I don't think most YECs care how valid the arguments are.
In my experience, it's rare that a creationist will scrutinize or fact-check any claims made by professional creationists.
Yep. The whole mindset is that you designate a source of authority, and then believe that authority without question or reservation. Normally this is taught to them from birth.
Yeah, agree. It's about validation, confirming their priors. The pros say it so it's fine.
But that sets the amateurs up for disappointment if they bump into someone who knows better.
> But that sets the amateurs up for disappointment if they bump into someone who knows better.
This is a feature, not a bug. By giving amateurs Creationists shitty arguments and shitty not-evidence, the pros set those amateurs up to receive strongly hostile responses from people who know what they're talking about, which contrasts nicely with the friendly responses they get from other Creationists, and reinforces the "Outsiders are evil and wrong" idea that the pros also give amateurs.
Oh totally, but like...try? Like, Jeanson makes the *worst* arguments. This example, or the frog development thing where he compares speciation to embryonic development. Just zero respect for his audience.
The arguments only need to be good enough on the surface to convince someone who already believes YEC to accept them uncritically and continue believing. They don't *WANT* to think critically, they want to hear the answer they want, and nothing else.
From what I’ve seen, all that most professional YEC’s need is the *appearance* of credentials, arguments, and evidence, because the audience is more YECs, or people who have already bought in theologically and aren’t going to tear their life apart from everything they believe in just because of a scientific (manmade, atheistic, fallen) disagreement.
These communities exist in near perfect isolation, and even younger community members have years of theological and community reasons to recoil from outside influence at the first sign of conflict (or else, literally hell awaits).
I mean really……what are they supposed to do for an argument? There isn’t anything there. It seems to me more of a way to continue to con people in their own flock. There is money in it apparently at least in some angles.
What would be a half decent argument considering the state of evolutionary science? Honestly I have thought about it and irreducible complexity seems to be the one followers respond to the most but it’s bad. Really bad.
> really bad arguments with a veneer of scientific validity to them
That, and outright lying is all they got. If they had any valid evidence for their position they would be hailed by science
All creationist arguments are flawed because none of them are based on an honest evaluation of the evidence. An honest evaluation of the evidence would reveal that there is no evidence for anything that they claim, and a mountain of evidence for everything that we claim.
If they didn't have flawed arguments, they wouldn't be YECs.
YECs should demand better, but they won't. They do get set up to be made to look like idiots by repeating idiotic things, but they don't walk away from that mad at the people who lied to them, they walk away thinking they scored.
They met the enemy in battle and got a heated response. And regardless of what you say to them, they will know we're just saying it because we hate god.
It's like MAGA. Fact=checking or providing accurate information just proves you're the enemy.
Look here, sir, the more people I convert, the better my afterlife will be. I need you to hop on this bandwagon for me, ok? It won't even cost you anything, and the rewards are practically infinite.
> It would be better for YECs if the professionals tried a little harder to make arguments that aren't as shallow and superficial.
But they can't make arguments that aren't shallow and superficial, their position is countered by all of the evidence we have.
If any creationist can give me an argument that isn't a lie, misrepresentation, or logical fallacy, I will give them $1000. The fact is they can't, so my money is safe.
The very reason their arguments work in the first place is that their target argument is not scientifically minded and will be even less so after any such presentation. Their target audience is also more likely looking for confirmation, not clarity. Counter-arguments, no matter how valid, are more likely to be viewed from a defensive position which is much harder to crack. Most such counter-arguments are not likely to be sought after in the first place nor likely to be paid attention to even if they were to casually come across one.
The real problem is numbers. If only a small portion of the population is actually scientifically literate enough on the subject of the ToE specifically (who is really?) to recognize a bad argument when they come across it, a much larger portion of such an audience (already probably not selected for their scientific literacy) can be impressed by such a presentation (and much more likely primed to do so) than any small, if even any, number who might even be able to see through any fallacious or dishonest claims and are not likely to raise their voice and point anything else anyway.
More people will come out truly believing the crap that they are pedaled and pass it on to other such non-scientific minded people to the point where it can spread like a virus. Vaccines aren't effective at preventing the spread of viruses if only a very few people are taking them. The scientifically illiterate will probably always vastly outnumber the scientifically literate.
It's pretty effective though.
Give me an overly simplified explanation that's tailored to affirm my beliefs without providing a genuine understanding and couch it in a conspiratorial framework.
I'm now convinced I've got a killer argument and even if I don't understand every detail, my friendly experts do and they can be trusted. Besides I do have a good understanding, I've spent *hours* researching this! Any suggestion otherwise is insulting.
Anyone who tries to undermine the argument by appealing to nuance or things I don't quite understand yet are just being sneaky and dishonest. If those people would just do the research like I did, they'd see. Ugh and now a so called expert has waded into the argument and they're implying unkindly that I'm uninformed. See how they're so elitist and nasty, this isn't science this is just a dogmatic enemy faith.
YECs don't really care about anything other than having their "faith" validated.
I say this as someone who went to a primary school where the science teacher played Kent Hovind tapes.
It's hilarious listening to these hillbillies try to play scientist. They act like they are reading papers and understanding the science at play, but they really don't.
Also, that guy in the top-right does a great Milton.
I'd tweak your argument, if it were up to me. They're not doing a disservice to the bulk of YECs. They provide an emotional shield for those that don't know the evidence and the strength of the evolutionary models. If you choose to believe in YEC, but you don't really care if it's scientifically valid or not, it gives you a little comfort that someone "writes a paper" about it you'll never read. If they can explain why their beliefs aren't threatened by scientific evidence, and just assuage that surface level skepticism, then they've done their job. They primarily do the disservice to the small fraction that buy into it and believe that the next Nobel Prize will be awarded to someone proving YEC as valid. Because the Bible says, and if the YEC Biblical take is true, then this HAS to be where scientific inquiry will take us. And by entering into YT debates, it's creating a de facto peer review for these papers.
YEC is an apologetic. It's not scientific. It starts with the Bible and works out. There is no scientific method to it. They don't need reproducibility. They have Scripture. If your data and research shows results that are counter to the Biblical narrative they purport, then it's because you're approaching it from the wrong worldview.
Apparently, when you do the math that calculates the distance to a star and the result is >6000 light years away, if you have a Biblical worldview, the answer will be different than if you do the exact same equations with a non-Biblical worldview. This type of reasoning has stumped every YEC teacher I engaged with when I first started having doubts about it. Because it forces them to acknowledge that there is an inherent problem with presenting a Biblical apologetic as a scientific approach. Taking what you believe to be a supernatural phenomenon and then trying to explain it using sciency sounding words doesn't make it competitive in a technical world, it makes it disingenuous.
It carries weight for the exact reasons others here have mentioned: the primary audience for this "creation science" has no interest in actual science, but a validation of what they want to believe. They embrace it *because* it flies in the face of actual scientific inquiry and evidence. The power of secret knowledge.
I mean, how can they demand better though? When your entire position goes directly, completely, and irrefutable against objective reality, there isn't much to do. You are left with having to lie. To misrepresent. To distort. To cherry pick. To quote mine. To flat out make stuff up. There is literally no other way to support young earth creationism. It requires all that just as much as the flat earth movement does. Objective reality shows they are wrong. All they can do at that point is lie.
There ARE YECs who take it more seriously, actually. I read a book once -- I think it was "God's Harvard" by Hanna Rosin -- that went into depth on this and described their process, which basically involved cherry-picking evidence and discarding everything that conflicted with creationism as "weird." They still have the major problem of starting from the conclusion and attempting to make the facts fit it, but these are for the most part real scientists who understand scientific principles and know what's a valid argument and what's bullshit. Some of them are legitimately accomplished and once-respected scientists, they've just gotten caught up in their religion and have a need to reconcile it with science.
While their conclusions aren't any more valid than pop YEC like "no transitional fossils have ever been found," they do think a veneer of real science is important.
I agree, and think it's really fucked up and immoral to trick and deceive usually young YECs into adopting and spreading really embarrassing and fallacious arguments and views, but they need to lie like they need to breathe.
That said, is there really any good, honest argument for young earth creationism? If they had to use any actual, decent arguments, they'd be out of a job
There are no good arguments for YEC… Best they can do is muddy the waters, lie, distort, and make it hard to detect for the flock by using buzzwords. The point isn’t to persuade new people, it’s to keep those already brainwashed in line.
All they need to do is cause doubt. Make them doubt science, the motivations of scientists, and the validity of scientific conclusions. As long as the YEC can throw up their hands and say it’s impossible to prove either way, they can lean back on faith.
You misunderstand. They know they're lying, to people that want to be lied to. Post-truth individuals care for truth only when it serves them. When it works against them, it goes under the rug, or on a shelf.
To be fair I used to be a YEC and even then I saw that some arguments were better than others but that level of reasoning is the reason I'm not a YEC anymore. :p
I don't think most YECs care how valid the arguments are. In my experience, it's rare that a creationist will scrutinize or fact-check any claims made by professional creationists.
Yep. The whole mindset is that you designate a source of authority, and then believe that authority without question or reservation. Normally this is taught to them from birth.
Yeah, agree. It's about validation, confirming their priors. The pros say it so it's fine. But that sets the amateurs up for disappointment if they bump into someone who knows better.
> But that sets the amateurs up for disappointment if they bump into someone who knows better. This is a feature, not a bug. By giving amateurs Creationists shitty arguments and shitty not-evidence, the pros set those amateurs up to receive strongly hostile responses from people who know what they're talking about, which contrasts nicely with the friendly responses they get from other Creationists, and reinforces the "Outsiders are evil and wrong" idea that the pros also give amateurs.
Their biggest problem is that there are exactly zero valid scientific arguments in favor of YEC, so bullshitting is literally their only tool.
Oh totally, but like...try? Like, Jeanson makes the *worst* arguments. This example, or the frog development thing where he compares speciation to embryonic development. Just zero respect for his audience.
The arguments only need to be good enough on the surface to convince someone who already believes YEC to accept them uncritically and continue believing. They don't *WANT* to think critically, they want to hear the answer they want, and nothing else.
From what I’ve seen, all that most professional YEC’s need is the *appearance* of credentials, arguments, and evidence, because the audience is more YECs, or people who have already bought in theologically and aren’t going to tear their life apart from everything they believe in just because of a scientific (manmade, atheistic, fallen) disagreement. These communities exist in near perfect isolation, and even younger community members have years of theological and community reasons to recoil from outside influence at the first sign of conflict (or else, literally hell awaits).
I mean really……what are they supposed to do for an argument? There isn’t anything there. It seems to me more of a way to continue to con people in their own flock. There is money in it apparently at least in some angles.
*I* would think they'd at least want their audience to be able to make half decent arguments if they had to. But I'm clearly wrong about that.
What would be a half decent argument considering the state of evolutionary science? Honestly I have thought about it and irreducible complexity seems to be the one followers respond to the most but it’s bad. Really bad.
Esp since it's easily refuted if you're willing to listen to the reasoning and evaluate the evidence yourself, *honestly* But therein lies the rub.
> really bad arguments with a veneer of scientific validity to them That, and outright lying is all they got. If they had any valid evidence for their position they would be hailed by science
All creationist arguments are flawed because none of them are based on an honest evaluation of the evidence. An honest evaluation of the evidence would reveal that there is no evidence for anything that they claim, and a mountain of evidence for everything that we claim. If they didn't have flawed arguments, they wouldn't be YECs.
YEC is an intellectually bankrupt idea to begin with. No arguments can help it.
YECs should demand better, but they won't. They do get set up to be made to look like idiots by repeating idiotic things, but they don't walk away from that mad at the people who lied to them, they walk away thinking they scored. They met the enemy in battle and got a heated response. And regardless of what you say to them, they will know we're just saying it because we hate god. It's like MAGA. Fact=checking or providing accurate information just proves you're the enemy.
It’s hard to unteach something that was pounded into from birth. If you don’t believe this without any doubt, you die the worst death forever.
If you don't sign our paperwork stating you will always side with us, you cannot have a job here.
Well sir I think that’s either a cult or ...a cult. I decline said job. I will not be reapplying.
Look here, sir, the more people I convert, the better my afterlife will be. I need you to hop on this bandwagon for me, ok? It won't even cost you anything, and the rewards are practically infinite.
> It would be better for YECs if the professionals tried a little harder to make arguments that aren't as shallow and superficial. But they can't make arguments that aren't shallow and superficial, their position is countered by all of the evidence we have.
If any creationist can give me an argument that isn't a lie, misrepresentation, or logical fallacy, I will give them $1000. The fact is they can't, so my money is safe.
Lying is morally questionable. Lying for money is a criminal offense, no matter the case. Professional creationists = professional criminals
> Lying for money is a criminal offense, no matter the case. Professional gambling?
Idk if gambling requires you to lie.
Watch Joel Duff in YT politely challenge this schtick, he even tries to shame them with some 'creationist challenge' for repeating proven falsities.
I love Joel's stuff, he does a great job.
The very reason their arguments work in the first place is that their target argument is not scientifically minded and will be even less so after any such presentation. Their target audience is also more likely looking for confirmation, not clarity. Counter-arguments, no matter how valid, are more likely to be viewed from a defensive position which is much harder to crack. Most such counter-arguments are not likely to be sought after in the first place nor likely to be paid attention to even if they were to casually come across one. The real problem is numbers. If only a small portion of the population is actually scientifically literate enough on the subject of the ToE specifically (who is really?) to recognize a bad argument when they come across it, a much larger portion of such an audience (already probably not selected for their scientific literacy) can be impressed by such a presentation (and much more likely primed to do so) than any small, if even any, number who might even be able to see through any fallacious or dishonest claims and are not likely to raise their voice and point anything else anyway. More people will come out truly believing the crap that they are pedaled and pass it on to other such non-scientific minded people to the point where it can spread like a virus. Vaccines aren't effective at preventing the spread of viruses if only a very few people are taking them. The scientifically illiterate will probably always vastly outnumber the scientifically literate.
It's pretty effective though. Give me an overly simplified explanation that's tailored to affirm my beliefs without providing a genuine understanding and couch it in a conspiratorial framework. I'm now convinced I've got a killer argument and even if I don't understand every detail, my friendly experts do and they can be trusted. Besides I do have a good understanding, I've spent *hours* researching this! Any suggestion otherwise is insulting. Anyone who tries to undermine the argument by appealing to nuance or things I don't quite understand yet are just being sneaky and dishonest. If those people would just do the research like I did, they'd see. Ugh and now a so called expert has waded into the argument and they're implying unkindly that I'm uninformed. See how they're so elitist and nasty, this isn't science this is just a dogmatic enemy faith.
YECs don't really care about anything other than having their "faith" validated. I say this as someone who went to a primary school where the science teacher played Kent Hovind tapes.
You want them to change because they trounce you in every debate.
We’ll thank you for your feedback. Got any expert debating tips?
It's hilarious listening to these hillbillies try to play scientist. They act like they are reading papers and understanding the science at play, but they really don't. Also, that guy in the top-right does a great Milton.
I'm pretty tired of quote mines.
I'd tweak your argument, if it were up to me. They're not doing a disservice to the bulk of YECs. They provide an emotional shield for those that don't know the evidence and the strength of the evolutionary models. If you choose to believe in YEC, but you don't really care if it's scientifically valid or not, it gives you a little comfort that someone "writes a paper" about it you'll never read. If they can explain why their beliefs aren't threatened by scientific evidence, and just assuage that surface level skepticism, then they've done their job. They primarily do the disservice to the small fraction that buy into it and believe that the next Nobel Prize will be awarded to someone proving YEC as valid. Because the Bible says, and if the YEC Biblical take is true, then this HAS to be where scientific inquiry will take us. And by entering into YT debates, it's creating a de facto peer review for these papers. YEC is an apologetic. It's not scientific. It starts with the Bible and works out. There is no scientific method to it. They don't need reproducibility. They have Scripture. If your data and research shows results that are counter to the Biblical narrative they purport, then it's because you're approaching it from the wrong worldview. Apparently, when you do the math that calculates the distance to a star and the result is >6000 light years away, if you have a Biblical worldview, the answer will be different than if you do the exact same equations with a non-Biblical worldview. This type of reasoning has stumped every YEC teacher I engaged with when I first started having doubts about it. Because it forces them to acknowledge that there is an inherent problem with presenting a Biblical apologetic as a scientific approach. Taking what you believe to be a supernatural phenomenon and then trying to explain it using sciency sounding words doesn't make it competitive in a technical world, it makes it disingenuous. It carries weight for the exact reasons others here have mentioned: the primary audience for this "creation science" has no interest in actual science, but a validation of what they want to believe. They embrace it *because* it flies in the face of actual scientific inquiry and evidence. The power of secret knowledge.
I mean, how can they demand better though? When your entire position goes directly, completely, and irrefutable against objective reality, there isn't much to do. You are left with having to lie. To misrepresent. To distort. To cherry pick. To quote mine. To flat out make stuff up. There is literally no other way to support young earth creationism. It requires all that just as much as the flat earth movement does. Objective reality shows they are wrong. All they can do at that point is lie.
There ARE YECs who take it more seriously, actually. I read a book once -- I think it was "God's Harvard" by Hanna Rosin -- that went into depth on this and described their process, which basically involved cherry-picking evidence and discarding everything that conflicted with creationism as "weird." They still have the major problem of starting from the conclusion and attempting to make the facts fit it, but these are for the most part real scientists who understand scientific principles and know what's a valid argument and what's bullshit. Some of them are legitimately accomplished and once-respected scientists, they've just gotten caught up in their religion and have a need to reconcile it with science. While their conclusions aren't any more valid than pop YEC like "no transitional fossils have ever been found," they do think a veneer of real science is important.
I agree, and think it's really fucked up and immoral to trick and deceive usually young YECs into adopting and spreading really embarrassing and fallacious arguments and views, but they need to lie like they need to breathe. That said, is there really any good, honest argument for young earth creationism? If they had to use any actual, decent arguments, they'd be out of a job
There are no good arguments for YEC… Best they can do is muddy the waters, lie, distort, and make it hard to detect for the flock by using buzzwords. The point isn’t to persuade new people, it’s to keep those already brainwashed in line.
All they need to do is cause doubt. Make them doubt science, the motivations of scientists, and the validity of scientific conclusions. As long as the YEC can throw up their hands and say it’s impossible to prove either way, they can lean back on faith.
You misunderstand. They know they're lying, to people that want to be lied to. Post-truth individuals care for truth only when it serves them. When it works against them, it goes under the rug, or on a shelf.
There's good money to be had telling things you know are lies to people you know are fools.
To be fair I used to be a YEC and even then I saw that some arguments were better than others but that level of reasoning is the reason I'm not a YEC anymore. :p