We have given @jeffb a lot to work through so I will post this for a general readership—and hopefully for his eventual consideration.
It is arguments and articles like the following which makes it difficult for a rational person to take Ken Ham seriously:
I also include this example because it illustrates so well the misuse of scripture and eisegesis in a particularly appalling way.
Of course, if one has to explain the reasons why “Were you there?” is a bad argument, it is also a sad indictment on our science education curricula. I don’t know what is the best way to convey these basics to adults which somehow missed the fundamentals in middle school and high school. But that is one of the reasons I like floating this type of topic now and then. Sometimes I get some novel approaches in reply.
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“Yes We Were There” (PDF, page 12), is an essay by Antione Bret which answers this question very well. Highly recommended.
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Great example, Dan.
Sadly, even though everything in that one page rejoinder requires nothing more than high school physics (or perhaps even middle school science class), I’m always fascinated at how YEC faces glaze over with this kind of basic argument. It tends to fly right over their heads. Or they will simply say, “But God used different laws of physics then” or “Created light already in transit.” So they clearly don’t understand what the evidence demonstrates.
Just for fun, when a YEC repeats the “Were you there?” argument to me, I casually reply, “Yes I was.” When they say, “No. You couldn’t have been.”, I tell them, “How do you know? Were you there?” Obviously, if being a “direct observer” and present for a past event is the only way to know something about the event, then they are guilty of their own incongruence.
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