Thanks for posting, but this sounds like you’re saying that we don’t have any evidence outside the Bible that would indicate a young earth. That’s something I would strongly disagree with. Of course, I certainly agree that the most important reason to be a YEC is Scripture, not the interpretation of evidences outside the Bible.
Feel free to put forward some “evidence outside the Bible that would indicate a young earth” that you are willing to defend. Make sure that it doesn’t have any of the ‘flaws’ you use to reject other dating methods, lest you engage in hypocrisy. Don’t forget many here have seen all the standard PRATTs before and can identify the problems with them quicker than you can Ctrl-V them.
Otherwise there’s only your opinion, which isn’t worth anything.
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We don’t. Every bit of “young” Earth evidence is individual cherry-picked snippets of the type “this coin is dated 1720 so the Earth can’t be more than 300 years old!” YECs will never ever consider ALL the evidence as a whole. Like the C14 calibration data where ages are determined by over a dozen independent and closely agreeing non-radiometric proxies back to 50,000 YBP you’ve ignored many times.
It’s that consilience thing YECs just can’t stand and will never address.
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I agree. Seems even AIG acknowledges this when they say “same evidence, different interpretations.” And no one maintains a scientific YEC position without appeal to the testimony of Scripture.
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And there are even YECs, very well above averagely qualified ones at that, such as Kurt Wise and Todd Wood who admit that the evidence is more in favor of an Old Earth than of a Young one, but that they believe in YEC in spite of the evidence, and in the hope that they may at some later date discover evidence of equal weight.
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This is why I say it is a Hebrews 11 belief. It is a belief currently weighted towards faith, not towards current evidence. Thomas demanded concrete evidence. Jesus said those were blessed who have not seen and believed. I am comfortable that my belief looks stupid, especially to those who are not Christians (who probably think it’s absolutely bonkers), but Jesus demands it.
I’m not familiar with the strongest arguments tbh. All I currently know is evidence for young human origins: @swamidass geneological proposals and AIG’s Jeanson’s genetic work. But those don’t refer to animals, earth, or universe. What are your top #5?
It looks that way to most Christians too. You should know that.
I think you will find that most Christians don’t agree that Jesus demands YEC.
GAE is not evidence for young human origins. It’s not evidence at all; it’s a hypothesis that’s not supported by evidence but which is uncontradicted by evidence. And it doesn’t refer to young human origins unless you use the word “human” in the very special way @swamidass does in that connection, i.e. “a descendant of Adam”. But in GAE there are lots of other people around at that time that you would probably consider human.
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Thanks. I’ll read through this but I was actually asking @PDPrice. It was confusing because I tagged you.
It’s evidence that Adam and Eve can be the genealogical ancestors of us all 6,000 years ago. I did not know science supported that. I hadn’t thought of that aspect before.
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Yes, but they are not our genetic ancestors according to GAE. And GAE does not contradict science as showing that our genetic ancestry goes back many millions of years further back than that.
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But where does Jesus ever mention the age of the Earth. It is a non issue.and must be very offputting for those who might otherwise consider remaining YEC.
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Jesus affirmed the Old and New Testament.
I don’t understand what your second sentence means. Why would anyone remain YEC unless they believed Jesus demands it to be faithful to scriptures? Would I affirm evolution if I didn’t believe Scripture forced me to believe otherwise? Of course I would.
Yes, I realize that.
Just because genetic ancestry looks similar does not prove that we must have descended from apes who descended from?
It just looks that way.
You would have to ask one of the Geneticists on here, but I believe that the evidence goes well beyond “looks similar” (e.g. evidence of a gene that became fused in the ape-to-human transition, shared broken Vitamin C gene, etc).
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But why does it just look that way? If you’re a YEC, you’re implicitly accusing God of falsifying the data of the world. Are you OK with that?
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False propositions can have true evidence. For instance, I don’t believe in God. But I fully grant there are multiple lines of evidence for God’s existence. But I can not think of a single line of evidence for a young earth.
Some of the best evidence for common ancestry is the differences between species. There are very specific patterns of differences that common ancestry and evolution will produce, and we see those patterns. You may want to check out this article over at BioLogos (and check out BioLogos in general if you are interested).
https://biologos.org/articles/testing-common-ancestry-its-all-about-the-mutations
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Yes. False propositions can have evidence. Some guy who didn’t fire the murder weapon can have his prints on it.
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My concern is that YEC does not have good evidence inside the Bible.
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