Yes, and she might even be willing to start boarding airplanes and take trips to places on the other side of the world that she had previously denied herself. But…she would still be a teacher, she could still walk to work, and she could still teach her students all the same subjects - even geography, albeit with some better tools.
One of the things causing some differences of opinion here is over the question of which reality they are labeling as hypothetical. To the majority old-earthers here, it is a no-brainer that of course any young-earth reality is hypothetical to an extreme. Hence their inability to even imagine academic pursuits or understandings under such a regime. One might as well ask a mathematician how their professional life would change if we now take 2+2 to equal 5. They understandably just scratch their heads in puzzlement, and muse about needing to head to different careers. BUT, what most old-earthers here are failing to appreciate is that this young earth hypothesis is far from hypothetical to young-earthers themselves. They instead are thinking of the deep-time situation as the hypothetical one. And they see the real world as the one in which they have been living and carrying on – complete with what they see as compelling evidence (to them) that the world is actually young. The one thing we all agree on is that we all do live in this real world and have been getting on fairly well in the world just as it is (young or old). So they are puzzled about people speaking of drastic life changes should they prove to have been wrong about something. After all, haven’t we all been living in and getting on fine in this world just as it is? I know - the “about something” above is a mighty big something to a lot of folks who are immersed in science for a living. I get that. I’m one of those in part at least. But it is a failure of imagination on our part to not see where Mike is coming from in this. There are plenty of YECs who have become medical doctors or engineers or many other things without that having been a trouble to them. (Biologists, geologists, cosmologists, petroleum engineers, … and a lot of other specialized fields would be another matter I know – I get that too). But Mike’s point still stands nonetheless.
All observations are of the past. By the time any sense information reaches you, the event that produced it is in the past. It’s just a question of how far in the past.
But how could we know reliably that God had told us that? This is why I previously asked you for a more detailed scenario. How do I know what to trust, if I can’t trust the obvious implications of my sense impressions?
Memories are our “observations” of the past. Yes, it’s not technically a direct observation, but it is 99.9% of what you have to work with when you think about anything. So you had better resign yourself to the fact that your brain uses them. The present snapshot of sensory experience your brain is getting right this moment would be 100% meaningless to you without a host of memories to give meaning and context to it. If you can’t trust anything of what you know about the past from your direct senses and your indirect learning about it, then you have no hope of understanding, much less adhering to any biblical revelation or teaching whatsoever.
We’re just using words differently. I consider memories observations from the past. And I certainly wouldn’t want to live without them.
The “observations of the past” to which I was objecting are primarily those events projected (assumed, estimated) to have occurred before human memory or recordkeeping.
So what would you call a fossilized dinosaur nest complete with intact eggs, broken eggs, and baby dinosaurs that you can hold in your hand? It represents an event that occurred in the past. You know the event happened. Coming up with a date might be a projection but that doesn’t change the fact that it did happen.
Hi Mike,
Maybe it helps if I describe some of the projects I have been doing over the past few years:
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Two years ago I spent 9 months simulating the movements of stars throughout our galaxy over literally billions of years, to test whether we can measure the shape of the dark matter “cloud” around our galaxy.
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Over the past year I have simulated evolution of simple organisms over many thousands of generations in order to study the emergence of communication and positive-negative distinctions in such communication (approach versus avoidance).
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This year I’ve been working on simulations of how black holes launch matter into space over distances of millions of light years. It literally took millions of years for these effects to result in what we observe today in space.
So yes, all this work would be nonsense if the earth/universe were young and evolution were a hoax. That would have direct, practical repercussions for my daily life. The age of the earth is not some far away, “esoteric” topic for me and thousands of other scientists around the world. I’m not talking about “shame” here, I’m talking about the actual research which would cease to exist and would not make sense anymore in the hypothetical scenario that we would (somehow?) find out that the earth is actually young.
In your second paragraph, you ask why we shouldn’t “trust the obvious implications of our sense impressions,” but in the first you gave a reason.
Thanks for fleshing that out, though my intelligence and education are such that I can’t fully appreciate why it would all go out the window if you found out that the universe was created by supernatural processes over six days rather than by natural processes over 14 billion years. All it would mean is that the numbers you were working with were theoretical and not historical. It wouldn’t change any of the calculations. It wouldn’t change any of the projections. Can a theoretical model not project an actual result?
Because we study directly the evidence of event history that natural processes have unambiguously left behind over the course of billions of years. Research is done on how to interpret all that evidence today. The scenario you sketch would undercut all attempts at interpretation of that evidence. In principle, God could have made everything seem like natural processes have been occurring over billions of years, by placing misleading evidence there. However, if that would be true, He could also have made us all last Thursday, including our most vivid memories of the past. This would be absurd, but it is just to illustrate why that kind of reasoning runs into problems. It implies deception on God’s part. [edit: Such deception is more difficult to square with the Bible than billions of years and evolution… 
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There is no such distinction. A correct theory tells us correct things about history, in order to explain what we see today. If the theory is completely wrong about history, the theory itself is (most likely) wrong and we have no reason to trust what it tells us about what we see today.
Could you expand on this question? I’m having difficulties with understanding what you intend to say here.
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This isn’t analogous to what Casper wrote, Mike.[quote=“Mike_Gantt, post:51, topic:36307”]
Thanks for fleshing that out, though my intelligence and education are such that I can’t fully appreciate why it would all go out the window if you found out that the universe was created by supernatural processes over six days rather than by natural processes over 14 billion years. All it would mean is that the numbers you were working with were theoretical and not historical. It wouldn’t change any of the calculations. It wouldn’t change any of the projections.
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Wow.
Do you realize that you opened by saying that you don’t understand Casper, yet you have no problem coming to a sweeping conclusion?
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Sorry I didn’t make myself clear. So what would you call it? From or of? To me it would be both. It would be an observation of the past using an object from the past. Do you see my confusion?
We’ve been down the road in one of these threads about God’s so-called “deception.” As I’ve said, I just don’t get it. It’s sounds to me like a flat-earther saying that if the earth revolves around the sun then God was deceitful to make it look like it was rising in the east every morning.
EC’s and YEC’s each have their own theory about the past which they believe explains the present. Whichever theory is right, however, the present is still the present. It doesn’t change because one theory replaced another - although perception of the past would. But since no one is living in the past, what would it matter in practical terms?
Maybe it’s different in science, but when I was a business executive I valued a good theory because it helped me predict the future. That it might explain the present or the past as well was of secondary importance.
I don’t mean to diminish at all your perspective, but it really does sound to me like a person hearing about another dimension of reality besides appearance that he is just unwilling to seriously consider.
Mike,
They aren’t equivalent. Then you touch on why:[quote=“Mike_Gantt, post:55, topic:36307”]
Maybe it’s different in science, but when I was a business executive I valued a good theory because it helped me predict the future.
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The YEC “theory” doesn’t predict what we’ll observe the future.
Can a Flat-Earther predict the upcoming solar eclipse? Can he even explain it after the fact?
You know the answer to that, Mike.
One cannot set aside a significant portion of natural findings, and the even greater set of natural laws behind them without triggering a domino effect where natural law is logically dismissed everywhere.
I was listening to a radio interview with the author of the The Great Quake - an Alaskan quake in 1964 That essentially forced scientists to confront a brand new realization: that earthquakes are triggered by the movement of vast tectonic plates…especially where one plate is forced to plunge under the more irrestible opposing plate.
This is widely accepted now. But what would you do if an Adventist said:
“It is a lie… God said the Earth cannot be moved. Since we are a planet, God couldnt have meant the Earth’s orbital movements … which only leaves the solidity of the Earth’s surface! If the surface moves in jolts and constantly…it would mean God is a liar !”
The difference is that there exists a sound explanation for that apparent disagreement, one that can (in principle) be understood by the flat-earther. Are you suggesting a scenario in which a sound YEC explanation would somehow “fall from the sky” for the entire body of evidence in every field of science relevant to this question? In that case, I might be able to continue doing my research but then within that new framework (after serious reschooling!). Though it would look nothing like any YEC researcher has come up with so far. In that case, I would actually be very curious to find out what it would look like!
I have tried to explain that my research is largely about understanding the evidence of past events. In your hypothetical scenario, that evidence would become meaningless and the corresponding past events would be non-existent. Therefore, I would have nothing to do research on. It is an answer to your question in practical terms.
It is different in astronomy, because we are mostly observing events that happened thousands, millions, and billions of years ago (because of the time light needs to travel towards us). We are always looking at the past. 99,9999% of the observable universe lies beyond the distance that light can travel in 10,000 years. In most cases, we are directly observing the universe as it used to be, millions of years ago. In that sense, astronomers are living in the distant past, most of the time 
.
It saddens me that I have given you the impression of being unwilling to consider your hypothetical, because it was my sincere intention to do so. I actually enjoyed letting my imagination run loose. It made me realize that, in that hypothetical scenario, my area of expertise would simply cease to exist. I have seriously considered your hypothetical and this is an honest answer.
If there would be a completely new form of expertise that could replace my work (as described in the first paragraph of this post), I would probably learn about that new framework and start working within that. But that would still involve a huge change of career. This cannot be framed any other way, I’m afraid.
Which brings us back around to my original question: “Why would anyone trust observations about the present if observations about the past have no connection to reality?” You appear at this point to be willing to discard anything we learn from our senses in order to maintain the idea of a young earth. But if we can’t trust our sense, we also can’t trust the Bible or other people, since we only learn of them through our sense. What have you got left at that point?
No. I’m asking why we cannot trust God if He tells us something is not as it appears. If the flat earther can trust the scientist, I don’t understand why the scientist cannot trust God.
I accept this and appreciate it. Please don’t stop trying.
Leaving aside that you’ve brought us back to your original question without having reconciled my original objection to your framing of it, you have failed to recognize the implications of your having, in your penultimate post, demonstrated that there can be valid reasons for not fully trusting your five physical senses.