So as far as I know, people typically try to disabuse Young Earth creationists (YECs) of their belief in a ~6000 year-old universe by pointing to things like the geological record and carbon dating. I think some ultra-religious folks have claimed in response that ancient fossils were "put there to test our faith" or something like that.

Fwiw, a different line of reasoning occurred to me, and hopefully it's logical. Astronomers can find the distance to stars using a combination of the parallax created by Earth's orbit around the Sun, trigonometry, and knowledge of the speed of light. So if a YEC subscribes to the principles of trigonometry and agrees on the scientifically established speed of light (and both of those things are provable mathematically), it should be possible to prove to them that the universe is much, much older than 6000 years because we can see the light of stars and galaxies that are billions of light years away.

If god can fake dinosaur bones in order to test our faith, he can also create a universe of this size, and place photons in the correct position to make it look like they came from a galaxy that was billions of light years away, but only actually travelled 6000 light years.

https://answersingenesis.org/astrono...iverse-is-old/

What you don't realize is that your use of "prove" is simply too strong of a word for the type of argument being raised.

Even if you soften the word "prove," you're not going to get anywhere. You're not going to prove, convince, confirm, demonstrate, move the needle... anything to people who have an unfalsifiable belief--a belief which they think is confirmed whichever way the data comes in.

If they're willing to overlook basic biology, tectonic shifts and archeology / carbon dating - then don't think this will convince them.

I mean, it's essentially "because this old book says so" versus a mountain of scientific evidence. It's not even a matter of "this old religion", as fundamentalism isn't that old as a Christian tradition.

They just argue that the speed of those things has changed.

Here are a bunch of YEC claims and the refutations. You can probably find counters to the refutations somewhere but this was the first thing I found.

Refuted Young-Earth Claims

A number of major Christian apologists, such as William Lane Craig and Hugh Ross, claim that a "millions of years" cosmology is consistent with a literal interpretation of Genesis. Apparently the word translated "day" in English comes from the Hebrew word "yom", which doesn't have to refer to a 24-hour day, but can sometimes refer to an unspecified period of time.

I am personally a YEC, but I think that reasonable Bible scholars can disagree.

(And please no snarky comments like: "If they believe the Bible, then they're not reasonable." )

Have a blessed day.

This thread was about YEC, which is not a reasonable position. It flies in the face of every piece of scientific evidence we have about the age of not only our planet, the solar system, the universe, but also on the history of a lot of other living beings, ourselves, archeological findings and geological formations.

And it's not like these theories are only used to determine age. So not only do you have to reject them on that basis, you have to adequately explain why they seem to work in other respects. Why can we find oil and gas based on geological theories that uses time as a factor, but still the age factor is wrong? Why do you reject carbon dating, when we know very well from other scientific venues that radioactive decay is a theory that works exceptionally well. And so it goes.

Believing the bible is one thing, taking it at its literal word is another. You're literally have to run in almost endless circle and reject fully working, functional and well supported theories.

And the main support you have for your view is a book that can't adequately predict a single phenomena. It's the equivalent of claiming you can't fall down a cliffside because God says so. Meaning that it isn't really a discussion, it's a complete rejection of evidence and at best hiding out in some severely misguided form of philosophical skepticism.

I think reasonable Bible scholars can disagree on this point, but I don't think that reasonable people who are educated in the physical and biological sciences can. There is no reasonable argument to confirm a YEC view of the universe when viewed from a scientifically-literate perspective. The best that YEC has is a tenuous negation of scientific conclusions.

Also, when one looks into the history of YEC (at least within American Christianity), one finds that it isn't really that traditional of a viewpoint, and that it's embedded into a deeply anti-intellectual perspective. This is outlined in "Scandal of the Evangelical Mind" (Mark Noll). Also, here's an online article about it:

https://biologos.org/uploads/static-...ly-essay-1.pdf

Hi Aaron.

Is it your assertion that there are no "scientifically-literate" scientists at Answers in Genesis or at the Institute for Creation Research?

I'm pretty sure that Jason Lisle, who has a PhD is astrophysics from the University of Colorado qualifies as "scientifically-literate." He's one of the top scientists at ICR. Although his area of expertise is astrophysics, he also seems to know a thing or two about biology. (Probably a lot more than most of the people who criticize him.)

Have a blessed day.

It's interesting that in the US, theist scientists are in a minority, I think somewhere around the 33% mark (compare that to 83% in the general public), and a further 18% who you could describe as deists, so we can see immediately a huge discrepancy between those who are 'scientifically literate' and those who are not.

Also, it's not an equal distribution. The number falls the more the specific area has the potential to contradict or replace understandings gained through the religious paradigm. E.g. Chemistry, in which we can gain huge understandings without it ever really conflicting with a god belief has the higher number of theist scientists, while Physics, where theories regularly conflict with religious dogma has the lowest number.

(Source)

Do you have stats on the specific scientific fields in which YEC beleiving scientists work?

I believe only about 6% of the members of the National Academy of Sciences are professing theists.

I have no stats regarding what fields YEC scientists are specialists in.

Right, I forgot to include that the percentage drops the 'higher' up you go and top ranking scientists are overwhelmingly not theist.

OP, IIRC when I first heard about this argument, the parallax method does not work for stars/galaxies that are 7k+ light years out. But there are other ways to establish distance, so yes, the nighttime sky would be much darker if the universe were young.

Are you arguing that a young universe is a scientifically sound proposition? Because although Lisle may be a scientist, he's using faith, not science to claim a young earth. There is no evidence that a day once lasted millions of years.

Argue for young earth if you want based on faith, but if you claim it is compatible with science -- it just isn't.

There are "scientifically literate" people there. But I think they are unreasonable.

It's interesting that you put the hedge phrase "seems to" in here. The fact that his expertise is in one area does not imply that he has expertise in another. For example, Neil deGrasse Tyson is an astrophysicist that has made all sorts of blunders in his recounting of both biology and history.

I want to reemphasize my wording here:

Again, the challenge was not to scientific literacy. The challenge is to the reasonableness of the arguments.

Thanks for the clarification, Aaron.

I'm a YEC based on my understanding of the Bible, not because of what scientists say (or don't say).

Since I believe that:

(A) The Bible is infallible, and

(B) The scientific method is not infallible,

If there is an apparent conflict between what the Bible says and what even a large majority of scientists conclude based on the scientific method, I will believe what the Bible says.

Having said that, if a large majority of scientists have concluded something that seems in conflict with the Bible, that probably increases the likelihood that I have misunderstood what the Bible is saying. That is to say, I don't think that there can ultimately be a real conflict between science and the Bible (given my view of biblical infallibility).

I'd encourage you to explore this statement in a larger historical context. Specifically, look at the historic Judeo-Christian viewpoints on this idea. You will find that the contemporary American Christian perspective deviates quite far from most other positions.

I will do some research on that.

Thanks Aaron, and have a blessed day.

What about what the bible doesn't mention? All the modern technology which you no doubt use daily and take for granted, how do you feel about the science behind all that? When you take an aspirin, are operated on, fly in a plane, or trust your safety to some electronic gadget, would you cast that aside without a second thought if it were shown to contradict the bible?

You're correct that the scientific method isn't 'infallible', in fact it's 'corrective', which is how we constantly improve our understanding, by correcting previous misconceptions and striving for a better understanding. My biggest problem with any theist dogma is that it prevents so much progress. There's a reason we endured the dark ages when the churches were in charge of education. You can't seek new answers when you think you already have them all.

You earlier said that:

As such, why do you think it is an issue of science against Biblical infallibility? Shouldn't the scientific evidence against YEC incline you to think the YEC interpretation, which might be reasonable or even preferable based on textual evidence alone, is actually incorrect? If there are two reasonable interpretations of a passage, either of which can be supported on textual grounds, shouldn't you prefer the one that is more in line with the non-textual evidence of what is true? For instance, Christians now almost always interpret the passages in the Bible that suggest a geocentric world as being figurative because of the scientific evidence for heliocentrism.

That strikes me as a backdoor way of accepting science while seeming to maintain Biblical inerrancy.

Take the argument that a day might have been hundreds of millions of years long at the beginning. That's not a young earth. It's a very old earth, using different units.

By boldly redefining terms you can always make science and the Bible consistent. But if you use the interpretations of the Bible in effect since antiquity, it does not fit science.

A friend of mine who is a retired professor at California Polytechnic in Pomona has often said (only half-jokingly) that he believes in technology, but
not in science.

I'm in favor of building a better mousetrap, but I'm not a big fan of so-called science that goes beyond what is observable, repeatable and testable. I'm probably over-simplifying here, but in essence if it's observable, repeatable and testable it's science, if it isn't it's philosophy.

The Dark Ages occurred because the Roman Catholic Church was in charge, and even Christians could be punished for reading the Bible on their own.

Even after the Dark Ages, the Roman Catholic Church burned Tyndale at the stake for translating the Bible into English.

The universe may very well be billions of years old. I heard a debate between Hugh Ross (an "old-earth" creationist) and Jason Lisle (a YEC) on the issue, and I found Lisle's arguments more convincing.

This isn't an issue I spend much time thinking about. As someone once said, "I'm more interested in the Rock of Ages, than the ages of rocks."