My first thought was this this meant an equilibrium between secular people joining the church and believers leaving it.
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Yes, there are; the equilibrium is used in uranium series dating that can give dates up to at least 1,000,000 years. Uranium–thorium dating - Wikipedia
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To summarize the state of the YEC accelerated nuclear decay model as it stands:
For no fathomable reason or purpose, during Noah’s flood the intensity of radioactive decay over the entire planet was arbitrarily cranked up to something like the inside of a nuclear reactor undergoing meltdown. All the evidence YEC offers for acceleration would have been eradicated by the heat inherent to the proposed decay, so the very existence of such evidence falsifies the idea. They have never committed to any solution to this self contradiction. They have no defined field theory. Despite emphasizing the exactness of fine tuning elsewhere as an argument for design, they have not the slightest idea if modifying the relevant constants would immediately extinguish life. They do not apply acceleration to all radioactive isotopes, selectively dismissing acceleration if contradicting their evidence for acceleration. The riddle of what to do about the acute lethal radiation poisoning persists. There is no mention of the million fold spike that could be expected for atmospheric helium from alpha decay.
This hair brained scheme was fluffed to a book length hairball to appear as a serious work, and the RATE project was consecrated into the YEC canon. To some measure, it achieved its objective. To many adherents, that formally qualified scientists produced a dense and technical volume was enough to satisfy their need for the existence of a refutation to radiometric dating. They are not in a position to notice the false witness of omission and commission.
The illogic and daftness of all this demonstrates the challenge that geochronology poses to young earth beliefs.
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You’re being too kind to them there, Ron.
22,400°C according to their own calculations.
That would make the inside of a nuclear reactor undergoing meltdown look like a cryogenics experiment.
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@adamjedgar I would respectfully disagree. I am a Christian and I believe that God can do anything He likes with creation. I affirm every miracle the Bible records, and I believe that Christ will raise believers bodily in the future.
The issue for me is not what God could do, but what He would do. Biblical miracles all have a purpose in God’s redemptive plan, and generally are “signs” done for the benefit of human witnesses to see God’s glory. YEC proposes miracles like accelerated nuclear decay and heat removal which would have no human witnesses and no effect on the world except to create an apparent record of great age. It is hard to see how this would not be deceptive, and that would be contrary to God’s character.
I started a discussion on this at Peaceful Science: The Burning Bush Reversed: the Unbiblical Miracles of Young Earth Creationism
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In her YouTube channel Erika aka Gutsick Gibbon, never one at a loss for words, has occasionally discussed the heat problem, with this being the latest
and @Joel_Duff summarizes and comments on that video here:
Divine Intervention in Geology: How the “Heat Problem” is Reshaping Creationist Theory
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My guess is that … like God … like religion … like war (the kind that is supposed to end all wars) … the death of the subject always ends up ‘having been exaggerated’. The people mourning (or exulting) over the tombstone in the garden are back again the next year … next decade … still fighting the same battles. Human stubbornness and stupidity are the constants that never ever seem to get defeated. And when they seemingly are … resurrection is a thing! The trick is, one just ignores the facts they don’t like. And if you’re one of the few who ‘has seen the light’ - you’ll die off and be replaced by several who haven’t.
Looking forward to some point when our institutions can be ruled by some knowledgeable ‘elites’ again. No populist dentists or plumbers for me please!
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Erika’s point was the YEC folk appear to be slowly, very slowly, turning to acceptance of miracles as a required part of the process. Thus it is the “scientific” part of scientific creationism that is dying.
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Yeah - her points and presentation (the bulk of it) are well done - and major points taken. I have one quibble with one side-comment she threw out toward the end … something to the effect that it is "theistic evolutionists who are ‘adding to scripture’ " or something like that. I mean - yeah - I guess TEs come in a lot of flavors and varieties too, so some who are stuck with various strict concordisms they try to force are probably what is fueling that perception of hers. Maybe it’s too much to wish that critics might actually engage with more theologically robust proponents who acknowledge that attention to genre and interpretation as well as attention to science are both indispensible things. People like the main “TEs” (ECs) around here are known for doing this. And they are exactly the ones refusing to try to make the Bible say more than is there.
But as her thing is more science and not religion, and certainly not a main point - I shouldn’t be trying to hold her accountable for a side comment. All the rest of what she says is so accurate and spot-on! Which is why I presume she would also take an interest in getting her facts straight even regarding various religious ‘sub-species’ too.
So to her main point - yeah - “scientific” creationism has already shown it’s non-viability many times over to any scientific thinkers who’ve given the issue much attention; and the heat-death is then maybe the first time we see the YECs themselves (many of them) largely and finally acknowledging the need for a miracle. So maybe that is pretty significant. Kudos to her for showing how plainly it is laid out, and how it comes from YECs themselves no less! I still think she’s optimistic if she thinks that they’re just going to roll over and let the “scientific” garb fall away. For one thing, people are quite adept today (here in the U.S.) with living in alternate realities, and I can guarantee you that if I went up to just about any random YEC that I personally know and asked “so what about the heat problem?” … the response would be “what heat problem? What is that?” And why would they say that? Because they will never in a million years (or even 6000) watch a video like this one. They’re too busy living in the reality of their own careful selection of information - a carefully curated view where this problem will never be mentioned, except in some dismissive sort of way if at all. If you think “well, people can’t ignore this!” then you are yet again underestimating the human capacity to ignore huge chunks of reality - to which the reality-ignoring mobs here in the U.S. have responded by saying “challenge accepted! Just watch us!”
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Well stated. As I’ve noted sometimes before, if they’re going to invoke random miracles, why don’t they shut down the whole argument about the size and seaworthiness of the Ark by saying God wrapped it in a force field that held it together? That at least would be a miracle with a purpose!
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They could also claim that the Earth used to be flat and covered with a solid dome originally, only acquiring its present day spherical shape during the Flood.
I seem to remember reading somewhere that Tolkien’s legendarium had a cosmology that did something like that.
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That’s pretty much exactly what happens to Arda (the world for LoTR, the Hobbit, the Silmarillion, etc.) at the end of the Second Age-- the world becomes a sphere, instead of a flat disk, and Valinor and Tol Eressea (which were across the ocean from Middle Earth) are removed so as to only be accessible by Elves.
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So the Flood covered the entire world under the dome, then God took the dome away and the water drained off to fill the oceans? Creative!
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Once you invoke miracles to make inconvenient evidence go away you have admitted defeat, at least scientifically. The fact these miracles are wholly unnecessary, both physically and theologically, further illustrates the emptiness of YEC. It’s like a little kid claiming God used a miracle to plant all of the cookie crumbs and melted chocolate on his face after his mother discovers an empty cookie jar.
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