Quite correct, I largely agree with much of your impressions here. YEC should be accepted or rejected based on how well it either does or does not line up with the facts at hand.
If interesting, In particular, my own biggest critique of YEC is oddly enough the same as my critique of EC… someone committed to YEC is utterly unable to see evidence for old earth or evolution even if it were right there for all the world to see… their commitment to certain presuppositions would preclude their ability to see such things even if all the evidence was right there. Similarly, for me… I cannot help but see EC’s commitment to Methodological Naturalism as doing essentially the same thing in the other side. Someone utterly committed to MN would similarly be unable to see evidence of God’s special creation if evidence for it was right there for all the world to see.
Pay close attention to my next statement after that, Daniel.
Do you have any hands-on experience of working with complex systems where one thing depends on another, Daniel? I have been working with such systems for years, and I can assure you that if you change something at the bottom of the dependency tree, you break everything that depends on it. This isn’t just an assumption or an assertion: it’s something that you learn the hard way from hands-on personal experience. That is why I say it is unrealistic to postulate that the speed of light has changed. The speed of light sits right at the very bottom of every dependency graph. If you change the speed of light, you change everything.
This is the problem with YEC. They aren’t just “open and willing to challenge cerrain assumptions that other scientists seem entirely unwilling to even entertain.” They end up challenging basic fundamental facts and principles that other scientists and engineers rely on to make things work properly without blowing up in their faces.
I’m sorry, but dismissing these things as “begging the question” or “assumptions” or “assertions” just demonstrates a lack of understanding of the basic principles of how science actually works.
Psychologists have demonstrated that beliefs play a role in the process of perception, turning the raw data of the senses into meaningful information. Thus if we go by perception alone we cannot get past our basic subjectivity.
Science has devised a way of doing so with these two methodological ideals:
honesty - this is by testing an hypothesis rather than trying to prove it.
objectivity - this is by limiting our claims to the results of written procedures which give the same result no matter who follows them or what they want or believe.
Thus we can get past the basic subjectivity of our perceptions by limiting our premises to what is established according to these methodological principles. Theoretical biology sometimes loosely referred to as evolution adheres to this standard and creationism does not.
I understand and have heard that mentioned often. Personally, it doesn’t bother me at all, because I see MN as a principle guiding science. I agree that science should explore the natural explanations and come to natural conclusions. I also don’t believe that God left tangible evidence for his special creation. I believe that in the evolution of life and the creation of the cosmos, He has left many indications for us, but not proof. I think this is His intent, too. Faith is what He demands from us, and a leap is what faith takes. Not a blind leap, though.
EDIT: I think that your description of someone being utterly committed to MN is important, too. Anyone who is utterly committed has adopted a philosophy that is leading them. As Mitchell points out above. Being closed-minded, they will miss, as you say, the indications that God has left to be seen.
I believe that the issue was of word choice. I winced when I saw “because it is one of the fundamental concepts” … but I think it was clear what you intended in your next statement. This highlights one of the problems in discussing these issues. People (in general) are often looking to find where someone is wrong rather than trying to understand what they mean. We all need to be more charitable in this way.
agreed and granted. I am merely suggesting that God is:
Smart enough time know exactly what all those changes will be, given the specific change to c,
Smart enough to modify c in ways that will actually achieve his purposes downstream in that way that everything is interconnected, especially given that
God is also able to change all the other constants that interact with or are otherwise affected by any change in c, and
God is also smart enough to know the downstream consequences of any and all other modifications of universal constants, as well as how they interact with each other, as combined, including c.
thus the fact that changing the speed of light changes everything else, I do not see how that presents some kind of insuperable obstacle to the purposes of an omniscient and omnipotent creator that created the very forces of physics that we’re discussing. If God had wanted to change c for some purpose, he might well have done so… perhaps he might have had to simultaneously modify the strong and weak forces in certain ways to “balance” the effects of increasing or decreasing c, I can hardly imagine. maybe changing c simultaneously alongside gravity and the strong and weak forces in very specific fine-tuned manners changed everything such that they accomplished something glorious that we could hardly conceive of, rather than simply making everything break as you suggest?
i simply object to the idea that God could not change c because He would either have no idea what that would do, or because he wouldn’t be able to control the chaos that would result, or he would be unable to adjust or fine-tune the other universal constants to compensate or to achieve some other useful phenomena given the change in c, or some such argument as that.
OK I think I get where you are coming from. The only problem is that changing the speed of light in that way would almost certainly require changing other physical constants in mutually contradictory ways.
But even if it were possible, I just have one question here: why would He do so? Such an action serves no obvious purpose whatsoever other than making the Earth look older than it really is in the most complicated and convoluted way imaginable. At that point, you might as well ditch any attempt to invent new physics at all and just go for a straight-up mature creation with the appearance of age and fake history.
It is possible that the speed of light was orders of magnitude different in the past than the present measurements. Back when the speed of light was 5 km per hour, your mass would increase during a brisk walk, and when you returned home you would find your spouse had passed away of old age. The implication of this is that light has been greatly speeding up, has now reached an upper asymptote, and the universe is hundreds of trillions of years old.
It is possible that radioactive decay was speeded up in the past, enough so that there is not one atom of an unstable isotope to be found anywhere in the universe. This is known as the “decayed isotope paradox”.
It is not so much that YEC is willing to challenge the assumptions of science, but that YEC is explicitly unwilling to challenge its own assumptions, as per the AiG statement of faith…
By definition, no apparent, perceived or claimed evidence in any field, including history and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the scriptural record.
simply that part of me has a problem with the suggestion that, if God did want to create a starry sky that people could look at, that the only way an omnipotent God could do such a thing is to create the stars, then sit back for some howmany ever hundreds of millions of years, and wait for the light of said stars to finally reach earth, and only then he would be able to create people who could look up and enjoy the starry sky.
To me, that sounds more like we’re describing the only way we could imagine it working, rather than what God would be able to do.
now if interesting, I take issue with the idea proposed by some YEC that suggest God “simply” created light in transit, as to me, that really would cross the line into doing something “deceptive” (now i wouldn’t entirely rule that out either, but they’d have to explain to me why i’m seeing a “history” in the light of distant stars created in transit - e.g., supernovae - but that never really happened? that does seem deceptive in the extreme)… but the idea of God doing all manner of things to accelerate his universe-creating process simply to create a universe instantly, or near-instantly, that met his desired specifications for his purposes doesn’t seem either far-fetched nor particularly difficult for him, as i consider all things involved.
appreciated. if i may restate for clarity (and since I saw @rsewell’s very helpful quote of the YEC position…)
There are certain conclusions that the YEC takes off the table as “illegitimate conclusions” before the inquiry starts. Certain conclusions are deemed “invalid” from the beginning. Namely, any evidence from any field that contradicts (their interpretation of) the scriptural witness is deemed invalid a priori even before any scientific inquiry begins, and is thus not even allowed to be considered.
Now, I’m a fundamentalist, evangelical, inerrantist biblical literalist… but i acknowledge that my understanding of Scripture may be wrong, and thus i allow general revelation (science) to correct my understanding of special revelation (Scripture), just as my intention is to be just as ready to allow special revelation to correct my understanding of general revelation, as each gives clarity and interprets the other. thus I am not willing to remove any conclusion from the table a priori before inquiry begins, based on my own interpretation of Scripture, which i may come to understand was in fact faulty.
However, by that same reasoning…
There are certain conclusions that the EC takes off the table as “illegitimate conclusions” before the inquiry starts. Certain conclusions are deemed “invalid” from the beginning. Namely, any evidence from any field that points to immediate or special creation by an intelligent agent is deemed invalid a priori even before any scientific inquiry begins, and is thus not even allowed to be considered.
Thus by the same token, I am not willing to remove any conclusion from the table a priori before inquiry begins, based on some claimed “proper” philosophical method of “doing science”.
Rather, I reject the basic philosophical approaches of both YEC and EC (“follow the evidence unless it leads to certain conclusions”) because i prefer the more simple, reliable, trustworthy, and obviously correct approach of, “follow the evidence wherever it leads”.
That is like asking him to write out an entire library. The evidence is simply overwhelming.
Lets just take one example which I explored just this morning: the grand canyon. We can date all the layers of this canyon.
that is 270 million years to 1840 million years in grand canyon alone.
Can we trust these dating methods?
Better than we can trust that the earth is round rather than flat.
Why?
Because only a few nations have been able to put spacecraft in orbit to see the shape of the earth for themselves but in the case of dating we have at least 20 different dating methods in over 142 labs in over 50 countries. Thus it is easier to believe that the earth is flat than to believe that the earth is only a few thousand years old.
Someone else could explain the specifics better than I, but here’s my layman’s description, if helpful… others can correct if I messed something up…
it is used for dating organic / materials, or those that were alive… organisms I understand take in carbon atoms from the environment that, due to various factors, have a rather consistent percentage of a variation of carbon that is radioactive… it has more neutrons than your typical carbon atom (known as Carbon-14 or C14). These radioactive atoms decay at a steady predictable rate. But once an organism dies, it is understood that it is no longer absorbing new carbon atoms from its environment (through absorbing CO2, eating, etc.), therefore will have no more intake of new C14.
Thus, we essentially can accurately estimate the “starting level” of C14 in any given organic material at its death, and thus calculate based on the steady and constant decay rate how long it was since said organism died.
However, while the C14 molecules do last quite a while, they do decay faster than other types of radioactive material. Thus if I recall correctly, after about 50,000 years any C14 that was in something organic will have completely vanished.
(Now, as I hinted at earlier, all of this is based in the assumption that the rates of decay have in fact remained steady over the course of history. I for one am open to hearing alternative theories on that topic.)
That’s my simplistic layman’s, explanation but others here with more knowledge may want to expand or correct what I’ve said here.
Carbon dating can only be used for things that were once alive. Carbon-14 is a radioactive form of the element carbon. It decays into nitrogen-14 at a known rate, with a half life of 5,730 years. When organisms are alive, they are constantly incorporating carbon; plants get most of their carbon from the air in the form of carbon dioxide, and animals get most of their carbon from the food they eat. In a living organism, the ratio of carbon-14 to carbon-12 will be the same as the ratio of the two carbon isotopes in the atmosphere. When the organism dies, it stops incorporating carbon, and the ratio of carbon in the organic remains begins to change as the carbon-14 decays into nitrogen-14. Scientists can calculate how many years have passed since an organism died by comparing the ratio of carbon-14 to carbon-12 in the sample with the ratio in the atmosphere. Radiocarbon dating is typically used on samples that are presumed to be less than 30,000-40,000 years old, although very sensitive instruments may be able to detect remaining carbon-14 in samples up to 70,000 years old.
Radiometric dating is used to calculate the age of a rock or other object based on analysis of the proportion of radioactive isotopes present in the sample. The nuclei of radioactive isotopes are unstable, and over time the atoms of the radioactive isotope change into a more stable isotope by a process called radioactive decay. Radioactive decay happens at a constant rate for each element and is often expressed in terms of half life, the amount of time it takes half of the radioactive isotopes originally present to decay into more stable isotopes. For example, it takes 1.3 billion years for half of the radioactive isotope Potassium-40 in a sample to decay into Argon-40. The older a rock that contains Potassium-40 is, the less Potassium-40 will be left. To measure the age of a rock or object this way, scientists must be able to calculate the proportion of the radioactive element that was present in the sample when it was formed and then be able to measure how much of the radioactive element has decayed. A number of different methods and radioactive elements are used for radiometric dating, depending on the type of sample. Radiometric dating provides scientists a way of dating igneous and metamorphic rocks, which can not be dated relatively like sedimentary rocks using principles of stratigraphy. It also provides a way to measure the absolute ages of samples and a means of cross-checking other scientific dating methods.
Stratigraphy relies on study of the types of fossils that are found in certain strata of sedimentary rock and correlations between rock strata from different places around the world. Sedimentary rocks can be dated using faunal succession, which is the idea that the earliest layers (and oldest fossils) are at the bottom of a formation.
To fill in another part of the Carbon-14 explanation is that this isotope is constantly formed in the atmosphere due to the action of cosmic rays on the carbon dioxide in the upper atmosphere. Of course we cannot assume that this is always produced at a constant rate but this can be checked with other places where this carbon dioxide has been deposited over time giving us an historical record. It is the same way we know how the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has changed over time. We just have to measure the carbon 14 in them to check what the starting amounts of carbon 14 in living organisms was.
Alright thank you! I asked this question as I was discussing with another student the problems with YEC and timing as I believe scientists use Carbon dating as a way to date certain things. I was unsure of how to respond when I was simply told that carbon dating was “wrong”. Are there other ways scientists date different fossils or layers of sediment?
You start your approach to scriptures, understandably, with an assumption that they are the Word of God. If some part of scripture were shown to be incorrect, due to a copying error, you would accept that this is the case, but that the originals were inspired. This is a philosophical stance that favors Biblical fidelity and there’s nothing wrong with it, but it, too, is a stance that you are taking. You can neither prove nor disprove that all scriptures are inspired, so you take the position that they are so.
I used to be upset by MN similarly to how you are. But I am not any longer, because it fosters scientific fidelity; and there’s nothing wrong with that, either. Science does not consider God when it looks for a cause, and so it will not conclude that God is causal. That said, it looks for material causes and, wherever appropriate, shows them to be so, experimentally. Science cannot show that God does not exist, because God is outside of the realm of science. I don’t see how it is a problem.
In the past, when science invoked God (or spirits or demons or whatever) as a cause, it was because the true causes were not understood. Later, as the understanding increased, the true causes were shared and shown to be correct using the scientific method. Why is that problematic? Any unknown causes could still be “God”…
I guess I’m just wondering, where exactly is this problematic? Do you have scientific evidence that God caused something that is repeatable and testable? Does science lack a materialistic cause?
I honestly feel that here you have exaggerated, because this is not what’s being said at all. No one is saying that God couldn’t have done it another way, or that this is what God had to do. What is being said is that there is a step-wise methodology that is in place and seems to be universal. Light travels at a specific speed, and if we know the distance, we can calculate the time. When you suggest that God had to “sit back for” millions of years and wait, that’s simply your struggle. Time as we understand it is a property of our universe, so if God is the creator, he is not subject to that time.
I agree with your last point about God and time, also God clearly tells us in Job 38 that it is impossible for us to understand all his reasoning and ways as He is the Creator and we are not.
