In addition to the misrepresentation of unusual dinosaur footprints as giant human prints (although slightly understandable as a mistake initially, by now it’s lying to claim them as human) and carvings or paintings billed as actual footprints, there are also quite a few “footprints” that are based on imaginative interpretation of something that isn’t a print at all. There are also footprints reasonably similar to those of modern humans from pre-modern hominids, some of which are a few million years old.
Most of the major young-earth groups do not promote the human footprint errors any more; it’s now primarily coming from fringe sources like Carl Baugh. So the fact that the video includes that as a top 10 “proof” suggests that this is coming from someone who doesn’t even pay attention to the major young-earth groups.
The list does not overlap much which Answers in Genesis’ list of top proofs for a young earth, but in both cases, if those are the top proofs for a young earth, the case for a young earth is absolutely terrible and nobody should take it seriously.
In the realm of “top ten” proofs, @jammycakes, who participates here, had a blog series a while back debunking Answers in Genesis’s top ten best “evidences” of a young earth. It is probably not exactly the same as this “top ten” list, but YEC talking points tend to be pretty similar from one organization to the next, so it would likely be helpful for someone as a starting point:
Thanks! I was trying to remember who it was that had done that. We used to have a post on interesting blogs and podcasts we enjoy in the faith/science realm. May be time to do that again to have a reference.
In fact - (I’m a bit embarrassed to admit this) - but as long as I’ve been a regular around here, you’d think I’d be all over recommended resources, books, and ‘resource-notable’ posts like others of you around here and @Christy always are. But for some reason my organizational skills have lagged, and my memory certainly doesn’t fill the gap. So everytime I want to refer somebody to, for example, Glenn Morton’s awesome list of well-explained geological answers and rebuttals to all the nonsense, I can never seem to find it - or not quickly. So I’m glad you popped in with one of James’ excellent posts.
Didn’t we have some sort of thread or collection somewhere where we thought to consolidate valuable links, book referrals and such? I should probably just head over and look at the main biologos site again - as I’m sure there’s a resources or bibliography page there I should be staying current with.
It can be tricky when there is just so much that needs responding to, and so many different resources that speak to slightly different aspects of it for slightly different audiences and purposes. In the process of trying to find that one, I went to Age of Rocks, but they actually did 100 reasons the earth is old instead, which has more pieces of information, but may not be quite as focused as a “top 10” list…
This thread that Kendel started is very thorough as far as giving information about resources, so maybe could be opened up again if people have things they want to add.
I read the list of claims on that link and couldn’t stop laughing, especially the ones about the Grand Canyon. Then there’s this one:
The top Evolutionary Radiometric Dating Laboratories have now Carbon Dated dozens of dinosaur bones, and 100% of them only date as thousands of years old (we document it)
which reveals the problem with YEC material: THEY ARE LYING. The big lie here is that C14 dating is useful on dinosaur bones because C14 can’t date anything that old. So when they claim to have dated dinosaur bones using C14 they are following the Father of Lies by leading people to believe something that cannot by its very nature be true.
And that doesn’t make me laugh, it makes me angry.
If you know what he had to say in his last few days . . . that’s worth liking because it shows how every Christian should face death.
= - = + = - = † = - = + = - =
Yeah, that one makes me angry, too. There was all sorts of stuff to learn about St. Helens when I was studying geology because most of the geology faculty had actively studied it starting well before the eruption itself. It’s quite obvious that the YECists are deliberately looking to deceive people.
Actually if it was formed rapidly in soft sediments it doesn’t meander enough: it should have a thousand oxbow lakes and abandoned channels across an area at least three times as wide as it actually occupies, and the sides should have a slope of about 15° maximum.
I’m not even inclined to listen to the sample clip!
Their customers won’t know that. This should be a dead give-away that the vast majority of YECists are in it for the money! These guys will get thousands in speaking fees and don’t even have to learn anything new.
The sample audio clip includes the claim that dinosaurs and lizards are the same ‘kind’, the ‘reptile’ kind, in order to claim that no ‘kind’ of animal has ever gone extinct.
That’s not just an absurd stretch of what is covered by a ‘kind’, lumping T Rex, Diplodocus with dwarf geckos, but also suggests that Komodo dragons, tuataras, skinks, alligators, marine iguanas, flying lizards and nano-chameleons (and possibly anacondas, adders, slow worms, turtles and tortoises) all evolved from just two ark-borne reptiles in a few thousand years.
He didn’t mention pterosaurs, but for his argument to work they’d have to be the same kind as nano-chameleons too.
At least some of the proposals that I’ve seen would produce a completely straight valley because it should be getting carved in minutes to hours in the model.
If he can put all the dinosaurs into the lizard kind, even the ones like Kosmoceratops, Therizinosaurus and Sharovipteryx, lumping whorl-tooths into the shark kind and placoderms in with bony fish is easy. Geosaurus and Elasmosaurus might be harder to place.
Probably, depending on how soft the sediments were; I’ve seen some massive flood experiments where the outlet end had multiple channels, plus there were numerous side channels. It would also depend on how well the sediments adhered; low adhesion would produce a straighter channel because the sediments would be sloughing in fairly steadily while higher adhesion would produce a more wandering channel because the sides would fall in as massive slides or even chunks that would force the water to shift course.
Though another detail occurred to me: if that canyon was the result of a single massive flood event the delta down at the Sea of Cortez (Gulf of Baja) would be radically different. The delta as it is shows a long, slow, reasonably steady rate of deposition which is not consistent with a massive flood.
But a big trouble with “minutes to hours” is that the energy involved in drawing down water that deep would boil the oceans. YECists seem to be very good at ignoring thermodynamics!
A huge single flood would seemingly make a broad fairly shallow canyon or canyons with multiple channels, whereas a deep canyon with a single channel would require a smaller volume of flow over time within the same narrow channel to remove the same volume of material.
Also, this statement would actually be a problem for YEC claims on Adam being the sole male ancestor 6000 years ago:
“* Recent DNA Research Studies that confirm all humans genetically go back to one man, about 6000 years ago”
Reason being that if the literal view is consistent in holding to Noah’s flood being global and complete, the earliest single male ancestor would then be Noah about 4000 years ago, as I understand their math. (4359 years to be exact)
True. If one is trying to make it so that no kinds have gone extinct, what does one do with Herpetogaster, Vetulicolia, Hallucigenia, dinocaridid arthropods, trilobites, Cambropachycope, eurypterids, halkieriids, ammonoids, etcetera, etcetera; other than ignore them?
