What would it take for a young-earth creationist to believe that the Earth is way older than 10,000 years? (quora)

Q

What would it take for a young-earth creationist to believe that the Earth is way older than 10,000 years?
https://www.quora.com/What-would-it-take-for-a-young-earth-creationist-to-believe-that-the-Earth-is-way-older-than-10-000-years#

I

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Blog : "http://creavsevolu.blogspot.com". Debating evolutionists for 15 years +.

Answered just now

I am a Young Earth Creationist.

If Tolkien had written Genesis as a novel drafted together with a few others after his death to a volume first published in 1973 or 1974, and if Silmarillion had been the heritage of an observable elvish civilisation, and had been known for centuries or millennia, and that as an at least reputed history, I would have believed the world was as old as Silmarillion said.

History of Arda - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Arda#Valian_Years

II

David Rosen

studied at Brooklyn College

Answered 12h ago

At least 10,000 years.

YEC logic requires narratives of historical events, unfiltered through chains of deduction or hypotheses. So in order to be sure that the earth was oldere than 10 KY, a YEC has to actually live at least 10 KY.

YEC belief is Objectivist philosophy gone amuck.

[I upvoted this]

III

with some debate under - updates will be given if he answers, I hope!

Pete Mercauto

Answered 13h ago

A competent science education, for starters. Also a few logic classes would help. Because, even if a creationist suddenly became an atheist, he’d still be unprepared to honestly evaluate the evidence for an old earth. He may accept it on its face, but he’d only really be accepting what to him is revealed knowledge imparted onto him by an authority figure, the same thing he always did as a creationist.

I have never once in 20+ years of debating YEC’s encountered a single YEC with even the most elementary understanding of scientific terms, principles and procedures. Not one was ever able to provide a cogent definition of the theory of evolution either. Nearly none were ever able to properly define words like “law”, “hypothesis” or “theory”.

So, you’d have to start around the 3rd grade level and get them up to at least about the 11th grade level before they would even be able to understand how scientists can legitimately claim to know the earth’s age. For them to get a start on really understanding, they’d need another couple years studying geology and chemistry and maybe astronomy and perhaps physics.

Answered three times

A, B, and C

A

Hans-Georg Lundahl

11m ago

“He may accept it on its face, but he’d only really be accepting what to him is revealed knowledge imparted onto him by an authority figure, the same thing he always did as a creationist.”

Nice admission about a lot of Evolution believers.

Pretty much sums up how Orthodox Christians in the 1920’s of Russia became Evolutionists!

B

Hans-Georg Lundahl

15m ago

"Not one was ever able to provide a cogent definition of the theory of evolution either."

Some evolutionists define the theory as: "descent with modification over time and 'the space of' populations".

This is however in fact a trait which is common to both Evolution and Baraminology, which is one Creationist move, intellectually, these days.

To fully define the theory, one would need to add:

"not only of obvious and half intuitive groups from same more recent ancestor, but of very abstract groups, including all life itself, from remoter ones"

This, Baraminologists do not believe.

Both Baraminology and Theory of Evolution are opposed to fixity of Linnean species, the adherents of which are these days more likely to be Old Earth Creationists and deniers of globality of the Flood.

Have I left out any important point in what I defined? Was there any lack of cogency in either?

To be really complete, one could add:

"usually associated with other theories like human mind evolving from consciousness of lower/older animals, like abiogenesis, like Big Bang, like stellar 'evolution', like Heliocentrism, like myths and legends typically being fictions mysteriously mistaken for solid truth by bad transmission of traditions"

and this criticism:

"all of which have at least sometimes been reputed as being in conflict with the Bible and all of which are involved when different or sometimes same people lose previously held beliefs of Biblical inerrancy".

So, the full definition is, on my view: descent with modification over time and 'the space of' populations, not only of obvious and half intuitive groups from same more recent ancestor, but of very abstract groups, including all life itself, from remoter ones, usually associated with other theories like human mind evolving from consciousness of lower/older animals, like abiogenesis, like Big Bang, like stellar 'evolution', like Heliocentrism, like myths and legends typically being fictions mysteriously mistaken for solid truth by bad transmission of traditions, all of which have at least sometimes been reputed as being in conflict with the Bible and all of which are involved when different or sometimes same people lose previously held beliefs of Biblical inerrancy.

Spot as many incoherencies as you like, and don't hesitate to tell me!

C

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Just now

"So, you’d have to start around the 3rd grade level and get them up to at least about the 11th grade level before they would even be able to understand how scientists can legitimately claim to know the earth’s age. For them to get a start on really understanding, they’d need another couple years studying geology and chemistry and maybe astronomy and perhaps physics."

You mean, most Evolution believers do not really understand what kind of claims the scientists who believe Deep Time are making? Most, of course, haven't these extra years of astronomy and physics ... fair enough, I'd have to agree with that one!

I have some amateur level skills in these, do feel welcome to try to convince me about Deep Time (not meaning you can try to with any means you think necessary, like long time confinement in social isolation or physical torture or such, not that, just plain debating ...)

We could start with "Distant Starlight Paradox," which seems popular right now, and is a more obvious for astronomy connected to deep time than "stellar evolution" ("it takes millions of years for a flat and rotating gas cloud to become a star with a star system and for a planet on the outskirts to cool down to earth like levels of temperature after that").

First step on cosmic distance ladder is AU. Triangulation Earth-Moon-Sun is simultaneous, and so it is acceptable as evidenced. On the other hand, solar light arriving 8 minutes (I think it was) after emission from source is hardly an argument for deep time.

Next step is planetary distance, triangulation Earth-Sun-Jupiter (with sunlit side of Jupiter showing its angle to the Sun), nearly as simultaneous, but similarily inadequate as an argument for deep time.

Third step is by and of itself not directly relevant. Since even for 4 lightyears you have a "very skinny triangle" (Kent Hovind's expression, and it is definitely justified mathematically), you will certainly not get ANY measurable angle involved in triangulating 13.5 billion light years. B U T ... the parallax is indirectly relevant, since Herschel's series of stellar similar sized (or supposedly) objects on different distances ("main series" and that stuff) builds on the nearer ones (or supposedly such) getting a distance measure by parallax. That would be "step four" from which further steps would lead on to "13.5 billion light years".

Now, parallax is also curious in another way. It is triangulation over time. Instead of three objects, with the relative positions measure simultaneously, you have for three positions only two objects, one of which is supposed to be the moving one.

Now, if it isn't earth which moves, there is really no distance indication in parallax, since one angle and no known distance is not enough to triangulate from.

This is why, from opposing Deep Time I went to opposing also Heliocentrism.

Your turn ...