YEC Evidentialist Article: Evidence for a young world

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To give in my 2 cents, scientific ideas don't have to be complete or seem right on every single count at a given point in time in order to seem like the very best idea. Overall coherency tends to be a good thing, because the truth can't disagree with itself, BUT knowledge is limited and we are gradually developing better ideas. Because of this, I don't see the criticisms as sufficient to undercut a theory that reasonably explains the entire fossil record, especially given that a creation account seems to have more problems unless one allows for ad hoc-ness. I do think that the evidence provided is probably good evidence of why falsification is too strong of a goal for science, as given changes in knowledge, we could potentially falsify most beliefs.

Why is it so difficult to believe that humans lived for a long time without agriculture? To some extent, agriculture leads to a less healthy diet and lifestyle. When humans lived in small tribes, there may not of been a very good reason to to develop agriculture in the first place. Additionally, agriculture could of been discovered several times within the last 100,000 years but those prehistoric agricultural societies could have died out or disappeared because of change in climate or environment. The climate has changed many times during that period and we know that agricultural societies can collapse due to factors like because it has happened even in recorded history. Also, one possible reason for the need for the development of agriculture 10,000 years ago my be that the end of the last Ice Age lead to a population increase and the agriculture was utilized as a way to support a larger population.

ZEGH8578, in another thread a few months ago you told me to not bother you, but now you address me. Do you resend your previous order or prefer it to be one-sided so that you can post at me by I may not reply to you?

Yes, there is a good example of the ability for rates of radioactive decay not being constant actually, if you are to go by that. Not entirely so, with the amount of density required for pion interaction. But other reaction rates can be altered as well.

Which has more of a stable and controlled environment? A laboratory or the outdoors?

There are many presumptions involved in radiometric dating,

You're right. So, this has been corrected.

Even if this were true with Humphreys, it is most certainly true with ruveyn and Sand. Ruveyn seems to play upon this more, but Sand is off more so in ad populum land than in this though it still involves this "picking and choosing" of what to consider true or realistic. Generally, if something opposes a predetermined conclusion, no matter whether they are a young earth Christian or an old earth Christian or an old earth atheist, if their beliefs are not supported by facts then the facts are wrong. The old earth view currently has predominance among those who get research grants (*stab at sand with cell phones*), which allows for such ad populum arguments, but truth of premises and validity of argument form and soundness of arguments are independent of the qualifications one has and is also independent of the number of voices in verbal agreement.

i forget names. sorry for the misunderstanding.

*poof*

I have to agree with your criticism, Jono. Not developing agriculture isn't a matter of stupidity. In fact, a lot of our discoveries aren't matters of stupidity, but rather of not knowing where to look and how to change our ways. I mean, the same criticism about agriculture could be given for not starting scientific progress sooner, as to us the idea of continually testing things and finding out the outcomes is pretty easy to think of and straightforward to attempt, but it really is a huge leap in perspective. The same criticism goes for 11.


Why write things down when they can be told orally? I mean, widescale literacy is a relatively new thing, so why write things down when telling other people would be easy, and why write something down when everybody knows what you are talking about?? The expectation that past people create history for absolutely no reason seems absurd. Even the Bible(OT) is considered to have been an oral tradition for long stretches of time before being written down.


I still stand by the earlier statements I made about science, and I only examined the matter a bit more critically due to Jono, mostly because I am not as oriented towards geology or astrophysics(the matters in question for most of these issues) as I am towards social studies. That being said, I don't think many people think models of flood geology seem credible, given that things such as the Grand Canyon do not match what would be expected from sudden rushes of water, but rather that winding paths make more sense in a model where path dependency of smaller amounts of water is more relevant. However, I really am not an expert in the other issues, but it still seems to me that the creationist model has more questions about it than it answers.

In the 1960's such were included in the "General Theory of Evolution". The usage has been adapted over time though to consider only the biological aspect. Back then, abiogenesis was considered "chemical evolution". It may be a fun word game to play upon the current usage, but it is nomenclature. When the terms "evolution" and "natural selection" are used interchangeably, however, such is not merely a case of nomenclature but rather of equivocation. Biological evolution requires not just natural selection to function, but also mutations which do more than just damage or remove components.

iamnotaparakeet: how old do you think the world is? how old do you think the universe is?

If any testable and observable process were to give a lower minimal time than that required for all life to have a single common ancestor to have occurred, then all life does not have a single common ancestor.

If any testable and observable process were to give a lower minimal time than that required for the ratios of one element to decay into another, then the ratio of these elements is not due to decay.

Perhaps it is just for my fondness of history and the coinciding of my birthday in the Gregorian calendar with that of the Ussher's date for the world in the Julian calendar, but I would say, arbitrarily, about 6,012 years. I know Ussher is bound to have made some chronological errors due to the scope of his work, so perhaps plus or minus a few centuries.

How old is the universe? Depends where you are at in the universe, if the universe has (1) a center of mass, and (2) has emerged from a gravitational singularity, such as a black hole/white hole. In the gravitational center of a singularity, time stands still with respect to all other locations. The further away from the gravitational center, the faster time runs with respect to that center. Earth cannot be in such a center, and never would have been. It would be as lethal as being in the galactic core. The current situation would not permit for much gravitational time dilation difference, but in the past, when emerging from the singularity, the difference in percentage of time dilation would have been enough to account for Earth being young while the rest of the universe was old. Since the percentage levels are minimal, as they would have moved to decrease to upon emerging past the event horizon and the further from the gravitational center with the universe expanding, time rates would be about the same as the are now.

The farther out one looks, the older it would be with respect to the center. We would be off-center, so this is not entirely correct for us. But basically, our planet and solar system would be practically the same age. (Mercury would perhaps be the oldest planet since it is closest to the sun). But the rest of the universe would be as much as billions of years old for what we could see. Past the expiration period for stars, we'd only see residual heat (such as from trillions of lightyears away) and past that would have cooled already and not even emit heat.

And what are the "facts" that contradict everything about our current understanding of the age of the earth or universe? Even if specific hypotheses turn out to be wrong, you can't exactly throw out everything because of that. Any new ideas have to be consistent with all other data as well, thus it is often better to modify a theory than to throw it out completely. Even if you ignore radiometric data, there's still the issue that we know the life cycles lifetimes of stars for instance, as well as the physics to go with it. Don't forget that via astronomical observations, we've not only seen other solar systems but in some cases we have observed proto-planetary discs of solar systems in the making. So we do have some idea of how solar systems formed. Also, despite what the creationists might say, radiometric dating is quite robust. Yes, certain things can affect their accuracy depending on the specific method, such as argon from the atmosphere contaminating rock samples in the case of potassium-argon dating,but those things can be corrected for.

Well I'm not trying to attack your beliefs, just to ask a few questions:

1. If someone believes in something so rigidly - say that creation was in the year 4004 BC - might they be inclined to choose facts that support that belief rather than then exploring the ones that don't?

2. Ussher based his timeline on biblical ages written in the Old Testament - the old testament written before both those calendars - so when it says someone was 200 years old - which is in the torah - is that 200 in the New Roman calendars or on a calendar from 4004 BC - which of course Adam and his family must have then created?

3. Do you believe that radioactive isotope decay - which is observable and measurable - and in some materials have half lives in the billions of years - is maleable? If the world is 6012 years old, how is it possible for say uranium 234 particles to have decayed more than that if the rate is observable and measurable?

This is asinine to put it nicely; it borders on if not crossing over into racism. When white folk arrived in Australia there were people there, but no agriculture. Are you reasoning that these people and a whole hoard of other such examples are substantially less intelligent than other kinds of people, that they had no knowledge of the relationship between seeds and plants?

In fact, it is highly unlikely that "first attempts" at agriculture were immediately successful over the long term. One bad season and everyone needs to hunt and gather until the next crop. It is more likely that agriculture was adopted piece-meal over a number of generations and that there were a number of set-backs in the adoption of agriculture even where it was eventually successful. In fact both plants and human groups were probably "pre-adapted" as a result of earlier subsistance practices, before agriculture was or could be a viable life-way.

There are drawbacks to agriculture. The spread of maleria in areas where it is endemic resulted from agriculture for instance.

In at least some places agriculture was not adopted uniformly to the exclusion of hunting/gathering. In cultures where hunting and gathering predominate, there is still often evidence of land management including "quasi-agriculture" where people intentionally deposit seeds in areas they know they will grow well and use the resource seasonally when in that area, but do not maintain settled living areas around these resources, nor put much dedicated effort into cultivating the seeds they have dispersed. The Kumeyaay Indians provide an example of this kind of "quasi agriculture". They harvested grasses and burnt the remaining stuble before broadcasting seed in the area; they deposited seeds (such as nuts) in areas suitable to their growth, but they remained mobile and predominately hunted and gathered for their livelihoods.

In fact burning off land to encourage regeneration of grasses that serve as food stuff for animals hunted for food is not uncommon amongst hunter-gatherers, and is seen as a feature of "quasi-agriculture" where regeneration of plants exploited for human food was encouraged using the same methods. In early agriculture the same technique was an important strategy in clearing areas for cultivation. An obvious conclusion is that "pre-agricultural" societies were probably not entirely ignorant of all things botanical. There is no grounds for assuming a lack of agricultural practice can or should be explained by a lack of understanding of the link between seeds and mature, harvestable plants, and quite a lot of evidence demonstrating that on the contrary, many hunter gatherer societies possessed such knowledge.

Until reliable means of preserving seasonal surpluses for times of seasonal shortage have been found, agriculture can only be relied on seasonably at best. Agriculture is actually a heck of a lot of work and even when you know what you are doing and have a store of cultural knowledge and solutions to fall back on, it is a very risky life-way strategy until it is well established.

Agriculture and settled pastorialism can produce greater food surpluses than hunting and gathering, (and once established, including the establishment of sufficient succesful technologies and knowledge, can be relatively stable and self-perpetuating) but especially during the transition from hunting and gathering to settled agricultural and pastoral subsistance life-ways, it can be tenuous and high risk. It is very unlikely that any society ever suddenly discovered and settled into agriculture, and it is more likely that a long period of "quasi-agriculture" supplimenting hunting and gathering occurred prior to any stable adoption of agriculture by any long lived society or culture.

Evidently, agriculture is considered to have been well established in Southeast Asia by 10,000 years ago (rather than to have been only initiated around this time). In tropical Africa, agriculture is as recent as only 1000 or so years, (and only occured among some cultures/peoples). In some regions, settled agriculture and even nomadic pastorialism were never adopted by local peoples' own accord. One reason why a people may not adopt agriculture is that they might prefer to be hunters and gatherers. That the only or most common reason for not adopting agriculture is a lack of understanding of the relationship between seed and mature edible plant is simply not supported by the facts. It is very obvious from direct observation of hunter gatherer societies, that a lack of such knowledge does not usually co-exist with the absence of settled agricultural practices.


Pre-historic man might not have felt any need to record history through means other than oral histories. Early literacy seems to have been a response for a need to record a different kind of information, specifically information pertaining to complex transactions such as taxes. The fact is, there are still people who exist without any kind of literacy. They tend to live in small communities that are mobile or semi-mobile and lack complex transactions such as taxes.

Only if these processes and their interpretation are absolutely reliable. I am rejecting falsificationism for the notion of a web of scientific beliefs. We can have contradictions in this web of scientific beliefs, but the idea is that it is desirable to eventually make all notions consistent. That being said, science shouldn't be looked at as a process without messes.

(that being said, I agree with Jono once again)