What is curious about flat earthism is that there was also a modern geocentrist movement about 15-20 years ago that seemed to be gaining ground alongside the flat earth movement. They used the exact same kind of literalist arguments and accusations of bias and conspiracy on the part of scientists to support their view. The main difference is they believed Earth was spherical but at the center of the universe and that the solar system revolved around it. The ones I encountered believed in the Tychonian model rather than the Aristotelian model. What is interesting is that modern geocentrism as a movement appears to be extinct (their main website no longer exists), while the flat earth movement continues. My hypothesis for why this is the case is that flat earthism is more ideologically consistent. As a geocentrist, you are still buying into the narrative of science (“we used to think earth was flat but science disproved it”). With flat earthism, you just reject everything. Interestingly, most flat earthers I know of still appear to believe in genetics and nuclear physics, since their are also big conspiracy theorists who think the government is planning to start a nuclear holocaust and creating genetically engineered bioweapons. The other reason is probably that a flat earth view is funnier and more likely to attract trolls since it is more obviously incorrect.
My point was to address what was specifically written outside of a hollow, generic critique that didn’t actually address the arguments made by the article. This lack of rigor and attention to detail is how the myth just kept going. Now I say this in reference to only one small part of your response. It was the part I originally highlighted. Your critique on that part was generic and looked like a poor AI response. This is not meant to cast doubt on the rest of your post which was generally solid in my opinion.
That of course does not mean that was not the issue (or primary one) of the authors under discussion or that darwinism didn’t intensify the need for them. I found the flat earth stuff and the Draper and White info quite informative. The author took a dig at darwinism at the end of the article which kind of sullied an otherwise solid piece. Of course, I think it was a creationist journal so I just assume it was a bit of choir preaching and standard fare in those circles. Many very conservative Christians tend to say similar things about every academic consensus that disagrees with some of their core beliefs (archaeology, critical scholarship, science etc.). It certainly added nothing to the discussion for me and the connection was not substantiated.
You like to nitpick a lot so maybe a bit of your own medicine. A lie is an intentionally false statement. Most YECs genuinely believe what they are arguing. They are not knowingly putting out false information as true. That is a very poor and judmental word choice.
Vinnie
If you are talking about the people warming the pews I would agree they believe.
If you are talking about the leaders I would have to disagree. There is one example of a very prominent “expert” that talks thousands of years in his YEC writings but used millions of years in his professional, peer reviewed work.
And one anecdote justifies labeling YECs liars? Open the windows. Get some fresh air.
Because that’s the picture that both archaeology and the Old Testament paint. Israel is portrayed as continually wanting to be “like the nations”, meaning all their ANE neighbors, and countering that comprises a huge total of what’s in the OT, starting with Genesis 1 itself denouncing the Egyptian gods.
Where in the scripture is there any indication that God cared about teaching science to anyone? This is where YEC goes off the deep end! Science is not part of the Gospel, it is not part of preaching repentance, it is not involved in sanctification, so why would any of the inspired writers – assuming some kind of divine download into their brains – have given it any attention at all?
Really? You think God would spend time teaching science when people are perishing spiritually? You get that because you’re imposing a MSWV onto the text, indeed imposing it onto God, insisting that He has to speak in your terms and according to your understanding.
You’ve got that backwards: the ANE culture was the culture of the Israelites for the most part; it’s what the prophets kept trying to pull them away from! The irony is that YEC takes most of the theology that Moses directs against ANE errors and tosses it in the trash by misreading the opening Creation story!
It’s an assertion from a faith that is not based in the text of the scriptures!
Spot on.
More generally, ancient Israel is a part of the ancient Near East. Many of the neighboring peoples spoke the same or closely similar languages; they traded with them, fought with them, and interacted in other ways. Moses was learned in the wisdom of the Egyptians; Abraham had the common knowledge of a successful Mesopotamian pastoralist; Proverbs contains sayings derived from foreign sources. The Israelites drew on information from their neighbors and vice versa.
Of course, the Bible is not merely borrowing from ideas current in the region. Not only is it inspired by God, and thus quite exceptional theologically, but also different peoples have their own ideas. But examination of other writings from the region gives us information about vocabulary, cultures, politics, and more. We can see where prophets took up pagan myths to make fun of those gods and their followers. Indeed, the Bible does not stand independent of the culture. It is not an exhaustive encyclopedia. It assumes that people have certain background information. For example, many of the rituals described in the Pentateuch are puzzling because the directions assume common knowledge that is lost to us. Leviticus tells us what is needed for a proper wave offering. But it doesn’t say exactly how you offer it, nor exactly what it means as opposed to other types of offering.
Apart from the Bible itself, we have very little writing from ancient Israel itself. The libraries of clay tablets from Mesopotamia and the inscriptions and papyrus rolls from Egypt provide large samples of writing that tell us some things about the beliefs and cultures of the larger neighboring countries. If a belief seems to be general across peoples within the various information from surrounding cultures, there’s a decent chance it was also accepted in Israel. That’s not proof, but a likely supposition.
On the specific question of a flat earth, the earth does look flat (not without hills and valleys, but does not obviously appear to be round). It’s a reasonable guess as to what the whole world looks like. Unless you travel long distances, it’s hard to get enough evidence to point otherwise. The Bible does not say “the earth is flat.” But it uses the imagery of a flat earth. Did the ancient Israelites ever think about the shape of the earth? Probably not often. Would they probably have guessed that it was flat, if you asked them? It seems likely. ANE data confirms that other people living in the area believed in a flat earth, including those who the Israelites would have seen as more scientifically informed than themselves. The data support, but do not prove absolutely, that ancient Israelites would have had similar assumptions.
Sadly, many examples can be found where a particular professional young-earth advocate gives information that they know to be untrue. What counts as lying has a further complication. Professional young-earth claims generally have an implicit, if not explicit, claim to be well-researched, reliable data when often they clearly made no effort at verification. They know how much they checked the information before publishing.
The followers may not know (though they frequently seem not to care), but the leaders of the movement have too much expertise and knowledge to not know that they are putting out false ‘information’.
This is especially the case for those who continue to make the same false claims even after they have been conclusively demonstrated to be false.
Cf. Gish and hydroquinone, Sarfati and supernova remnants, Snelling and grand canyon cracks, Hovind and Dima. Those are lies. So is the claim that the world was considered young until Darwin. Anyone making that claim is either creating or repeating a lie.
One anecdote?
There are hundreds.
If you don’t know that you shouldn’t be pontificating on the subject. If you do know that, and given your extensive history on this and other forums you really should know that, …
Interesting question here. Does not caring whether a false statement is false make it a lie?
I would classify a lie as a statement that the person making it knows or should reasonably be expected to know to be false. Hence false statements about science made by trained scientists would be lies, when those made by people with no scientific background who lack the skills and expertise to check would just be ignorance.
But if someone doesn’t care, that tips the balance somewhat. Certainly if they are in any kind of teaching or leadership role, they should care. Such people have a duty to make their best effort to ensure that what they are teaching is accurate. They are in a position of trust, and not paying due care and attention to the integrity of what they are teaching is a breach of that trust.
To paraphrase St. Augustine, if someone doesn’t care if they are making false statements about science then why should they be trusted to tell the truth about scripture?
Exactly.
I would classify a statement made by some-one who hasn’t a clue whether it is true or not as a lie. Perhaps even if it turns out to be true.
If I was to say “There’s a hedgehog in my back garden”, that’d be a lie. I haven’t looked there today, I’ve never seen a hedgehog there before today, and obviously I know both those things.
But I have seen a hedgehog in the alleyway behind my house, albeit only once (I looked for it in the same place later and it wasn’t there), so it’s possible that there is a hedgehog in my back garden. As I said, I haven’t checked.
But me stating that “There’s a hedgehog in my back garden” would be a lie even if there is one, because I know it may not be true.
So when some-one states that ‘the world was considered young until Darwin’s time,’ either they know that might not be true (in which case they’re lying), or they don’t know that it might not be true, and are just repeating what they’ve been told, in which case they’re very ignorant, and very gullible. If they also present that claim as something they know is true, rather than something they’ve been told, they’re also very stupid and effectively lying by omission. This is particularly true when posting misquotes. So the options are: (i) knowledgeable but lying about facts, or (ii) ignorant, gullible and lying by omission.
Neither produces credibility.
Lies are intentionally false statement the person knows are false. That is an extremely serous accusation. If you are so polarized that you feel the need to make up your own language just so you can label those who disagree with you as liars, let me know when your dictionary comes out.
You were grotesquely wrong on Mother Theresa. What is the evidence for Snelling? As I responded to Bill in private message, accusations of lying sometimes are true and sometimes they are just repeated stories. I’m not that interested in this issue but take exception to labeling YECs liars. Incorrect is a more gracious word choice.
Is the link above an incorrect assessment of Snelling? Was he actually hiding cracks with a picture? I have never spoken to the man or his team. Have you? What is the actual evidence besides regurgitated anecdotes online? I am sure there are charlatans out there. But without any real statistics, anecdotes don’t justify you in calling some thing a YEC lie as you did (carte blanche).
Vinnie
The assessment is by a fellow YEC who agrees with Dr. Snelling.
Yes. The picture is actually well known as the people Dr. Snelling added to the photo are all standing in front of cracks. A strange coincidence if that is what it is.
Dr. Snelling stated in a AIG article that there are no cracks.
He also spent 4 years studying rock samples trying to come up with a mechanism that could explain the cracks (which he said weren’t there) but his paper basically said he found nothing. To be gracious you could say he was just incorrect, but why the refusal to just admit he was incorrect?
I’m not sure if that’s intended as an ad hominem argument but it doesn’t change how I assess the evidence. Imagine if I said that the analysis of some evidence for evolution was made by an evolutionist. Or that analysis of the resurrection was made by a Christian. So what?
Are there quotes or links to that statement?
Vinnie
Especially given how often the prophets had to repeatedly call the people back from drifting into those neighboring cultures! All the way through to the Exile the history of Israel is one of a people inured by the general ANE culture, especially from their immediate neighbors.
That fits YEC quite well – they’re not honest about either one.
Not ad hominem. Just pointing out the “assessment” is one-sided.
I provided a direct quote from here.
Edit to add: I think this is brought up so often as it is one of AIG’s “Best Evidences from Science That Confirm a Young Earth”.
I’m thinking of James 3:1 here.
Not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly.
As I say, it’s a matter of trust. When you are learning from a teacher, you are trusting them that they have done their due diligence, to the best of their ability, in making sure that what they are teaching you is accurate. If they are teaching things that you later find out that they should reasonably have been expected to know to be false, given their level of education and their actual or claimed authority to teach about such things, it is only reasonable to conclude that they have committed a breach of that trust. The more blatant and egregious the falsehood, the harder it is to excuse it.
It’s also worth considering this discussion that we had a few years ago on the extent to which we should assume good faith on the part of young earth advocates:
Thanks for the link. They point out that Andrew Snelling has indeed acknowledged the existence of the cracks in question. However it is worth noting that his acknowledgement of the fractures is only made in a lengthy technical report that was published in 2021. The dodgy photograph, and the claim that the rock formation in question was not fractured, is in a popular-level article that is one of a series that frequently gets re-posted on their Facebook feed and that of their supporters and that was first published in 2012. The thread on this forum discussing this misrepresentation was in September 2017.
The assertion that the rock formation was not fractured is spelt out explicitly in the popular-level article, in the caption of the photograph itself:
Photo 1: The whole sequence of sedimentary layers through which Grand Canyon cuts has been bent and folded without fracturing. This includes the Tapeats Sandstone, located at the bottom of the sequence. (A 90° fold in the eastern Grand Canyon is pictured here.)
As of today, this article has not been updated to correct it, though it does have a link to the technical report at the bottom. I am not aware of any acknowledgement of the fractures by Snelling et al that predates our 2017 discussion, though if someone can provide a link to one I will be happy to acknowledge it.
Perhaps that is why Christ said “call no one teacher”
There is a fallacy here that Teachers are just there to impart their knowledge and learning. Part of the education system is to inspire thought and personal understanding.
It seems that depite the claims otherwise ad hominum reigns supreme here which is why people seem happy to attack the person as much if not more than what they are saying. I think what @Vinnie is trying to say is that perhaps there comes a point where the mental well being and health of a person supercedes even truth , or at least claims of it. There is a certainty and assertion on this forum that I find unhealthy. The need to be right is placed above all else, including our humanity to each other.
Richard
@Bill_II included a quote in his post.
I think it is extremely dishonest to reply to a post which includes something by ignoring and omitting that item and then requesting it as if it was not there.