Getting the basics wrong

Wow, this thread has gotten off topic a bit. Bringing things back on track here…

It might be worth giving a few examples. Young earth claims that are not just wrong, but so bad that they are an insult to the intelligence of anyone who was actually paying attention in compulsory science classes in school. Or that demonstrate thinking that would get people killed if you applied it to any other area of science.

One that comes to mind is when they tell us that a light year is a measurement of distance, not time. While this is strictly speaking true, the suggestion that it means that distant starlight tells us nothing about the age of the universe is tantamount to denying either that velocity is distance divided by time, or that the speed of light is a thing, or both.

On one occasion on this forum we were told that intensity can be substituted for time. As I pointed out in response, that kind of thinking leads to thousands of people getting killed on the roads every year. That is why we have laws against speeding.

Then there’s Mount St Helens. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve had to remind young earthists who bring that one up of the simple fact that newly formed unconsolidated ash is not the same as hard, durable, erosion resistant rocks such as limestone and sandstone.

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