That may have been a plausible argument in the 1970s and 1980s but it has not had a shred of merit since the YEC organisations spent $1.25 million on the RATE project, and it has become even less credible since Answers in Genesis spent $100 million on the Ark Encounter.
What YECs need to produce in terms of evidence is not quantity but quality, and you don’t need billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money for that. Nobody expects you to come up with thousands of studies a year supporting a young earth. But we do expect the studies that you do come up with to be as least as rigorously executed and at least as tightly constrained as conventional old-earth science. $1.25 million should easily have been enough to come up with something better than tiny samples with huge error bars in support of levels of accelerated nuclear decay that would have vaporised the earth if they had any basis in reality.
It’s as simple as this, Craig. Science has rules and honesty has rules. If YECs don’t want to be called liars, they need to stick to them.
And ICR, AIG and CMI are not just hand-waved away as “dishonest” or “ignorant.” On the contrary, you will find specific examples of specific rules of honesty and factual accuracy that they demonstrably flout.
Similarly, if you don’t want your evidence to be discounted or ignored, it needs to meet the same standards of rigour, precision and quality control as mainstream science. YECs are yet to provide any evidence that comes anywhere close to that standard.
What you’re doing here is effectively asking for a free pass to claim anything you like. We might as well just accept that mermaids are evidence for a young earth, because treknobabble.
The difference between biofilms and original tissue is observable, testable and repeatable, even if you must insist that “were you there?” is a legitimate argument (which it isn’t, but that’s a discussion for another time).
The same thing can be said about the difference between haemoglobin and heme breakdown products, between intact blood cells and fragments of blood cells, between skin and fossilised skin, between DNA and DNA breakdown products, and so on and so forth.
The bottom line is that YECs repeatedly make claims about what the soft tissue remnants prove on the basis of demonstrably untrue statements about what the soft tissue remnants actually consist of.
This is a perfectly legitimate argument. The preservative properties of iron on collagen have been demonstrated in the laboratory.
No YEC is not “bad” for spending time and money on conferences and education. YEC is bad for spending time and money on conferences and education that teach falsehood, misinformation, and antagonistic attitudes towards science.
No, BioLogos is a forum for people who believe that claims about science made by Christians should be based on honest reporting and honest interpretation of accurate information. Anyone who agrees with this will find it worthwhile to spend time here, but you should expect to have it explained to you what honest reporting and honest interpretation of accurate information actually looks like, and to be held accountable for making sure that the claims that you are making actually meet that standard.