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.
keiths, this will be my last post on the subject, unless a third party chimes in. I’m sure everyone will applaud this.
The reason I said you had not proved the YEC God does not exist is that you erected a straw man YEC God that no one believes in. Straw man arguments an be structured with flawless logic, but the conclusions are vacuous.
Actual human beings who call themselves YEC are very resourceful in worming around the 6000 year problem. If they were scientists we might say they are willing to modify their model to fit the data.
We have everything from thousand year day people to Last Thursdayists.
Now if you want to beat me up some more, just find a TSZ poster who accepts your premise of what we necessarily must find in order for the YEC God to exist. I am quite willing to be wrong on my assumptions about how YEC believers think. I’m open to a discussion of how YEC believers define God.
If a premise is not accepted, the conclusion does not necessarily follow. And if the premise is a definition rather than a fact, the conclusion is assumed in the definition.
keiths,
Have you seen Petrushka’s comment here?
Hey, I’m a third party!
I normally agree with your comments here, but your experience in this case doesn’t align with mine. The YECs I grew up around, including some family members, definitely believe that the god they worship created everything in six twenty-four hour days sometime in the past few thousand years.
I can sort of see your argument about the difference between what an entity is and what it does (or has done). That’s valid when applied to historical figures who have accreted some apocryphal stories. However, the creation of the universe in the past few thousand years is a defining, essential characteristic of the god worshipped by the YECs I know. Given what we know about the age of the universe and of the Earth, it doesn’t strike me as unreasonable to say that the YEC god doesn’t exist.
Is the whole disagreement between you and keiths just about essential characteristics?
That’s almost certainly true, but my experience is that faith doesn’t produce entailments. There’s always an escape hatch.
It’s been decades since I discussed religion with my brother, but the last time I did, he was a Last Thursdayist. A last Thursdayist can live with evidence for an old earth. Another common escape hatch is that the laws of physics have conveniently changed. Evidence doesn’t “prove” anything. There are always epicycles and ad hoc twiddles that an omnipotent deity could have done.
If you define the YEC God so narrowly as to exclude Last Thursdayism and other ad hoc escape hatches, you create something very close to a tautaulogy. Stripped of unnecessary verbiage, you wind up saying that the god that by definition, cannot exist, does not exist.
But that isn’t the way I read it, and I would never phrase it that way, because I think ordinary language is too slippery to support that kind of close reading, and I think it just pisses people off. As I have tried to say, it impedes communication.
It is simpler just to say what the evidence indicates about the age of the earth, and stop at saying either the Bible is metaphorical or it is factually wrong. Take your pick.
I think there is a larger issue that may be driving keiths. On other threads he insists that science can test claims of the supernatural.
And I agree.
I think you have to be really careful about how you phrase your argument, and I think you need to be extra careful to exclude escape hatches. What you wind up with — in tests of Psi, for example — is a conclusion that really doesn’t say much beyond listing the test results. Believers will always try to find an escape hatch.
Ah, I’m understanding your concern better now, thanks.
I still think there’s something essential to the YEC god that is refuted by science, though. Rather than excluding Last Thursdayism, I’ll happily include it by saying “The YEC god is the god that created the universe sometime within the last 10,000 years.” I know a number of people who believe in that god. Would you agree that science has shown that it does not exist?
I think that the YEC god does not exist, and I think science has demonstrated that no such recent creation event occurred.
But I have a very deep bias against verbal constructions in the form: “science has proved that X does not exist.” Science can test entailments and prove facts in the legal sense of prove, but not in the sense of formal logical proof.
We are not happy when creationists disprove Darwinian evolution because blended inheritance is wrong.
Entailments are difficult to craft, and it’s fairly easy to slip into gotcha reasoning. As I say, it can piss people off and not communicate.
Fair enough. “Your claim that the universe was created at some point in the past 10,000 years is not supported by, and in fact is in direct contradiction with, the available scientific evidence, hence the entity you claim to have created it is equally without evidentiary support.” is a bit of a mouthful, though.
That’s a false equivalence. The creation of the universe in the past 10,000 years is an essential characteristic of the YEC god. Blended inheritance is not an essential characteristic of evolutionary theory.
Alan,
Yes, but his objection still baffles me. He wrote:
Of course it is possible to disagree with things other than fact and logic. He expressed such a disagreement, and I responded to it.
He is free to respond, and I wish he would, but instead he is bizarrely insisting that I didn’t address his point at all:
Hi Patrick,
Welcome to the fray. 🙂
Yes, and I pointed that out to petrushka nine days ago:
petrushka,
YECs do believe in a God who created the earth several thousand years ago. It’s not a straw man at all.
I addressed that already, when you wrote this:
I responded:
petrushka:
It looks like Patrick volunteered. 🙂
Also, you keep ignoring what I’ve repeatedly asked you to address, which is this passage from the OP:
I made this clear the very first time I mentioned the YEC God:
Apparently that wasn’t clear enough for you, but I can hardly be blamed for that. I think your reading comprehension needs some work.
This is silly. Science can certainly do the testing, but it cannot disprove the existence of such a god, because such a god could alter the evidence. I would cite any number of UD discussions in which the designer is touted as capable of covering his tracks. Surely a creator of the universe would not be so limited as to be incapable of twiddling with evidence.
What you can demonstrate is that the scientific evidence contradicts the expected evidence of the purported YEC events. Yes, you can certainly say the the original scientific YECs expected to find confirming evidence, and what they found was contradictory evidence.
I find this discussion to be odd, because in all the years I’ve followed these debates, the big complaint the science side has is the lack of entailments by the theistic side. An omnipotent god can do anything. So how can science demonstrate his non-existence?
petrushka,
You’re unwittingly contradicting yourself.
Earlier, you wrote:
If God can alter the evidence, then science hasn’t demonstrated that no such recent creation event occurred. God might have faked it.
You can’t have it both ways. If science demonstrates “that no such recent creation event occurred”, as you say, then it also demonstrates that “the YEC God who created the universe 6,000 years ago” does not exist. If it doesn’t demonstrate that “the YEC God who created the universe 6,000 years ago” does not exist, then it also doesn’t demonstrate that there was no recent creation event. One implies the other.
In fact, science would be impossible if your objection were valid, because we could never reject any hypothesis, whether natural or supernatural. Any hypothesis can be rescued by the addition of ad hoc assumptions.
You think the phlogiston theory is wrong? Not so fast. Phlogiston has negative mass. You think that Barack Obama is not a lizard? Guess again. Reptilian shape-shifters can make themselves look like people.
Science is possible because ad hoc assumptions count against scientific hypotheses. That’s why we can reject phlogiston and the lizard theory, and it’s also why we can reject the YEC story despite your claim that God might have mucked with the evidence.
Because as any theist will tell you, the fact that God can do everything doesn’t mean that he does do everything.
Theists routinely place limits on their Gods. For example, most Christians claim that their God is perfectly good and never does anything evil.
Lots of folks think people were specially created <10,000 years ago:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/21814/evolution-creationism-intelligent-design.aspx
also
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/over-half-of-americans-have-difficulty-believing-the-big-bang-created-the-universe-9273260.html
Certainly, but is deception one of the characteristics of the YEC god? Most of the believers I know would say no, although there are a few that think Satan hides their god’s handiwork and even fewer who claim that their god wants people to believe solely on faith.
Now, adding characteristics does run the eventual risk of defining the YEC god out of existence, as you noted earlier. I do think, based on the YECs I grew up with, that there is a core set of characteristics for the YEC god that an appreciable percentage of them accept. That god concept is inconsistent with the science.
An omnipotent god who is willing to deceive people can do anything. Most believers, YEC or otherwise, in my experience are uncomfortable with that feature.
While not a believer, I’m a big fan of Loki and Coyote myself.
So does Ken Ham accept your argument, or does he find alternative ways to interpret the evidence?
So we have the hypothesis that there are people who fit keiths’ definition of YEC, and the assertion that science has proved their god does not exist.
Should be easy to ask one if keiths has convinced them.
Maybe trundle over to answers in genesis and take a peek.
Anyone care to bet?
I bet they don’t accept keiths’ entailments or have found some alternative way of looking at the evidence.
You and I may think they are nuts, but claim on the table is that they do accept all of keiths’ premises.
Perhaps we can say that No TRVE YEC could fail to be convinced by keiths’ argument.
We are all fond of arguments in the form: No true A would B.
That seems to me to be a different argument. Faith is belief without evidence (and sometimes in the face of evidence). The fact that some people refuse to change their beliefs when presented with contradictory evidence doesn’t change the fact that their beliefs have been demonstrated to be incorrect.
I’m going to make the rather rash assumption that Ken Ham and his followers believe that the earth is “about” 6000 years old. Maybe 10,000, but that’s not a big deal.
The flood? Absolutely.
Are they convinced by keiths’ argument? I’m betting not.
The No True Scotsman argument is a bit lame. It is what I think of when I say no one believes in the YEC god in the way keiths’ argument requires. The jury of actual, practicing YECs is not convinced.
So assuming that keiths’ logic is unassailable, we need to ask why it doesn’t convince the jury. I confess that my attempts to explain this have been inadequate and rambling. But I am unrepentant. The argument only convinces those who are already convinced.
But I don’t think Ken Ham uses the faith without evidence argument. You can go to his site and check. Perhaps a faith without evidence person wouldn’t be a true YEC.
I know from the Bill Nye debate that Ken Ham considers his interpretation of the Bible to trump objective scientific evidence. That’s hardly a compelling argument when he has no evidence to back up his claims.
I think I’m missing your point, though. I thought there were two issues at the root of the discussion:
a) Are there a set of actions, including creation of the universe within the last 10,000 years and a global flood, that are essential to the concept of the YEC god?
b) Is it appropriate in any circumstances to state that science has proved a claim untrue?
You seem to be adding a third:
c) Can a claim be proved to be untrue if the person making the claim refuses to accept the proof?
Am I missing something?
petrushka,
As a purely practical matter, could you let me know how many times I need to repeat something before you acknowledge that I’ve said it? Is it 15? 100? 1,000?
If you’ll let me know, then I can copy and paste the required number of repetitions into one giant comment. After you’re done reading it, we can (I hope) actually discuss the point I’m making.
The OP deals with your objection. In particular, I’d like you to concentrate on this statement:
Do you understand that statement, and why I make it? The OP explains. Please read it, as many times as necessary.
If you don’t understand that statement, then you don’t understand my argument.
Confession! I haven’t really paid attention to your argument and possibly for two reasons. The idea that the creation of the World and everything on it happened as described in the Genesis accounts and around six thousand years ago is just too plain daft to take seriously. And for someone who, contra all the evidence to the contrary, does believe it, I can hardly imagine how a logical argument will sway them.
Seems to me, you can either discount the “YEC” god altogether on the basis that the Earth is over 4 billion years old or you can merely conclude that the creation of the Earth 6,000 years ago is an incorrect attribution and that the “YEC” god nevertheless exists.
Alan,
No one here is arguing that the YEC story should be taken seriously.
That’s the issue being debated. Hence my emphasis on this statement from the OP:
But why do you say that is counter-intuitive?
It seems blindingly obvious that almost anyone who starts to discuss their personal take on their preferred god, there is wide variation on what people – even within the same denomination – believe.
Alan,
It’s counterintuitive because “the YEC God” and “the God of the YECs” would seem to refer to the same entity, but it isn’t necessarily so.
That’s because “the YEC God” can be interpreted in at least two distinct ways:
1) the God of the YECs; and
2) the God having YEC characteristics (i.e. who created the world <10,000 years ago)
My argument is that the latter God does not exist, and that this is shown by science.
That I was referring to the latter God, not the former, was clear from the very first time I mentioned him:
Petrushka is arguing as if I hadn’t said any of this.
I’m convinced that there is no entity that fits your description because the evidence of the history of the Earth can be gleaned from many sources such that we can dismiss such ideas as human invention.
I’m not so sure. I think he is suggesting that YECs are unfazed by the counter-factual nature of elements of their belief. But I could have misunderstood.
I think I’ve made it pretty clear that actual YECs are not the TRUE YECs that keiths’ argument requires. I haven’t been very successful in conveying this point, but I think my best evidence is that they are unimpressed with keiths’ logic.
Something is amiss.
So I suggest that someone try to find an actual TRUE YEC and convert him using keiths’ argument. Shouldn’t be difficult.
Had a brainwave! Why not ask Cornelius Hunter and his commenters?
Great idea. I do not expect to get eyestrain reading the responses.
ETA:
Answersingenesis is a trove of such stuff.
I do not offer up creationist arguments as valid or convincing. Just existing.
petrushka,
Hmm
My take is:
“Age of the moon, no big deal!”
Obviously not a TRUE YEC.
I’m still not following this line of your argument. The YECs of my experience do not believe what they believe because they have been convinced by scientific evidence, they believe because they were raised to believe from the moment they were born.
They do, in fact, hold the position that the god they worship created the universe in six twenty-four hour days within the past 10,000 years. They also, in fact, hold the position that the god they worship caused a global flood sometime during that period, killing all but a few humans.
Science has shown that neither of those events took place, thereby refuting the existence of any god for which those are essential characteristics.
Why does it matter that the YECs are unconvinced by the evidence? Their refusal to be reasoned out of a position they were never reasoned into has no bearing whatsoever on whether or not their claims have been disproven.
Frankly it doesn’t matter that much to me. Believing the Earth is 6,000 years old per se does not seem to have dire consequences. It’s the entitlement to interfere in (for example) women’s reproductive health that’s more of an issue.
Alan,
Exactly. The God I described does not exist and science shows this, despite petrushka’s protests.
keiths:
Alan:
My argument has nothing to do with that.
petrushka,
And I think I’ve made it pretty clear that my argument does not require “TRUE YECS” at all. Nor does it require that YECs be swayed by my argument, as Patrick points out. You are flailing at a straw man.
Your behavior in these two threads has been quite bizarre. What’s up with that?
Again, take a look at this statement from the OP:
Do you understand that statement, and why I made it? If not, then you don’t understand my argument. Please read the OP again. If you still don’t understand it, then ask questions.
Beating up straw men just makes you look silly.
keiths,
That being whether YECs worry unduly about scientific research showing testable claims like the age of the Earth to be wrong. Yes?
So, what is the essential point you wish to make?
Alan,
Yes.
The one I’ve been making in the OP and throughout the thread. Please read the comment below and if my point is still unclear, feel free to ask questions.
Patrick,
Precisely.
So the real issue has always been whether those characteristics are essential or incidental. I explained that to petrushka nine days ago (!):
People can, of course, disagree on which characteristics qualify as essential, as I pointed out five days ago in the OP:
I emphasized the fact that there is no objective answer to the question of which characteristics are essential and which are incidental:
Then I explained how context helps us determine which sense is being used:
And the context was clear from the very first time I mentioned a YEC God:
So yes, science shows that the YEC God I specified does not exist.
But wait, petrushka says, at least some YECs would still believe in their God even if they became convinced that the universe was old. In other words, YEC characteristics are not necessarily essential to the YEC God.
Exactly, I say. That is why I am emphasizing this point from the OP:
Do I need to repeat all of this a hundred times, petrushka, or will you drop your straw men and engage my actual argument?
I agree too. Is that it?
Actually, that’s not what I said. At least I can’t recall saying that.
What I have said several times is that YECs can believe in YEC despite scientific evidence to the contrary. What I have said several times is that religious believers do not accept the kind of entailments required by your argument. They might find some way, such as Last Thursdayism, to deny the relevance of your evidence, or they might produce some alternate physics.
I assert that this must be the case, since your argument has been around for a long time and isn’t converting many YECs. I assume that some YECs have been converted, but in those cases, I would agree that they are no longer YECs.
But it is very likely, based on answersingenesis and similar sites, that there are YECs who are aware of your evidence and who are not converted by your argument.
So what?
So cognitive dissonance is a widespread complaint?
ETA Virtuoso believing as Dawkins puts it.
Although there are scientific reasons for accepting a young earth, I am a young-age creationist because that is my understanding of the Scripture. As I shared with my professors years ago when I was in college, if all the evidence in the universe turns against creationism, I would be the first to admit it, but I would still be a creationist because that is what the Word of God seems to indicate. Here I must stand.
Richard Dawkins quoting Kurt Wise
petrushka:
Patrick:
Indeed, so what?
Petrushka, I’ve never claimed that I had a magic bullet that would convert YECs into rational thinkers. Where did you get that bizarre idea? Please engage my actual arguments instead of your fantasy versions of them.
Do you even read my comments? I wrote this above:
My claim, as I explained to Alan, is this:
Keiths,
I think you have define a YEC that is unlikely to exist.
Someone who IS YEC and who also accepts the correctness of geology and astrophysics and who also accepts your assertion of essentialism.
I think you will find that — however irrational you may find it — they have found some way to reject one or more of your premises or a way to reject your evidence.
Alan,
That’s it.
Now if we could only figure out what petrushka is on about.
He seems to be claiming that “the YEC God” must always and only refer to “the God of the YECs” and never to “the God having YEC characteristics” — despite the fact that I made myself absolutely clear in my first comment mentioning the YEC God:
If he disagrees, then he’s back to using the same bad logic he used with regard to the toothpaste thief, when I wrote this…
…and he claimed this:
It’s obviously wrong, as he finally admitted over a week later. The same (il)logic applies if he objects to my YEC God comment.
petrushka,
How many times do I have to repeat myself?
My argument does not depend on how you or I define a YEC. It does not depend on who is a “TRUE YEC” and who isn’t. It does not depend on whether YECs are swayed by my argument or whether they cling to their irrational beliefs.
Please read that statement over and over until it sinks in.
Hang on. Let’s call this “certain stranger” Joe Bloggs. He has a perfect alibi against being the toothpaste thief. He lives in another country and has no passport. He’s paraplegic and hasn’t left his house in ten years. But he exists. Similarly Kurt Wise would still believe in his YEC god even if convinced by science that the Earth was old.
keiths,
You’re getting a bit Murrayesque! 🙂 “That is not my argument!” This is getting less clear the more I try to follow.