What is the YEC answer to the lack of shorter lived isotopes?

This is really misplaced in this discussion. If somehow, I feel God spoke to me inside to do something or believe something, and others tell me to do or believe something different, then I have to decide whether to believe man or God. If, however, you, Henry Morris, Ken Ham, Kent Hovind, or the Dalai Lama says that God wrote Genesis and meant by it that the earth was created in six days six thousand years ago, and scientists say it isn't true, then I have to decide which men I am placing my faith in--God isn't involved in the matter.Since scientists can present a lot of evidence for their position, and you, Henry Morris, Ken Ham, and Kent Hovind (I'm pretty confident the Dalai Lama is not a YEC) can't, then I choose the other men/women over your lot.Actually, in the end, I'll bet you place your trust in scientists, too, unless you're part of a very extreme minority of charismatics/pentecostals. If a person near you suddenly fell to the ground, jerked around some, and foamed at the mouth, would you call your pastor or would you call 911, so that they can call the scientists (doctors) at the local hospital to treat the person's seizure? Almost every Christian I know would choose 911 and the people who studied science to treat an epileptic, not the man who studied the Bible.And I think it's clear to anyone who reads the Gospels that the Bible teaches that when a person falls to the ground, writhes around, and foams at the mouth they have a demon, which should be treated by exorcism, not epilepsy, which can be treated by drugs and diet.Anyway, I wonder if your "trust God or men" applies to epilepsy and seizures. I wonder, too, if you're still upset that pretty much all of Christianity has trusted Galileo and Copernicus instead of God on the rotation of the earth.I've got even a better one. When Jesus said that Abiathar the priest gave David "and all those with him" (Mark 2:26) to eat of the showbread, should we trust him (God) or should we trust the men who wrote Samuel and said that David was alone and got the showbread from Ahimelech (1 Sam 21:1)? This is not true. Nothing about this is true. This is the "false dichotomy" the other poster wrote about. Science does nat say that there can't be a higher power or that anything unobservable is wrong. They only say that anything unobservable, unrepeatable, and untestable can't be science.Of course, it doesn't matter how many times that's pointed out. If I had to, I'd bet my last nickel that you will repeat this false argument the next chance you get. It can be effective rhetoric to the ignorant, so who care's if it's true, right?

This is not true. Nothing about this is true. This is the "false dichotomy" the other poster wrote about. Science does nat say that there can't be a higher power or that anything unobservable is wrong. They only say that anything unobservable, unrepeatable, and untestable can't be science.so if it is not science what is it? According to this forum majority it is false, thus you are stating that if GOD is unobservable, science would say he does not exist and is false.
I look at these boards and I wonder if we all agree on Absolute truth.
let us say absolute truth is the fundenmental truth of all the universe, it's laws, and its constants. I will call it A.
Either A = God or A= ScienceIf god exists and is the creator of all then God =A. To say anything less is to deny that God is the creator.If there is no God, then science is used to discover A. but to use science it is assumed that A is observable, testable ,and repeatable. There is a chance however that A is not one of the three, and so science ( as it has been described by you) could not discover A, but it would appear that it had discovered A. Therefore it is possible that Science's A < A. One cannot argue that currently science's current truth does not equal A. in fact every statement about truth in science is a theory created by man.
So I have absolute truth in two context. If you believe the first, than science is only one of many tools to get to A but not A itself. If you believe the second, many argue that that science is the only way to A, which in itself is a faith as we have no proof that A can be reached by scientific method. So you place your faith in either inScience or in God-
thus no false dicotomy[This message has been edited by agrav8r, 01-09-2004]

No! Now listen very carefully. If something is unobservable (in all ways) science says nothing about it. Nothing at all. The process of science can't say it exists or not. Having "no comment" on somethings existance is not the same as saying it doesn't exist. I can't tell what you could possible mean about a "fundamental truth" in the scientific sense. You are constructing another false dichotomy. Science can say many, possibly true things about the universe none of which have anything to do with God. Some of them maybe pretty "fundamental" (whatever that does mean) but all are subject to further research and may prove to not be so "fundamental" after all. In fact, that's happened a lot. So perhaps there isn't any "fundamental" truths in science. (even things like conservation of energy had to be changed less than a century after being formulated).You are putting forward a false dichotomy. A dangerous one. If you insist that only one of "science" or "god" can be correct then as evidence mounts more and more people will pick the one with evidence. However, most believers aren't so foolish and believe in a more interesting God than you do.Your whole last paragraph is based on the wrong idea that not observing something known (defined) to be not observable disproves it. It doesn't!Let's try an analogy. Einstein's special theory of relativity says we should always experience time dilation if we travel. It predicts the exact amount that we should experience. We calculate how much you should experience driving to the store and back. We use wristwatches to check the result. We do NOT observe time dilation.Have we disproved special relativity? Of course not. We didn't expect to observe the dilation.You have described God as being unobservable. Given that, when we don't observe Him have we disproved Him? Of course not.If you say that God doesn't exist if the earth is more than 6,000 years old you have supplied an observation that can be made. I make the necessary observations. The earth is much more than 6,000 years old by any measures that I can reasonably make. {i}Now[/i] [b]you've/b supplied a God which is disprovable and disproven. That's up to you, not scientists.

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Common sense isn't[This message has been edited by NosyNed, 01-09-2004]

first off, I appreciate the thoughtfulness and respectful nature your posts show- i have been recieving very little of this, but this may be due to my screen name. That said:
When i speak of fundenmental Truth -I mean the reality of the universe ,whether that be God created the universe, it hatched from a chicken , evolved from nothing, ect.. not the process but the final equation. If you can understand this i would ask that you reread and see if my post makes more of a point. if you come up with the same conclusions, please just state so and i will elaborate, but i have problems communicating my ideas, nad would rather ensure that we are on the same page before continuing.

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so if it is not science what is it? According to this forum majority it is false, thus you are stating that if GOD is unobservable, science would say he does not exist and is false.

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How many times can this be explained to you, and how many times can you completely miss the point, before we all wring our hands in frustration and walk away from our keyboards? If a god is unobservable then science refuses to make any conclusions about him or her, beyond unobservability! The scientific method simply says "we cannot determine this for sure, so we will not say yea or nay!"

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I look at these boards and I wonder if we all agree on Absolute truth.
let us say absolute truth is the fundenmental truth of all the universe, it's laws, and its constants. I will call it A.
Either A = God or A= Science

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Science is a means of learning information and testing our attempts to explain it. Science is not an end in itself, a governing law, or an ideal toward which people strive. Nor is it something people put faith in. It is a tool which we use to discover and exploit the order of the natural world. Why people like you feel the need to conflate so many other concepts with this one is something I do not understand very well.

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If god exists and is the creator of all then God =A. To say anything less is to deny that God is the creator.

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Ohhhh, man. So the speed of light is God? Is everything in the universe God? What about our digestive systems - are they God? 'cause I'm getting really hungry right now....I know you're trying to make a nice big-picture point here, but you're simplifying way too much in the process and losing your coherency. I wouldn't mind seeing you take a stab at this from a different angle.

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If there is no God, then science is used to discover A. but to use science it is assumed that A is observable, testable ,and repeatable. There is a chance however that A is not one of the three, and so science ( as it has been described by you) could not discover A, but it would appear that it had discovered A. Therefore it is possible that Science's A < A.

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If I follow you correctly, you're saying that we could discover a subset of the natural order and be deceived by the illusion that we had discovered it all. As I understand science and methodological naturalism, nothing at all is wrong with this idea and a good scientist would not object. However, they would also ask: if some aspect of "reality" or "A" as you call it does not affect our lives in ways that can be understood via observation, and does not do so with regularity, what good can come of even concerning ourselves with it?Observation is our ONLY means for gathering information about the universe. The scientific method reduces the effect of errors in observation through repeated testing. If we tried to acknowledge unobservable, untestable, or unrepeatable phenomena and use our knowledge of them to direct our paths through life, we might spend our whole lives waiting for their effects and die disappointed.

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One cannot argue that currently science's current truth does not equal A. in fact every statement about truth in science is a theory created by man.

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The first part of this goes back to what I said earlier. Based on what we know today, no good scientist would try to argue that we know everything there is to know about the universe. As for the second statement, you are correct: theories are created by man. Show me an idea that is not.

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So I have absolute truth in two context. If you believe the first, than science is only one of many tools to get to A but not A itself. If you believe the second, many argue that that science is the only way to A, which in itself is a faith as we have no proof that A can be reached by scientific method. So you place your faith in either inScience or in God-

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Man, if you think everyone who does practical research using the scientific method subscribes to this rabid scientist faith you describe, maybe you need to actually meet some of them. It is well known that a large percentage of scientists are theists of one kind or another, and thus can hardly be claimed to hold the view you attempt to pin on them.

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thus no false dicotomy

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Huh? You almost got it right when you had science as one of multiple paths, but then you attempted once again to set up science in direct opposition to the viewpoint of which it was supposed to be a subset. I'm not sure which one of us is more confused, but you've still got a false dichotomy.

Ok, maybe I get what you mean by fundamental.But it is so very fundamental that I'm not sure it's meaningful. Most of us here don't have any argument with those that say "I believe God created the universe.". We may not believe it ourselves but you can if you want. Science has no comment that far back (at least not for the time being).But you don't get to believe just anything about how he went about creating it. Well, you can but you have to keep it out of other peoples faces in any free country with separation of church and state.So most of us aren't arguing about something quite so "fundamental". I don't know how the universe came into being or why. I'm comfortable not knowing and enjoy watching the process of learning more and more. Others aren't so patient and want an answer now, however it is arrived at.But as I noted earlier there are a number of pretty basic things about the universe which are probably pretty correct to a high enough probability that you really, really have to do better than just believe if you expect to be taken seriously.The arguement here is with those who not only choose to believe some pretty silly things, but to believe it without any good evidence or logic and, on top of that, want to interfere with the process of scientific discovery and education based on that belief. They even think that they can damage some very fundamental freedoms in most democracies by breaking the church-state separation.That last one is pretty strange, they are in a minority everywhere and would be in the group of those who suffer if the separation ever really was gone.

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Common sense isn't

"If I follow you correctly, you're saying that we could discover a subset of the natural order and be deceived by the illusion that we had discovered it all. As I understand science and methodological naturalism, nothing at all is wrong with this idea and a good scientist would not object. However, they would also ask: if some aspect of "reality" or "A" as you call it does not affect our lives in ways that can be understood via observation, and does not do so with regularity, what good can come of even concerning ourselves with it?
Observation is our ONLY means for gathering information about the universe. The scientific method reduces the effect of errors in observation through repeated testing. If we tried to acknowledge unobservable, untestable, or unrepeatable phenomena and use our knowledge of them to direct our paths through life, we might spend our whole lives waiting for their effects and die disappointed."
An example
there are arguements ( and I am not fluient in them all so I will generalize) for open, closed and stagnate universes in the current scientific theories. A scientist would say it is one of the three and come up with a theory based on the little bit of fact they know- however when the evidence doesn't work correctly they "add" things - again with no actual proof- only perception through what may be faulty observation/logic - this is what I mean by Scientism. There are many theories ( something that may be right, but could very well be wrong) to support- but supporting a theory that may ,if only a 1/10000000000 chance, be wrong is the same as having "faith". You fight for it and will continue to do so.
Your only arguement is that we can see/observe it.
Overly simple example following:
I look at a piece of paper with designs on it. We will say that the paper is the universe.The designs are in such a way as to appear to have depth and to "move". i cannot see/observe the other side and so I will continue to say it has depth. I will argue that it is measurable and come up with theories base on the movement and the way the patterns fall. Then someone comes up and says it is just a peice of paper and there is another side to it. I will argue that they cannot know that prove it to me. I have faith in that all that is observable is all there is. This is Scientism.

But you don't get to believe just anything about how he went about creating it. Well, you can but you have to keep it out of other peoples faces in any free country with separation of church and state.
This is another arguement that i would want to make a differnet thread for, but nowhere did our founders use that term. It has been taken out of context and misused so often that most people believe that it is in the constitution like that. but i digress"But you don't get to believe just anything about how he went about creating it."
My arguement is that in both science and religion you are doing just that. they both use faith in the assumption that their way of looking at the world will lead to A.
If I say evolution exists, and A turns out to really be god's hand touching everything, and not evolution- but it appeared to be evolution, you would have faith that it was a random set of evens despite A.
Now i realize that the arguement can be turned around- but i admit that I have faith, and jsut want to prove the point that basing your beliefs is another kind of faith-
I do this only to set the stage and perhaps open a few closed minds. In my mind we must first discuss the idea of fundenmentals and then we can move on to where truth (or more truth) resides. I may be assuming that minds are closed, and if that is true , i apologize as I don't wish to offend- despite my name sake.

agrav8r Please inform us of the assumption that science has used.

I hope that by now you've gathered from everyone else's (the "forum majority") responses what it is (basically unknown or unknowable). But I guess if they say repeatedly that they are not saying that what is not science is not necessarily false, and you don't believe them, there's not a heck of a lot any of us can do about that.A "false dichotomy" means you say, "You must believe A or B," when in fact there are more choices than A or B. Things are not either science or false. That's the false dichotomy Zephyr's speaking of. If you say you saw a floating, glowing orange cloud in your dining room three years ago, and neither you nor anyone else has seen it since, your story really can't be scientifically tested, but that doesn't mean it's false.

Well, this is quite the accusation, isn't it? Can you give examples where this has happened? Where "evidence" has been made up?Or are you talking about speculating about the unknown so that scientists can go test that speculation. Scientists speculate all the time, but part of their speculation is always about how they will test their speculation to see if it is true. They don't just believe it. That's what young earth Christians do, and it is what scientists object to when they do it concerning things that are testable (like the age of the earth). No, fighting for a theory that has only 1/10,000,000 of a chance of being wrong is a great idea, especially if competing theories have a far greater chance of being wrong.What exactly, agrav8r, do you know about the earth, God, religion, or about anything else that has less than a one in ten million chance of being wrong? Very little beyond your own name and address.If something has a 50% chance of being right, and you can continue to test it and continue to use it to test other things, then you should. As you continue to examine, you might eventually find out it's wrong. Then you back up as far as you need to and then go forward again. That's the road to truth, and it works really, really well.Because people who do science look for truth that way, and because Biblical literalists don't, then when people are sick--even Christian people--they call doctors who study science in order to get better. They don't call preachers who study the Bible to get better, EVEN THOUGH THEY USED TO. The reason they don't call preachers who study the Bible is because doctors who study science can make people well. Not 100% of the time. Certainly not with less than a one in ten million chance of error (or even of malpractice), but people go to doctors, anyway, because they are immeasurably more successful than preachers at healing people.Why is that, when the Bible COMMANDS you to take a sick person to the elders of the church and says nothing about doctors? (Unless your a Catholic, where Ecclesiasticus in the apocrypha mentions doctors). It is because scientists do not cheat on evidence, but look at it and adapt their ideas, and thus find what's true and are able to heal.You trust science to be honest, and you trust their speculations and testing when you're sick. Why do you accuse them and reject their search for truth when it concerns earth's history?There is an inconsistency here, but it's not with science.

Another accusation with no evidence to support it. Isn't slander forbidden by your religion? [/qs]Now i realize that the arguement can be turned around- but i admit that I have faith, and jsut want to prove the point that basing your beliefs is another kind of faith[/qs]"prove the point"? That's called slander, not proof.

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I look at a piece of paper with designs on it. We will say that the paper is the universe.The designs are in such a way as to appear to have depth and to "move". i cannot see/observe the other side and so I will continue to say it has depth. I will argue that it is measurable and come up with theories base on the movement and the way the patterns fall. Then someone comes up and says it is just a peice of paper and there is another side to it. I will argue that they cannot know that prove it to me. I have faith in that all that is observable is all there is. This is Scientism.

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Okay. I understand that. You have explained this before, and this restatement is a good piece of writing, but the fact remains that "scientism" is not the same as science, and that very few scientists can be shown to hold that view. Thus, its weaknesses can hardly be used against things like evolutionary theory or the scientific method in general. So you've done a good job of pinpointing and undermining a principle that is (unfortunately) of almost no relevance to the questions regularly debated here.

I think the answers YECs have offered in this thread are the best I've seen for this issue. Agrav8r offers that there a fundamental truths about the universe that science doesn't address. I agree with him.Many evolutionists are like me in that they come to the Creation/evolution debate out of a concern for the quality of science education in those parts of the world affected by Creationist efforts to push religious views into public schools. While science *is* a process for understanding in a mechanistic way the world around us, it is not really a method for uncovering fundamental truths. There *are* courses about the fundamental truths of the universe, but they usually have names like Comparative Religions and so forth. And most religions believe they are dealing with fundamental truths.The Bible is not trying to tell us the structure of atoms or the quark components of sub-atomic particles or the decay rates of isotopes. The Bible provides fundamental truths about the human condition. The age of the universe, the origin of life, the evolution of species, these are all irrelevant to the more fundamental and important considerations of how we should lead our lives.The fundamental problem with offering fundamental truths as explanations for scientific phenomena is that fundamental truths are not scientific. We reach fundamental truths through revelation, prayer and dialogues with God. We develop scientific theories through the scientific method.While the YEC answers offered here are religiously powerful, they have no place in science classrooms. These answers are religious, not scientific.--PercyPS - Agrav8r - at one point you mentioned a concern that your user name may be affecting the way people reply to you. I don't think that's the case, but if you wish, you can go to the profile page and change your member ID to something else.

Rei, (and Percy, since I've read most of the posts here.)Here's how I deal with the young earth ideas in Genesis.God says that He created the heavens and the earth, but He doesn't say, explicitly, when (vs 1). When asked by Kabbalists, and the fundamentalists I have heard of who took the trouble, the answer received was, "a very long time ago." Some Kabbalists even got an estimate approximating that of the cosmologists.But, as the story unfolds, the earth was laid waste and destroyed. Now, this is often translated "formless and void," but the Hebrew words used here are translated elsewhere as "laid waste and destroyed." That this could happen at this point in Genesis is later confirmed by the pre-existing presence of a destroyer, Satan, who shows up without being "created" (except as part of the heavens and the earth in verse 1) in Chap. 3. Then, in six days, about 6000 years ago, God restored the creation that had been destroyed.The beauty of evolutionary theory is that it takes a long time, and describes a process of the production of biological and physical diversity. But that process could be either a creation or an evolution. Selection could be either natural or artificial. Genetic change could be either random mutation or genetic engineering. Data that indicate either selection or genetic change support both theories. If creation is true, we learn something about the way God, the Creator, works, about His nature, what we can expect from Him, even from the theory of evolution. It's like Newton's laws of force and motion. Not exactly true, but useful for many practical purposes.That the restored creation retains the agedness of the original is thus a restatement of your option 1 into, "God deliberately set up the universe in its orginal old age, because that's the way it was when it was destroyed, the way He wanted it to be. He wanted us to know how He went about creating things, so that when we (His image) would create things, and would choose to do so in a Godly fashion, we would know how that was." We have the six day restoration story, so that when we found something that was laid waste and destroyed by evil (either our creation, or His), and wanted it restored, we could know that a "miraculous" fast restoration was always possible.This view of creation, when dealt with scientifically, I call evolition, to contrast with evolution. Giving the two theories these similar names seems to defuse in my mind the idea that the theories are of different natures and cannot be studied using strong inference. In strong inference, one takes two competing explanations, and deduces opposing predictions from the two. Then, the predictions are tested, and the theory whose predictions are confirmed gains in plausibility compared to the theory whose predictions are not. In this case, we might (!) predict from the theory of creation, from evolition, that those who "forget God" as is done with most evolutionary thinking will be artificially selected against by the artificially selecting Creator, still busy at work shaping His creation. That is, evolutionists ought to have a lower fitness, less reproducing offspring, than those believing in a Creator. From the theory of evolution, we (might, again) get the opposite prediction. That is, if a Creator can be safely forgotten, not being relevant to fitness, etc, then those who waste time on the idea, or are deluded or deceived (i.e. creation believers), being less aware of the truth about forces that determine fitness, would have fewer reproducing offspring. This assumes of course that intelligence "evolved" through natural selection, being a trait that produced clearer, more accurate perceptions and expectations of "selection pressures."In this simple test, the human group with the largest known fitness, Mennonites and Amish, being creation believers, confirm the truth of the evolition theory. Except for Robert Trivers, a unique evolutionary biologist who explicitly took his theory to heart and went out to have a large biological fitness, evolutionists are probably lower than the general population in reproductive success.Don't want to make too much out of this test, of course. Just presented as an example of how one scientist is going about seeing which theory is most plausible.