Talk:101 evidences for a young age of the Earth and the universe

Updates since (including yet another removed/changed argument) (8th May 2014)
Boredom struck. Rows are on a line-by-line basis. Try and guess which is the changed argument. (Spoiler: It's #67) ( Original page )


 * Anyone feeling up to updating it? FrizzyCatPotato (talk/stalk) 20:14, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

TOC
I think it'd look better if it was made into a left-aligned div -- eg:

TOC PAGE PAGE TOC PAGE PAGE TOC PAGE PAGE PAGE PAGE PAGE PAGE PAGE PAGE REBUTTALS AREA Currently it looks like it's just floating there. Thoughts? 00:46, 8 August 2016 (UTC)


 * Not sure what you're picturing. But it was basically adapted from something else that was ... somewhere ... on the wiki. So do whatever works. I mean, it looks fine to me on my 1366px-wide laptop and my 1920px-wide screen at work ... - David Gerard (talk) 12:33, 9 August 2016 (UTC)
 * It looks fine, aspie. Conscience (talk) 14:07, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

Another two cents
I can't understand why YECs are so obsessed with their ideas being true, when if that was the case the implications would be very deep -and not just because if YHWH was real why not other gods too, especially those of faraway lands where the Bible was not known until missionaries carried it there?- not only for us and this planet but also the entire Universe (just imagine the latter as we know to be, administrated by someone as YHWH as appears on the OT. Either that or the 'verse being just a big lie to test our faith, never mind the issues that idea could bring. It's not pleasant at all) --Panzerfaust (talk) 13:41, 4 May 2017 (UTC)


 * Asking if all religions can be right is like asking if all political parties can be right. If asked if people who die without ever hearing The Word get a free pass, many theologians would reply "Yes." And as for other planets, all I'll say is this: when the Bible says that humans are special, it means as compared to mountains and microbes and moles and such.  (For the record, I am not a YEC. I embrace both the ancient age of the universe and evolution, but I don't really fit into any of the "Old Earth Creationist" categories you folks have listed here.)Skadooshbag (talk) 19:08, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

create theological version of this page
There should probably be a sister page to this which addresses the theological arguments for YEC. I could help with such a page if you want. Skadooshbag (talk) 19:26, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

#4 the "response" isn't a response at all
The creationist's argument is that the measured mutation rates for mitochondrial DNA from multi-generational studies indicate an age that is at least "five times younger" than the accepted age. The response only restates what "most scientists believe" about the age, without dealing with the argument that the creationist is making. At the end of the creationist's article he states--"In short, I think MacAndrew is very premature and overconfident when he says that ‘subsequent research has largely resolved’ the challenge presented to long-age dates for ‘mitochondrial Eve’." So to refute the argument, we need to look into MacAndrew's claim and demonstrate that it is correct.

"I felt the need to clear up an issue concerning the main subject of the article."
[By Viralnugget: I wish to inform whoever may read this that this document is rather biased, and does not reflect the reality of the issue at hand. I'd like to think this won't get edited out since this site claims to be "rational," so the only way to test that hypothesis is to see if this edit gets approved.]

First, I need to say that I've studied the natural creation vs. special creation debate for almost 10 years now, and have studied at least 24,000 hours of scientific lectures during this time, by well over 50 PhD. scientists, in nearly as many disciplines. All of these scientists were educated at accredited secular universities, and all were at one time ardent natural creationists. (I prefer to to refer to the two parties in this debate as natural creationists [evolutionists], and special creationists [creationists], since these terms are much more accurate since they reflect the fact that both world views are creation models, and both sides have access to, and utilize the exact same body of evidences, and that both are scientific, and can be investigated scientifically, in spite of, and contrary to popular belief. In addition, since both models require their own measure of faith, both are religious in nature. Anyone who disagrees with this simply has not investigated the subject to any appreciable degree.)

I'm only addressing two issues in this article, since if I read it in its entirety, and addressed everything I did not agree with, I would spend far too much time on it, only to possibly have my work deleted. The first issue concerns the following statement made above: "[Creation] dismisses all scientific evidence that does not fit this philosophy." I chose to address this for the simple fact that it is an all too typical tactic that natural creationists use, and that is to blame their opponents for doing exactly what they do on a regular basis, and is something I've witnessed many hundreds of times in the past. If you were to watch Ben Stein's movie, "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed," you would see several excellent examples of this rather disturbing tactic. [Ben Stein's movie can be seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5EPymcWp-g ] This is also a tactic natural creationists use when they have no good argument for the evidence presented to them. When this happens they tend to attack the person, rather than address evidence they have no answer for.

I'm going to finish with a comment on the subject of the article - the age of the Earth. First, without deep time natural creation is nothing less than a useless hypothesis that would have been discarded and forgotten well over a century ago since without "billions of years" there simply is no time for natural creation to occur. For this reason, deep time is the very foundation of the natural creation model. Second, a 19th century lawyer turned hobby scientist named Charles Lyell is the one who made up the mantra "the present is the key to the past," which is still in use today even though it has been disproved many times. Lyell also postulated the "geologic column" long before there was any real evidence for its existence at that time.

It is also a well-known fact that he was not only biased against any form of religion, but had other ulterior motives he put to use prior to becoming a "geologist." His bias was so bad he intentionally skewed the data from his study of erosion rates at Niagara Falls, while completely ignoring evidence offered to him by locals from the region, including photographic evidence of actual erosion rates. His intent was to exaggerate these rates in order to get people back in England to believe in deep time, thus discrediting the Genesis account of creation in the Bible. He did this by simply multiplying the known erosion rates by a factor of 6 which effectively increased the actual rates to reflect an age of 35,000 years for the falls, as opposed to the 6,000 to 7,000 year range the actual data suggested, and the photographs offered to him clearly illustrated.

Additionally, Lyell had yet another unscientific ulterior motive of wanting to “free the [then new] science [of geology] from Moses.” This pseudo-scientific practice of Lyell’s was discovered after his death in a letter dated June 14th, 1830, to his friend and fellow geologist George Poulett Srope. In this letter, Lyell was postulating how to debunk the Genesis account of creation as laid out in the Bible, but how to do so without angering English Christians.

These documented, historical facts about the 19th century "father of modern geology," sets him in not such a favorable light that glaringly illustrates how unscientific his work was. In fact it not only totally discredits Lyell as a scientist, his anti-scientific methods tears natural creation completely down starting with its very foundation of deep time, without which the theory is dead in the water.

Since Lyell's actions would be considered to be fraudulent today, anyone who would condone this type of unscrupulous practice by any scientist from any era, are themselves anti-scientific, and most likely are suffering from their own case of cognitive dissonance and/or conformation bias.

I'd like to think this edit will get approved, but I'm not very confident that it will, and that is unfortunate since it has an extremely important bearing on this debate. Especially considering how integral and vital the concept of deep time is to the natural creation model.
 * If you'd like to dispute the points of this article, it would be better to do so here (or, perhaps, at the RationalWiki:Saloon bar, which is also quite active.) This is the dedicated place for that type of discourse. We have such spaces to maintain some level of professionalism, because having such discourse in the article itself tends to be confusing. If a pro-creationist work suddenly read "actually, creationism is bunko because..." and then afterwards continued on with its pro-creationist arguments, readers would be confused because they'd get conflicting opinions, unless the work made it clear that it was showing counterarguments or something like that.
 * A minor point, but we also don't really "approve" edits, or at least, there isn't some council or whatever that decides what edits go through or not. I'm not sure if you're new to wikis or just come from a wiki with that kind of system, but I would recommend reading up on the RationalWiki:Newcomers guide either way.DietMondrian (talk) 22:23, 11 August 2022 (UTC)