You seem to have avoided addressing some of the several clocks that God has engineered into creation which validate each other:
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This one is fun: Girdled rocks (notice the word âprovidentialâ 
)
(New evidence always supports the antiquity of the earth and it continues to build.)
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No. These ideas are based on overwhelming evidence. Yours is an Argument from Personal Incredulity fallacy. Just because you are unaware of the evidence doesnât mean that scientists are as well.
I disagree completely. I spent many years of my life as a an ardent Young Earth Creationist and I personally knew many of the leading advocates of anti-evolution YECism. I canât think of even one of them who repudiated evolution on the basis of evidence. Every one of them denied evolution because they believed it contradicted their interpretations of the Bible (and many of them also feared that the theory would turn people against the Bible and produce more atheists.) Indeed, some of them even stated outright that even if all of the scientific evidence pointed to an old earth and Common Descent, they would reject it anyone because of their theological reasons. Dr. Kurt Wise is well known for such a claim:
Although there are scientific reasons for accepting a young earth, I am a young age creationist because that is my understanding of the Scripture. As I shared with my professors years ago when I was in college, if all the evidence in the universe turns against creationism, I would be the first to admit it, but I would still be a creationist because that is what the Word of God seems to indicate. â Kurt Wise
So YECism is fundamentally based on a hermeneutics, not science. Wise is saying that no amount of observed evidence in Godâs creation could ever change his mind. So it is not really about science at all. It is about defending a particular interpretation of Genesis.
There is no conflict between the discovery of âsoft tissuesâ in fossils and the Theory of Evolution.
Instead of believing what anti-evolution detractors are falsely claiming, you need to read what Dr. Schweitzer and others have actually published and lectured. There is no âsoft tissueâ âproblem for evolutionâ that needs to be resolved. Dr. Schweitzerâs exciting discovery was yet another example of scientists finding unexpected things and then working hard to understanding the processes underlying them. The discovery of fossil âsoft tissuesâ (a term which means something quite different to the average layperson than it does to paleontologists, which has led to considerable confusion in the mass media) was not the first time that scientists found remarkable preservation in unusual places. I remember years ago when a similar stir was created after specimens recovered from oxygen-deprived cold waters revealed preservation previously thought impossible. We should not be surprised if even more processes may be uncovered in the future by which the assumed time limit boundaries of biological preservation are pushed back even further.
Iâll say it again: Dr. Schweitzer never claimed that her discovery somehow provided evidence against evolutionary processes. Itâs been spun that way by propagandists, none of who are scientists specializing in relevant fields. In any case, nobody has published a peer-reviewed challenge to the Theory of Evolution in a respected scientific journal based upon Dr. Schweitzerâs discovery. (Cue the academic conspiracy argument here.) The scientific discussion continues to revolve around identifying the exact processes which made the preservations possible.
I would like to see your evidence for that claim. Are most Americans truly free-thinkers?
It is true that the legal and cultural climate in the USA has often allowed Americans to dissent from majority norms without severe repercussions. But does that mean that the USA has a higher percentage of free-thinkers? If you study the history of Colonial America, you will find much oppression against free thinking, including imprisonment, torture, and even hangings. Indeed, Roger Williamâs colony of Rhode Island was founded for the express purpose of finding a better wayâand, fortunately, the United States of America eventually incorporated many of his ideas of free thought, pursuit of personal conscience, religious tolerance, and separation of church and state.
Holding a minority viewpoint doesnât necessarily make one a âfree-thinkerâ. Are flat-earthers free thinkers? Are Apollo moon landing deniers free thinkers? Or are they just plain wrong in their thinking?
It is interesting that a commonly taught pressure tactic impressed upon sales trainees is to say to the potential customers: âDonât you want to be your own person and deny convention? Donât you want to think for yourself?â Your appeal to self-congratulation in the same way by claiming that Young Earth Creationists are somehow virtuous because they are âfree-thinkersâ is unconvincing.
This is a popular Young Earth Creationist ministry claim that sounds good to their followers but not to people who are familiar with the scientific evidence.
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Fascinating geologic example, Dale. Hereâs another one I like to cite:
https://www.nps.gov/pinn/learn/nature/how-pinnacles-formed.htm
Plate tectonics (the San Andreas Fault in this case) split a volcano field to where the two divisions of that volcano are now almost 200 miles apart. They continue to diverge at a rate of about one inch per year after many millions of years of that slow journey. Young Earth Creationists have no sound explanation for this but merely say âthe Noahic Flood brought many changes to the earth.â They ignore the physics of such movement and the massive energies involved if compressed into a short-term event. As with the RATE Project, they simply shrug off the enormous heat involved in their claim.
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I wish it were funny how much evidence YECs ignore. Hereâs another â it refutes the YEC argument about the Kaibab uplift and the Grand Canyon in 11 seconds:
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BioLogos has its problems, as we know, but this is well done and should be compelling evidence for the antiquity of the earth, speaking of volcanoes and tectonics:
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Overwhelming evidence is precisely what gradualism lacks. Hence, the wave of opposition against it.
You are still defending an old planet â a detail that, if true, would not help evolution.
Meaning the problem for evolution has not been resolved.
Yours is the model that is unconvincing. Elegance is found in the belief that God brought about all life forms in sudden creation. You will need proof of your claims before you can expect free-thinking, and sound-minded individuals to trade elegance for your views.
Evolutionists make the mistake of thinking all are idiots who oppose them. YEC and other varieties of creationism that oppose evolution are popular views not because of naivety but because conclusions about gradualism and common descent are overweening and do not follow from the science.
There is no âwave of oppositionâ from scientists who have actually investigated the evidence.
No. Remarkable preservation of some fossils in no way compromises evolution.
No. Nobody here has called anyone an idiot. We (many of whom are former Young Earth Creationists)
have observed that those who promote a young earth view are merely misinformed and in many cases convinced by various ministries to ignore evidence in favor of a particular brand of hermeneutics.
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So, with truckloads of data to support it from many different disciplines, evolution is unconvincing, and yet the elegance that comes from sudden creation is convincing? What is convincing about it? That it is simple? Requires no proof or evidence at all? That any child can understand that God magically poofed something into being in order to support your particular interpretation of the first few chapters of Genesis?
Is a computer just a box with a spirit in it? To break it down to its systematic components is terribly complex. Is it more elegant to just understand that someone named Siri lives in my phone?
If you are going to be a free thinker, you need to give more effort than mere reliance upon simplicity disguised as elegance as your explanation.
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Science may have collected large sums of data, but bias leads to unwarranted conclusions like âDarwinian gradualism is no longer in questionâ.
Here you demonstrate that you do not understand elegance. Simplicity, which you demean, is a fundamental of elegance. A childâs ability to understand a proposal would serve to reinforce elegance, not negate it.
Your response is confused and out of control since you know God does not answer to me. You sound angry.
Again, you misunderstand elegance. Simplicity is a requirement of elegance. And any effort needs to come from your side. Your replacement model in its current form is not credible.
How dan you deride data-driven conclusions as unwarranted? What data do you present in response. I never stated what you quoted above.
I absolutely understand elegance. I showed that in suggesting that simplicity was inherent in it. I also suggested a childâs ability to understand it as a potential reason for you to prefer elegance. So, what you have said here shows either a lack of understanding on your behalf, or a desire to not understand.
I did not misconstrue elegance. I questioned how elegance serves as a solution to the issue we are discussing.
Iâm not angry, Iâm distraught. Every month another expert who knows nothing of the subject arrives to parrot information he does not understand, gleaned from dubious sources, and then proclaims, as you have, that the onus is upon everyone else but him to provide the evidence. This, in itself, is not an issue, because all of the evidence comes from the lab, not from anyone else.
You cannot continue to claim that the replacement model is not credible without providing reasons that it is not credible. That something may be more simple is not a reason. And it is the only âevidenceâ you have provided. You have an ethical challenge. If you wish to converse in an honorable way, then do so by providing evidence in the form of actual reasons why a theory is not valid.
To simply proclaim that others donât know and donât understand without explaining why is not responding honorably.
Feel free to explain elegance and why it is a better explanation than âthe current replacement model.â Clearly you know much about elegance, because you stated several times that I donât understand the concept.
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What is credible, considering its content, is the fact that even after multiple postings @Greg has given us no response to the following. Would you, please? (Remember, these are clocks that God engineered into creation which validate each other!):
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Several times I have pleaded with you to actually work with the evidence. So far, you have chosen to brush off the need to work with the evidence. Consequently you have exhibited exactly zero understanding of the evidence.
Zilch.
Nada.
Rien.
Nichts.
You can shout from the rooftops all day long that the evidence is unconvincing. You can shout from the rooftops that 99% of scientists, of whom tens of thousands are devout Christians, are biased as they interpret the evidence.
Until you can show that you have obeyed Godâs Word in Proverbs 18:17, and have actually worked hard at understanding what the evidence is, then hereâs how much credibility you have:
Zilch.
Nada.
Rien.
Nichts.
Iâm willing to listen, if youâre willing to deal with evidence and the inferences that can be made from it.
Are you up to the challenge? So far, you have shown no inclination to do anything other than express opinions without evidence.
Best regards,
Chris
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Not deep. Iâm not going to answer, because I donât think youâre actually interested.
Iâve seen claims like this more often than I can remember, but not one claimant has ever followed up with the consequence that if this is true, and all theists and all atheists were created with the ability to think logically, then why do we not only come to very different conclusions, but some of us conclude that we werenât created? Thatâs a contradiction.
Whereas if we did evolve, and are thus (quoting Greg) not necessarily âcapable of making accurate conclusions from the evidenceâ, it would follow that some of us are better at thinking logically than others, and that individually we often (some more than others) come to incorrect conclusions. No such contradiction here.
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The point was that you should have tried that yourself, instead of posting another bunch of unsupported and unconvincing opinions.
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It sure does.
The Virginia opossum is not 100 million years old, only 100 thousand. Nor does it have the same anatomy as preceding species - among other differences, it has a shorter tail, it has more body fat, and it can grow to twice the size of other opossums.
This has been pointed out to you before, but to no avail.
My emphasis:
We know no such thing. There is no problem with some species having little morphological change over many millions of years. We are not engaged in spin.
You have just called everyone who accepts living fossils on an old earth (including most Christians) not merely mistaken, but lying. Yet it is you that persists in spreading falsehoods.
You donât deserve a polite response.
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Well, it seems that, while we have not seemingly changed anyoneâs opinions here, this thread illustrates exactly why YEC maintains such traction. In a word, persistence.
Iâll allow Greg to respond and then shut this one down. It seems to have run its course.
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Logical thinking about the history of our existence would be wise to consider other philosophical categories that build the logic other than just materialism. There are smart people on both sides of this history of life theorizing. Being smart is not enough. Being wise is better. For guys like me who believe in God and the Bible, wisdom tells us that some of the things we make judgements on within a purely materialistic perspective are fools because God, by definition, is supernatural and involved in the interworkings of life on this planet.
And to reiterate: if you think that it is justifiable to accept the conclusions and judgements by those scientists who do so out of a fully materialistic frame of mind, then they must be held to account to that standard with the question,"How can you know that you are not just a product of a material paradigm incapably inept for true determiming of anything at all? How do you know that you are not just a cog in a machine spitting out other machine parts that have no true reasonable value for understanding that which is transcendent and true?
Fortunately for us all, this is not true of humankind at all! We were all created by God as in His image and God has not only made Himself aware to all thru creation, but He has also placed eternity into the hearts of man. The problem is is that we suppress this with desires for self glory, pride and a tendancy to avoid accountability to our Creator for holy living. Christian scientists will tell me, âwell i am different than that and i believe we evolved.â I challenge them to then consider the sacrifice of going against the worlds mainstream philosophical naturalism that is that towards a creation model upheld by God in Scripture!
Jesus himself addressed false judgementalism in his most famous sermon in Mt 5 thru 7. In that ch 7 Jesus speaks on âjudgingâ He tells us that the basis or measurement one bases judgement upon will actually be used against them. (The people group from whom Jesus was born missed Jesus for this bery reason of accessing Jesus through the wrong measurements) I personally fear for those scientists who claim faith and make judgements about our existence and thus about God Himself from a basis or âmeasurementâ within a philosophical materialism camp because they will be held to the same standard when they are judged. For me, of course i have questions about why the earth fossils, dna have certain appearances that both support an omniscient God as well as the intracacies within the natural which God created, but i choose to allow what God says of these be the main judgement and not my opinion. I am just a dot in the scheme of things afterall. Ultimately, the basis of judgement upon my soul rests upon âThe Wordâ who is Jesus, God in the flesh, âThrough whom all things were made, without him nothing was made that has been made.â (Jn 1:3) When i am held to account before our Great God, it will be the righteousness of Jesus that i hold as my own alone. There is nothing good in me, in the cross of calvary is where i stand!