How Science Works According to Creationists
Viced Rhino
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jM0P0fqlVQM
Viced Rhino commented on an AiG video. I commented on his. Despite his title, he gives at least as many arguments against Christianity in general as against Creationist views on obervation vs. reconstruction./HGL
Oh, one thing more, I am of course answering him on both accounts./HGL
2:31 You just happened to show about radiometric dating that decay of C14 to N14.
I am myself not sure whether C14 decays to N14 or to C12, I have heard both, but let's assume this as irrelevant for knowing how fast the decay is.
This by itself will not tell how old a sample with 1 % as much C14 as our atmosphere (in the proportion to C12) is, unless we presume that sample started out with 100 % or close enough. In that case it is of course 38 100 years or close enough. You can check that here:
Carbon 14 Dating Calculator
https://www.math.upenn.edu/~deturck/m170/c14/carbdate.html
But if it started out with only 50 % modern carbon, it would only have decayed to 2 % of its original C14 content (proportionally to C12), and it would be only 32 300 years old.
You could also reverse that. It could have decayed for a halflife and we have 1 % left, then it was 2 % to start with and the 32 300 years which differ from 38 100 by, in our case, 5730 real years, would be years added in analysis due to an assumption being only 2 % right about initial atmospheric content of C14.
This last is fairly close to how I think carbon dating works in those extreme cases, multiples of the real and Biblical chronology.
Can you prove the opposite from the remaining content of 1 % of modern carbon 14 (or 1 pmc)? No. I took that into account in my analysis.
Can you prove the opposite from the fixed rate of decay? No. I took that into account by using the Carbon 14 Dating Calculator which works on that principle.
So, your any attempt of proving the opposite would involve, heavily, an assumption about initial C14 content.
2:46 The repeated experiments in the present could involve observations of decay rate only very theoretically.
Or, ok, they could have set aside a piece of recent carbon tested to have then 100 pmc aside in 1950, and in 2000 it should have 99.397 pmc, now it should have 99.193 pmc. That is btw a very much clearer difference than you could hope to have with Uranium or Potassium isotopes.
But no repeated experiment in the present can per se determine the original C14 content was 100 pmc.
You could of course date a lot of organic material from the time of Tiberius. It should be independently datable to his time by history, like coins with his image and a presumption these went out of use soon after his replacement with next Emperor. You could check it is 78.511 pmc left, or close enough.
That would tell you the atmosphere in Tiberius' time was 100 pmc, if you assume both the decay rate AND that we are really exactly 2000 years away from Tiberius' 3:rd year of imperial reign.
Some recentists say we are only 1700 AD or sth (they could be so Masonic they would class this year as 1717, even, and consider the fake years of historians are exactly 300), which would mean that 78.511 pmc correponds to 1700 years instead of 2000 years. Then, either would the C14-content have been lower (96.436 pmc = 300 years), or the decay rate would be wrong.
I could imagine the opposite. There was a heroic century involving Arthur and Nibelungs, which was hidden ... so we could be 2100 years from Tiberius. And if we are not finding instead of 78.511 pmc the expected 77.567 pmc, perhaps the carbon content was higher - or the decay rate wrong.
We can know decay rate is right and that carbon content 2000 years ago was 100 pmc, by assuming that the historic evidence for us being 2000 years from Tiberius' third year is correct.
This kind of test cannot be done for determining whether the carbon 14 content in the time of the Cro-Magnon take over of Europe was 100 pmc. It could have been 2 pmc - and that would bring it within the times of Noah's Flood, according to certain versions of Biblical chronology.
3:11 "To find out how long it took the light to reach us ...."
That is assuming we know the distance.
Some part of assumed knowledge of distance involves speed of light and degree of red shift, but this is still not observational science.
We are not observing the star with supposed red shift at close hand so we can check the light is really red shifted. Also, that method is building on assuming we already know distance to "very close stars" with "measurable parallax". But the "measurable parallax" depends on certain assumptions too.
Calling it parallax involves assuming heliocentrism. No observation available for proving that one.
Calling it measurable involves assuming most stars do not show measurable parallax, only measurable "annual stellar aberration of light" SINCE the parallax is measured in relation to other stars doing also annually what is supposed to be "aberration of starlight"- which assumption in its turn depends once again on assuming - heliocentrism.
Without assuming heliocentrism, you don't know the distance. Heliocentrism is itself not observational science. You don't know the distance.
I can make a more or less wild guess the fix stars (as opposed to celestial objects moving around zodiak) are 1 light day away. You cannot prove it wrong without assuming heliocentrism.
And in case you think everyone agrees heliocentrism is observational science, no, look at Robert Sungenis and Rick DeLano and their productions "The Principle" and "Voyage to the Centre of the Universe". I only regret they don't go far enough, thinking parallax works without assuming heliocentrism. They have a technique for how it could work, but no proof that is happening. It is all stars moving in time and in pace with the sun. I presume they move in time but NOT in pace with the sun.
3:30 "when you say Jesus rose from the dead, we have no physical evidence for that"
No direct observation of the moment, though a trace of it on the Shroud of Turin.
But we have the empty grave - as physical piece of circumstantial evidence. It cannot be checked in the same way as you check water boils at 100 centigrade at air pressure of one atmosphere. It is history, not observational science. It is also historical science, and as such checkable mainly by historic evidence surrounding the scientific one.
3:35 "people who were not eyewitnesses to the events"
According to your heavily revisionist and basically non-historical assessment of authorships.
Two eye-witnesses (Sts Matthew and John), two having access to such (Sts Mark and Luke).
"who wrote at least 30 years after the events"
Not St Matthew, who - traditional authorship assignment, which has historic priority over reconstructions - wrote just after, AD 34 in Hebrew, and a bit later in own Greek translation.
"That would be like asking me to write an account of the Dupont Hotel fire in Puerto Rico in 1987."
If you have spoken to firemen and hotel personnel and guests who were around then, or looked at their left writings before they died, go ahead!
If you were in it yourself, go ahead too.
But recall that one traumatising event is not the equivalent of 3 years of study involving mostly non-traumatic ones.
"I wasn't there" - which is where you differ from Sts Matthew and John.
"Without the aid of the internet" - you know, even if some guys are actually these days enjoying social contacts mainly through internet, there are other ways too, which are at least equivalent.
Which involves the position of St Mark, long time student under St Peter, and of St Luke, student of St Paul and interviewer of lots of others in Holy Land or who had been there, including the Blessed Virgin who was still alive at the time.
3:57 the past : "speculation, circumstantial evidence" AND direct or second hand witness accounts, what we have for our religion and you don't have for yours.
4:10 "evidence is uncountable" - but pieces of evidence are countable - which is obviously what he meant.
[Some languages also use corresponding words like countables rather than collectives : Beweis, pl. Beweise and similar in Swedish : beviset = the proof, the piece of evidence, bevisen = the pieces of evidence.]
4:52 Yes a human foot print is very recognisable.
Why? Because neither the naked foot nor any shoe type I come to think of now directly looks like an animal footprint.
Also, wet mud is very recognisable as recent. That foot print was not photographed yesterday after being dried for months and then wetting up in a rain yesterday. If it was photogrpahed yesterday, the ground was wet same day and perhaps before.
5:09 You know the size of individual human beings of Laetoli footprints does not exactly match the size of the fossils without feet associated with them.
5:55 We can measure most of it, like height and how many people visit it each year.
But you cannot measure the year it was built in or who built it.
1889 and Gustave Eiffel are both known, not by historical science, i e scientific evidence in the present used to get the past, but by history proper, by historic evidence, i e accounts from back then. Preserved as narrative and as documents related to narrative.
5:58 "for the rest we have record keeping"
You claim to have it for Gustave Eiffel and 1889, we claim to have it for Genesis and Gospels.
I don't disagree with your claim, why do you disagree with ours?
If you say you need "proof" (outside records and community holding them as such) the records are really records (despite no community except that of recent sceptics taking them as not records, even Pagans considered them fake records rather than not records at all), what proof do you have for those involved in Eiffel Tower?
Essentially your trust in the community keeping the records, and a subjective one, since that community is modern, secular, "society". Which you are part of.
6:14 "there will probably be embellishments"
Most often not, more often like simplifications, mistaking one character, epoch or geographic locality for another, or inserting anachronistic details when original ones become incomprehensible.
"and these can add up to some quite ludicrous ideas"
Like King Lists in Egypt adding up to chronologies 8 times as long as Biblical record, when Church Fathers commented on it?
6:19 The Eiffel Tower is still here.
Yes, so is the Catholic Church after 2000 years minus less than two decades (33 - 2017 - Harmageddon).
So it is reasonably it was built some time - it is reasonable the Catholic Church was founded some time.
And it is more reasonable its building is recalled correctly than incorrectly - dito for Calvary, Easter Sunday, Forty Days to Ascension, Pentecost. And the 3 + years of intense study under Jesus leading up to it, for Apostles.
Same with its precursor the Ancient Hebrews (of whom the Jews are a Schismatic but still relic), it can be assumed it recalls Exodus and all before that back to Abraham - and it can also be presumed Abraham's genealogies back to Noah and Adam verify his keeping a record back to beginning of mankind. Involving fall, flood, dispersion of nations.
6:38 "it is possible Gustave Eiffel had another architect/designer locked in his basement, but there is no evidence for it, so we don't assert it"
Well, why do you assert non-evidenced anonymous authors of Gospels, then?
7:14 "when you have multiple reliable sources saying exact same thing"
Like Matthew, Mark, Luke and John?
"it is reasonable to conclude they are accurate"
Dito with Gospellers.
However, Genesis is one source. Isn't it?
Well, we have Palaeo-Jewish oral traditions too. But, the events are such that they would not have been believed except as either witnessed by original text composers (including oral ones later used by Moses) or by multiple sources reaching them (Moses was probably testing the fixed points of the tradition by interviewing many different sources).
When we have one source seeming to be result of multiple evidence, it is reasonable to believe it too.
7:23 "measurements and calculations that are not subject to human whims"
Well, any assessment of original amount of parent isotope is precisely a human whim.
"And can be checked by other scientists who can assure accuracy"
Except you are discounting those of them - see RATE project - who are not sharing a certain collective human whim on how to assess parent isotopes.
7:32 "we know the nature of human beings"
No, you don't. You don't know your own nature. You are fairly blind as moles to human nature, except when it suits you. Bring human nature up in connection with your whims, you tend to shout out about "vast conspiracy, do you believe that?"
7:56 "yep, but that is called history, not historical science"
Yes, precisely. History beats historical science, not the other way round.
8:00 "how we determine which documents are authentic" - is not a science like maths, is not a science like Bernouillis law of gasses, it is an art - involving human assessment, and yours is not the best one.
8:22 No, the repeatable calculations can be repeatably reversed with other assumptions about the unknow factors of certainly original amount of isotope, in some cases even length of halflife (K-Ar, U-Pb, Th-Pb - do you hear me?)
8:35 "the Bhagavadgita was right all along" - only if you trust divinity of Krishna.
Say I agree Mahabharata info on him is as for human observations (including Arjuna's) correct - is that an argument for his divinity? Not like Exodus or Gospels - for the divinity Moses served, for the divinity of Jesus Christ.
8:58 "if your God exists, yes"
Thank you - there are "Christians" who won't admit that!
"What evidence do you have for your God? Is it the Bible which is demonstrably wrong ..."
Actually Bible and Church - the latter guaranteeing the historical books of the Bible are real documents and not novels.
How do I know Lord of the Rings is a novel? Because the society of modern Western culture tells me it was written by Tolkien who hardly had much occasion to find and translate any Red Book of Westmarch.
How do I know Gospels are NOT novels? Because of the Church which tells me they are documents from about its foundation. Precisely as United States will tell me "Declaration of Independence" and "Bill of Rights" are documents from about their foundation as a Union free from previous colonial power.
And the part of "demonstrably wrong" presumes, perhaps, what you are trying to prove here : that "historic science" (as opposed to both history and observational science) is enough to conclude we walk on a globe which was around 4 point 5 billion years ago in a non-walkable shape.
Or, if you were adding to that ... I'm turning on the video again!
9:11 God inspired writers to write books which were compiled into a complete library called the Bible.
Well, that Protestant is using the passive voice, because Protestantism is shade on who did the compiling part, and who were also at same time evaluating authors as being inspired.
The answer is : the Church.
Not a Protestant "Church" or denomination which has a few centuries of existence, but the Church which was there from the beginning, well before Protestantism and also before certain schisms older than Protestantism.
First two Councils separate Nicenians from Arians. Arians have since then disappeared, some may have merged with Spanish Jews or Muslims rather than to become Nicenian, so Arians are no longer there. However, I think even Arians accepted the same NT books as we do as inspired.
Third council, the C. of Ephesus separated Chalcedonians and "Monophysites" from Nestorians. Each side has some kind of claim to be the real continuation of the Church, each side still exists. And each side certainly recognises the Four Gospels and the book of Genesis.
Fourth Council, of Chalcedon, separates Chalcedonians from Copts and Armenians, together often referred to as Monophysites, even if they consider that inaccurate. All three parts have some kind of claim (Nestorians would be fourth) to continue the Church for real, and all three parts also recognise the four Gospels and Genesis.
Two centuries of on and off conflict, from times of Photius to times of Caerularius, separate among Chalcedonians the Catholics from the Orthodox (usually now so called - the Catholic Church also claims the term Orthodoxy, the Orthodox National Churches also claim the term Catholic). Both parties (like the three non-Chalcedonians) have some kind of claim to be the original Church, and all five parties also do recognise the four Gospels and Genesis, and lots of books in between.
All five of these have better claims than all three to five thousand of the Protestant denominations to be the Church.
This is why the Protestant on AiG was not saying: God inspired writers to write books and showed writers and books as genuinely His by miracles before the Church, which books the Church just mentioned compiled into a complete library called the Bible.
So, my reason for believing there is not just a God in general, but One God in Three Persons, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, the God of the Bible, is that the Church historically testifies so. The Bible is the chiefest part of its testimony, along with oral tradition, or more precisely, with tradition not written by hagiographers into Bible books.
Precisely as my reason for believing there is a presidency and a power of civil movments originally not commanded by generals in US is the historic testimony of US.
9:12 Meme shown : no, religion is not infinite recursion, specifically it is not a circulus in probando as you suggest.
At least not the Catholic religion.
9:20 You seem to think the Bible is only credible if "the actual word of God", otherwise we could debunk just about everything in it. Specifically perhaps miracles.
False philosophy.
Suspend the question of whether Genesis, Exodus and Gospels are the actual word of God. Suspend ALSO your prejudice against miracles. Evaluate historicity according to claims and to credibility of claims. I. e. we don't consider it credible Tolkien found and translated Red Book of Westmarch, since all the millennia (fall of Barad-Dûr is in a letter dated to "perhaps 25 March 4004 BC") between the events and recent publishing of Lord of the Rings, no one had heard of Red Book of Westmarch - among the plentiful evidence we have from all these centuries. Specifically in "the North West corner of the Old World" now known as BeNeLux, British Isles and perhaps Scandinavia and North German coast too.
While the Atlantis theme underlying part of it seems tied to other languages than Adunaic and to other names than Elendil - or Sauron. And even that one is far shadier in claims to facthood than the Biblical story.
9:24 "written by human beings who were not there - were you there to see that the authors of the Bible were actually talking to God?"
No, but the Church was. In Exodus we see the Church in its Old Testament form, Israel, witnessing Moses talking to God. Not all people following him up onto the Mountain, but all people witnessing phenomena indicating it was God he was talking to.
Were YOU there to see the authors were actually not seeing the events? No. That is a reconstructional claim, not a historic one. And most certainly not one of observational science either.
So it is from this flimsy and dim category of claiming to know called "historic science" by a man on AiG.
9:33 How I know the Quran is not the completed book with God having given His final revelation to Mohammed?
Well, because certain close looks at the Quran (e ge Surah 5) demonstrate a conflict with what is already known as word of God, and even admitted by the Quran as such.
Also, because Quran involves a claim of founding an "Ummah" (nation or church would be acceptable translations) which presupposes the failure of both Jewry and Church. And while such a failure of Jewry was envisaged as possible (Deuteronomy 28) and by the Church claimed as factual (speech of St Peter about their rejection of the promised one in Acts 2), a similar failure of the Church is excluded (Matthew 28).
This shortcuts any possibilities for Mohammed, Joseph Smith, Martin Luther, John Calvin and quite a few more to be founding the true and final Church. Possibilities actually claimed by Mohammed and Joseph Smith (with equal strength of evidence, i e too few and unclear miracles), and possibilities ostentatiously not claimed by Luther and Calvin, but logically necessary for the claims they did actually make.
Muslims cop out of this one typically by claiming Tawrah and Indjeel were deliberately disfigured - but the Church has not made a similar claim against Jewry of wholesale large scale forgery of OT and doesn't need to.
9:49 Rig Veda, some time between 1700 and 1100 BC ... "the oldest one still in use today"?
At least it is younger than the 11 first chapters of Genesis (yes, we claim parts of Genesis were dictated or written, confided to writing materials or learnt by heart, well before Moses finally wrote it all down as one book, a bit like first entries of Anglo-Saxon Chronicle were written well before final redaction of ASC as we have it now, except ASC is not an inspired book).
9:55 "oldest book ... actually Job ... written down ... 1000 years after Rig Veda"
No. Eleven first chapters of Genesis are all less recent than Job, and Job is certainly not from 100 BC, not even from 700 BC, but way older.
10:03 "Obviously the Rig Veda was closer to the source."
Take a look at Genesis 11.
Languages were dispersed at Babel. Indian languages, including Vedic Sanskrit are either a direct or even an indirect product of this dispersion. So is the polytheistic interpretation of things.
While older than quite a few parts of OT (a real 1700 BC, which I think wrong, would make it older than Exodus, roughly contemporary with youngest biographical entries into Genesis), that is no compensation for being from a more corrupted line of tradition.
10:16 The book of Deuteronomy is not telling you about laws in US (or UK). It was a legislation for Israel.
Here is text and then comment by a Catholic scholar.
[28] If a man find a damsel that is a virgin, who is not espoused, and taking her, lie with her, and the matter come to judgment: [29] He that lay with her shall give to the father of the maid fifty sides of silver, and shall have her to wife, because he hath humbled her: he may not put her away all the days of his life.
Ver. 29. Life. A law nearly similar occurs, Exodus xxii. 16, (Haydock) only there Moses speaks of seduction. (Menochius) --- If the father or the woman refused their consent to the marriage, the person had only to pay 50 sicles; which the woman received, if her father was not alive. But if they consented, the person who had been condemned by the judge, was bound to marry the woman, how deformed soever. (Selden, Uxor. i. 16.) (Calmet)
In other words, you don't get the point of the law. It did not give a rapist a chance to marry if he wanted, it gave the victim's family a chance of a shot gun wedding if they wanted.
And I am in favour or certain shot gun weddings after certain events. No untrustworthiness there. Any rape victim could consider this as one chance of getting back at her molester, and if she didn't, she only needed to tell her dad, she was not forced to wed him. But in cases of "friend rape" - yes, there is such a thing - part of the point was that she was given a chance of getting to bed with an attractive guy but taking it slower, her timing, not his, this time.
Source:
DEUTERONOMY - Chapter 22
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859 edition.
http://haydock1859.tripod.com/id515.html
10:26 Judas' full story:
- threw down pieces of silver
- temple men bought him a field for it, Aceldama
- he hanged himself
- was cut down and consented to take up farming in Aceldama
- and there he burst open and finally died.
Yes, the Bible is trustworthy there.
10:37 Are you saying this about the "disciples":
8 But they going out, fled from the sepulchre: for a trembling and fear had seized them: and they said nothing to any man: for they were afraid.
That is actually about the
ST. MARK - Chapter 16
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859 edition.
http://haydock1859.tripod.com/id63.html
10:34 For Matthew you are perhaps thinking of the women too:
28:8 And they went out quickly from the sepulchre, with fear and great joy, running to tell his disciples.
Note, however, that in Matthew you are dealing with Mary Magdalene (with another one), while in Mark you are dealing with women explicitly excluding her, since she was mentioned after them.
10:51 Your list of proposed internal inconsistencies has been debunked.
I e : GE 1:20-21, 26-27 Birds were created before man was created.
GE 2:7, 19 Man was created before birds were created.
First chapter talks about all birds in general. Second chapter either recapitulates (therefore the creation of the birds is not after that of man) or refers to specific birds being created once more before Adam's eyes, so he could see God as the Creator He was.
11:19 Sorry, but you are way overdoing the accuracy of what you would call secular records if you consider these as more trustworthy than Gospels on Quirinius (plus there are possibilities they don't contradict).
11:28 "no Roman census ever required anyone to travel to the birthplace of their ancient ancestors"
The wording as cited was "his city".
In other words, if a citizen of Naples was in Pompei, he had to travel back to Naples.
The Holy Family obviously adapted the wording "his own city" to conditions they were more familiar with. And the Roman control was not so tight (or they would not have needed the census) as to make this perhaps somewhat tongue in cheek response impossible by letting Roman police keep them back in Nazareth.
It's a bit like how C.S. Lewis would have gone to Wales, where his grandfather came from, because he was a Welshman through his grandpa. Even if born in Belfast.
11:32 "there was no empire wide census under Augustus"
Disputed, and there certainly was some kind of census under him if claimed in the Bible. I saw a suggestion it was about a census of loyalty rather than a fiscal one.
11:49 The census of Quirinius after death of Herod could be Roman sources misplacing a carreer, for some reason, in time.
Or could be another one than that of the Bible.
12:03 "one of the most important events in the Bible"
I suppose you mean politically important and therefore important for independent, Roman dependent, records.
You also seem to presume we have very detailed and well documented extrabiblical sources for Roman history. We have not, not for this period. Whoever wrote the Gospel would have known dozens more than anyone this time.
"welldocumented historical events"
Well, the possibilities are the event was ill documented too.
If "census of Quirinius", the time was ill documented. If an earlier one, it was an ill documented one or documented as sth not usually now referred to as a census (see the "census of loyalty" theory).
Either way, even those not actively seeing the Bible as word of God could do well to consider it is the best documentation we actually have for the event.
12:24 "Some God punishes at once"
[Not quoting video, but a saying.]
You saw video sound on and heard cackle and then cough, I hope?
12:33 "you almost killed me"
Well, he admits it!
12:58 You don't get why "describing universe with math means God" to someone, let me help you.
Wisdom 11:[21] Yea and without these, they might have been slain with one blast, persecuted by their own deeds, and scattered by the breath of thy power: but thou hast ordered all things in measure, and number, and weight.
Second half of the verse indicates our Creator is a maths freak. If our creation had been just a freak event, this might not have seemed so.
13:12 No, when it comes to God of the Bible "not being logical", you get a fat F in logic.
Especially for including a list of supposed internal contradictions which aren't such.
13:19 God repenting in Genesis 6 does not mean creating was in the ordinary sense of the word "a mistake".
Anything except God Himself could on some level be a mistake, and that was the kind of "mistakes" God risked to make by chosing to create. You are profitting from it and so am I.
13:50 If there is spatial expansion, God certainly is doing it (one reading of one verse, among Christians supporting that reading of redshift phenomenon).
However, fertility is also God's domain (Ceres never made old infertile women like 90 year old Sarah or mother of Samuel give birth to any child).
Fire and lightning can certainly have been confided by God to lesser spirits.
14:05 "or if the mind evolved in a universe where understanding the universe helped with survival"
- 1) x helping with survival if there doesn't make a mindless universe or a mindless evolution capable of producing it. If men growing wings and flying would help certain men survive and have offspring, we have still not seen them do so. Dito with mind. In a mindless universe, mind would not have been favoured by survival of the fittest, it would not have been there.
- 2) Logic and understanding the universe on a theoretic level are not immediate survival values. Some people are now down playing logic and upgrading finetuned reactivity - and it is a survival value much more apparently useful.
No, God creating our mind is really and truly the best explanation for mind, and for language.
Will have a look at David Wood video too.
14:33 your own answer "how would you know" shows yourself downplaying reason.
Now, the strawberries are trusted as a foodsource, because planted from seeds with DNA able to produce the plant's own energy supply - and wild strawberries do supply energy, that is one use of food sources. They also supply some roughage, that is another use of them and also depending on the DNA which formed them.
Now, you might reply DNA is making our brains a trustworthy truth supply. But you can't even demonstrate it is our brains which to the full of each choice (theoretic or practic, like believing or disbelieving or eating or sleeping or doing sth) are doing the thinking - only that they are involved in the thinking.
14:59 "would not if your creationism hypothesis were correct"
You are bad in logic again.
15:08 - 15:11 You presume that if we observe the universe and it is 6000 (or 7500) years old, "speed of light had to have changed at some point to allow us to see galaxies that are more than 13 billion light years away"
Fair point against some Heliocentric creationists, perhaps, but as a Geocentric, I am not accepting nor needing in any way to accept the 13 or more billion light years.
If fixed stars are one light day or two light days away, created day four, Adam could see them on the evening of day six. If they are further away than that, you need to prove it. Without silently presupposing atheism or anangelism.
15:18 Decay rate changing is also not strictly implied in refuting extra-Biblical carbon or other dates.
See beginning.
15:24 "in order to leave the perfect geologic column"
Well, for aquatic creatures, no, the columns fairly well match what can be observed today about shell fish getting closer to bottom than real fish or aquatic reptiles or mammals (smaller shell fish can have been washed with mud slides covering these).
For land animals, we don't have geologic columns anywhere I know of - and I have looked.
See here:
Creation vs. Evolution : Archaeology vs Vertabrate Palaeontology in Geology
http://creavsevolu.blogspot.com/2016/06/archaeology-vs-vertabrate-palaeontology.html
15:43 God ordinarily giving an angel orders to carry Sun roughly speaking just along the aether move westward around earth, but causing some delay and ordering same angel to stop following the aether move westward while Joshua commanded otherwise is in no way illogical.
Nor is it illogical to assume God could allow Joshua to speak that command (Joshua 10:12). Since Joshua is the same name as Jesus, the name God would assume at His Taking of Manhood, or Incarnation.
Miracles are NOT in any way illogical - except to those making the wrong assumptions about the nature of the universe.
15:47 "If you believe the universe behaves in a consistent manner" - I believe all angels and all mere matter involved in the working of the universe are indeed consistently obeying God and God has a consistent both routine and plan for His great exceptions to that routine.
No, atheism and anangelism (or a spirituality allowing God and angels so little activity it is about the same) are NOT needed to allow the universe to be consistent as we observe it.
Making a change of routine to mark His presence and to help His faithful is not "fucking with reality". Reality involves the routine working of the universe, but is not limited to it.
16:18 "because the guy who routinely changes the laws of the universe"
The laws of the universe are the ones God made and which allow both for the routine functioning of solar days, solar years and lunar months, and for exceptions, like Joshua's long day or - upcoming - Doomsday.
God making miracles is not changing any laws.
You get a fat F in logic again!
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