I came upon it because Youtube put it in my feed.
The video reflects what I’ve seen Clarey write in his articles on paleontology. So I didn’t need to devote a half-hour watching it. (I skimmed it, found nothing new, and thought it useful for people who haven’t read Clarey on such topics.) So I don’t consider the timing of my post relevant.
It’s relevance to the book is that Clarey has a pattern of promoting unsound arguments that are unsupported by evidence. Clarey gets debunked often because he promotes poor arguments. Yes, not everyone agrees with that assessment—and they are free to publish and post according to their respective positions. [See below in this post for my suggestion at how we consider his and other arguments.]
Clarification: I’m not trying to convince you to abandon your opinions. I’m was encouraging an evaluation of the quality of the evidence for YECism and consideration of the pattern of many decades of misrepresentation of evidence and outright gaslighting by leaders in the “creation science” community. I well realize that many—such as Kurt Wise, who earned a PhD in paleontology from Harvard under Stephen Jay Gould—have stated that even if all the evidence from science supported an old earth, they would still believe in a young earth based on their religious faith. (I’m not saying you are in that group of fideists. I’m saying such beliefs are common.) So I’m under no delusions that compelling evidence will settle a debate if evidence is not central to someone’s position. (And I am quick to add that I am all for Kurt Wise and others of similar persuasions to have the freedom to form their opinions any way they wish. But I do want to be honest with them about what the evidence is and what constitutes a sound argument.)
Speaking for myself, I am very thankful that long ago when I started discussing my YEC position on Internet forums, I got hit hard with evidence and countless examples of contradictory, inaccurate, and logical fallacies in the “creation science” literature I knew so well. This pushed me to start checking footnotes and sources in books like The Genesis Flood (my first such read from the genre back in the 1960’s.) It took me weeks, even months, of intensive research to reconsider my position. So I don’t expect to convince anyone of the failures of YECism and “creation science” in a few posts over several days+. Moreover, different people are affected by different kinds of arguments and approaches. That’s fine. In my case, I’m thankful that some very knowledgeable people chose to “hit me right between the eyes.” (Of course, on Peaceful Science, we hopefully do that sort of thing “peacefully” when that does happen.)
No apologies necessary. And we all have other commitments—and nobody is getting paid to post. (There have been rumors that @Dan_Eastwood gets paid in ski lift tickets but the DOGE brigade has been ferreting out such abuses in the NSF budget so even if it happened in the past, I doubt that it will happen again.)
Understood. And even if that may disappoint some, you made clear your focus when this discussion got started and I appreciate that you kindly repeated it as a forum courtesy. That helps put the “peaceful” in Peaceful Science.
QUO VADIS? Where do we go from here? (Yeah, I like to show off one of the few things I still remember from high school Latin whenever I get the chance. That may be the closest I ever come to being a “renaissance man.” A near second was when I sang “Mona Lisa” in a Nat King Cole tribute concert.)
My suggestion for the next step-–because it sounds like we may have been talking past each other rather than connecting more directly—is that we start over with just one “young earth” evidence/argument at a time. Specifically, how about you tell us which YEC evidence/argument you consider to be the best or most personally persuasive for you. Or however you want to look at it. (Even if you find it hard to pick the very best one, then how about just one-at-a-time mentioning and explaining the arguments which compete for your top ranking?)
You are still welcomed to cite any YEC author/speaker you wish—but preface it with a paragraph which summarizes it and make sure we understand in at least a general way what evidence supports it. I’m not trying to make more work for you. Rather, I think it could actually reduce your workload and add clarity, especially since we can slowly review just one “bullet point” at a time.
I think we can all agree that there are really poor YEC arguments out there—which is why AIG and others have published their own “Arguments Which Young Earth Creationists Shouldn’t Use” lists. So let’s go straight to the best arguments to everyone’s benefit.
