I do not see any ambiguity. If the earth were 6,000 years old, what would you expect the world to look like? Given the text of genesis, I would expect that present animals would be all that ever lived, no more or less - no fossils of trilobites, dinosaurs, or mega fauna would ever be found. Looking to the sky, there would appear no objects further than 6.000 light years away, and therefore no galactic interactions would, or could, be observed. Radiometric dating would work fine and all results would return less that 6,000 years. Ice caps and varves would feature fewer than 6000 or 4500 layers, as would the tree ring record. There would be no record of the first dynasties of Egypt. Few craters would be found on the moon or mercury. These are logical confirming predictions of the 6,000 year old earth hypothesis. If YEC were authentic, they would advocate for these predictions, but of course it is readily apparent they fail, so instead the exercise is inventing excuses and modifying the predictions to somehow accommodate the contrary observations.
There is another important point to be made here. This is not a legitimate response to Deuteronomy 25:13-16. It is technically correct, it does make a valid point, and it is one that I am aware that I need to pay heed to, but when it is used to try and deflect attention away from your own responsibility to obey those verses, it becomes a tu quoque fallacy, which just comes across as shifty and evasive. It is only justified if you are making a specific and relevant response to a specific point that has been made to you. For example, if I were to make a demonstrably false claim about how measurement works, one that you would reasonably expect me to understand and get right, then you would be entitled to raise that as an objection.
No, there is one and only one legitimate response to Deuteronomy 25:13-16, and that is to justify your own approach to measurement and demonstrate that it is indeed accurate and honest. This means demonstrating that you understandâat least in general termsâwhat the rules of accurate and honest measurement are, and that you are willing to abide by them.
If you have not been given any examples of dishonest or inaccurate measurement, you may respond by demanding specifics, together with an explanation of what is dishonest or inaccurate about them. If you have been given specific examples, however, you must either demonstrate that the person giving you those examples has misunderstood the rules, or else bring some new and relevant evidence to the table that they may have overlooked.
Iâm sorry if you think Iâm branding you dishonest here, Jeff. That is not my intention, and Iâd much rather assume that you are in fact responding in good faith. But the fact remains that honesty has rules, and if you want to be viewed as responding in good faith, you need to demonstrate that you are prepared to stick to them to the best of your ability.
Although Iâm more interested in discussing scripture, I will take a moment and reply to this one. And again, I direct my response more towards the silent crowed. My intent here is to 1) encourage your faith in a young earth and 2) motivate you to do your own research! I assure you itâs worth the effort. You will find that posts like this above do not pose the significant challenges that people think they do.
But first, I suggest three things:
First, pray about this topic. I simply cannot stress that enough.
Second, research with an open mind. And do not shy away from hearing from both sides! Read the rebuttals, and the rebuttal rebuttals!
Third, consider applying the following three premises of Godâs supernatural work. We know as creationists, we will be invoking Godâs hand in Creation in supernatural ways. I have found that just these three are sufficient to cover the majority of our challenges:
- God chose to create an extremely large universe during creation week in a way that allows us to see light from the outer region of it today. And according Genesis 1:17, He commanded the heavenly bodies to âgive light on earth.â So according to scripture, He made it happen. No one questions whether He can do that, just whether He did.
- God creates things functionally mature (Adam, the Garden of Eden, etc)
- During the creation week and during the Global Flood, God operated in accelerated manners, to include things like plate tectonics, mountain raising, radiometric decay, heat diffusion.
To be fully honest, once Iâve committed to those three premises, Iâve actually reached a point where I believe itâs possible that we young-earthers have fewer scientific challenges. I know that sounds hard to believe. And because of that, I do share that cautiously. As weâve discussed here, honestly IS extremely important; especially for those who teach others (James 3:1). Itâs also why I really try hard to study all arguments against a young earth. I donât want to be that âEmperor with no clothes.â âŚa fool making overly boastful claims. ButâŚwhatâs been interesting, the more I research arguments against a young earth (as well as arguments against an old earth), the more confidence I gain.
So old-earthers can criticize my acceptance of those three above, but not that I have the significant fatal scientific challenges they think I have.
But again donât take my word for it. My objective is to help you past that barrier of even considering a young earth. Yes, I get that I have not listed specific evidence myself, but thatâs not my interest here. Getting you to go research it yourself is more important (where thereâs a will, thereâs a way). When you do, youâll find that things like varves, ice cores, and dendrology are not the significant challenges other say they are. And youâll start to learn about how those topics also pose their own challenges for an old earth. And eventually youâll not mind at all seeing those same three mentioned so many times.
Like it looks now, a world that was globally flooded, followed by a significant ice age. Unfortunately time does not permit me to go into details. But I can say this: After studying flood geology, the evidence is certainly there. I honestly cannot unsee what I see, and cannot look at the world differently now.
Lastly
Iâve shared what I want to here. Without question, another round of rebuttals will come. Most likely Iâll let you all have your âlast wordâ because Iâd honestly rather talk about scripture. I have to trust that there are a few (silent) people here who actually benefit from what Iâve shared. Thatâs enough for me.
Iâll respect that.
As I re-read your post a few times, two thoughts came to mind: 1) Even thought we each came to differing conclusions, it looks like we each consistently follow our conclusions. And 2) This discussion reminds me of the importance of this point #2 that I said earlier:
What weâre discussing here really highlights that second point (and last sentence), and a question I posed earlier: âWhat does God want from us?â I just canât get away from how important this is.
BTW, the first point is also an important one. Given that, I wanted to respond to this discussion on biblical interpretation:
Scriptural interpretation certainly involves discussions on which parts are to be taken literally. Some are obvious: God is not a literal ârockâ. Others are more challenging.
But in all my reading and listening to others on the topic, one consistency emerged:
Given that, if you see the YEC community interpreting scripture incorrectly, point it out to us. Interpreting scripture properly is at the very heart of what we want! YECs donât believe in 6k years or a Global Flood because we like it. We do so out of great conviction (and even welcome being proved wrong).
As in the cases you mentioned at the end of your post (rainbows as reminders), those challenges are pretty minor compared to the many challenges that come when one attempts to interpret the Flood as a local flood. Iâve said it before: I donât think a person can do so with all honesty.
Well then, letâs have an alternative for those mute corvids. 
YES is an interpretation of the Bible, ⌠wait, typo ⌠YES is a Prog Rock group. Iâll start again âŚ
YEC is an interpretation of the Bible, and thatâs OK, but Creation Science is not part of the Bible and is theologically unsound. Specifically, it requires that God would Create a young universe in a way which makes it appear to be old. While this is entirely within Godâs power (omnipotence), it implies that God is deceptive; God could create a young universe, make it appear to be old, and for all we know did so last Thursday. Prove me wrong.
This is also known as âLast Thursday-ismâ, Omphalism, or âThe Omphalos Argumentâ. Whatever itâs called, itâs bad theology because a deceptive God could lie about anything, including the Bible AND the Resurrection. Everyone including YEC theologians agree that Omphalism is bad theology.
You canât argue against Omphalism - an omnipotent God can do anything - argument over. It is NOT âhonoring Godâ to call Him a liar. The only solution is to disallow the possibility of a deceptive God, ask any theologian.
Anticipating the response, I offer this example: YEC requires (by definition) a young universe, which is contradicted by physical laws of radioactive decay, indicating the Earth is ~4.6 billion years old. The YEC might say that God changed those physical laws to allow things to look old, but changing physical laws would have other observable consequences. Astronomers looking at distant parts of the universe are looking back in time, and can measure physical constants over time, and they observe the constants remaining the same to within measurement error. Did God change physical law and then hide the evidence?
There are many such chains of consequences. Did God Create a universe we might learn to understand for ourselves, or is God lying to us?
No. It is far simpler to just understand that religion and science are different ways of understanding. Thatâs what most Christians do. Thatâs what reasonable people do.
If that is the case, how come you or YECâs donât want to interpret Joshua 10 the same way that the church fathers did?
How is this not being inconsistent if not slightly disingenuous to claim that you donât impose modern science into the text for Joshua 10?
This is certainly not the vibe I get. Iâve seen many debates between Hugh Ross and YECâs where his opponent has admitted that the main reason why they donât take his position is because of animal death and suffering. Thatâs it! This is what motivates them to take a YEC.
So I am guessing you donât advocate for the appearance of age argument.
Just functionally mature, which I would agree with.
Why should this be your main intent over encouraging faith in Christ?
It does not look like you carefully studied the other sideâs position because they donât claim it was local in the same sense that we experience every year.
It was abnormally large in extent because it covered almost an entire continent. It just was not global because the English translations were we really off and humanity was gathered in one place back then .
If you read the Hebrew text (I.e. true word of God ), it gives a much more accurate description, as we would expect from Godâs actual word.
The point I was making was that there are clear markers (even those separated by thousands of years and completely different cultures etc) that this is not a literal story, but a theological one.
As for the most-God honouring possible, most YEC (at least in NA) also retain biblical authority within the real of conservative evangelical hermeunetics. These lead to a host of corresponding doctrines because those doctrines rely upon that way of reading scripture. The God-honouring part is rather subjective as I see evolution honouring God far more than last thursday divine fiat.
There is great conviction on many sides as there have been throughout Christian history on issues. God calls us to be faithful to Him where we are at. As for science, it is not necessary nor according the best predictive models and evidence, to bring science into creation week. As my favourite biblical scholar would say, âGenesis can be taken like a bus of literalism, everyone gets off at some point, its really the timing that is the differenceâ (Paul Teel)
Yes and how do we test the hypothesis that he did? Well we canât because you insist God isnât allowing himself to be tested, and you dismiss physical challenges with literal magical acts.
Why? Why would he design a planet with plate tectonics that looks like it has a long history of plate movements, subduction, mountain formation, volcanic activity etc? Why put radioactive isotopes in the rocks and then accelerate their decay, in the first place? Whatâs this whole business with nuclear physics if the ultimate source of the elements arenât stellar nucleosynthesis in the first place, but God just magicked them into existence? Why make it heat up the surrounding rocks, but then magic away the heat with âheat diffusionâ?
None of this makes sense. Itâs just ad-hoc rationalizations. Last Thursdayism to the core.
Itâs not hard to believe. In fact itâs completely obvious.
Thatâs because you just wave them away with God-Magic. Like, literally you posit miraculous divine acts that solve problems by fiat because you have this imaginary concept of omnipotence to explain away any problem with compressing 4.56 billion years of activity into a few thousand.
âWe have essentially no scientific problems because God just created everything we see in the state we see it and if thereâs some sort of physical issue then Godâs divine powers made it go away and people who think this is a ludicrous way to understand the world, or to do science, just Hates GodTM.â
If thereâs one thing I would ask of you itâs just to be completely open and honest about it. Be proud of it. State it up-front: The issues are solved with miraculous acts of Godâs divine will.
If the theory requires accelerated nuclear decay that leaves unfathomable amounts of thermal radiation that would turn the planet into a hot incandescent ball of plasma when billions of years of radiation are released in a matter of weeks, then just say right of the gate that God worked a miracle for any and all such problems. Just say it. Donât say youâre doing science, say youâre doing religion and just be honest about it. No reason to even pretend thereâs any science in it. The details actually donât matter because if you run into some unavoidable issue you just invoke a miracle.
Of course they arenât, because you can just explain that away with an act of Divine omnipotent power. So just forget about science altogether. It ultimately doesnât matter. We can bring no evidence to contradict a theory that has no compunction against admitting miraculous solutions. Truly, we are defeated against that.
As others have pointed out, this is the Omphalos Hypothesis.
To be fair, it is a potentially honest approach to a young earth. There is no scientific reason why it couldnât be true, but that is only because there is no way to falsify it using measurement and observation alone. But in the same way, there is no way to falsify the hypothesis that we are all living in a simulation, The Matrix-style, using observation and measurement alone either.
However, in order for omphalism to go from being potentially honest to being actually honest, you need to make sure your facts straight about what the evidence that we see in Creation actually appears to indicate. Herein lies the problem, because most if not all omphalists seriously underestimate the level of detail, the precision, and the consilience in the appearance that the evidence gives.
We arenât just dealing with vague notions of âmaturityâ or âageâ; we are dealing with hundreds of thousands of high-precision measurements giving very precise details of specific events happening in specific places at specific times with specific causes and specific events. Nor can the maturity be reasonably described as âfunctional.â Many of the indications of maturity that we see serve no apparent purpose whatsoever other than to act as indicators of great age, many of them placing very tight constraints on timescales.
What purpose, for example, do galactic collisions serve? What purpose do Widmanstätten patterns in meteorites serve? What purpose do significant quantities of lead in zircon crystals serve? What purpose do correlations between radiometric dating and continental drift serve? What purpose do correlations between tree rings, lake varves, ice cores, Milankovitch cycles and the like serve?
On top of that, you would need far, far more than just accelerated processes to account for the evidence that we see in nature within a 6,000 year timescale. You would need the processes to all be accelerated in complete lock-step with each other by exactly the same amount, at all times and in all places, throughout the entire process. Most processes would not increase linearly, certainly not by a factor of a billion, so maintaining that lockstep would be an extraordinary achievement.
This is why, as a Bible believing Christian, I canât accept the Omphalos hypothesis as a serious proposition. It would all amount to God making the earth look older than it really is in the most complicated and convoluted way imaginable, for no obvious reason whatsoever other than to mess with our minds and leave us completely unable to tell what is real and what isnât. This is completely out of character for what I read about God in the Bible. Itâs more consistent in nature with the likes of Q from Star Trek, or Slartibartfast from The Hitch-Hikerâs Guide to the Galaxy.
Thatâs backwards. If youâre doing science, youâre supposed to follow the data. You keep talking about evidence, but never present any.
Nice Freudian slip there. 
But not to a chapter or verse. YECs are only committed to hyperselective hyperliteral interpretations.
Thatâs a great question, Jeff. Look inside yourself and try to answer it, even if you are unwilling to do so in public.
YECism is political, not theological. Itâs all about labeling people.
I would like to know of any one person who makes this claim. I canât think of any.
What claim?
Are you incapable of reading your own prior statements? The claim that there was a flood that covered almost an entire continent. I could also ask about the claim that English translations of Genesis were âreally offâ and the claim that humanity was gathered in one place back then, whenever then was and whatever continent youâre talking about.
These look like handwaving based on invented miracles and dubious theology.
Obviously this makes far more sense given the small geocentric universe of the ANE worldview implicit in Genesis 1. It makes increasingly less sense, the fainter and more distant the objects are. When we get to galaxies that can only be seen from space-based telescopes (which rely a lot on electromagnetic radiation outside the optical range) it really doesnât seem to make sense that God would do it,
As an answer to scientific objections it is just vague handwaving so it doesnât really work on that level.
Which fails to work as soon as evidence of past events - not required for âfunctional maturityâ come into the picture. As they often do.
Again this is vague handwaving and not mentioned at all in Scripture. Without detailed proposals on what was accelerated - and what was not - and with a scientific defence of that model, it isnât sufficient at all to answer scientific objections.
That seems to be clearly false, since none of them as written are adequate to address many scientific challenges at all, and major issues - like the order of the fossil record - arenât touched even then.
First, it is quite obvious that the ice age is not expected at all - Scripture doesnât mention any such thing. Second it is quite clear that the Earth does not look like that at all. Flood geology still fails to explain much of the evidence - which is precisely why you need to invent miracles to hand wave away the evidence.
It isnât sufficient to be science, period. It shouldnât be framed as a debate.
Genesis 1 doesnât suppose a small geocentric universe. It supposes a universe that consists of the earth and a few small lights in the ceiling.
But YECâs donât welcome being proven wrong when it comes to scientific evidence, as shown by the example of AiG.
They plainly state that they throw out evidence if it contradicts YEC.
The question for you is if you take the same position.
What features would a geologic formation need in order to falsify a young Earth or a recent global flood?
What features would a fossil need in order to falsify separate creation?
What genetic features would a genome need to have in order to falsify separate creation?
How is YEC functionally falsifiable? How can it be proven false? Or is any evidence, no matter what it is, somehow twisted and distorted to fit into the YEC worldview?
And a lot of water above the ceiling.
Oh no. But it isnât sufficient as an apologetic answer to current science either. Vague handwaving about made-up miracles is pretty pathetic even as apologetics.
Peter addresses the extent of Noahâs flood. In both cases, Peter qualifies the Greek word cosmos, translated as âworld.â In 2 Peter 2:5 he writes that the âworld of the ungodlyâ was flooded. Here, Peter implies a distinction between the whole of planet Earth and that part of Earth inhabited by ungodly human beings. He does this again in 2 Peter 3:6 where he refers to the world that was deluged and destroyed as cosmos tote, which literally means âthe world at the time the event occurred.â By attaching the adjective tote to cosmos, Peter implies that the world of Noah is not the same as the world of the Roman Empire.
This principle of conservation, or limitation, In Godâs acts of judgment clearly applies to the Genesis flood. It means that if humans had spread as far as Antarctica, The flood would have covered Antarctica, Destroying the Emperor penguins along with the people, Except those aboard the ark. If no people lived in Antarctica, God would have had no reason to destroy the place or its penguins. Nor would Noah be required to take a pair of Emperor penguins aboard the ark. â
The extent of the Genesis flood, According to the principle laid out in Scripture, Would have been determined by the spread of human sin. If humanity had spread throughout Africa, Asia, And Europe, Then those continents would have to be destroyed by the flood. If people remained only in the region of Mesopotamia and the Persian Gulf, Only that region would have to be flooded. Whatever area it covered, The flood must still be âworldwide, â given that people, Not the globe, Defined âworldâ (until a much later era). Any flood that exterminates all humans and their the soulish animalsâexcept those on board Noahâs vesselâwould be considered worldwide and would achieve Godâs purpose in pouring out judgment to cleanse the earth of reprobate defilement.
Thus, a Global flood model claims to destroy all of life in general except Noah and his family, which would cover the entire planet. A worldwide flood model that I adhere to claims to destroy all of human life (except Noah and his family), which covered only a local area at that time in history. More importantly, we actually do have evidence for this model.
In the study I gave you already, Rose points out that during the late Pleistocene era (150,000 to 12,000 years ago) reduced sea levels periodically exposed whatâs called the âGulf Oasis.â The Persian Gulf receded far enough to expose a landmass as large as, or larger than, Great Britain. Rose reports this landmass was well-watered by four rivers fed at the time by snow and ice melt: the Tigris, Euphrates, Karun, and Wadi Al-BÄášin. More than 60 archeological sites, some of which are currently submerged, show that the area was extensively inhabited.
Biblical place names and other descriptive details in the first two chapters of Genesis, including the mention of four major rivers, point to this locale as the likely vicinity not only of Eden but also of the world in Noahâs time. Based on humanityâs refusal to disperse even after the flood we can surmise this is where many of Noahâs descendants continued to dwell. The archaeological remains of ancient human settlements there would, of course, belong to postflood people, given that any traces of preflood habitation would have been destroyed in the inundation. From a geographical perspective, this location makes sense as the region where the flood occurred. It was habitable and arable roughly 50- 40,000 years ago, a rough estimate of when Noah lived. More importantly, during this time and location, a population bottleneck occurred where the number of humans plummeted, and the shrinking remnant became more genetically similar. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/11/121129093951.htm
Huge aquifers reside under this region, the potential âsprings of the deepâ mentioned in the account, and high mountains surround it. In addition, it offers a fairly easy migration route into eastern Africa, where genetic diversity is high. Taking all these factors (and more) into account, the latest scholarship proposes that the Genesis flood covered all of Mesopotamia, the entire Persian Gulf region, and much of southern Arabia, as well.