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Talk:Young Earth Creationism (view source)
Revision as of 17:42, April 30, 2008
, 17:42, April 30, 2008no edit summary
::: The fact that the edit was put in the 'responses to criticisms' section was not, by itself, reason to delete it. If that was the only problem, I would simply have moved it to a new section. But as explained above, that was only one of several problems with the edit.
::: The fact that the edit was put in the 'responses to criticisms' section was not, by itself, reason to delete it. If that was the only problem, I would simply have moved it to a new section. But as explained above, that was only one of several problems with the edit.
::: [[User:Philip J. Rayment|Philip J. Rayment]] 22:53, 29 April 2008 (EDT)
::: [[User:Philip J. Rayment|Philip J. Rayment]] 22:53, 29 April 2008 (EDT)
*[[Talk:Young Earth Creationism/Archive_1|Archive 1]]
== 15. Too few Supernovas ==
This section actually discusses comets, not supernovas. I thought I should point this out. [[User:Learn together|Learn together]] 13:52, 22 June 2007 (EDT)
::Thanks, I made the correction. I have been doing some work on this article in the last two days and I saw your comment on this page. [[User:Conservative|Conservative]] 17:54, 27 June 2007 (EDT)
:::Glad I could help. ;-) [[User:Learn together|Learn together]] 17:55, 2 July 2007 (EDT)
== Dates ==
Since this is protected, could someone dewikilink the dates? Thanks. [[User:Jazzman831|Jazz]][[User talk:Jazzman831|Man]] 23:45, 30 August 2007 (EDT)
== Starlight and the Age of the Universe rewrite ==
I've just rewritten much of the Starlight and the Age of the Universe section. My main reasons for doing this are that it gave too much importance to Setterfield's idea, which has been abandoned by most leading creationists, and it totally failed to mention Russell Humphreys' idea. [[User:Philip J. Rayment|Philip J. Rayment]] 23:22, 13 September 2007 (EDT) :Mr. Rayment, I do like your edits and want to know if what you say is true but it must be cited to be shown true. I deleted the sentence saying that most creationist or creationist scientists have abandoned Setterfield's idea. If you can cite that sentence, please include it. [[User:Conservative|Conservative]] 23:28, 13 September 2007 (EDT)
:: See my edit comment. Reference should be forthcoming. [[User:Philip J. Rayment|Philip J. Rayment]] 08:31, 15 September 2007 (EDT)
== Links ==
Many of the links given here are out of date, or have no bearing on the topic in question. I'll make a complete list at some point so you can update them all once the topic is unlocked.{{unsigned|Longitude}}
:An administrator can update them whilst it is locked. [[User:Philip J. Rayment|Philip J. Rayment]] 23:22, 7 October 2007 (EDT)
== Craters ==
Has YEC ever confronted the issue of meteor craters such as the one off the Yucatan peninsula?
[[User:MetcalfeM|MetcalfeM]]
: What's the "issue"? [[User:Philip J. Rayment|Philip J. Rayment]] 00:30, 18 January 2008 (EST)
Sorry I thought the issue would be clear. The fact that there is a huge crater (which is the gulf of mexico) in the earth. Surely if this had happened within 6000 - 10000 years ago there would A)Been record of it and B)Caused massive and, perhaps due to the size of the crater, irreversible damage to the growth and propagation of Mankind. Hence the issue is how does YEC explain craters (very old craters I might add)which dot the earth?
[[User:MetcalfeM|MetcalfeM]]
: That such craters are "very old" is only according to your belief system. And the Chixulub crater on the Yucatan peninsula was not formed by a meteor ([http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/1757/] see under "Signs of desperation").
: If impact craters were formed late in Noah's Flood, or even in the next few hundred years before mankind spread out around the planet, there would have been nobody around those places to witness them.
: [[User:Philip J. Rayment|Philip J. Rayment]] 22:03, 21 January 2008 (EST)
You say that "Very old" is my belief yet Noahs flood is also your belief and I am not going to take one link from Creationweb about the crater that the Gulf of Mexico as a final truth. Are you suggesting that all the craters that dot the earth (aside from the Tunguska Blast of 1908)all took place in a short few hundred years during the flood and soon after?
[[User:MetcalfeM|MetcalfeM]]
: Yes, Noah's flood is my belief, and I don't expect you to take any source as the final truth on anything. (However, the reference I linked to was specifically for the information that it wasn't an impact crater, and for that they were quoting non-creationists.) Some creationists do believe that the Flood was accompanied by a meteor bombardment, so yes, I'm ''suggesting'' (not claiming) that ''most'' of the impact craters on the Earth may have been formed in that time period.
Have any of you YECers ever looked here?
http://www.answersincreation.org/young_earth_creationist_argument_index.htm
[[User:MetcalfeM|MetcalfeM]]
: Yes, I've looked at the site before. [[User:Philip J. Rayment|Philip J. Rayment]] 21:25, 22 January 2008 (EST)
And what did you make of that site?
[[User:MetcalfeM|MetcalfeM]]
: I was not impressed. I can't recall specifics now, but probably they put the ideas of secular scientists above the Word of God, which a Christian should not do. On the Dinosaur discussion page you will have seen my reply about their "rebuttal" of the soft tissue issue. Their "rebuttal" was little more than a few throwaway lines, and severely lacking compared to the CMI rebuttal I pointed you to, which properly addresses the claims and clearly points out their errors. But whether that's typical of their other arguments or not I don't recall at the moment. [[User:Philip J. Rayment|Philip J. Rayment]] 00:43, 23 January 2008 (EST)
Well, anyway, aside from the website, on the issue of craters - it seems like quite a throwaway comment to simply say some creationists believe there was a meteor bombardment around the time of the flood. Such a bombardment would have devastated the planet and, if correct about meteors bombarding during this period (say over a period of 200yrs) why would the rates of erosion be so different? Some craters, such as the one in Arizona, are very clear while others have more or less faded away and can only be seen with satillite imagery.
[[User:MetcalfeM|Metcalfe]]
: First, a specific answer. The amount of erosion would depend not just on the passage of time, but the climate in the area. A dry environment, for example, would not have the same erosion as a wet one.
: Now, a more general answer. Neither creationists nor evolutionists claim to have the answers to every last problem. Just because a creationist does not have an answer to a specific problem does not mean that the creationary view is refuted. And keep in mind that creationists get almost nothing in research money (and most of what they do get is from private sources) compared to the billions that evolutionists get. So it's not surprising that creationists have not done much research in some areas. What is surprising, in my opinion, is that they've managed to provide good explanations for so much, given the severe lack of both funds and researchers. Perhaps that's because with a creationary view things fall into place better? Anyway, the point is that if someone tries to question how a bit of evidence fits with the creationary view, I will give the best answer I can, but in some cases that may be no more than a ''possible'' explanation, rather than a researched one. The point being that if there is a ''possible'' explanation, it undermines the argument (whether explicitly put or not) that 'creationists can't answer such-and-such'. I accept that in this case the answer I've provided is pretty speculative, but that doesn't mean that it's impossible. What I find ''very'' often is anti-creationists rejecting creationist explanations because the creationist explanation doesn't fit into the anti-creationists' theory.
: [[User:Philip J. Rayment|Philip J. Rayment]] 21:42, 23 January 2008 (EST)
It is very debatable to suggest that a creationist view fits better. What seems more likely here?
That the earth has sustained meteor hits throughout its history (much as you would see from craters on the moon and, more recntly, the comet that hit Jupiter) or that meteor craters are the result of a short bombardment that failed to kill everything on the planet (or on the boat as your case may be)? Sure things erode faster dependent on weather etc but for a large crater to be almost oblierated by wind etc in less than 6000yrs is a large stretch of the imagination.
And they (creationists) havent managed to provide "good explanations" at all. If they were "good explanations" why is not recognized by the scientific community? Oh right, I forget...its because they are all part of the liberal atheistic conspiracy. And where you have said "What I find ''very'' often is anti-creationists rejecting creationist explanations because the creationist explanation doesn't fit into the anti-creationists' theory." can be said the same about you, my friend, and ASchlflay and his junta as if it does not fit with your theories (god, YEC or whatever) it is branded as liberal, evolutionist or down right lies.
[[User:MetcalfeM|MetcalfeM]]
: Of course many others won't agree that the creationist view fits better, but I think it does, and I offered that as a reason that creationists have been able to explain so much with so little in the way of resources. But it was a general statement, not one specific to craters. I acknowledge that the evolutionary view does seem to fit the evidence better ''in a few cases'', but ''overall'', I believe that the creationary view fits the evidence better.
: I won't disagree with your second paragraph that, on the strength of what we have discussed so far, your explanation seems more reasonable (which doesn't mean that it's right, of course), but I will take issue with your last point about 6,000 years of erosion, as this is something based on your worldview, not on the observable evidence. That is, no-one has ever ''observed'' how much erosion can occur in 6000 years. Rather, you look at how much erosion has occurred in something that, ''according to your views'', is 6000 years old, and use that as your yardstick. But your yardstick then depends on your views, so your yardstick cannot be used to support your views, as that would be a circular argument. More on that below.
: Why are creationist explanations not accepted by the scientific community? Well, for starters, you are incorrect to say that it isn't. That is, you are talking as though the "scientific community" is of one mind on this issue. But it's not—creationary scientists are ''part of'' the "scientific community". Now if you are asking why creationist views are not accepted by ''the majority of'' the scientific community, then my answer is not conspiracy (i.e. a deliberate attempt to suppress something that they know to be true), but to point out that (a) there's been times in the past where the majority, even the vast majority, were not right, so that creationists are not in the majority doesn't really mean much, and certainly doesn't mean that their views are wrong, and (b) this is not a dispassionate academic exercise, but something that goes to the core of a person's religious beliefs (including atheistic beliefs), so the atheists are going to disagree and fight this ''without forming a conspiracy to do so''. Add to that peer pressure, suppression of the creationist view so that most don't get to learn of it (how are the "good explanations" of the creationists going to convince other scientists if they never get to read them?), etc.
: Regarding rejecting explanations, I may not have made myself clear enough. To use an example to illustrate, evolutionists believe that there was no global flood and that civilisation has been around for many thousands of years. YECs believe that there was a global flood 4,350 years ago, and that all civilisations that we have evidence for are younger than that. They also believe that the dating methods used by evolutionists ''are based on the evolutionary view being true'' and are therefore in error.
: Now, there's (at least) two ways to refute an argument. One is to produce evidence against it. Another is to show that the argument is logically or internally inconsistent. So you might refute the creationist belief about the age of civilisations by producing a reliable ancient document listing a succession of rulers and how long they ruled, the total of which exceeds the 4,350 years that the creationists believe. Or you might point out (if it was true) that creationists believe that the pyramids, being so massive, survived the flood whilst also believing that the rock the pyramids were built of were formed during the flood. This would show that their arguments are not consistent with themselves.
: But what many evolutionists often do is neither of those approaches, but to reject the creationist argument that civilisation is no more than 4,350 years old by quoting ''evolutionary dates'' for the civilisations being older. So they will say, "the flood could not have happened 4,350 years ago, as Egypt has been around for 5,000 years". As someone else coined the phrase, ''your theory doesn't fit with my theory so your theory must be wrong''. The point being, arguing that creationists are wrong ''because it doesn't fit within the evolutionary viewpoint'' is an invalid argument. That's what I was saying anti-creationists do very often, and I reject that I do the same the other way. And this is what your 6,000 years of erosion argument was doing.
: [[User:Philip J. Rayment|Philip J. Rayment]] 21:32, 24 January 2008 (EST)
== YEC is not all of Creationism ==
I would ask that someone go through this article and seperate YEC from Creationism. YEC is a branch of Creationism, but not the whole. In fact, I would say that YEC is a fringe group and thus all statements which go roughly "This is how Creationists argue [something]" should be replaced with "This is how Young Earth Creationists/Young Earthers/YECs argue [something]" before you give people the wrong impression. It is bad enough that Wikipedia does this, does conservapedia has to do it too? {{unsigned|Xenuite}}
:You are correct that YEC is a "branch" of creationism, not the whole, but I disagree that it's just a fringe group, and I'd also argue that ''many'' people use "creationism" and its variations as synonymous with YEC.
:Of the main creationist organisations (CMI, ICR, CRS, AiG, Hovind's organisation, the North West Creationist Group (if I recall the name correctly; I'm in a hurry) and RTB, all except the last are YEC. YEC is also the historical (pre-Hutton/Darwin/etc.) view.
:[[User:Philip J. Rayment|Philip J. Rayment]] 15:11, 14 February 2008 (EST)
:::I concur with Xenuite and move for such a change. [[User:Everwill|Everwill]] 12:48, 3 April 2008 (EDT)
== Error in age ==
Whoever wrote the Age of the Universe section needs to edit it again. I don't know what the correct numbers are for the estimated ages of the universe and the Earth, but I know that if the Earth is 4,500 billion years old, the universe isn't 14,000 million years old. Actually, if I remember correctly, the Earth is estimated to about 4.5 billion years, and I have no idea what the corresponding age of universe would be [14 billion years?]. Someone take a look. {{unsigned|Foxtrotuniform}}
: I took it you meant the 'Contrasted with evolution' section. "4,500 billion" should have been "4,500 '''m'''illion", which for most people is 4.5 billion. "14,000 million" (14 billion) was correct. Thanks for picking that up. [[User:Philip J. Rayment|Philip J. Rayment]] 04:41, 22 February 2008 (EST)
==Google==
6th rank good, Wikipedia still 1st {{unsigned|Jeanluc}}
== Overreaction...? ==
Conservative, I think you overreacted. I was just editing what I thought I could without changing the direction of the article, and I don't think you needed to reprotect it. --<sub>[[Special:Contributions/AutoFire|<font color= 'black' face= 'OCR A Extended'>trans</font>]]</sub>[[User:AutoFire|<font color= 'red' face= 'OCR A Extended'>Resident Transfan</font>]]<sup>[[User Talk:Autofire|<font color= 'black' face= 'OCR A Extended'>form!</font>]]</sup> 21:06, 26 April 2008 (EDT)
== races ==
Question - If there was a recent creation followed by a flood that killed all but Noahs family, how did races evolve? Like Asians, Africans etc etc? I will post this on Flood talk also.
[[User:AdenJ|AdenJ]] 01:59, 28 April 2008 (EDT)
: See [http://www.creationontheweb.com/images/pdfs/cabook/chapter18.pdf here]. [[User:Philip J. Rayment|Philip J. Rayment]] 02:24, 28 April 2008 (EDT)
==mention other creation theories==
I think this article needs to mention to other many of the other Christian theories of creation such as theistic evolution. The article lacks some scope and should direct readers to alternative theories as well. This would greatly increase the validity of the argument.{{unsigned|MikeJonez}}
:I've added some links to the 'see also' section. Thanks for the suggestion. [[User:Philip J. Rayment|Philip J. Rayment]] 22:36, 28 April 2008 (EDT)
== Zircon Dating ==
I added the following to the "Responses to criticisms" section today:
* ''Zircon crystals found in Jack Hills (located in Western Australia) have been found to have such a ratio of uranium to lead that their formation must have occurred at least 4.404 billion years ago. While some processes of radiometric dating can be innacurate (as in the case of the RATE project, where researchers conducted an experiment to show that the experiment they were conducting could be conducted incorrectly), the radiometric dating of these crystals is much more accurate than radiometric dating sometimes is because we know that uranium does chemically bond to the zircon crystals while lead does not. The only way the lead in the crystals found in Jack Hills could exist in such quantities as observed in the crystals is that it is the result of the atomic decay of the uranium in the crystals. Many defenders of Young Earth Creationism refute radiometric dating by saying that we don't know how the Earth was thousands of years ago, so we don't know that the decay rates of these atoms are "constant". This assertion is refuted by the fact that the only way to affect the probability that an atom will decay at any given instant is to introduce a strong source of gamma radiation (which is not found on or near Earth naturally). ''
: No sufficient rebuke of this yet exists. Click "edit" at the top of this section to add one.
[http://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Young_Earth_Creationism&action=edit&oldid=442207 (can still be found here)]
Since there was no simple "Criticisms of YEC" section in this article as there perhaps should be, I had to add it in the "Responses to criticisms" section.
The user Philip J. Rayment deleted this, saying "Revert; as this article is featured on the front page, I'd rather remove then discuss than discuss first what appears to be gobbledygook. Please explain what it means before reinserting."
Well, I thought I made this pretty easy to understand already, but to summarize, these crystals provide a means to robustly date the minimum age of the Earth (heh. robustly date). Anyway, seeing as though the only way this article "supports" the YEC conjecture is to refute various scientific ways of dating the earth and the universe, I thought a criticism that should be responded to was the results of the experiments run on these crystals.
I would appreciate it if you would further explain how any of this is "gobbledygook", Philip J. Rayment. I think it has more of a place here than discussions of psuedoscience such as "decay of the speed of light".
Since I have explained what my addition means as Philip J. Rayment requested, and if there are no immediate objections, I will be replacing this in about an hour, but not before letting the director of the physics laboratories at Florida Atlantic University proof read it if he is in his office. I am a physics undergraduate student at FAU, in case anyone was wondering. --[[User:MichaelK|MichaelK]] 16:43, 29 April 2008 (EDT)
::I'll even add a source this time from the peer-reviewed research journal Nature: [http://www.geology.wisc.edu/~valley/zircons/Wilde2001Nature.pdf]--[[User:MichaelK|MichaelK]] 16:53, 29 April 2008 (EDT)
:::Well, I found a case of unpaired parentheses in my addition. Maybe that was the gobbledygook you were referring to. I fixed it above. --[[User:MichaelK|MichaelK]] 16:57, 29 April 2008 (EDT)
:::: Actually, I only reverted the third of three edits you made, that being the addition of "While some processes of radiometric dating can be innacurate (as in the case of the RATE project, where researchers conducted an experiment to show that the experiment they were conducting could be conducted incorrectly", and it was that that I was referring to as gobbledygook. But this was because, for some reason, I missed the previous two edits. They also contain what appears to be gobbledygook, with this: "The radiometric dating of these crystals is much more accurate than radiometric dating is...". The whole paragraph you added is out of place (criticism rather than response to criticism, and much larger and more detailed and technical than the other points in that section), so I will delete the lot for now. However, I will look at it again when I get a chance (within the next 18 hours) and see what I can make of it. Consider this an objection to reinserting the material! [[User:Philip J. Rayment|Philip J. Rayment]] 17:10, 29 April 2008 (EDT)
::Yeah, I saw that too, and I fixed it above. The only thing I was saying is that this zircon dating is not subject to the common criticisms of radiometric dating, due to the chemical properties of zircon and lead. I explained why I added it to this particular section already. There is no "criticism" section. You have to be technical when discussing this stuff. --[[User:MichaelK|MichaelK]] 17:48, 29 April 2008 (EDT)
::: When I wrote my previous message, I was in a hurry and probably didn't explain myself as well as I could have. When I said "But this was because...", I was referring to why I only reverted the last of your three edits. My comments about that last edit being gobbledygook stands. I now see (as you said) that you had fixed the other bit of gobbledygook, but this bit remains.
::: Another problem with your edit that I didn't mention was the unencyclopedic last line.
::: Also, your unreasonable bias is showing in referring to the speed of light research as "pseudo-science". There's three possible reasons for this, none of which are acceptable.
:::# You are counting any creationist research as "pseudo-science". This is bigoted nonsense, and will not be accepted here (although I do note that you only said that in a talk-page comment, not in the article).
:::# You are counting any scientific research that turns out to be wrong as "pseudo-science". This is contrary to the meaning of the word. Pseudo-science refers to things that superficially appear to be "scientific", but are not conducted according to the scientific method. It does not refer to research done in a proper scientific manner that happens to turn out to be wrong, as was the case here.
:::# You are under the mistaken impression that this research was not conducted in a scientific manner. If that is the basis of your comment, you are simply wrong.
::: However, to get to the argument itself, I will first point out that creationists have pointed out that there are ''several'' assumptions involved in radiometric dating which, if wrong, invalidate the methods. ''One'' of these assumptions is that we know the starting amount of the daughter element (lead in this case). Your argument seems to be that the dating of these particular crystals avoids having to make ''that'' assumption, because we can be certain that there was zero lead to start with. Assuming you are correct on that, it still leaves the ''other'' assumptions unresolved, so although this case may be a ''bit'' more accurate than other cases, it is by no means yet a reliable date.
::: Furthermore, [http://creationontheweb.com/content/view/811 this article] points out other problems with the dating of these crystals.
::: The fact that the edit was put in the 'responses to criticisms' section was not, by itself, reason to delete it. If that was the only problem, I would simply have moved it to a new section. But as explained above, that was only one of several problems with the edit.
::: [[User:Philip J. Rayment|Philip J. Rayment]] 22:53, 29 April 2008 (EDT)
::::I have actually read that article you linked to long ago. As I stated in my original edit summary, I am friends with, and have great respect for a few evangelists who I have debated on these issues before (open air preachers Micah Armstrong and "JK", to be specific). I'll tell you what I told them about this article. First of all, the author states that "A further problem is that the 4.3 billion-year-old zircon, dated according to the U/U method, was identified by the U/Th method to be undatable." This is irrelevant. I don't see why there would be any thorium in the zircon crystals, so of course the U/Th dating will not be reliable (either the author doesn't understand the ''Nature'' article, or he is intentionally trying to confuse his readers. This, by the way, is one example of what pseudoscience is). The author makes a big deal about how most of the crystals dated produced different dates. I don't see why the factors that resulted in the formation of those crystals could not have existed in that place for millions of years, so crystals of different ages could be expected.
If you force me to agree with one of your three reasons for me calling the speed of light decay thing pseudoscience, then I guess it would have to be the second one. But it's not just that the guy's conjecture is so obviously incorrect, it's the method he used. He just took the fact that measurements taken centuries ago usually produced a higher value of ''c'' as evidence that the speed of light is actually slowing down. I've measured the speed of light myself. Even with (somewhat) modern instruments, it's very hard to get a precise or accurate value. I believe Mister Setterfield's thing is pseudoscience because of the weakness of the thought processes he tried to advocate. I definitely do not consider all research conducted by people who believe in creationism to be pseudoscience.
You are correct in saying that assumptions must be made in order to determine the age of the earth using any observation-based means. This is true for any observational (as opposed to theoretical) science. But it is extremely unlikely that any lead entered those crystals through chemical processes, and it is extremely unlikely that the decay constant of the uranium in those crystals has been altered.
The composition of these crystals is the strongest evidence against the conjecture of Young Earth Creationism, but until yesterday there was absolutely no discussion concerning them on this article. I think that is irresponsible. --[[User:MichaelK|MichaelK]] 13:42, 30 April 2008 (EDT)