How do I fairly teach YEC Cosmology/Geology?

[Randy]

What do you think about a brief review of Falk and Wood’s lessons in dialogue from The Fool and the Heretic?
Those who write disparagingly of your teaching don’t want to hear the truth; it sounds like nothing you say will convince them. To get a good review, you can meet them on common ground of listening to each other. Using this example of a respected YEC who emphatically says (in the January Series cast today) that Falk is not a heretic, and that he’s learned a lot of theology he didn’t know prior to talking with Falk, may open their minds to talking nicely and maybe eventually learning.

Best wishes.

[T_aquaticus]

@pevaquark

Anyways this is an honest question. How can I fairly present YEC ideas (presumably giving some students the idea they have equal merit) such that YEC students won’t feel I’m just teaching ‘my opinion’ with bias?

You could let the students construct the hypotheses. Have them present the YEC ideas. You could ask them what they would expect to see in the geologic and fossil record if there was a recent global flood. For me, the honest way to approach questions about nature is hypothesis testing. Figure out what we should see if the hypothesis is true, then see what is in nature. Let the chips fall where they may. However, there are many people who think “fair and honest” is avoiding conflict between beliefs and facts, so there’s that.

[Laura]

@T_aquaticus

You could let the students construct the hypotheses. Have them present the YEC ideas. You could ask them what they would expect to see in the geologic and fossil record if there was a recent global flood. For me, the honest way to approach questions about nature is hypothesis testing.

I notice that often when you engage with users here from a YEC or ID perspective, you use sort of an unofficial “Socratic method” of discussion, where you ask questions of the person to help draw out some of their underlying assumptions. I’m sure it can be quite effective if someone is really interested in learning, because asking questions forces them to figure things out for themselves that you could have just told them (though there is a place for that too). Plus, nonconfrontational questions can help reduce some of the defensiveness that’s often a part of apologetics thinking. Not sure how well that would translate to a large class of students, but it’s something I aspire to be better at in my own interactions.

[SkovandOfMitaze (Mi)]

I guess if my job was to teach the theory it’s what I would do. I would read up on the ideas and get quotes and teach it. Then make a test based on those answers to test they learned it. While doing this I would say I don’t believe it.

Same as if I was teaching a class on Buddhism or anything else that I don’t believe in. I would teach it as it’s taught by those who believe it and test the students ability to retain it and make sure it’s clear this is not my belief on it.

[Tim_Matter]

Former YEC here. I think a good approach is to stress how firmly biology is based on evolution and geology is based on a very old Earth, and the students who want to get jobs related to these fields will have to know these (You could say wrongheaded ideas) well enough to get hired.
I have a question to get them thinking. What good is the YEC version of geology? Are there any successful YEC based oil exploration companies? Why does creation itself reward only old Earth believing geologists.

[Dominic_Roy_Accampo]

Creationists are not anti-science and anyone who is a creationist or who believes in truth and reason over winning debates through insulting people should be offended by those liberal minds which call us anti-science.

You sir must surely know of countless instances where largely unsupported theories have filled in gaps on science to support the Old Earth Hypothesis and the theories of evolution. While you should, if you have done a reasonable amount of research, know about instances where esteemed evolutionary minds simply lied in support of their beliefs.

One example of unproven conjecture that supposedly proves part of evolution is the common DNA chain that supposedly proves common ancestry despite a rather pathetic amount of evidence for these common ancestors. Yet the Bible gives a Common Creator as a cause and your maligning this, is not proof that the Bible is not right, namely the fact that this Common Creator did exactly what computer programmers do today by cutting and pasting DNA segments to create similar structures with the same DNA segments. While close relationships between man and animals help us to avoid some of the human experimentation, though not all of it, that we might be tempted to otherwise do.

Then there is one example of fraud by professor Reiner Protsch von Zieten who falsified the age of a skeleton and Lucy who is depicted as having human hands thought no hands or feet weer found:

Many atheists like you refer to God as, “The God of the Gaps,” despite the fact that God is Lord, Creator and Sustainer of all things, explained or not. But the real truth of today is that evolution is the theory of the gaps where every gap in our knowledge is filled in with evolutionary theory, despite the fact that such theories have been proven ludicrous in so many areas. For one example, when it comes to the evolutionary theories on how the universe formed and how this compares to scientific testing Professor Michio Kaku describes the mismatch between theory and testing as a factor of one to the one-hundred and twentieth power:

While one last note: Why do you think that the very idea of a miracle is absurd? Do you also think that nothing can exist unless it is proven? Do you truly think that the human mind is the ultimate reality? To quote Einstein, - “There are two ways to view life, as if nothing is a miracle and as if everything is a miracle.” Your choice to view the world in the former way proves only your own mind set and not the reality that you think it proves.

[T_aquaticus]

@Dominic_Roy_Accampo

Creationists are not anti-science and anyone who is a creationist or who believes in truth and reason over winning debates through insulting people should be offended by those liberal minds which call us anti-science.

I don’t know you at all, but it might help to give an example of what I think is anti-science:

By definition, no apparent, perceived or claimed evidence in any field, including history and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the scriptural record.
Statement of Faith | Answers in Genesis

If someone throws out evidence because it contradicts a conclusion, then that runs counter to the very essence of how science operates. Ken Ham himself has stated that no scientific evidence will ever change his mind.

@Dominic_Roy_Accampo

One example of unproven conjecture that supposedly proves part of evolution is the common DNA chain that supposedly proves common ancestry despite a rather pathetic amount of evidence for these common ancestors.

The differences between the genomes of different species is very strong evidence for common ancestry. @glipsnort has a wonderful essay on this evidence if you are curious:

https://biologos.org/articles/testing-common-ancestry-its-all-about-the-mutations

This would probably be a great lesson for a YEC biology class. The YEC students could try and explain why transitions and CpG mutations occur at the highest rate in humans, and are also the most common differences separating chimp and and human DNA.

@Dominic_Roy_Accampo

Many atheists like you refer to God as, “The God of the Gaps,” despite the fact that God is Lord, Creator and Sustainer of all things, explained or not. But the real truth of today is that evolution is the theory of the gaps where every gap in our knowledge is filled in with evolutionary theory, despite the fact that such theories have been proven ludicrous in so many areas. For one example, when it comes to the evolutionary theories on how the universe formed and how this compares to scientific testing Professor Michio Kaku describes the mismatch between theory and testing as a factor of one to the one-hundred and twentieth power:

In a YEC class, what would be the YEC theory that could be presented and how has it been scientifically tested? Or has it been scientifically tested? Or better yet, how could the YEC theory be tested?

[jpm (Phil McCurdy)]

Interesting to quote Kanu in The Principle when you look at the allegations of intentional misrepresentation of science in it:

The Principle

Quote from wiki article: Michio Kaku said that the film was probably using “clever editing” of his statements and bordered on “intellectual dishonesty”,[10]

[03Cobra (Vance)]

Teach both creation stories, the one in Genesis 1.1-2.4a and the one beginning in Genesis 2.4b.

A thinking student will notice that they are mutually exclusive as literal history.

[Mervin_Bitikofer]

Sorry it’s taken me so long to thank you for your last reply! And in case you’re still around, I’ve got a tangential question … but first a comment. At first I was still a little puzzled at the notion of an “intergalactic” medium that would seem to provide some sort of ethereal “substrate” for everything as if there is, then, (contra Einstein) some absolute signpost by which all motion of the universe can be measured. But you made it clear that this is all a relatively “local” event, i.e. relative to a local cluster.

This sets me thinking about the “intergalactic medium” generally. According to this encyclopedic entry at an educational website, the galactic medium may be one of the hottest (millions of Kelvin) regions of space because the particles there would have horrendous kinetic energy. But at only about 1 particle per cubic meter, we would obviously freeze in that rarefied (but hotter than the sun’s surface!) environment! I guess by contrast, the average interstellar medium is a thick soupy atmosphere, (which is yet still thousands of times more rarefied than our best laboratory vacuums!) So one question I have from all this is: Even though intergalactic space is so rarefied, yet there is so much of it - and at such high temperature. Shouldn’t the cosmic background radiation then be much higher than the measley few Kelvin that it is? After all, most of what we’re looking through is the IGM.

Another tangential question: I know that the cosmological principle teaches that all vantage points in space are supposed to have identical observations - i.e. all will see everything else moving away from it (the farther away, the faster the recession on average - Hubble’s constant). I’ve heard the surface of a balloon with dots on it used as the analogy. Every dot sees every other dot getting farther away as the balloon inflates. But given this, can’t we still spatially trace this observation back towards some fixed Newtonian point? I.e. if it really were a balloon and we could see all the dots even across to the other side of the balloon, we could still have a concept of a 3-D center of inflation in the middle of that balloon. Why can’t we do the same with the cosmos and have some rough idea in which direction away from us the big bang origin should be? I suppose the answer will have something to do with our failure to find any edge, as well as the isotropy of our observations preventing us from identifying any “center”. But still, it would seem the “balloon” analogy is totally broken on that score then. Any light to shed on all that?

[gbob]

As probably the only published young earth creationist author (30 or so published yec articles in CRSQ) here on this forum, who became fully an evolutionist, rejecting YEC, I think you teach the theology of it as the first and foremost point. I have worked with YEC geologists in the oil industry–good geologists, some of whom were so good at what they did as geologists as to become multi-multi millionaires, who felt the theology constrained them to that belief. I would gladly work with them again because of their geological skill. The rest of it, a miraculous universe created with an appearance of age is what one has to believe to believe the theology.

Indeed, they feel like I do that historicity is extremely important–except they won’t budge from their anti-evolutionary position–again evolution is rejected based on the idea that God wouldn’t use such a cruel means to evolve us. Also, the theology of the fall is much weakened if it isn’t a single pair. Even H. G. Wells knew and acknowledged this problem but modern liberal Christians won’t acknowledge the problem:

“If all the animals and man have been evolved in this ascendant manner, then there would have been no first parents, no Eden, and no Fall. And if there had been no Fall, the entire historical fabric of Christianity, the story of the first sin and the reason for an atonement, upon which current teaching bases Christian emotion and morality, collapses like a house of cards.” H. G. Wells, The Outline of History, (Garden City: Doubleday, 1961), p. 776-777

H. G. Wells is correct and modern accommodationalism which has false words coming out of God’s mouth or at least out of his inspiration, breaks the trust we have in Scripture. To deny this issue is to say that YECs have no theological point, and they do!

I agree with Phil, if that is the job do it. One problem I see in academia today is that no one is capable of actually arguing the other side of what they believe. No matter the issue or subject matter, people fell as you do, that the other side has zero merit. That means, one doesn’t really understand the other side and will mis-represent that side, whatever the issue is.

[pevaquark (Matthew Pevarnik)]

@Dominic_Roy_Accampo

You sir must surely know of countless instances where largely unsupported theories have filled in gaps on science to support the Old Earth Hypothesis and the theories of evolution. While you should, if you have done a reasonable amount of research, know about instances where esteemed evolutionary minds simply lied in support of their beliefs.

So your argument is that supposedly some scientists one time made stuff up or lied or that all scientists everywhere are constantly lying?

@Dominic_Roy_Accampo

one example of fraud by professor Reiner Protsch von Zieten who falsified the age of a skeleton

Yeah and he was in a lot of trouble for lying – thanks to the scientific community who were investigating him and his claims. That example actually strengthens the science that we do have, so thanks for pointing that out.

@Dominic_Roy_Accampo

But the real truth of today is that evolution is the theory of the gaps where every gap in our knowledge is filled in with evolutionary theory, despite the fact that such theories have been proven ludicrous in so many areas. For one example, when it comes to the evolutionary theories on how the universe formed and how this compares to scientific testing Professor Michio Kaku describes the mismatch between theory and testing as a factor of one to the one-hundred and twentieth power

What does this have anything to do with evolution? Also that number, a ‘mismatch’ of one to the 120th power has nothing to do with how the universe formed. It also isn’t even really a mismatch as there is no theoretical model that can actually predict the cosmological constant. Here’s a nice blogpost summarizing the number: Sabine Hossenfelder: Backreaction: The cosmological constant is not the worst prediction ever. It’s not even a prediction.

@Dominic_Roy_Accampo

While one last note: Why do you think that the very idea of a miracle is absurd? Do you also think that nothing can exist unless it is proven? Do you truly think that the human mind is the ultimate reality?

Was your post supposed to be a post arguing in favor of young-earth creationism?

[jammycakes (James McKay)]

@Dominic_Roy_Accampo

Creationists are not anti-science and anyone who is a creationist or who believes in truth and reason over winning debates through insulting people should be offended by those liberal minds which call us anti-science.

You sir must surely know of countless instances where largely unsupported theories have filled in gaps on science to support the Old Earth Hypothesis and the theories of evolution. While you should, if you have done a reasonable amount of research, know about instances where esteemed evolutionary minds simply lied in support of their beliefs.

There are a couple of things that you need to realise here. First of all, it will take a lot more than just a handful of examples of fraud to falsify scientific theories that have been established by hundreds of thousands of careful studies across multiple disciplines. You need to demonstrate that such fraud is pervasive, systematic, and ubiquitous. Given the extent of the data and the number of scientists (including grad students or even undergraduates) involved, such a conspiracy theory isn’t even remotely plausible.

Secondly, by using expressions such as “esteemed evolutionary minds” here, you are using “evolution” as a catch-all term for anything and everything about science that you don’t like. This is something that YECs do all the time, and I’m sorry, but it is anti-science. It is passive-aggressive and hostile.

This takes me to my next point:

@Dominic_Roy_Accampo

Creationists are not anti-science

If you don’t want to be called anti-science, don’t say anti-science things.