When is the YEC God no longer the YEC God? That question came up in my recent thread on methodological naturalism and accommodationism. In that thread I argued that science falsifies the YEC God, because it shows definitively that the earth is about a million times older than the YECs believe. If the earth is old, then the YEC God doesn’t exist. There might still be a God, but not the YEC God, because the YEC God necessarily created the earth a short time ago. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be “the YEC God” at all!
Robin and Petrushka objected because they didn’t see “the YEC God” as being essentially YEC. In other words, they saw “the YEC God” as referring to a God who would still be the same God even if it turned out that he hadn’t created the universe several thousand years ago.
In short, I saw “the YEC God” as equivalent to “a God having YEC characteristics”, and they saw it as equivalent to “the God of the YECs, who might or might not have YEC characteristics”.
Of course, neither interpretation is correct in an absolute sense. Language is a convention, and “the YEC God” can plausibly be interpreted either way. However, I argued that in the context of the thread, it was clear how “the YEC God” was being used:
…I thought that readers would notice that I used the unusual phrase “the YEC God” instead of “God” or “the Christian God” or “Yahweh”. Since I took the trouble of adding the qualifier “YEC”, they would infer that there must be some significance to it. There was; I added it to indicate that my argument was confined to YEC Gods. What is the characteristic of a YEC God that distinguishes him from an OEC God or other Gods? The clue is in the qualifier “YEC”. He must have created the earth a (relatively) short time ago.
This leads to a counterintuitive realization: the entity we refer to as “the YEC God” is not necessarily the same as the entity that YECs refer to as “God”!
How can we resolve this apparent paradox? I think the key is to recognize that within our minds, “the YEC God” doesn’t really refer to a single possible entity. It refers to an entire set of possible entities, any of which would qualify as “the YEC God”. Likewise with “God”.
The set of possible entities encompassed by the word “God”, when spoken by a YEC, is larger than the set encompassed by the phrase “the YEC God” as used in the other thread. The latter is a subset of the former. Since they are not coextensive, they don’t mean the same thing.
There’s much more to be said about this, particularly about how God’s status as a fictional (or at best unknown) entity affects all of this, but I’ll leave that to the comments.
Points of Fact (based on prior testimonies given here):
The thread author and the two names mentioned are all atheists.
The thread author is also an anti-theist, particularly anti-Christianity (shouldn’t he just keep such posts to his own blog?).
Again, TSZ appears more like an anti-theist or Atheist Zone.
Gregory
This site is open to all views (within the law) and all posts and comments are open to challenge. There is no bar other than the not-very-onerous rules established by Dr Liddle.
If you wish to present a case for God, have at it.
Carl Sagan seems to have covered this with his “dragon in my garage”.
Gregory,
I am skeptical of Christianity, and it is entirely appropriate for me to express my skepticism at a site called The Skeptical Zone. Obviously.
As Alan says, you’re free to challenge anything I write, and I will return the favor if I think you’re mistaken.
However, if you’d like to challenge my skepticism regarding Christianity, I would suggest writing a new OP. The topic here is not Christianity per se, but rather a philosophical point regarding names and descriptions. Particularly, when do two references point to different Gods, and when do they point to the same God?
I for one would be very interested in seeing you attempt to defend Christianity, so I encourage you to write an OP.
Alan,
Sagan was aiming at a different target. He was pointing out that while an untestable hypothesis can’t be disproven, that is not at all the same as proving it to be true.
The question here is different, because the YEC story is actually testable (and has been falsified).
Here, the question looks more like this: “Science shows us that the YEC story is false, so does that mean that the YEC God doesn’t exist, or does it merely mean that he doesn’t have the properties that the YECs thought he had?”
The answer depends on how you interpret the phrase “the YEC God”, as I explained in the OP. But it leads to a more interesting and general question, as I explained to Gregory:
And from the OP:
Indeed. Almost any argument for God: Kalam, the various ID “god of the gaps” arguments, Upright Biped’s “semiotic argument” seem to leave the choice of God to the observer. Perhaps someone could explain the second step of the “therefore God” argument. Therefore which God?
keiths:
To add one rather trivial point, I’ve met quite a few people who identify as YEC, but mainly for theological reasons. They certainly accept the possibility that their god is not the “YEC god”, but they are simply not interested in the scientific evidence that bears on the YEC vs. OEC issue.
I have a YEC physician friend who fits this description. He’s willing to discuss bible verses all day long, but in the instances when I pressed him on evidence for an old earth/universe, he felt that I was drilling down on this one point excessively and became bored with the discussion.
Alan,
Apologists sometimes try to use the ambiguity to their advantage. If they find it difficult to defend a particular God, they will often switch to another God and defend him instead.
For example, David Bentley Hart is an Eastern Orthodox Christian, yet in his recent book The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, and Bliss, he barely (if at all) mentions the specifically Christian aspects of God such as the virgin birth, the doctrine of atonement, the dual nature of Christ, etc.
He’s probably embarrassed by those things, and for good reason.
I suspect our own Gregory may suffer from the same embarrassment, which is why he won’t stand up and defend Christianity here, preferring instead to complain about the number of atheists who post here..
Gregory, what good does it do to have theists around if they’re afraid to defend their faith? It’s telling that the only prolific theist contributor at TSZ, William J. Murray, “defends” his theism by saying “I never said it was true, and I don’t care anyway.”
Where are the believers who actually have the courage of their convictions?
Possibility 1: The YEC God and the OEC God are different entities.
Possibility 2: The YEC God and the OEC God are the same entity, and the disagreement between YEC and OEC is about some of what that God has supposedly done.
That, I think, has been the miscommunication between you and petrushka. You have been talking past one another.
socle:
Are you sure it was boredom? I’ve had similar experiences with scientifically literate YECs, and the problem was not boredom, but rather an avoidance of questions that could lead to cognitive dissonance.
At some level, scientifically literate YECs know that their beliefs are ridiculous and impossible to reconcile with their scientific knowledge. The path of least resistance is to avoid the issue altogether by simply not thinking about the conflicts.
I think that YECs are intellectually more honest than non-literalists in one important sense: they understand that if the Bible isn’t correct on creation, then it is impossible for us to determine whether, and when, it is correct on doctrine. If the entire book is in doubt, then the entire faith is in doubt, and most YECs realize this.
Neil,
We resolved that in the last thread. However, that was not the issue that generated all the heat.
The issue that generated all the heat was petrushka’s statement regarding the ‘toothpaste thief’ scenario. That was not a miscommunication. It was a logical error.
Avoidance could also have played a role, although I think it would have been at a subconscious level, if that makes sense.
I believe that he really didn’t care much about the science and had never thought about its implications. For example, he had no response to the distant starlight problem.
From his perspective, I seemed like one of those YECs who focus on the few anomalous results that arise in radiometric dating, while ignoring the fact that the curves all agree.
Following up on a point from the OP regarding references to fictional (or unknown) entities vs. known entities:
Suppose you’re in conversation with someone who mentions “that guy who shot Robert F. Kennedy from the Book Depository in Dallas”. You know that no one shot RFK from the book depository, but you don’t conclude that your interlocutor is referring to a non-existent person.
Why? Because you realize that it was probably a verbal slip or a momentary confusion, and that your conversational partner is really referring to Lee Harvey Oswald, the person who shot John F. Kennedy, not Robert F. Kennedy, from the Book Depository in Dallas.
What makes that possible? How are you able to figure out that he is referring to Lee Harvey Oswald, when the description he offers doesn’t match? Well, you know that there is a famous case of Lee Harvey Oswald shooting the President from the Book Depository. Your conversational partner is more likely to be referring to Lee Harvey Oswald than to some nonexistent person and an event that never happened.
In this case, the description nearly (but not quite) matches a real person, so you assume that it was intended to match the real person. The known facts about the real person override the errors in the description.
This isn’t limited to real entities, however. Suppose a new Laotian immigrant is talking to you about American customs, and she mentions the cat that hides the colored eggs on Easter morning. You instantly know that she is referring to the Easter Bunny, not the Easter Kitty, even though both the Easter Bunny and the Easter Kitty are fictional. Why? Because the Easter Bunny is a widespread American idea, and the Easter Kitty isn’t.
Now consider God, who is also a fictional character (or at least very poorly known). The number of possible entities encompassed by the word ‘God’ is enormous, ranging from the “ground of being” of modern theology to a guy with a body living on the planet Kolob and having lots of children with his many wives (Mormonism), to people here on earth like David Koresh (Branch Davidianism).
Here it gets much harder to identify “Robert F. Kennedy” style mistakes, because there is no real (or known) God to check against. There isn’t even a standard version of God to check against, like there is for the Easter Bunny. You’re stuck instead with a large, vague, and conflicting set of possible beings, all mashed together under the single label ‘God’.
socle,
Sure, that makes sense to me.
That’s interesting, especially for someone in a science-based profession like medicine.
You mean the theology all lined up for him so he thought that to complain about the science was a mere quibble?
Giuseppe Puccio, Paul Giem, Michael Egnor, Jon Garvey – medics all!
Alan,
In fairness, I think Paul Giem is the only one of the four who is a YEC, right?
That’s not to say that IDers don’t also have major problems with science, of course — just that they aren’t quite as severe as the problems faced by the YECs.
there is no evidence on earth for a earth being here more then 6000 years.
What could there be of intellectual worth for making such great conclusions about unwitnessed things.
Exactly. In his view, the accuracy of the bible is beyond doubt (based mostly on arguments such as those found in Josh McDowell’s books), and YEC is the most obvious interpretation of the texts. But like I said, he’s not very passionate about the YEC/OEC issue, and finds it odd that people make such a big deal about it.
It’s kind of a warning sign to him, in fact. Anyone who is so obsessed with such minutiae is probably just looking for an excuse to reject Jesus. Christianity is not supposed to be hard to understand. You should be suspicious of anyone (e.g., professors with bad combovers) trying to convince you otherwise. 🙂
What do you make of this, Robert? Here’s a link to the main page for context.
socle,
Satanic goatees are also a warning sign. I’ve always wondered if David Silverman does it on purpose.
My point is orthogonal to Keiths’.
I would be willing to consider the possibility that my point is wrong, but it was never addressed.
petrushka,
Which point is that? I thought I had addressed all your points.
I concluded an earlier comment this way:
Expanding on this point, there are also cases where a label may refer both to a real entity and to a concept that has drifted far from its original referent. This, for example, is why scholars are compelled to distinguish between ‘the historical Jesus’ and ‘the Jesus of Christianity’.
The point is that any label or description points to a number of possible entities that would satisfy that label or description, if they actually existed — and one of them may, in fact, exist (or have existed), as in the case of Lee Harvey Oswald. But the set of possible entities is not equivalent to the single entity that actually exists, if there is one.
I posted about 20 times. See if you can paraphrase my point.
petrushka,
There were several points, and I believe I responded to all of them. Do you think I missed one? If so, please point it out and I’ll respond.
First let me see if I can characterize what you meant when you said the YEC God does not exist.
1. The YEC God exists only if the earth was created about 6000 years ago. Alternative phrasing: The creation of the earth about 6000 years ago is an essential attribute of the YEC god.
2. The earth was created about 4.5 billion years ago.
3. Therefore, the YEC God does not exist.
petrushka,
You wrote:
What point did you have in mind?
First, I need to see if I understand your point.
petrushka,
You’ve already declared that your point “was never addressed”. What point is that? Which point of yours did I fail to address?
My point was that you had an implied premise (my number one, above) that many, if not most people would not agree to.
My point would be, that implied premises are hazardous.
keiths:
petrushka:
I addressed that at length in the other thread and here in the OP:
Here’s the post that started it.
I have highlighted the part of your premise that I think is troublesome.
When constructing a syllogism, you may define your premises any way you choose, but you may not insist that everyone agree to them or accept them as well constructed.
I don’t argue with your logic, but I think your premise is a straw man, or very nearly so. The whole scenario is very much like the way IDists argue against evolution when they find flaws in Darwin’s writing.
Now if I were writing the bolded sentence, I would say, If this history of God’s activities were correct, we would observe certain things.
And I would conclude, this history is not correct.
I said this rather explicitly several times, so I don’t know how you missed it. I am not arguing about the correctness of your logic. I’m really saying I think the argument is aesthetically challenged. I think it dies because the premise does not track the way most people think.
Ultimately, the problem I have is with the way you constructed your argument It seems parallel to arguments I see against science and evolution.
Define — for example, “Darwinian evolution” — in a narrow way so that it is easy to find evidence against. The logic can be flawless.
petrushka,
I didn’t miss it. I responded directly to it, and I even requoted my response for your convenience!
Sure you are. Given the ‘toothpaste thief’ scenario, I say the thief doesn’t exist. You say:
That is a disagreement over logic.
Christ, petrushka. Do we have to go through all of that again? Is it really so painful for you to admit that you made a mistake?
What would satisfy you, keiths? a blowjob, maybe? Kiss your ass?
Let’s try to focus.
A strawman argument can be perfectly constructed and prove nothing.
petrushka,
Well, a little more maturity on your part would be a good start.
Beyond that, I would be very happy if you would simply accept responsibility for your comments, including the mistaken ones.
I will never be mature. Age, but never mature.
I acknowledged that your logic was correct. You are merely asserting that my further comments are made in bad faith.
I am at a disadvantage, because I do not have the vocabulary to express what I find wrong with your argument. But it remains a bad way of arguing.
I don’t want to upset the thread here. however its just guessing using present rates. not allowing other options for other reasons of rate changes.
That’s not the point, Robert. The graph shows that if you do assume a constant decay rate for carbon-14 as well as constant carbon isotope ratios in the atmosphere (which is slightly off), then the radiometrically determined ages correlate well with the results from two other, independent dating methods. In fact, it appears you could accurately determine the “varve age” of a varve by using its carbon-14 age, for example. You are right that this is off-topic here, so I’ll leave it there.
socle:
That’s because God is testing your faith, socle. He arranged for those dating methods to give well-correlated results. Are you going to believe his Word or the words of those pointy-headed, goateed, combovered scientists?
It wouldn’t be off-topic in a new thread. You’d be welcome to start one on the consilience between tree rings, lake varves and radiometric dating.
ETA: changed your status to author. If you decide to author a post, please check the rules. Author status confers the technical ability to delete comments in your own threads but please don’t. Comments outside the rules can be moved by admins on request.
Thanks, Alan! I don’t have any ideas on this subject that haven’t been gone over many times elsewhere, but maybe I’ll try putting up a post sometime in the future.
No problem. I just thought we were due a scientific post for a change!.
Alan,
When you moved those comments to Moderation, you missed one.
ETA: A link to the comments in question.
keiths,
Fair enough! I moved the post and the post to which it referred to keep the continuity.
keiths,
Posts moved
Headsup to Petrushka
Keith responded to a comment of yours but as the conversation was more about moderation than the thread topic, I moved it here.
Saying that keiths’ logic is correct is equivalent to saying that anything I said to the contrary is incorrect. I resent being asked to grovel. I consider that a gross violation of the site rules. I have posted about 20 amendments and reformulations of my position, all of which are orthogonal to keiths’ literal argument.
Can we say orthognal? Its that a word? Is it just barely possible that I am saying something other than keiths is wrong?
Thanks, Alan.
Sigh.
petrushka writes:
No, because you made it clear that you thought you were correct all along:
petrushka:
Saying “I don’t believe that any more” or “I was wrong about that” is not groveling. Why is that so hard for you?
It’s not a “gross violation of the site rules” for me to point out a contradiction in your statements, and to ask which of them represents your true position. It’s not a violation at all, as you know perfectly well.
It would be a violation of site rules to mandate special treatment for you, however. There are no special ‘petrushka’ rules. No waivers or exemptions. You are responsible for your own statements, just like the rest of us. Your statements can be challenged, just as ours can — even if that upsets you. We can ask you to justify your statements, just as you can ask us to justify ours.
Yes, and you claimed that I hadn’t responded to the point you were making:
When I asked you which point I had failed to address, you described a point that I had already responded to in detail (in the OP, no less).
Then you blew up and started babbling about blowjobs and ass-kissing.
You’re free to dig the hole deeper. That’s perfectly within the site rules. But I’m also allowed to point and say, “That’s an awfully deep hole you’re digging, petrushka.”