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,
I’ll respond when I can get to a keyboard. But “narrowly” is key.
Alan,
“Narrowly true” is still “true”.
You agree that science has falsified the YEC God that I specified.
You also state that
Since the YEC God I specified has been falsified by science, it is clearly not “immune or invisible (undetectable — however indirectly) to scientific study”.
Therefore, by your definition of “supernatural”, the YEC God is not supernatural.
That is clearly absurd, and in my opinion the problem lies with your definition of “supernatural”. Gods can remain supernatural even if they interact with our universe in testable ways.
I would call phlogiston a model or hypothesis rather than an entity. Oxygen and combustion is a better model.
I have no problem saying that science can demonstrate the ineffectiveness of models, including the model you called the YEC God. I have no problem with saying the YEC God as a scientific model cannot account for geological and astrophysical data and requires implausible ad hoc assumptions to fit the data.
I simply don’t think you can prove non-existence. You can demonstrate that models are inconsistent with data, but you can’t prove the non-existence of entities.
The thing that surprises me about this is that I’ve been on evolution forums for 15 years, and I continually hear the evolution side arguing that you can’t prove a negative. You can personally and professionally declare that the Loki God — the one that falsifies evidence — is silly and extraordinarily unlikely, but you can’t prove its nonexistence.
petrushka,
No one is claiming that science absolutely proves the nonexistence of the YEC God or of phlogiston.
It’s right there in your quotation of me:
When scientists say that phlogiston doesn’t exist, they mean that the evidence is so strong that the existence of phlogiston is implausible. Like any scientific conclusion, it is provisional and subject to refutation if contrary evidence comes to light.
Would you seriously argue against a physicist who claimed that phlogiston doesn’t exist?
I think that depends upon what is predicated for the entity in question.
For example, if I postulate “an angel in this room that is always visible to all” and nothing is visible, we’ve proved non-existence of that spirit – given those predicates.
Having specified a God with the predicate “that which created the earth 6,000 ago,” and we are convinced that the earth is much older than that, then we’ve shown that the God so predicated does not exist to at least the degree to which we are certain of the age of the earth.
I already did. Phlogiston theory was a model. It was replaced by a better model.
Saying the object of a model does not exist is simply not a useful way of communicating.
And I have repeatedly stated that I do not disagree with that logic. But an actual YEC would not agree with the proof. Check out their websites.
Then you don’t want to say “I simply don’t think you can prove non-existence.”
What you want to say is, “I simply don’t think you can prove non-existence to the satisfaction of an actual YEC.”
Which is a very different statement.
If your object in discussing science is reaching a meeting of minds, it is best to discuss relationships among phenomena rather than arguing over the existing of things. You can waste a lifetime trying to define things.
Phlogiston is a good case in point.
There are more recent equivalents. The vital principle, gaia, information.
Arguing over whether these things exist goes nowhere. The question is whether they are useful models and whether the models are consistent with evidence.
A YEC might agree to keiths’ logic, but not to the implication that anything important is proved. They would say it is an empty syllogism referring to nothing in their world. Invisible pink unicorns do not exist.
Might I ask what could be the point of defining “YEC god” in a way that is unsatisfactory to YECs?
Surely young earth creationists agree that god has among his predicates, “He created the earth 6000 years ago” (or whatever).
Seems to me that it doesn’t matter what additional attributes are ascribed that I have omitted, prompting a YEC to say I am defining God in an unsatisfactory way. Regardless of what other characteristics the YEC would like to include, if the YEC conception of God includes that initial predicate, then we can state that a God with that combination of predicates doesn’t exist.
That isn’t a proof, but it is no less certain than the assertion that the earth is billions of years old (which, of course, the YEC denies).
The YEC may omit that predicate, but in that case I don’t see why s/he would identify as a young earth creationist.
I would say, why not ask them or read their material. I would say they see your predicate and disagree with it or with some other aspect of your argument.
My thought is, that if there is no basis for communication, so be it.
These threads have been exercises in people talking past each other. I doubt I would have gone down this road if I had foreseen how futile it was going to be.
But I ask again, why bother making an argument when you haven’t agreed on the terms? What is gained over simply stating the scientific findings? You aren’t convincing scientists, because they are already convinced. You aren’t convincing YECs, because they don’t agree with your premises.
There are people I simply don’t interact with. Most of the people at UD, and one person in particular at AtBC. I don’t bother trying, because it is obvious there can be no common ground. Or it becomes obvious within a few posts.
keiths:
Robin:
You’re confusing the hypothesis with the entailment. The age of the earth is just the entailment. The hypothesis is that God created the universe 6,000 years ago. God creating the universe is not a natural phenomenon, so the hypothesis is a supernatural one.
Robin:
keiths:
Robin:
The same as for any hypothesis. Whether the hypothesis is natural or supernatural makes no difference.
I’m not sure what the point would be, but you could test your peers’ reading of Genesis 7:12. Why would that be a problem?
The testing method depends on the nature of the entailments. For example, the methods used to determine the age of the earth will differ from the methods used to validate the effectiveness of an AIDS vaccine.
Whether a hypothesis is worth testing is one question. Whether it’s testable is another.
Yes, that’s right. Showing the real claimed entailments such as a 6,000 year old Earth to be impossible, show that – well – a 6,000 year old Earth is scientifically untenable.
But I did not define “supernatural”. I reject “supernatural” as a misleading and ambiguous word. I substitute imaginary. I define imaginary as not being real. Real I define as amenable to scientific study. I still don’t know how you can type “therefore the YEC god is real” from anything I have written.
Disagree because I define reality to be amenable to scientific study. Gods, if they can interact with reality, have entailments – the claimed real effects they are alleged to be able to manifest in the real world – are by defintion, part of reality. Mind you, there is still the causal link to establish. Poofing rupees is still not testably caused by Ganesh. But you seem set on misunderstanding what I am trying to say. Never mind.
petrushka,
You keep asking the same question, and I keep giving the same answer. What’s the point of repeating your question endlessly? Are you expecting my answer to change?
Why do you participate in these discussions if you are unwilling to pay attention to what your opponents are saying?
I answered your question a week ago, and I have repeated my answer multiple times. Here’s our exchange:
petrushka:
keiths:
Narrowly. If the sole attribute of the YEC god is that s/he created the world 6,000 years ago, and the concept stands or falls by that attribute, it falls. I don’t consider for one moment that the YEC god is more than a human invention in the first place, so I don’t give a fig.
Who gives a fig?
Another comment that I apparently need to repeat:
No, indeed. Just state your actual argument briefly: the essential argument.
keiths:
Alan:
Alan, yesterday:
Alan:
I haven’t typed that, nor have I implied that.
Alan, are you feeling okay?
I’m led to think of the difference between the inquisitorial and adversarial systems of law.
Pretty good, thanks for asking.
Did Keiths not write this in a comment?
Yes, of course I wrote that.
Do you think that “the YEC God is not supernatural” means the same thing as “the YEC God is real”?
OK. You got me. I mean to say that the “supernatural” is anything that can’t be real. The complement of reality, which is all that that is amenable to scientific study. There’s no ambiguity in what I mean. You might be able to nitpick over how I’m expressing it.
Of course I readily concede your argument might be winging over my head. That is why I suggest you might like to summarize it concisely.
By my definition, of course.
ETA
“The YEC God is not real” is a statement I would make and defend.
“The YEC God is supernatural” is something I would not say as the word “supernatural” has connotations of “existing in another reality” which is something I have no need to speculate about. We don’t need no stinkin’ supernatural!
keiths:
Alan:
That definition seems to be at the root of your confusion.
‘Real’ is logically distinct from ‘natural’, and ‘imaginary’ is logically distinct from ‘supernatural’. In other words, real-vs-imaginary and natural-vs-supernatural are separate axes.
Now, you and I happen to believe that all supernatural entities are imaginary, but (at least in my case) that is for empirical reasons. There is nothing logically incoherent about the idea of a real, supernatural entity, like God for example.
If your definition of “supernatural” leads you to conclude that the Christian God is not supernatural, then it’s time to get a new definition.
Alan,
You made the same request a week ago, and I responded then.
Please read my response as well as the OP. If you still have questions after that, then fire away.
velikovskys:
No single test does so generally, but specific tests can rule out specific testable hypotheses, including supernatural ones.
keiths:
velikovskys:
Yes.
No. The note’s failure to appear falsifies the supernatural hypothesis, which is that Ganesh will cause a 100 rupee note to materialize in your hand if you recite a certain prayer to him.
Ganesh’s existence is not predicated on this hypothesis, however, so disproving the hypothesis does not disprove Ganesh’s existence.
Alan,
You’re missing an important point, which is that a test cannot confirm a hypothesis.
I explained this to you yesterday. You wrote:
I responded:
petrushka, to Reciprocating Bill:
Petrushka,
I’m not sure where you get your ideas about YECs, but they most certainly do believe in a God who created the universe less than 10,000 years ago.
From the AIG Statement of Faith:
I hasten to add, however, for the zillionth time, that my argument does not depend on who is, or isn’t, a “true YEC”. I just wanted to point out that your ideas about YECs are questionable, including your assertion that
As I said before, that would make them OECs, not YECs.
You’ll have to work hard to convince me that a real imaginary entity is not an oxymoron. Explain to me how something (?) that is only imaginary can be nevertheless real.
I totally agree with Keiths, here, – apart from the misuse of the word “supernatural”.
Rupees “poofing” or not, there is nothing we can say one way or the other about the existence – with zero entailments impinging on our reality – of an imaginary entity called “Ganesh”.
When did I miss that? Water boils at 100°C at atmospheric pressure. Sure I can’t prove that water always boils at 100°C for all moments and places in the observable hypothesis. But I’ll work with that assumption till disproved.
keiths:
Alan:
Why should I ‘explain’ something that I don’t believe?
What part of this comment do you find confusing?
This in answer to your question: “What part of this comment do you find confusing?”
Alan,
As I said, Ganesh’s existence is not predicated on the poofing hypothesis, so disproving the hypothesis does not disprove Ganesh’s existence.
However, the experiment does demonstrate the nonexistence of gods named Ganesh who poof 100 rupee notes into your hand when you recite a certain prayer.
Likewise, the evidence for an old earth does not disprove God’s existence. However, it does demonstrate the nonexistence of “a YEC God who created the universe 6,000 years ago and wiped out all but a favored few in a global flood”.
If a hypothesis H has an entailment E, and experiments show that E does not hold, then the hypothesis H is falsified, along with any other hypotheses that have E as an entailment.
Alan,
I already explained why your definition leads to the conclusion that the YEC God is not supernatural:
If your definition of “supernatural” leads you to conclude that the Christian God is not supernatural, then it’s time to get a new definition.
But it doesn’t lead me to such a conclusion. You seem to be saying that following my own logic, I ought to conclude that the Christian god is “not supernatural”. That is what I’d like you to explain. I don’t see how you get that from anything I have written.
How can supernatural gods interact with reality in testable ways?
Alan,
I’ve already explained that, but let me try again.
You wrote:
You agree that science has falsified the YEC God that I specified.
Science cannot falsify things that are “immune or invisible (undetectable – however indirectly) to scientific study.”
Since science did falsify the YEC God that I specified, that means that the YEC God is not “immune or invisible (undetectable – however indirectly) to scientific study.”
Therefore, according to your definition of “supernatural”, the YEC God is not supernatural, because it does not fit your definition. It is not “immune or invisible (undetectable – however indirectly) to scientific study.”
Alan,
You’ve already agreed that science has falsified the YEC God that I specified. The interaction of the YEC God with reality — creating the universe 6,000 years ago — is in fact testable, and has been found to be false.
The hypothesis “The age of the Earth is about 6,000.00 years” is demonstrably falsified by many consilient lines of evidence. If you want to claim that “The sole predicate on which the YEC god exists is an age for the Earth of around 6,000 years and that precise god can’t therefore exist as the Earth is actually 4.5 billion years old”, then OK. Frankly, as the whole myth of the Old Testament god is a human invention, I’m not bothered.
There really is no paradox here. The paradox would only arise if we had some evidence we could examine that imaginary “supernatural” entities could affect the real world. your statement “therefore the YEC God is not supernatural because it is not immune to falsification therefore cannot be “supernatural” might have some relevance if the YEC God could be shown to have some entailment, some causal link that we could address (I mean like your rupee note cannot be linked to Ganesh). It seems pointless to have to refute something that doesn’t affect reality.
Alan,
Good. We agree so far. 🙂
No, it doesn’t have to be the sole predicate. No matter what combination of predicates you assign to a God, we can rule out that God if any of the predicates is “created the earth 6,000 years ago without doctoring the evidence”. Many possible Gods are scientifically eliminated this way.
I agree. This is all perfectly straightforward. The reason you’re confused is that you are using a bad definition of “supernatural”. If you replace your definition with a more sensible one, you may suddenly find that all of this makes sense.
That isn’t my view, but it is implied by your definition of “supernatural”.
There is an entailment. If “a God who created the earth 6,000 years ago” exists, then he created the earth 6,000 years ago. We look at the evidence and determine that the earth is much older than 6,000 years. Any hypothesis that entails a 6,000-year-old earth is therefore falsified by science. That includes both natural and supernatural hypotheses.
Agreed, which is why science can only address testable supernatural hypotheses. The untestable ones are off limits to science.
V…yet you contend that the lack of its appearance proves the truth of the nonexistence of Ganesh.
k No. The note’s failure to appear falsifies the supernatural hypothesis, which is that Ganesh will cause a 100 rupee note to materialize in your hand if you recite a certain prayer to him.
But not the existence of a divine ATM machine. Only that the appearance was not able to be replicated for unknown reasons. You have convinced me,science can deal with a supernatural hypothesis, as long as there is a material observable entailment. Any entailment requiring an adherence to the known laws of matter, is untestable, since you are dealing a force not subject to those laws of matter.
velikovskys,
Right, just as the failure of a terrestrial ATM to deliver a bill doesn’t imply its nonexistence.
Ganesh might still exist, because we simply don’t know whether he reliably responds to that particular prayer. On the other hand, if we specify a particular set of possible gods as “the gods that reliably respond to that prayer by poofing a 100 rupee note into your hand”, then if the 100 rupee note fails to appear, we can say that none of those gods exist.
That’s why the evidence for an old earth allows us to say that “a YEC God who created the universe less than 10,000 years ago” does not exist.
Good!
I would put it a little differently and say that if something can already be explained by known physical laws, then there’s no need to appeal to a supernatural entity to explain it. That’s why we invoke meteorology, and not the Rain Fairy, to explain today’s weather.
If the Rain Fairy mimics the laws of physics, then there is no experiment we can perform that will distinguish between the existence of the Rain Fairy and the truth of modern physics. The reason we don’t take the Rain Fairy hypothesis seriously is not that it is falsified by the scientific evidence — it isn’t — but because it requires too many ad hoc assumptions.
I’m confused in my natural state; I don’t need a reason!
You’ve hit the nail on the head. My mistake was following you down the primrose path into using the word “supernatural” at all. My weakness of character allowed me to be drawn into the simple error I had been trying to avoid. We don’t need the word “supernatural” at all let alone needing to define it.
Let me be Orwellian. All we need is “real”. We don’t even need “imaginary” because we can say “not real”. Do you agree that we can define a category of “the real”? Can we say, for some alleged phenomenon, that it is real (we could even test to get evidence for this phenomenon) or it is not (provisionally, of course, we are always open to new evidence)?
“Supernatural” merely leads to the fallacy of reification. Plus there is the added confusion of unnatural (where are you going with those wellingtons?) and artificial.
keiths,
That’s why the evidence for an old earth allows us to say that “a YEC God who created the universe less than 10,000 years ago” does not exist.
Only if you can show that the result of ex nihilo creation is identical to the result of natural processes. What is the basis for that assumption?
The reason we don’t take the Rain Fairy hypothesis seriously is not that it is falsified by the scientific evidence — it isn’t — but because it requires too many ad hoc assumptions.
Of course,the proposition that an omnipotent,omniscient, unknowable, reclusive Being exists is nothing but a giant ad hoc assumption.
Now if a YEC claims that his God created the universe 10,000 years ago and the scientific evidence shows it ,that is falsifiable. It limits the YEC God to scientific consistent actions and it is a specific scientific claim.
Alan,
Disallowing the word “supernatural” is no better than defining it badly. The question of whether something is natural or supernatural is separate from the question of whether it is real or imaginary, and both questions are useful and meaningful.
To see that, notice that the answer to the first question doesn’t always track the answer to the second question.
Examples:
real, natural: a pomegranate
imaginary, natural: the Loch Ness monster
real, supernatural: God, if theists are right
imaginary, supernatural: God, if you and I are right
These are four logically distinct categories. Since all four are logically possible, it is up to us to determine empirically whether supernatural things are real or imaginary. We can’t assume it ahead of time.
In response to my claim that…
…you wrote:
That’s a mistake. Whether you think the YEC God is “laughably childish” is irrelevant. The question is whether the YEC God exists, and that was only settled when scientific investigations spanning hundreds of years arrived at the conclusion that the earth was old. The question was settled empirically.
Don’t make the mistake of assuming your conclusion.
keiths:
velikovskys:
Why would that be necessary? You can determine how long something has been aging by natural processes without assuming that it was created by natural processes.
Right, and stated that way, it is also an untestable proposition. Theists who claim that God is unknowable usually end up contradicting themselves by insisting that they do know certain things about him. (And of course, knowing that something is unknowable is itself a form of knowledge about that thing.)
That is exactly what most YECs claim. It’s the reason for foolishness such as the RATE project.