Dead right. But who is doing this? Is there a link?
- True U: Featuring Dr. Stephen Meyer on Intelligent Design, Cosmology and the Origin of the Universe
- What Is the Science Behind Intelligent Design? (see in particular the heading "Evidence for Design in Physics and Cosmology)
- Is There Merit for ID in Cosmology, Physics, and Astronomy?
- Science and Evidence for Design in the Universe (“three scientists revisit the difficult and compelling question of the origin of our universe”)
Just a few examples.
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Thank you so much - I have based some further investigation on them. However, my purpose in trying to pin down a ‘YEC ID-er’ was to attempt to discover someone for whom the difference between ID and Evolution was not entirely philosophical. You will have seen that my contributions to this forum have often been based on trying to discover a scientific difference (i.e. one that could actually be observed) between the two, so far with no success. If any proponent of ID actually claimed that the universe was less than 14 billion years or so, then their evidence for doing so would be very interesting, but alas, I can’t find anyone. Your examples, including Stephen Meyer, Michael Behe, William Dembski, Hugh Ross and so on all accept an old universe, even though they sometimes claim that it isn’t important.
But how many of those names you name also accept a Very Old Earth? It’s the same threshold for science. If they all accept an Ancient Earth to go along with an Ancient Universe, that would actually be an important Factoid to store in our heads!
Alas, I’ve no idea. Are there any believers in ID reading this forum who could enlighten us? Generally, modern science accepts about 14 billion years for the universe and about 4.5 billion years for the age of the earth. Are there any believers in ID who think substantially differently?
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Science is a terrible thing to waste on Truth…
Please attend to the miracle presented in this video. There is just no way to explain this…
… without breaking out into uncontrollable laughter…
Imagine saying that a newly discovered fossil was found in rock layers 65 million years old. Or maybe 5 thousand years old. Or whatever. Who cares, right?
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Of course oddities like that should be discussed … but until there is a systematic existence of such a class of oddities, I don’t think it really changes the science, do you?
The internet is full of things like the hammer that was found in a coal field (I think?)… and things like that. But in the end, there are scientific assessments that explain how the oddity was created - - unintentionally by nature, or intentionally by a fraudster…
You misunderstand me. no good scientist would say a newly discovered fossil was found in rock layers 65 million years old. Or maybe 5 thousand years old. “When” is a big part of science.
It’s worth poimting out that many ID proponents (like Behe) do not hesitate to advocate for an ancient earth, when asked. Some (like Ross) have even made advocacy for an ancient earth a prominent theme of their core message.
I’m sure you agree with this post, Jonathan, so this is not directed at you really. It is directed at those readers who may be less familiar with the ID movement.
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Actually I’ve seen people provide plenty of evidence identifying the observable differences which make ID pseudoscience as opposed to real science.
Well it’s easy, you can start by just reading “Of Pandas and People”, and you’ll find this on page 92.
“An additional issue concerns the matter of the earth’s age. While design proponents are in agreement on these significant observations about the fossil record, they are divided on the issue of the earth’s age. Some take the view that the earth’s history can be compressed into a framework of thousands of years, while others adhere to the standard old earth chronology.”
And here’s a classic piece of intelligent reasoning.
So the bottom line is when someone tells you that the Earth is 4.5 byo, all they are really doing is telling you the speculation based on the assumption (that the Earth was not intelligently designed).
Or you can read a paper like this one.
But despite the differences, there are still a number of similarities between ID and YEC, so much, in fact, that some YEC proponents have found a home in the ID movement.
It also contains gems like this.
For example, ID cannot resolve the issues of biological ancestry or the age of Earth, because in-group members disagree about them.
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[quote=“Jonathan_Burke, post:31, topic:35581”]
Actually I’ve seen people provide plenty of evidence identifying the observable differences.
[/quote]Well, that’s more than I have. Can you link to one? I tried to get something out of a few posters here, but nothing concrete emerged.[quote=“Jonathan_Burke, post:31, topic:35581”]
Some take the view that the earth’s history can be compressed into a framework of thousands of years
[/quote]So they say. But who? and where?[quote=“Jonathan_Burke, post:31, topic:35581”]
some YEC proponents have found a home in the ID movement.
[/quote]So they say. But who? and where?
If there actually is a single exponent of ID who thinks the earth is less than a billion years old, has he ever stood up to be counted?
Yes - Paul Nelson holds to YEC, and is an ID proponent.
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In reality, most proponents of ID think the Earth is young. For most supporters of Intelligent Design see intelligence in the miraculous special creations of all the animals alive today … rather than see ID as a way of tolerating Evolution, with multiple moments of God’s intervention in Evolution.
It’s this same “bias” for interpreting natural history that allows even those who believe in Old Earth that not only is there Evolution, but also de-evolution! Behe is one of them.
But I’ve never once read a coherent definition of De-Evolution.
Thanks. Actually, I’ve been hunting about, inspired by Jonathan’s suggestions, and find that both the authors of “Pandas” are also described as YEC. However, in my edition, there is no suggestion that they think the earth is young - quite the reverse. Although the passage quoted by Jonathan above is certainly present, the rest of that chapter (on fossils) repeatedly refers to things happening millions of years ago, and a table on Page 99 gives the “First Appearance” of Kakabekia at over a billion years ago.
Moving on to Paul Nelson. Googling “paul nelson” “age of the earth”, the very first entry is from sandwalk.blogspot.com. Laurance A. Moran begins: “Paul Nelson is a Young Earth Creationist. He believes the Earth is less than 10,000 years old and all modern species were created separately.” To which, in a comment a few lines further down, Paul Nelson himself replies: “I don’t endorse either of these propositions.” Although he does claim to be a “young-earth creationist”. Weird or what.
The second Google find is from unseenevidence.com. Here we have: “Paul Nelson and John Mark Reynolds admit,
Natural science at the moment seems to overwhelmingly point to an old cosmos. Though creationist scientists have suggested some evidences for a recent cosmos, none are widely accepted as true. […] As it is now interpreted, the data are mostly against us. […] Recent creationists should humbly agree that their view is, at the moment, implausible on purely scientific grounds.”
Hardly a robust defence of a young earth on scientific grounds.
The search goes on…
It is my experience that ID people think of their group as a big tent that welcomes YECs as much as anybody. For that reason they are very reluctant to answer questions about the age of the earth. Watch the recording of the science vs ID debate at the American Museum of Natural History (I can provide a link if you want) or watch the documentary “Kansas vs Darwin.”
That is a quotation from their book. They go on to explain why Christians should believe in a young earth anyway, despite the lack of scientific evidence. They even go on to defend the idea that God created the universe with a fake past. Their book is called “A Case for Young-Earth Creationism”. So yes, both Paul Nelson and John Mark Reynolds are YECs who hold to Intelligent Design. Your search is over.
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Sadly, I think you’re right. In so far as we evolutionists (using ‘evolution’ in its broadest sense) enjoy a discussion with non-evolutionists, we prefer to do it on scientific, not philosophical grounds. I never have any complaints about true YECists who reject science altogether. It’s a point of view which I don’t share, but cannot challenge. However, many aspects of ID claim scientific validity, and insofar as they differ from evolution, I’m interested in the challenge. To me, though, a crucial aspect of science is its universal coherence, and if ID is not prepared even to try to co-ordinate its biological ideas with the broader fields of cosmology and geology, then even its biological credentials remain no more than whimsy.
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The litmus test to distinguish a scientific theory from a faith or religion, is that a scientific theory is falsifiable and therefore can be tested, in contrast to a faith or religion.
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The theory that the earth has an age of billions of years, is contradicted by comprehensive empirical evidence. See: secondary problems, nr.1 at http://evoskepsis.nl/english/problems.html
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The faith that the earth was created in 6 days of 24 hours, is contradicted by Genesis 1, which tells that the sun and the moon were created on the 4th day. As a consequence, the basis of the human measuring of time did not yet exist on ‘day 1’ , ‘day 2’ and ‘day 3’ and in the preceding period.
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The age of the earth is not the issue, but the claim of Naturalists and Darwinists that natural processes of decay can create and innovate, and have the potential to produce DNA and DNA mutation repair systems. That claim is contradicted by empirical evidence and empirical science and is no more than an irrational faith. See further: The Second Law of Thermodynamics also holds for open systems and What is the Evidence for Evolution?