

I guess my thing is there are things that are manifest that shouldn't be if the account in Genesis is a literal one.

That's the crux of my question. Why shouldn't they be? I don't know the answer.

Because it seems like something a trickster god would do. Why would God purposefully create things in a way that scientific discovery shows to be really, really old if they are in fact really, really young?
Beyond that, why would he make it look like there was never actually a global flood? Because there are a lot of things that should be different if there was and a lot of natural laws that would have been broken.

Like, you bring up tree rings and ask why they would have to start with ring #1 on the first day they are created. Ok, so, that makes sense because of course they would have all been saplings at the same time and Adam/Eve needed some big trees, too. So, God created mature trees and not-so mature trees all with coinciding rings so that they all looked like they were impacted by weather and stuff the same years/rings. However, there is more to tree ring science than that including dating when a piece of wood was cut by the rings and something else so it still wouldn't be that simple.

I guess he did the same thing with the polar ice caps and the magnetic field.

Then we have fossils and dinasours. I guess they all just got buried super deep during the deluge and stuff.

The civilizations that have a continual history over the deluge timeframe. I'm not sure what that was.

DNA seems to present another problem for young earth and the deluge. DNA is being used to learn migration patterns that go back way farther than 6000 years. It also doesn't seem possible for the racial diversity we have today to stem from one family that lived 4500 years ago.

I don't know. This all starts looking like the supernatural power argument and science denying to me.

[_Hoops]

Because it seems like something a trickster god would do. Why would God purposefully create things in a way that scientific discovery shows to be really, really old if they are in fact really, really young?
Beyond that, why would he make it look like there was never actually a global flood? Because there are a lot of things that should be different if there was and a lot of natural laws that would have been broken.

Ok, so, that makes sense because of course they would have all been saplings at the same time and Adam/Eve needed some big trees, too. So, God created mature trees and not-so mature trees all with coinciding rings so that they all looked like they were impacted by weather and stuff the same years/rings. However, there is more to tree ring science than that including dating when a piece of wood was cut by the rings and something else so it still wouldn't be that simple..

Yes, this is what I'm getting at. I am asking why. If one assumes Genesis is literal, why would He do that? I am looking for: "He would do that because, light does X,Y, and Z in the universe. And tree rings do A, B, and C for trees." Or whatever. I am also looking for the converse. "Light has no impact on a working universe until or if X,Y, and Z occur." Or whatever it may be. If God did create mature and immature trees, why would that same approach be taken for other things in the universe? If necessary. It seems this question is not JUST a scientific one, but a theological one as well, as you indicated above. I'm confortable with the requirement that both be answered to some degree.

Secondly, I'm not sure that there is not good evidence for a world wide flood. But that's another question that must be answered after this one, don't you?

[_Ceeboo]

Hey good people.

Because I know more than a few YEC's in real life (Dear friends/customers/etc), I am fairly familiar with what their positions/beliefs are.

It seems that this thread is confusing/not understanding their position (perhaps a tad?).

If I may,

The YEC position/belief is:

The earth does not look old, it looks young (No trickery by God)
The Genesis/Creation are literal 24 hour days
The Dinosaur lived with human beings (Book of Job)
The Grand Canyon (as well as many other examples) is the result of a catastrophic Global Flood
The Fossil record speaks to a catastrophic Global Flood
The geneology account in Holy Scripture speaks to a young earth

These (as well as many, many, many others) are the positions that they hold and are willing to share amongst all who are interested.

If anyone is interested in hearing the positions of my beloved YEC brethren, I would strongly suggest, again, going directly to them for their positions.

I do not believe that the MDB board is the best place to hear/learn what their positions/beliefs are. (NOTE: If you find them to be enormously ignorant and do not have any interest in their perspectives, then please disregard my above suggestion) :)


Peace,
Ceeboo