Dear all,
I am extremely busy right now with some very important personal matters so this will be my one and only post here (for the foreseeable future):
Vincent Torley is correct: I am not a young earth creationist and I accept that the earth is billions of years old. In fact, I don’t remember having ever been a young earth creationist, so my views on this matter did not “change” because I was never a young earther to begin with.
In fact, the reason I put the statement front and center on my personal website that “I accept that the universe and earth are billions of years old and I am not a young earth creationist” (see Vincent’s comment for the link) is because I’ve been misrepresented so many times on this point over the years that I needed a clear, unambiguous statement of my views on the age issues!
Anyways, I have been publicly on the record as being an “old earther” for many years. One example of this can be seen in a 2013 post at On the Age of the Earth, Josh Rosenau of the National Center for Science Education Misrepresents My View | Evolution News where I wrote (please note that the “Josh” referenced here is Josh Rosenau, not Joshua Swamidass):
Though I have nothing personal against young earth creationists, it’s not my viewpoint. On both scientific and theological grounds, I do not believe everything was created in six 24-hour days just a few thousand years ago. In fact, Josh should already know this. Here is what I wrote to him in a private e-mail on March 30, 2010:
Plate tectonics / continental drift / standard model of physics / HIV causes AIDS / age of the earth / big bang cosmology — in all of those areas I find the “consensus” view persuasive due to the evidence.
So I was perfectly clear to Josh that I accept the “consensus” view on the “age of the earth” because of “the evidence.” And this is nothing new; I’ve been quite public about my views on this for a long time. Indeed, earlier this year I co-authored a textbook and curriculum, Discovering Intelligent Design, that endorses the Big Bang model (and thus the standard age of the universe) because it’s a compelling argument for cosmic design. Yet Josh still goes around suggesting I might be a young earth creationist.
I don’t get it. I’d like to think that maybe he forgot what I wrote him. I don’t know for sure. But what I do know is this: when you’re dealing with the Darwin lobby and the NCSE, often what you say and what you do don’t matter. Their goal is to spin things and try to paint you in a negative light.
Another example of this sort of thing came in 2015 when David Klinghoffer wrote:
Let’s say that Larry Moran comes along and wants to contribute a comment. In the post I referred to from his own site, he includes a blatant untruth about our colleague Casey Luskin:
Casey Luskin can’t decide how old the universe is but he leans toward Young Earth Creationism. Yet he’s a leading spokesman for the “science” of intelligent design.
This is intended as a slur, and it’s flatly false. Casey has written countless articles here about cosmic origins, biological origins, and human origins that all, without exception, take for granted the standard time table reckoned in millions and billions of years. He is no Young Earth Creationist, clearly. Yet this doesn’t stop Darwin defenders from painting us with that brush. See here for Casey’s reply to another evolutionary advocate, Josh Rosenau of the National Center for Science Education, on the very same point. Jerry Coyne, evolutionary biologist and emeritus University of Chicago professor, has similarly tried to dismiss Stephen Meyer as a “young-earth creationist,” but at least Coyne then corrected himself and apologized.
David is exactly right: I am a big fan of the big bang model of the universe (which indicates that the universe is billions of years old) because I think the evidence supports it. I even once wrote that “the Big Bang is one of the best arguments for the design of the universe ever offered by science.” (Because I’m a new user, the forum apparently won’t let me post a link to that comment, but it’s from my 2014 post on ENV, “The Ham-Nye Creation Debate: A Huge Missed Opportunity”.)
In any case, just as I am 100% sure that I did not say that I was a YEC during my conversations with Joshua Swamidass (those conversations took place in 2015), I am also 100% sure that Joshua did not say otherwise maliciously, and I am sure that his comment was an unintentional mistake that is probably solely due to an imperfect memory. (It’s also quite possible that what Joshua thought was his memory was actually influenced by false things he read about me online where other people wrongly claimed I was a YEC.) Goodness knows–I don’t have the world’s best memory, so I could never judge anyone for having a memory that failed them!
So while I am a bit frustrated at having to correct the record on this point for the nth time, there are no hard feelings towards Joshua Swamidass.
Again, I am extremely busy right now with some very important personal matters so please don’t expect me to have any further involvement with this discussion thread. Having to post this has already taken up a enough of my limited time. The last thing I have time for right now is to get roped into an online conversation on any discussion forum about anything anywhere!
Thanks.
Casey
p.s. I should note that I left this comment because Joshua kindly emailed me to verify if I was a YEC and pointed me to this discussion. So thanks for checking with me, even if it was after some inaccurate comments were already made.