# Where do people get the idea that the earth is less than 10,000 years old? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 13, 2014, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-do-people-get-the-idea-that-the-earth-is-less-than-10-000-years-old/693007 "2014-07-13T18:30:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 9
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2015, 4:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-do-people-get-the-idea-that-the-earth-is-less-than-10-000-years-old/693007/161 "2015-06-24T04:25:26Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > No more than “God” pushes the question back a stage. Where did He come from? > [@wolfpup](#): > > We hear that a lot, but I regard that as a logical fallacy. We are faced with empirical evidence that the universe appears to have had a beginning. The paradox of the universe is that it obeys natural laws that define our reality, but those laws cannot explain its origin. . . . Not having an answer for a question does not make it a logical fallacy. It isn’t fallacious at all: it’s asking the obvious question. Much of the Creationist doctrine is based on the claim that human intelligence cannot have arisen save by the direct application of intelligent design. It is not a fallacy, but ordinary logic, to say, “Wait a minute… Where did that designing intelligence come from, if intelligence requires intelligence to have designed it?” The fallacy, instead, is the “special pleading” that says, “Human intelligence can only have come about by intelligent design, but God’s intelligence is not subject to that rule.” Why not? ---
**Author:** ![Arcite](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/67e7ee/32.png) [@Arcite](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arcite)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2015, 4:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-do-people-get-the-idea-that-the-earth-is-less-than-10-000-years-old/693007/162 "2015-06-25T04:07:29Z")
> [@Measure\_for\_Measure](#): > > A poster here seems to agree with Ken Ham: It seems that some fundamentalists perceive science not as an engine of economic growth but as a threat to traditional values. I’m not a fundamentalist, but can you blame them, when cultural leftists are so often telling them that science _is_ a threat to traditional values? In the other thread, **wolfpup** [said that](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=18450323&postcount=82) not believing in evolution is part of a larger “anti-science” stance that leads to “stupid decisions” based on “rampant ignorance” like restrictions on abortion and euthanasia. > [@Trinopus](#): > > Loath though I am to defend **Arcite** , I don’t think gay rights was the key to his sentence. I think his point really was meant to be that the cultural left likes evolution because it weakens the Bible…and that gay rights was only one example of the kinds of things the left wants to obtain from a nation that is less devoted to the Bible. > > His phrasing was careless and simplistic, but I don’t think he meant that gay rights was the key to support for evolution. He could have put “abortion” at the end, or “Muslim rights” or “racially mixed marriages” or “divorce.” > > In any case, even taken in this more generous spirit, his claim is wrong, as the left’s support for evolutionary science is mostly based on a regard for real science and a disdain for the hypocritical lies published by Morris, Gish, Ham, and other arrant frauds. We’re opposed to the Moon-Landing Hoax for the same reason: it’s a goddamn lie. > > ETA: the left’s support for evolution is also, in part, a reaction to the right’s frantic attack on evolution. Most of us wouldn’t care very much, if it hadn’t become so heavily weaponized a topic for them. Yes, you got more of the gist of what I was saying. I was using homosexuality as a synecdoche for “culture war” issues in general. But I still don’t think my claim is entirely wrong. I wasn’t talking just about the left’s “support” in a vague, abstract sense, rather, about why it’s such a hot-button issue. Along those lines, I think your last statement comes closer to the truth. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2015, 4:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-do-people-get-the-idea-that-the-earth-is-less-than-10-000-years-old/693007/163 "2015-06-25T04:44:50Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > Not having an answer for a question does not make it a logical fallacy. It isn’t fallacious at all: it’s asking the obvious question. > > Much of the Creationist doctrine is based on the claim that human intelligence cannot have arisen save by the direct application of intelligent design. It is not a fallacy, but ordinary logic, to say, “Wait a minute… Where did that designing intelligence come from, if intelligence requires intelligence to have designed it?” > > The fallacy, instead, is the “special pleading” that says, “Human intelligence can only have come about by intelligent design, but God’s intelligence is not subject to that rule.” Why not? I agree with all of that. “Intelligent design” isn’t just wrong, it’s a particularly dimwitted, low-level kind of wrong that tries to argue for an anthropocentric kind of God who sits around a drafting board in a design studio up in the clouds and periodically releases new, improved life forms with longer warranties and built-in rustproofing. In that sort of context, which denies that intelligent life could arise spontaneously, it’s certainly fair to ask who created this cloud-dwelling champ. But when one posits the sort of extra-natural God I was referring to, who exists entirely outside our perceived universe and was (perhaps) responsible in some incomprehensible way for its creation, asking where He came from makes the huge and unsubstantiated assumption that natural laws such as causality must apply in that extra-natural domain. Causality requires time, space, energy, and matter – all the ordinary things of _our_ universe. > [@Arcite](#): > > I’m not a fundamentalist, but can you blame them, when cultural leftists are so often telling them that science _is_ a threat to traditional values? In the other thread, **wolfpup** [said that](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=18450323&postcount=82) not believing in evolution is part of a larger “anti-science” stance that leads to “stupid decisions” based on “rampant ignorance” like restrictions on abortion and euthanasia. Ignorance is not a “traditional value”. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2015, 5:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-do-people-get-the-idea-that-the-earth-is-less-than-10-000-years-old/693007/164 "2015-06-25T05:37:18Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > . . . But when one posits the sort of extra-natural God I was referring to, who exists entirely outside our perceived universe and was (perhaps) responsible in some incomprehensible way for its creation, asking where He came from makes the huge and unsubstantiated assumption that natural laws such as causality must apply in that extra-natural domain. Causality requires time, space, energy, and matter – all the ordinary things of _our_ universe. True enough, I suppose…except where someone suggests that this God has influence inside our universe, and then it’s fair to ask what the influence vector is. A God such as you describe can only exist outside our universe. And…okay, that’s fine. It’s still an invisible pink unicorn, i.e., it’s defined as being beyond our ability to perceive. It can’t grant wishes, it can’t speak to prophets, it can’t part the Red Sea. Also, “So where did he come from” is still a completely valid question: it’s just defined, now, as unanswerable. “Who knows, as the laws of causality and origins may not apply in the place – whatever it may be – outside our bubble of space-time.” It’s not a logical fallacy to ask questions for which there aren’t answers. It’s a dead-end, but not fallacious. It’s like “Is there intelligent life elsewhere in our universe?” Maybe, but no one knows. We get to ask, but we have to accept that there isn’t any answer. (The big difference, of course, is for the latter question, at least, we have possible ways of learning the answer.) > [@](#): > > Ignorance is not a “traditional value”. I wish there were fewer exceptions to this than there seem to be. (Like my cousin, who, upon seeing a picture of a Kzin skeleton in the end-papers of one of Larry Niven’s science fiction books, shrieked, “That’s evolution! I don’t believe in evolution!” Staggering.) ---
**Author:** ![BrianJ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/54ee81/32.png) [@BrianJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrianJ)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2015, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-do-people-get-the-idea-that-the-earth-is-less-than-10-000-years-old/693007/165 "2015-06-30T00:47:03Z")
I like this video. It is an interesting take on why a 6000 yer old earth is absurd. From what I've noticed, the objection to old earth and evolution stems from it all invalidating the Bible. It's far worse (for a biblical literalist) than "liberuls just want gays to marry!!!". If Evolution is true (and it is) Adam and Eve weren’t real. If Adam and Eve weren’t real, no Original Sin, and no need for Jesus to be sacrificed to absolve humans of their original sin. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2015, 4:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-do-people-get-the-idea-that-the-earth-is-less-than-10-000-years-old/693007/166 "2015-06-30T04:08:34Z")
I watched as far as 1:08, where the neolithic warriors were pushing a sledge full of ice and bottled beer. Odd, as, up to that point, it seemed to be a serious exposition on the state of civilization re 6000 BC, but that one little note of blatant humor seems to falsify – or undermine – the seriousness of the documentary. Should I have stuck it out and watched to the end? (The serious point is that we know that there were civilizations, megalithic constructions, and complex early crafts such as beer-making, at a time when the young earth creationists claim the world hadn’t even been created yet.) ---
**Author:** ![The\_Stainless\_Steel\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_stainless_steel_rat/32/5727_2.png) [@The\_Stainless\_Steel\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Stainless_Steel_Rat)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2015, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-do-people-get-the-idea-that-the-earth-is-less-than-10-000-years-old/693007/167 "2015-06-30T18:57:27Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > I agree with all of that. “Intelligent design” isn’t just wrong, it’s a particularly dimwitted, low-level kind of wrong that tries to argue for an anthropocentric kind of God who sits around a drafting board in a design studio up in the clouds and periodically releases new, improved life forms with longer warranties and built-in rustproofing. In that sort of context, which denies that intelligent life could arise spontaneously, it’s certainly fair to ask who created this cloud-dwelling champ. > > But when one posits the sort of extra-natural God I was referring to, who exists entirely outside our perceived universe and was (perhaps) responsible in some incomprehensible way for its creation, asking where He came from makes the huge and unsubstantiated assumption that natural laws such as causality must apply in that extra-natural domain. Causality requires time, space, energy, and matter – all the ordinary things of _our_ universe. > > Ignorance is not a “traditional value”. Thank you, wolfpup, you saved me some labor (and you write slightly better on this topic). I like to consider myself an Agnostic A-religionist. That is,…call it a “central purpose or reason for the Universe” existed or is still existing, but that it is quite probably unknowable and we (at least at our current level) cannot validate or disprove it. That said, I find NO religion, past, present, or future, to have any credibility or reason for me to follow it, and if there is a “God”, then He/She/It/They/Whatever, if they take any interest in this rock, probably point and giggle at what we are doing in the religious sense. IMHO of course. YMMV. ---
**Author:** ![BrianJ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/54ee81/32.png) [@BrianJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrianJ)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2015, 3:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-do-people-get-the-idea-that-the-earth-is-less-than-10-000-years-old/693007/168 "2015-07-01T03:43:17Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > I watched as far as 1:08, where the neolithic warriors were pushing a sledge full of ice and bottled beer. > > Odd, as, up to that point, it seemed to be a serious exposition on the state of civilization re 6000 BC, but that one little note of blatant humor seems to falsify – or undermine – the seriousness of the documentary. > > Should I have stuck it out and watched to the end? > > (The serious point is that we know that there were civilizations, megalithic constructions, and complex early crafts such as beer-making, at a time when the young earth creationists claim the world hadn’t even been created yet.) The visuals were just taken from old movies and such, not meant to indicate anything specific about the people he was talking about at the time. it’s really his speech that is relevant. he could have left it as a black screen the whole 10 minutes. It seems you already realize the point of the video, so up to you if you want to hear what he has to say. I found it interesting, for the information about the state of the world 6000 years ago at least. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2015, 5:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-do-people-get-the-idea-that-the-earth-is-less-than-10-000-years-old/693007/169 "2015-07-01T05:32:32Z")
Was the sledge full of ice and bottled beer supposed to be a joke? Why throw a joke like that into the middle of a documentary? That bit was just so damn weird. It made it impossible for me to credit the rest of the show with any seriousness. If he had a real point, he lost it completely by going for a cheap visual joke. ---
**Author:** ![vivalostwages](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/d07c76/32.png) [@vivalostwages](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vivalostwages)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2015, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-do-people-get-the-idea-that-the-earth-is-less-than-10-000-years-old/693007/170 "2015-07-23T18:23:50Z")
> [@Measure\_for\_Measure](#): > > Do they get it from the pulpit or is it just a general impression? > > Data from Gallup: [Evolution, Creationism, Intelligent Design | Gallup Historical Trends](http://www.gallup.com/poll/21814/Evolution-Creationism-Intelligent-Design.aspx) > > 31 + 19 = 50 percent believe in evolution, possibly with God’s guidance. 42% believe that God created human beings pretty much in their present form with the last 10,000 years or so. Specific wording: Which of the following statements comes closest to yoru views on the origin and development of human beings - (human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided this process, human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God had no part of this process (or) God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so)? > > Ok, so about 42% of the country believe in young earth creationism. I know, I know: the question covered the creation of man and not the earth: I welcome further evidence and clarification. > > I choose the Gallup survey because of its detail and the fact that they’ve asked similar questions since 1982. For example 79% report that they are either very familiar or somewhat familiar with evolution and 46% say that the theory of evolution is inconsistent with their religious beliefs. Huh. I’m most interested in, say, the 2/3 least committed of that 46%. I assume most don’t bother to buy anti-evolution books or visit [talkorigins.org](http://talkorigins.org). > > So I’m guessing that a lot of these 46% studied the theory of natural selection at some point during their schooling. But they don’t trust the overwhelming scientific consensus on this issue, though I think it’s fair to say that most will see a licensed physician when they are sick rather than a faith healer or snake handler. > > Anyway, what I was wondering is whether creationism is a meme or something that is actively pushed in most non-mainline Protestant churches. And if it’s the latter (which I suspect) how does that sermon work? Nonbelievers believe the scientists? Hell and brimstone? Teach the controversy? Or what? > > In the mainline church I grew up with, anti-evolution arguments never came up. My exposure to anti-evolution arguments in high school was limited to [a fictional book about the Scopes monkey trials](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inherit_the_Wind_%28play%29) of the 1920s. It had been assigned to my brother and I had read it on my own. Do Creationists look at evidence like the following… [https://www.genf20.com/info/10-animals-that-spit-at-father-time/](https://www.genf20.com/info/10-animals-that-spit-at-father-time/) and STILL insist that these creatures aren’t really all that old? How do they figure it? ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2015, 11:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-do-people-get-the-idea-that-the-earth-is-less-than-10-000-years-old/693007/171 "2015-07-28T23:07:25Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > Was the sledge full of ice and bottled beer supposed to be a joke? Why throw a joke like that into the middle of a documentary? > > That bit was just so damn weird. It made it impossible for me to credit the rest of the show with any seriousness. If he had a real point, he lost it completely by going for a cheap visual joke. Well, he cobbled together bits from numerous movies, TV shows and apparently at least one beer commercial, so chill out. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2015, 3:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-do-people-get-the-idea-that-the-earth-is-less-than-10-000-years-old/693007/172 "2015-07-29T03:18:55Z")
You supply the beer. But you must have cave-men deliver it on a stone sledge. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-do-people-get-the-idea-that-the-earth-is-less-than-10-000-years-old/693007.md?page=8)