But, yeah, nothing rational can compete with “God created it that way to test faith.”
I actually have a Creationist book where the author claims to be a scientist and actually believes the evidence agrees with young earth creationism. Off the top of my head, I remmeber things like that he claims that carbon dating has been shown to be off my millions of years when used for current things, stuff like fossils and stratifications only making sense if the world were once covered in water, and stuff about abiogenesis that I don’t quite remember. Oh, and finally, he posits that we have no proof that the speed of light is not a local constant.
He’s got it exactly right. There is even a good scientific reason why it is totally consistent with all evidence that the universe was created last Tuesday (or five seconds ago, for that matter) with all our current memories, fossil records, you name it. At every moment the entropy is getting higher and the higher the entropy of a state, the more likely it is. And the time of the big bang was the lowest entropy and least likely of all. This argument is frighteningly powerful and I have no idea how to refute it. Not that I believe it for an instant.
As for answering a YO believer, that is a mug’s game. I wonder if they ever tried this entropy ploy. Probably not; too dangerous. Besides it requires too much knowledge of real science. Incidentally, the argument has no connection with the use of entropy to argue against evolution since the universe is (presumably) a closed system.
I once discussed “God’s rainbow promise to Noah” with a rabbi, and he agreed that all light from stars far enough away had changed from inseparable white to separable (with a prism) white at exactly the same time, in transit, when God made that promise. There’s no way we can disprove it.
Well, oil takes millions of years to be created in the earth, so if the earth was only 10,000 years old there wouldn’t be any oil and you couldn’t fuel your car. If that’s the kind of thing you’re looking for.
But as people have pointed out, the response is to deny the science that suggests it takes millions of years. After all there’s works of art, axes and cave paintings from well over 10,000 years ago. There are fossils of all types of creatures older than that. Etc.
I’d worry about the “created” part at least as much as the “when” part: We know that the universe is much, much bigger than it needs to be to support human habitation. To a first approximation it is 100% hard vacuum, and most of the parts that aren’t hard vacuum are obscenely hot plasma, or other nasty things that humans can’t live in. The habitable part of the universe is an almost-discountable fraction of the entire thing.
It certainly does not look like the kind of place that was created by a being specifically for humans six thousand years ago or any other time. I’d expect a created universe to be more in line with prevailing Canaanite cosmologies at the time: a small bubble around the then-currently known world, filled with breathable air. No need for all this extra crap.
I would challenge them on a biblical basis. I may question their method of interpretation in light of what the scriptures say about interpretation. Not hitting on the ‘is YEC true’ so much as are you interpreting scriptures the way that scriptures say to. Failing the ‘test of the spirits’ under the premise that the ‘scriptures can not be broken’ will throw their whole premise in question.
That won’t work. The crazy have beaten you to it (though mainstream science did too).
I agree that that would be a good strategy for persuading a fundamentalist, but does the Bible itself actually say very much (and say clearly) about how it should be interpreted, or that it should not always be interpreted literally? I am not saying it does not, but if it does, it is news to me. If you think it does, please quote chapter and verse.
It is true that St Augustine, traditionally one of the greatest Christian authorities, does say that the Bible should not always be interpreted literally, and particularly not when it conflicts with science, but Augustine, despite the very high esteem in which most Christian thinkers have held him over the ages, is not the Bible, and I doubt whether either creationist ideologues, or even ordinary Christians unversed in theology and church history would acknowledge his authority on this point.
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On another topic, I really do not know why people are putting forward the time that light takes to reach us from distant astronomical objects as a relevant piece of evidence. The ways that the distances of relevantly far astronomical objects is estimated, depend on long complex chains of inference concerning recondite facts, such as the relation between period and luminosity of Cepheid variables. These are very far from the sorts of common sense arguments and “everyday facts” that the OP is asking about. Most of us only “know” that many astronomical objects are more than 6,000 light-years away because we accept it on the authority of astronomers. (Heck! Most astronomers are probably relying on the authority of other astronomers.) Nothing like this is going to impress someone who is already keen to reject the arguments and authority of biologists and geologists.
It is also notable that people did not even start estimating the distances to galaxies, and the more distant stars, until well into the 20th century, long after it had become a generally accepted scientific fact that the Earth was many millions of years old. If you want relatively simple, easy-to-follow arguments, based on reasonably readily observable facts, for the antiquity of the Earth, it would be a good idea to look a bit further back in the history of science to the facts and arguments that originally actually did persuade scientists (back in the day when they were mostly gentleman amateurs) of the point. In this respect, Charles Lyell’s research on Mt. Etna stands out both for its historical significance and for the clear, easily understandable evidence and straightforward argumentation that it relies upon to show the Earth’s great antiquity. I gave links to two succinct and reasonably clear explanations of this in my previous post in this thread (#12). If you can get a creationist to listen to you long enough to explain that, you might well have a chance of persuading him/her. The significance of oyster shells in sedimentary rocks under and between the lava layers is a lot easier to grasp than the reasons for believing that all Cepheid variables conform to a regular period-luminosity relation.
I can’t remember and can’t look it up right now, was the 6000 year number calculated using the Hebrew or Greek version of the bible and which one listed people as living for hundreds of years? I believe there is a1500 year difference between the two based on those ages. It’s probably not the debunking desired, but how can they even be sure the 6000 year number is the correct calculation?
I would have to look up certain passages to go into much depth, but what I believe you get is that man can not know the mind of God - God must reveal it to man, therefor a person can not in himself interpret God’s word, God must speak it to the heart, the gift of knowledge and wisdom is from God, not man. So man can not interpret Scriptures on his own, nor can other men do it for you. Any answer to the question ‘how did you come to that conclusion’ other then a answer along the lines of enlightenment by the Holy Spirit is in question by default. (So answers like I read it, I learned it in bible study, this is what the book states is automatically in question).
I wouldn’t suggest taking it literally, but would suggest trying it on for size. If it works for you great, if not it’s going to cause some internal conflict which then I suggest looking for the answer that works and asking God for help with it. King David certainly didn’t take it literally and Jesus made it clear that in doing so was found guiltless.
It wasn’t “calculated” at all. It was a silly inference from Peter 3:8 (“one day is with the Lord as a thousand years”), resulting in the idea that six days of Creation meant 6,000 years.
Ussher, Newton and others decided that meant the world was created in 4,000 BC or so and counted from there.
Nonsense. They calculated if from the genealogies to be found in the Old Testament, as Fubaya’s post implies.* If they thought the six thousand referred to the 6 days of creation, then mankind, would have been created less than a thousand years ago, more recently than the events related in the New Testament! In fact, they thought Adam was created about about 6000 years ago, the date given by Ussher being 4,004 BC.
Young Earth creationists, generally insist on this dating, more or less, and also insist firmly on creation having taken literally six days. Old Earth or “day era” creationists (who are considerably less loopy, and try to, to an extent, anyway, to reconcile the Bible with science) may have used the Peter passage to justify the idea that creation could have happened over a long period of time, but they are far too sane to any longer have any influence on the fundamentalist movement, where being as anti-science and anti-rational as possible is a large part of the point.
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- And as Fubaya’s post also implies, there was a lot of room for uncertainty in those calculations. The 4,004 BC date given by Ussher was never an accepted Church doctrine, although it may have been widely regarded, for a while, as a best guess. Ussher’s Biblical exegetical techniques were, so I understand, actually quite sophisticated. Unlike modern creationists, he and others of his ilk were far from anti-rational.
How does the YE crowd reconcile the fact the there are different races, with the fundemantalist (literalist?) belief that there was one creation and no evolution since? Were there multiple Adams and Eves? And snakes for that matter.
I thought that the concept of ‘race’ technically was not scientific.
And for a belief that there are angelic/human hybrids on earth before the flood ‘and afterwords’, I don’t think the concept of observed differences between people is going to be much of a game changer.
I think from the different complexions of the various sons of Noah (also the physical differences between Jacob and Esau, who supposedly gave rise to Jews and Arabs respectively).
Anyway, for someone who can believe that God can create all the different types of plants and animals (including extinct ones) in one day, it is not much of a stretch to hold that he can also cause human beings to differentiate widely enough, over a few thousand years, to get us different races. This is the least of their problems.
An example of how that kind of thinking is accepted - There’s a ridge quite close to town here, at the top there’s a shingle outcrop within the limestone (complete with embedded seashells - living species). My Dad pointed out that; for those stones to get there, the mountains had risen (from wherever), eroded out rocks that fell into a river and were tumbled into smooth pebbles, rolled out to the sea, where they lay undisturbed long enough for sand, sediment, seashells etc to form the rivermouth into solid rock, before the whole seabed was lifted up and eroded again to make the ridge they were walking along, 20-odd kilometres from and about 700 metres above the current sealine.
Fantastic! I was suitably impressed.
The guy we were walking with said “But I don’t remember any river being here.”
He’s over 80, so I guess he should know! 
True, in the sense that similarity of phenotype characteristics commonly thought of as indicating “race” (e.g., color of skin, color and curliness of hair, shape of nose, etc.) does not reliably correlate to closeness of genetic relationship.
But there are different genetic populations within the human species: i.e., geographic/ethnic/cultural groups whose members are on the whole more closely related to individuals within the group than to individuals outside the group. (It’s just that you can’t reliably identify such groups by looking at their “racial” characteristics.)
Evolution has produced some biological differences between certain of those populations: for example, the lactose tolerance of many populations in Europe and Africa, the epicanthal fold in the eyelid of many populations in Asia, the lower melanin levels of populations in temperate as compared to tropical climates, etc. These are the scientifically attested biological differences among humans that creationists who reject the theory of evolution would need to find an alternative explanation for.
Amen.
I used to care about trying to convince people they were wrong about things. I don’t anymore. Not worth the time. Let them believe whatever they want (in person anyway…on the dope I still try from time to time 
).
This includes relatively benign/nonreligious things…like 15 years ago the wife of a friend was a travel agent but the internet hit that hard…so she became a stockbroker…guess what? Finally, she decided on her next career. REAL ESTATE AGENT! That was, I think, the last time I ever tried to convince someone of something…and all I got for my effort was bad feelings, being called a pessimist…a dream smasher etc
Nope, never again. If someone truly comes up to me and wants my opinion and makes an effort asking me to be honest…I will give it. However, only my kids ever do that…well, and a couple co-workers.
Otherwise, I just STFU.
I find it interesting that the OP specifies “everyday facts”, seemingly meaning “things that are obvious” or “evidence from everyday life”. You’re not going to find that kind of evidence for a lot of scientific knowledge. There’s a quote I keep using here, and I really need to track down where it originated, but it goes “science is the fight against common sense”. The point being that the world, the universe, or what have you, does NOT work on immediately obvious rules. It has taken much work and study to be able to see deeper than just what it right in front of our eyes every day of the world.
Or, in other words, if our common sense was sufficient to understand the world around us, we wouldn’t need science. It’s not common sense that we live on the skin of a furiously spinning giant globe hurtling through empty space. It’s not common sense that we’re surrounded by invisible molecules that fuel the slow-burning fires within us that power our bodies. It’s not common sense that our ancestors were ape-like. Or rodent-like. Or reptile-like. Or so tiny that we couldn’t even see them. It’s not common sense that many diseases are caused by breathing or eating tiny microscopic self-replicating molecular machines that invade the other microscopic self-replicating molecular machines that make up us. And it’s not common sense that this planet has been here for so incredibly long that our minds are simply unable to grasp the numbers of years involved.
To learn all these things, we’ve needed science. Everyday experience simply is not enough.