I was thinking specifically of your concluding comment about the Flood explaining all geological layers. I don’t believe that is their argument. The Flood features large in their understanding of geology, but there is an understanding that other events etc. contribute to existing geological evidence.
If you wanted to dig further, emailing them would be my advice.
Here are some general comments on Flood Geology and YEC from the perspective of a working scientist. Basically, you can’t beat something with nothing. It’s not enough to poke holes in the arguments of the other side; you also need to have fewer holes in your own arguments. It’s not enough to demonstrate that your explanations for some geological features are plausible; you need to demonstrate that your explanations are more plausible than those of the other side. And you also don’t win by having the better explanation in one area when the other side has better explanations in ten areas. YEC takes too much of a piecemeal approach that just works around the edges. Instead, it should focus on developing a core of coherent and detailed hypotheses that can explain what we see in the natural world. Certainly I’ve never read any YEC explanation for a geological formation as detailed as the one I provided in my comment above.
That being said, I don’t understand why YECers feel the need to scientifically demonstrate that the Earth was created recently. If you cut down a full-grown tree in the garden of Eden, you would expect to see tree rings, wouldn’t you? Otherwise it would be a strange kind of tree. So why shouldn’t a full-grown Earth (so to speak) also look as if it had already been around a long time? Perhaps it wouldn’t even make sense for God to create an Earth suitable for man that didn’t look old (I will leave my reasoning on this point for another time). Then if a secular scientist said X is Y million years old, we could shrug our shoulders because there would be no reason that we should expect it to appear otherwise. I think YEC has unnecessarily adopted the impossible task of demonstrating through observations of the natural world that the Earth is not old and that in the long run YEC will turn out to have been a dead end.
This is precisely my position as well. It’s worth noting that the typical objection to that is that God makes himself “dishonest” by making something that appears to be older than it really is. (Edited to add: Now that I think about it, I’m not sure that it even makes sense to talk about “apparent age” vs “real age.” Was Adam “actually 1 day old” the day after he was created? Of course not. He had only existed for one day, but he didn’t just appear to be a grown man. He actually was an adult.)
I do not buy the argument, but even if one was inclined to, one cannot hold such a position and believe in miracles. Miracles, by their very nature, break the laws of nature. When Jesus made wine, it not only had the appearance of age, it also had the appearance of having been made from grapes.
And there was never any greater miracle than the creation of the universe out of nothing by the word of God. To restrict God to “natural” means of aging that universe is to restrict Him to the physical laws He created at the same time as the universe. It’s absurd.
Dear Joel, with all due respect, your comments demonstrate that your knowledge of YAC thinking is poor. I don’t wish to write so strongly, but it pains me to see your pronouncements when you seem to have little to no understanding of the YAC literature. I hope to write something more on this soon.
Henry, looking forward to it. Love robust discussions on this topic.
Anyone familiar with YAC literature would not be stumbled by this omission since there are indeed well known evidences put forward in the YAC literature for accelerated decay having occurred in the past. Namely, the radiohalo argument (parent-less polonium radiohalos), the helium zircon argument, and a host of other indirect evidences (e.g. soft tissue in dinosaur fossils etc.). Make of these arguments what you will, but they are there. In fact an extended research project (RATE) was conducted looking into this question and the findings can be read in various places. The existence of such evidences was actually alluded to in passing in the documentary, and a charitable critic might have searched them out to know what he was dismissing. Furthermore, although a whole lot of detail was necessarily left out of the documentary, if you watch the 3 volumes of post-documentary releases (‘Beyond Is Genesis History?’), which contain the fuller interview footage that didn’t make it into the film, you can find these evidences discussed there. Too, the conference lectures associated with the documentary contain a vast amount of additional material that give a much fuller picture.
I have never heard a critic take this line of attack, since to my knowledge experimental attempts to change decay rates in all sorts of varied conditions have shown only very small variations in decay rates. A much more formidable argument against accelerated decay than the one you present is the heat problem. That is the major difficulty with accelerated decay and is fronted quite openly by the more responsible YACs, who have it as a matter of ongoing research.
(As a side-note, in my view the radiometric evidence is currently the best argument against YAC. Although YACs have uncovered some very intriguing evidence suggesting accelerated decay, without a solution to the heat problem the balance of radiometric evidence still favours an old earth. That said, radiometric evidence is not the only line of evidence YACs draw on… it is formidable though).
Whilst the ‘poke-holes’ approach has been a feature of village YAC, anybody conversant with the more responsible YAC literature can see that this very criticism is one they have (for quite some time now) been bringing to bear against their own movement. And an impressive amount of effort has been directed towards positive model building, employing precisely this kind of big-picture thinking you lament is absent. There have been some notable results. You do your credibility as a YAC critic a disservice by speaking as if this is not so.
Aside from the fact that many geological phenomenon present formidable challenges to an old earth view (the mere fact of diverse phenomenon is not a one-way argument). And aside from the fact that no YAC thinks the entire geologic column is the product of a global flood, but makes allowance in varying degrees for pre- and post-flood deposition (e.g. Quaternary glacial deposits). Aside from these things, I would simply point out that asking ‘how?’ does not constitute a very strong counter-argument. We can ask ‘how?’ about many things we don’t understand, which nevertheless happened. Too, you should assume that YAC geologists are aware of the variety of geological formations worldwide, and that perhaps, just maybe, they have devoted some effort at creationist model building to explain these things. (I’ll provide some recommendations later).
It’s founded on theological considerations. And, to be fair, those theological arguments are not trifling.
This is another misunderstanding of YAC, since YACs regularly make use of the apparent age / mature creation argument themselves (to varying degrees) e.g. see Kurt Wise ‘Faith, Form & Time’. But your analogy from tree rings to a ‘full-grown’ earth doesn’t seem cogent since the earth does not grow like a tree, which is to say whilst tree growth rings are necessary to arrive naturally at an adult tree, its hard to see why billions of years of radiometric decay are integral to arriving at a complete Earth, since radiometric decay has nothing physically to do with any ‘growth’ of Earth.
Regarding your personal geological interpretation of Devil’s Punchbowl, I’m not a trained geologist but my line of work does intersect with geology to some degree and I have enough layman’s knowledge to not be particularly awed. Most of your description proves nothing, as you give no decisive arguments for timescales, and end up just asking 'how’s? again, which can be turned in both directions - one striking feature about geology is that so many geological features exist that we see no modern-day processes making. That deserves attention.
Before getting off the ground, you need to establish whether YACs actually consider these particular deposits (and the source rocks) to all be formed during the global flood, and to do this you need to be familiar with where the pre-flood/flood and flood/post-flood boundaries are typically drawn by YACs (and there is more than 1 view). You appear to assume fine-grained deposits can only form in quiescent conditions and that this therefore rules out a global flood. Two immediate problems with this: first you presume that there was no quiescent water during the entire rising and subsiding of a global flood (a position I doubt you will find YACs advocating). Second, look up the mud flume deposition experiments conducted in recent years at Indiana University, published in Science, which showed that deposition of fine-grained material also occurs in fast-flowing water. Too, it is not clear why your interpretation necessitates lithification occurring before the next layer is deposited or before folding, or why the lithification of source rocks had to be during the flood. YAC literature often points to evidence of folding before lithification (absence of fracture features that would be expected if deposit was hard when folded etc.). As for the cause of folding and tilting, integral to YAC flood models is severe tectonic activity, so I fail to see why the presence of folds and tilts presents any internal difficulty to the YAC view. Furthermore, you note that aquatic (rather than terrestrial) fossils were found. Were they marine? If so (as is often found on land), then this fits into the whole ‘how does one best explain the pervasive presence of marine fossils on dry land?’ question. Obviously seawater got fairly pervasively onto land somehow. How, given that sea-level is below land? Both creationists and secular geologists have to answer this question. But run your interpretation by a trained YAC geologist, I’m sure there is much more they could add. They do a lot of field geology in various places around the world.
A trap I think many have fallen into is that they see cheap intellectualism of village creationists like Ken Ham (no ill-will towards him, he is just not fitted for being taken seriously by anyone but the simpleminded), and judge that if the cream rose to the top then it’s time to run a mile from YAC. Understandable, but injurious to the truth of the matter when one looks beneath the surface to see what’s actually going on in YAC today. I’ll present some of the better YAC reading recommendations in another post for those interested.
For those interested in getting a hold of the better quality YAC literature (the scientific aspect of it), here are few of the better books:
Paul Garner (2009) The New Creationism
Kurt Wise (2002) Faith, Form, and Time: What the Bible Teaches and Science Confirms about Creation and the Age of the Universe
Leonard Brand & Arthur Chadwick (2016) Faith, Reason, and Earth History: A Paradigm of Earth and Biological Origins by Intelligent Design (Andrews University Press; 3rd ed)
The last one can be downloaded here for free, though if you only read one I’d go for Garner, it is a lot shorter and more accessible to the layman.
These books are quickly becoming dated as lots of new work continues, and if you’re interested in any of the topics in Is Genesis History?, eat until content in lectures below, I’d especially recommend Kurt Wise’s fascinating lectures on geology, gives a good up-to-date overview:
A lot has been published that hasn’t made it into books yet, here are the main journals, which are a mixed bag and have good and not so good authors/papers:
Proceedings of International Conference on Creationism (2018, other years via here)
Journal of Creation
Answer Research Journal
Creation Research Society Quarterly
ICR Technical Papers
This journal is higher quality, but much more limited in output and scope:
Origins journal was called the ‘best-refereed journal of young-age creationism’ in 2004 by Kurt Wise, but that is quite some time ago and I think it is published less regularly now:
Lastly, get to know which authors are regarded as trustworthy by responsible YACs in different subject areas, it is very helpful in filtering content.
Thanks for your reply, Henry. I’ll deal with what I think is the most important first.
I would strongly disagree. Science starts with the ‘what’, but the heart is pursuing understanding of the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of nature. I spend a large part of my day developing and testing ideas of how nature operates (actually, mostly advising students on how to do this). A foremost objective of YAC should be explaining as specifically and as comprehensively as possible how the Flood and any other processes generated the various geological formations we observe. After all, that’s what secular geology does in the context of its own assumptions.
Regarding my geological scenario for the Punchbowl formation, I’ll leave aside the time needed for rocks to harden, erode, fold, etc. My foremost point is that there are many distinct events occurring – different environmental conditions to deposit the different types of rocks, different folding events, different erosion events. How could this occur? Secular geology posits that the events took place over, or were separated by, long periods of time such that the local environment and elevation could change from one condition to another. YAC posits that the events took place over a very short period of time during the Flood or within a few thousand years before and after. But if during the Flood, how could such distinct events and varying conditions occur rather than one big jumble of rock? And if before or after, how could all the events and varying conditions occur in such a short period of quiescent time? And if some explanation could be contrived, would it be more plausible than the explanation that the events simply took place over a long period of time?
Perhaps it is unfair for me to criticize YAC without having read much recent material, but I appreciate you understand my position of having been urged repeatedly in comment threads that I should read X or Y because it is a really good and then I find that it is not. What I would most want to read is journal articles by YAC explaining the ‘how’, but I see above you state they are of mixed quality. YAC really ought to exercise some peer review – not that peer review guarantees that the science is correct, but at least it generally filters out the worst.
Thanks Joel.
Re. asking ‘how’ I’m simply making the point that this does not carry the same weight as actual evidence against. On the varieties of geological formations etc, I’ll just point you to resources cited above, you might particularly enjoy Wise’s IGH lectures, and also Steve Austin’s too. If you want recommendations of specific papers for particular subject areas, send me a message as I have a pdf doc of recommendations from a responsible YAC. I can’t upload pdf’s here though, as far as I can tell. Thanks for the discussion.
In practice, there are always some data or observations that don’t fit with a scientific hypothesis, so evidence against may not count as much as some might think. If the evidence for is substantial and the hypothesis seems reasonable, it usually will be accepted and the evidence against will be viewed as an unimportant anomaly or reinterpreted to fit with the hypothesis. I do this myself every day, not because I am forcing the data to fit some pre-conceived notion but because inside and outside of science one must make judgments in the face of evidence that is not completely black-and-white.
For example, I recall from IGH that it was shown that soft tissue might be present in dinosaur fossils. Let’s assume this is true. YAC adherents would see it as evidence that fossils are not as old as secular scientists thought, but I am sure that secular scientists would simply conclude that they were wrong to think before that soft tissue could never be preserved over so many millions of years. They would do so because they would believe there were still so many other X, Y, Z lines of evidence pointing to the great age of dinosaur fossils. If YAC adherents protested that soft tissue evidence was being ignored, secular scientists would ask that if dinosaur fossils were not as old as thought, then how could the other X, Y, Z lines of evidence be explained in the YAC framework? If YAC could not do so, YAC would lose (nothing does not beat something). This is why answering the ‘how’ is important, and not just providing evidence against.
Great discussion! I found Robert A Herrmann’s ideas ( www.raherrmann.com ) very interesting, but since I’m not a scientist and don’t have time to read it all, I was wondering if somebody here is familiar with his work.
Actually, the arguments for dinosaurs being the same as dragons (!) and co-existing with humans is one of those Creation Science ideas that I thought weird until I looked at their broader reasoning. Then, when the existence of soft-tissue in fossils was discovered (by a secular scientist), it just helped confirm their theories. Of course there are other interpretations.
Joel, I understand your reluctance to countenance sloppy thinking, but I wonder whether the mockery and contemptuous dismissal of Creation Science in the secular world has caused you to reject it before understanding it. Certainly, when I first approached Creation.com, I was convinced the Bible taught a 6 day creation, but was extremely sceptical of those weirdos who made Christians look foolish by grabbing any tenuous argument (so I thought) to support their belief. I was pleasantly surprised and a little embarassed that I’d fallen for the smear job against them.
Maybe that’s not you, but I put that out there for your consideration. At the very least, some of your complaints and examples show you are not familiar with even the layman articles at creation.com. Disagree if you will, but it would help me as I read if you addressed what they actually say. You might even win me over.
I don’t know about dinosaurs, but I believe in dragons.
Okay. Different country, different culture, different background…I’m guessing all that contributes to me saying, “Huh?”
This may be a different topic for a different thread, but I have some thoughts on stars and starlight that I would love to hash out. Specifically, the objection from skeptics “if the universe is old X thousand years old, why can we see light from stars that are 13 billion light years away?” Any thoughts?
I don’t really know anything about dinosaurs. All I know is that the Bible seems to describe a dragon in Job, and dragons are part of cultures around the world. Just like a huge flood. Seems like people remember things like that for a long long time—Long after they’e gone away. Hope that explains it.
My thoughts on light are as follows:
Please suggest the best articles related to geology or astronomy for me to read.
One idea is so “heretic” that I like it very much: That the solar system is basically the center of the universe. No need for extended “time frames” and such. The Creation Answers book has a chapter on it. Fascinating. The standard model that is so much prevalent hinges quite a bit on the cosmological principle which is just a philosophical assumption. Do away with it and all of a sudden quite a lot is possible. This (secular) article explains it a bit: Where is the centre of the universe?
Joseph, if light created en route is no more “dishonest” than any other miracle, then trees without rings are perfectly possible too 
I think it’s a good idea not to mix Gen 1 and 2. “Bring forth” is very much different then “planted a garden”. The first one seems to speak about a “development” of itself while as the second one has a gardener who could have grown the trees being in a greenhouse and then brings them into the garden to plant them. We humans do this all the time…
Hi Joel. It’s really not difficult to find relevent articles at the website. Even so, I’ve provided links to three you might find of interest.
As I have said previously, I enjoy John Hartnett’s writings. He’s one of the men who doesn’t hold too tightly to his hypotheses if they prove to be untenable. Here’s one article on the the starlight issue being discussed in this thread:
Here’s another article from different authors on two different creationist approaches to “a bible-based geologic framework of earth history”:
And this might be of interest:
But using the search engine is probably the best idea. After all, I am only a layman myself, and because there are a variety of authors who do not always agree (and at times revise their own work), one article is not the be-all-and-end-all on a subject.
Enjoy.