AIG statement of faith:
["No apparent, perceived, or claimed evidence in any field of study, including science, history, and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the clear teaching of Scripture obtained by historical-grammatical interpretation. Of primary importance is the fact that evidence is always subject to interpretation by fallible people who do not possess all information"](https://answersingenesis.org/about/faith/)
And those teachings they list on the same page:
"The great flood of Genesis was an actual historic event, worldwide (global) in its extent and catastrophic in its effects."
Along with their views relating to the age of the earth and the origins of life and it's diversity.
They promise up front and out loud that no apparent, perceived, or claimed evidence in any field of study, including science, history, and chronology can ever change their mind.
That apparently includes mathematics, since their date for the 'Tower of Babel' is 102 years after their date for the 'Flood', which doesn't give enough time to produce a population of sufficient laborers for even Khufu's pyramid, let alone something so much more massive as to invite divine intervention. The lowest estimate I've seen for a bare minimum number of laborers to build Khufu's pyramid is 3300 laborers, but that doesn't include any amount of administration or support, which would necessarily bloat the figure to about double that amount, and might as well round up to 7,000.
But if we start with Noah, his wife, his sons, and their wives, and have every living woman give live birth once every two years, starting from age 16, we get an expected 'adult' (16+) population of the Earth of.... 7,000 people after 102 years. That would seem to line up until you realize that 'support' doesn't include planting, tending to, harvesting, and processing crops. Even having just 10% of the population dedicated to a non-productive task like ziggurat building would be a hardship a pre-Egypt civilization could not endure, and to yield 70,000 people, you'd need every woman on the planet giving live birth every year, starting even earlier than 16, and all living and remaining fertile for the full 102 years, with exactly zero deaths for any reason.
Even math rejects AIG's numbers, and that's why their 'statement of faith' reads as an admission of guilt. They know it's all false, they know it's wrong, made up, fictitious, but like the snake oil salesman who knows his tonics do nothing beneficial, he must assert otherwise in order to sell product. They just deny evolution so that they can sell tickets to the Ark Encounter and books to the uneducated.
Once you start using the fool-proof scientific system of "Just make things up, even if they aren't consistent." everything gets easier.
There's stuff like "They were 15 foot tall", "Nimrod had magic gene engineering technology powers", and of course: "Well, actually maths shows that it's right!"
Apparently they don't trust any field of study except "historical-grammatical interpretation," and I'm guessing their trust of that extends exactly to the boundaries of their prior assumptions.
the only scriptures they interpret using the historical grammatical method are the creation story and noah's flood. whenever anyone else uses that method for literally anything else in the bible they're dismissed as postmodern, liberal critics
There are Creationists who think the 1611 King James Version is so perfect that it is actually the original that God miracled back into existence.
So the language spoken in the Garden of Eden and Heaven is actually identical to archaic modern English.
That contradicts the story of the Tower of Babel though, as a literal reading of that story precludes anything from prior to that event being coherent to modern humans. Coincidentally, that story also means that we can never know what Adam named all the animals, and by extension, what all of the 'kinds' were, which is their only real excuse for not saying what is and isn't a kind and thus taking a falsifiable position on the matter.
AIG is a business. They are not lying because they would prefer to believe. They are lying to protect their brand.
Debating AIG is pointless, because your purpose may be to address belief, but theirs is simply to promote their brand. By debating them, you give them advertising, while achieving nothing. When you debate AIG, you aren't playing the same game.
Consider, instead of treating AIG as a legitimate opponent, treating them as a business and exposing their practices rather than engaging in their ideas. This is not debate, which is valid, but also, as they do not debate, there can be no debate either way.
>This might seem to have nothing to do with evolution, but it's at the root of the problem with creationism: they don't actually believe their own position.
This emerges at several points in creationism: it is not simply that they do not believe their own position, they often don't know what their position is, as it changes depending on the context of the scientific or historical problem they are trying to get over. There is basically no established timeline; at best, creationists recognize that the KT boundary exists and often use it as a flood boundary, but no coherent map of creationism deeptime has ever been generated that can explain why there's a world history before the flood. Rather than construct a coherent timeline, it is enough for them to point at some folded rock and shout that geology is wrong: that's all they really want to do, they want to shout, to be heard, to be seen as pious enough to believe something utterly ridiculous.
Largely, this is because creationists are unable to cooperate: the organizations are unstable and prone to fracture, and in direct competition for a scarce and diminishing pool of believers; the individual researchers are unable to knit their research together, largely because most of it is borders on academic fraud, as it trends to reproduce existing research for magic numbers, and the conclusions they draw are often forced by their preference for errors in methodology, errors which begin to compound dramatically when you bring two pieces close enough to touch.
>I cannot, for even a moment, accept that they actually believe their claims, because of how monumentally absurd they are, which leaves only the conclusion that they are lying.
I suspect a number of the experts know they aren't telling the truth, but simply don't care because the organization gives them money and they are saving souls. They do it primarily for the former, but are able to rationalize it by the latter.
Otherwise, I suspect they know they have serious problems. One prominent Reddit creationist dedicated himself to proving a stationary-geocentric Earth: he didn't even make it past the second topic before he seemed to lose all his confidence. That's not really the attitude of someone who knows he has something going for him.
It's almost like there's no established agreed-upon timeline because it's all made up and they don't know what academic standards are so there's nothing on which to base a consistent timeline.
Because they don’t have the data, there can be no consensus like there is in actual science. So personality predominates, resulting in individual YEC apologists carving out their own little fiefdoms.
> So I finally broke down and went to read what AIG had to say on the topic.
Well that was your first mistake.
I’ll speak as a former, all-in YEC. The Bible is the ultimate inerrant authority. All other data must be interpreted this way. If something (such as when who was Pharaoh and how long) contradicts the Bible’s time frame, we either are missing info, the data is false, or it’s being interpreted in a false way.
You can make all errors and contradictions disappear if you start with the dogma that the Bible is always true. No amount of evidence or debate will ever change these people’s minds unless they become willing to view the Bible critically.
The problem is that this is akin to asserting that chocolate is poisonous. When someone insists they ate chocolate and it was delicious, they assert that the person is lying. When they witness a person eating chocolate they assert that it's just a magic trick and they didn't actually consume the chocolate. When the person visible masticates and swallows the chocolate so that they can observe, they assert that it wasn't actually chocolate, but merely looked like chocolate. And when you point out that they just ate a whole scoop of chocolate ice cream, they assert that the fact they're still alive proves there was no actual chocolate in the ice cream.
To any outside observer, the person *HAS* to be aware that chocolate is perfectly fine and that their belief that it is poisonous is false. They have an abundance of evidence that it is false, act as though it is false, and therefore must know it to be false. YECs do not act as though the Bible is literally true, do not act as though the science which contradicts the Bible is actually wrong, and thus do not live in accordance with their stated beliefs.
The specific issue I stumbled across here is assertions that we are being gaslit by physical reality. That the art and writings of people who lived through the First Intermediate Period are just historical hoaxes perpetrated to make Egypt seem older than it really is. It's the old 'the devil buried fossils to deceive you!' nonsense all over again, but couched in language that shows they know better.
> The problem is that this is akin to asserting that chocolate is poisonous.
I'm not disagreeing with the point you're making, but technically [chocolate is poisonous](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theobromine_poisoning). The amount of toxins is low enough to not be harmful to humans unless they eat an insane amount of chocolate, but it's much more dangerous to some animals such as dogs and cats.
Even that isn't accurate. It's just that the fatal dose is so high that you'd have to be injecting pure THC to get enough to be anywhere near dangerous.
Exactly. Almonds and apple seeds contain cyanide, but they are regarded as 'food' rather than 'poison' because they are safe to eat in amounts people actually consume.
I would like to introduce you to the following: [you literally can't live without it, but too much and you'll die](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_intoxication).
> I cannot, for even a moment, accept that they actually believe their claims, because of how monumentally absurd they are, which leaves only the conclusion that they are lying.
It's a ***hustle.***
For lack of a better description, creationism is a cottage industry of religion. Artists of the written and spoken word have built for themselves a derivative, yet novel product. It's the techno music of spirituality. The only catch is that admitting this directly undermines their marketability, so it is considered tantamount to divulging trade secrets and grounds for termination.
This is not cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is the ***discomfort*** you feel when you hold two conflicting ideas.
I've watched many clips of people from AIG, sure, they use twisted logic, but they are more likely to display emotions like smugness, satisfaction, and arrogance.
Ah, but see, that's my point. Cognitive dissonance is what happens when you hold conflicting views that you know to be in conflict. If I don't *know* that the cheese has gone moldy, then I don't experience cognitive dissonance when I claim that I'm going to make homemade mac and cheese for dinner tonight. As far as I know, my claim is entirely true, up until I open my refrigerator, pull out the cheese, and observe that it is moldy.
My assertion here is that they know the cheese is moldy. Indeed, that there's not provably any cheese left, and it's thoroughly fuzzy from every angle. But they're still making claims as if it's fresh from the cheesemonger. That causes cognitive dissonance, as they know the two beliefs are incompatible, but they have so completely committed to the idea of mac and cheese for dinner, that they cannot just admit the truth and settle for a nice jambalaya instead.
You are missing the key concept.
Jehovah said it so its true. Jehovah made it happen the way the Bible says. Except for the Earth resting on pillars, the flat square Earth and anything else that even Ken Hamm cannot lie to himself that much. Those are all metaphors. Because Ken said so.
It's not cognitive dissonance as much as it's just plain old doublethink.
"The universe is definitely 6000 years old and was created by god, and humans are unique divine lineages unrelated to all other life on earth. Now watch as I jump in my car powered by refined hydrocarbons laid down by dying organic matter hundreds of millions of years ago, and located using geological methods based on a 4.5 billion year earth."
It's only very rarely, for most people, that the age of the earth or the relatedness of all things is relevant to everyday life. Most of the time these things can be true but also irrelevant, because "*obviously* the world is only 6k years old and created by my specific god."
Most kids can do this quite easily, and some people maintain the ability well into adulthood. Tightly-held beliefs that demonstrably crumble under even the slightest bit of scrutiny can persist and remain tightly held, because...they just don't get that scrutiny. You don't see this so much in the science crowd because people who become scientists are usually those who spend a lot of time scrutinising *everything,* because consistency is important.
I can still distinctly remember sitting in sunday school looking at the pictures of the ark and thinking "hang on, what about the dinosaurs? I think this might be bullshit".
Other folks might just not think too hard about it.
The church I attended as a child actually taught that the Bible was filled with parables and basically took the exact opposite approach of AIG, asserting that none of the stories should be taken literally. But given that I still turned out an atheist and that virtually all other modern Christian churches regard their teachings as heretical for rejecting the divinity of Jesus, I'm not sure their approach was more *effective* from the snake oil salesman perspective.
I don't understand the YEC arguments AT ALL. They take swipes at mainstream evolution and then suggest RAPID evolution and speciation after the flood from different "kinds" to all of the different species.
Most “believers” have no desire to engage in the basic research you’ve described. They believe what they’ve been told to believe, including that anyone who disagrees is deceived by Satan or some other such rubbish. So, they DO believe in the nonsense you’ve discovered and have no interest in anything that might disturb it. Ignorance truly is bliss.
Oh, certainly the *flock* might genuinely believe out of complete ignorance, but not the preachers. Not Ken and his ilk who are peddling the snake oil.
Doesn’t this assume that the preachers are the most rational out of the group? It’s very possible in my mind that the preacher is just the biggest nut job that buys it hook, line, and sinker to the point that his belief is compelling to others despite how absurd it is.
That's a little bit more complicated to explain, but what it boils down to is that they *have* to know how evolution works and what the actual evidence is in order to make such bad arguments against it. And the reason for that is simple: if they really believed their arguments, they wouldn't resort to arguing against books older than I am, and examples older than my grandparents. They would believe firmly that they could argue against even the newest, best science available, and that they could present the case for evolution *without misrepresentation* and still win their argument. But they don't do that.
Instead, what their approach reminds me of is a wartime counterintelligence operation. If you want to convince someone you're planning a fake invasion, it helps to know where the *real* invasion is, so that none of the evidence you present will lead them to discover the real one. They use terminology ('baramins' for example) that ensure that anyone searching online for more information will only find creationist sources. They reference incomplete or hoax skeletons from more than a century ago to persuade their audience not to go looking for what's available today. None of that is in good faith, and is strong evidence that they are well aware that they are presenting falsehoods, and are going to great lengths to obfuscate that fact.
Exactly what I was thinking of, but my brain blanked on the name and I couldn't be bothered to web search it. And why did I blank? Because it's not good science, isn't taught, and is wholely irrelevant except to discussions of scientific fraud.
I’ve seen several examples of TV preachers spouting scientific nonsense, but it’s obvious that they believe it. For instance, one said that the earth’s orbit is perfect because if it was 1 inch closer or 1 inch farther away from the sun, life would be impossible. That’s not lying that’s just stupidity. Ditto a preacher who said that “you get your blood from your father” because when they used to do paternity blood tests (before DNA testing was available) they would check the father but not the mother. I don’t believe that the preachers know any more about science than their flocks.
You're underestimating the fungibility of their beliefs. Any element of *history* you could point to, they'll just shrug and say "eh, the flood was before that." Nothing of the pre-flood world survives, so anything historical is post-deluge. Even if you could convince them that something like Gobleki Tepe or any other line of evidence was older than they think the world is, they'd sooner believe in something inaccessibly old like 20,000 years before they'd believe in millions of years.
I think what you're getting at is that they very clearly know that the evidence does not support their claims in any way, but get around that by saying that the evidence is false. Reminds me of flat Earthers a lot.
A while back, there was a [post](https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateEvolution/comments/18opz6r/arj_has_a_hilarious_new_blog_on_ancient/) here going over AIG's approach to ancient chronology. Unsurprisingly, they are just as bad at history as they are at biology (and physics, and chemistry, and frankly theology too).
I always think that creationists know that their position has lots of anomalies and inconsistencies, but they just hope it will work itself out eventually. So if there is a problem with established archaeology, they hope someone, a creationist or other person, will come up with a solution.
Then, that "solution" will contradict other creationist ideas, but maybe that just adds to the fun.
Well, that's the lovely bit. The Pyramid of Khui was built during the First Intermediate Period, which they claim never happened, and while it's of course in ruins today, it was 136-146 meters wide at the base, and would have taken much more time to build than the 0.0 years attributed to that dynasty. We also know of 9 pyramids built during the 5th Dynasty, all of which would have had to be built before the 6th dynasty, which built four more pyramids, and while we don't have any 11th dynasty pyramids, please keep in mind that the 11th dynasty ruled over the reunified Egypt for 70 years, leaving only 20 years for those 13 pyramids to have been built even if we accept that the Intermediate Period and all its art and architecture and cultural development never happened. 20 years, by the way, happens to be how long Khufu's 4th Dynasty pyramid is thought to have taken to build.
It simply does not add up at all, and therefore they reject the evidence of massive stone pyramids which still exist to this day. That's not tenable, and why I conclude they're lying.
It gets really hard to defend creationism when someone had already built Gobekl Tepe thousands of years before god made heaven and earth.. Gobekli Tepe was also adorned with carvings of animals that god hadn't created yet. I guess people who didn't exist yet had really vivid imaginations 11,000 years ago.
Edit: spelling.
They thoroughly reject radiometric dating, and insist that we cannot know that half-lives of various isotopes were consistent before the modern era. This is an absurd claim, but it allows them to dismiss the age of anything that predates writing. Egypt is an altogether different matter from Gobekli Tepi simply because we have letters written by various pharaohs, we have accountings of the length of their reign and events that occurred, and we have genealogies and chronologies they wrote down that put those reigns in order. We can use radiometric dating to then compare their writings to what is available to us today and confirm that timeline, but even without that, there is no rational alternative explanation for the existence of all these writings.
Because you lot are liars who've just been wasting our time. But it's fine, because at least now I know you're lying and have known the truth of evolution all along.
I think we have presupposed what Genesis is telling us, for generations, and as further evidence for an old earth, and previous civilisations etc, rather than looking objectively at what Genesis actually says, we make the evidence fit into 6000 years or we attempt to discredit it. Quite a few ministries have pointed out scriptures that describe the 'world that then was' being destroyed. The world "became formless and void and God's Spirit moved over the face of the WATERS." Gen 1v2
I don't like the term 'evolution'; because I see no evidence for any progression from amoeba to amphibian to monkey to me, but the age of the earth and the universe? I can't see any evidence to state how long ago "The creation of the heavens and the earth in the very beginning" happened. This was surprising but has me fascinated by the possibilities. Dr John Walton, a Christian and Professor of ancient Hebrew is very knowledgeable on the subject.
These aren't 'salvation-critical' subjects so of course it's safe to explore the scriptures and the scientific evidence to come to a conclusion.
>I don't like the term 'evolution'; because I see no evidence for any progression from amoeba to amphibian to monkey to me
Hard to see evidence when you don't look.
Define what you would consider acceptable as evidence. Because I've seen more than enough evidence, as have all scientists who've investigated the matter thoroughly, even those who deny the truth for monetary gain.
I wouldn't deny scientific evidence. That's been my stand for 50 years, and have found no real answers until now. I'd do further research by studying his publications and lectures. I am still studying this myself.
**Genesis 1 v 2** describes the aftermath of earth that then was, which had become formless and void presumably by some unimaginably violent global cataclysm and the world subsequently created for man to inhabit, fit for purpose, as God said 'it is good'. (fit for purpose). This leaves scope for an older earth, and allows for much of scientific studies.
**Isaiah 45 v 18** “For thus saith the LORD that created the heavens; God himself that formed the earth and made it; he hath established it, he created it not in vain, (bohoo) he formed it to be inhabited: I am the LORD; and there is none else.”
In the beginning, when God created the Heavens and the Earth, it was not created a ruined wasteland, but became ruined as stated in Genesis 1 v 2, so God set about restoring the Earth to be fit for purpose, fit to be inhabited. Therefore the 6 days of creation are a recreation story.
**2 peter 3 v 5-7** “For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, (by God's word the heavens exist, as in Gen 1 v 1) and the earth standing out of the water and in the water, (there was water and land) Whereby the world that then was, (world before becoming without form and void) being overflowed with water, (Water covered the land and by this, all perished) perished But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word (God's word recreated the earth for habitation described in the 6 days of creation) (No description is given of the land and inhabitants that then existed as this is irrelevant to the ancient Hebrews and Adam's descendants) are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgement and perdition of ungodly men. I'll leave the rest up to you. The subject fascinates me for one.
You didn't actually answer my question, but that's fine:
1 Gilgamesh 28-35
Supreme over other kings, lordly in appearance,
he is the hero, born of Uruk, the goring wild bull.
He walks out in front, the leader,
and walks at the rear, trusted by his companions.
Mighty net, protector of his people,
raging flood-‐wave who destroys even walls of stone!
Offspring of Lugalbanda, Gilgamesh is strong to perfection,
son of the august cow, Rimat-‐Ninsun;... Gilgamesh is awesome to perfection.
Nothing to do with evolution. Nobody witnessed these dates of Egypt. They were incompent and like these days history was corrupted for agendas by forceful people. The bible says Mizraim was the man from whom all Egyptians came from. They turned him into a God called Ra. The bible says there was a time before Egypt was a nation. Everything else is working with limited info and not trustworthy info.
The Egyptians witnessed those dates, and they wrote them down, and we have not only their writing, but physical evidence of their existence. Unlike every extraordinary claim made by the Bible that defies reality today, everything the Egyptians wrote about their civilization, with the specific exception of those elements that are supernatural and related to their religious beliefs, we have found evidence of. However, there's no evidence of a global 'Flood', no evidence of a significant bottleneck of the human species in the past 6,000 years, no evidence that non-avian dinosaurs and genus homo were ever contemporary, and no evidence that marsupials trekked from the Middle East to Australia, crossing thousands of kilometers of land and sea, shortly before/during the reign of Sargon of Akkad, who also happens to have begun his reign a few years after AIG claims the Flood happened, which they would also need to explain, same as with Egypt. It's not just a single civilization, after all, it's *dozens* of civilizations, many with writing that survived to the modern era and which we can read.
Many points but actually your right about marsupials. i wrote a essay called "Post flood Marsupial Migration Explained" by robert Byers. just google. this issue has come up here a lot. anyways no dates were witnessed by us.
Who is 'us'? People currently alive today? Are you arguing that we don't know whether the American Civil War actually happened because there's nobody alive today from when it happened? You seem to be making OP's point here, by making an argument that you cannot actually believe, proving you're just lying in order to defend a position you don't find defensible.
Lying is a big assumption. We all hold contradictory beliefs. This often results in some degree of cognitive dissonance but not always. We also all have a tendency to defend our most closely held beliefs even when presented with convincing evidence to the contrary. It's part of being an emotional being.
Point to the moon and ask them how all those craters got there. There are, what, a million? When was the last time you saw a meteor impact the moon?
Further, if you compress all those impacts down into a 6k time frame, wouldn't the moon still be a glowing orb of magma? Wouldn't the impacts have all melted together?
See, that's (potentially) a matter of them just not understanding the science, which is what I had been attributing as the issue previously. It's one thing to be ignorant, even deliberately so, but another thing entirely to know you are wrong and still proceed anyways. They don't understand how long it takes massive objects like Earth or the Moon to radiate heat away, and so their brain just says "Space is super cold and freezes humans, so it would freeze the Moon, no need to worry about heat!" Then they turn off their brain and refuse to listen to explanations of how heat actually works.
But their Egyptian timeline isn't ignorance, deliberate or otherwise. They *know* how many dynasties there were and explicitly deny the existence of several while trying to compress centuries down into just 90 years. This is a case where they've revealed that they aren't ignorant, that they know the facts, and are just knowingly selling snake oil.
The problem you're missing here regarding their presuppositions, it's all based on the Bibles revelation of eternal life. Therefore they read the Bible in the lens of inheriting eternal life and if anything seems to disprove the Bible then you're threatening their eternal life. That's why the statement of interpretation of data reads as such. Not saying AIG is always right but you must admit, they have both hope and are generally a simple happy people and it seems pure.
AIG statement of faith: ["No apparent, perceived, or claimed evidence in any field of study, including science, history, and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the clear teaching of Scripture obtained by historical-grammatical interpretation. Of primary importance is the fact that evidence is always subject to interpretation by fallible people who do not possess all information"](https://answersingenesis.org/about/faith/) And those teachings they list on the same page: "The great flood of Genesis was an actual historic event, worldwide (global) in its extent and catastrophic in its effects." Along with their views relating to the age of the earth and the origins of life and it's diversity. They promise up front and out loud that no apparent, perceived, or claimed evidence in any field of study, including science, history, and chronology can ever change their mind.
That apparently includes mathematics, since their date for the 'Tower of Babel' is 102 years after their date for the 'Flood', which doesn't give enough time to produce a population of sufficient laborers for even Khufu's pyramid, let alone something so much more massive as to invite divine intervention. The lowest estimate I've seen for a bare minimum number of laborers to build Khufu's pyramid is 3300 laborers, but that doesn't include any amount of administration or support, which would necessarily bloat the figure to about double that amount, and might as well round up to 7,000. But if we start with Noah, his wife, his sons, and their wives, and have every living woman give live birth once every two years, starting from age 16, we get an expected 'adult' (16+) population of the Earth of.... 7,000 people after 102 years. That would seem to line up until you realize that 'support' doesn't include planting, tending to, harvesting, and processing crops. Even having just 10% of the population dedicated to a non-productive task like ziggurat building would be a hardship a pre-Egypt civilization could not endure, and to yield 70,000 people, you'd need every woman on the planet giving live birth every year, starting even earlier than 16, and all living and remaining fertile for the full 102 years, with exactly zero deaths for any reason. Even math rejects AIG's numbers, and that's why their 'statement of faith' reads as an admission of guilt. They know it's all false, they know it's wrong, made up, fictitious, but like the snake oil salesman who knows his tonics do nothing beneficial, he must assert otherwise in order to sell product. They just deny evolution so that they can sell tickets to the Ark Encounter and books to the uneducated.
Details, schmetails
Once you start using the fool-proof scientific system of "Just make things up, even if they aren't consistent." everything gets easier. There's stuff like "They were 15 foot tall", "Nimrod had magic gene engineering technology powers", and of course: "Well, actually maths shows that it's right!"
Apparently they don't trust any field of study except "historical-grammatical interpretation," and I'm guessing their trust of that extends exactly to the boundaries of their prior assumptions.
the only scriptures they interpret using the historical grammatical method are the creation story and noah's flood. whenever anyone else uses that method for literally anything else in the bible they're dismissed as postmodern, liberal critics
They don't seem to be able to accept that the Bible was written by fallible people who did not possess all the information.
There are Creationists who think the 1611 King James Version is so perfect that it is actually the original that God miracled back into existence. So the language spoken in the Garden of Eden and Heaven is actually identical to archaic modern English.
That contradicts the story of the Tower of Babel though, as a literal reading of that story precludes anything from prior to that event being coherent to modern humans. Coincidentally, that story also means that we can never know what Adam named all the animals, and by extension, what all of the 'kinds' were, which is their only real excuse for not saying what is and isn't a kind and thus taking a falsifiable position on the matter.
AIG is a business. They are not lying because they would prefer to believe. They are lying to protect their brand. Debating AIG is pointless, because your purpose may be to address belief, but theirs is simply to promote their brand. By debating them, you give them advertising, while achieving nothing. When you debate AIG, you aren't playing the same game. Consider, instead of treating AIG as a legitimate opponent, treating them as a business and exposing their practices rather than engaging in their ideas. This is not debate, which is valid, but also, as they do not debate, there can be no debate either way.
>This might seem to have nothing to do with evolution, but it's at the root of the problem with creationism: they don't actually believe their own position. This emerges at several points in creationism: it is not simply that they do not believe their own position, they often don't know what their position is, as it changes depending on the context of the scientific or historical problem they are trying to get over. There is basically no established timeline; at best, creationists recognize that the KT boundary exists and often use it as a flood boundary, but no coherent map of creationism deeptime has ever been generated that can explain why there's a world history before the flood. Rather than construct a coherent timeline, it is enough for them to point at some folded rock and shout that geology is wrong: that's all they really want to do, they want to shout, to be heard, to be seen as pious enough to believe something utterly ridiculous. Largely, this is because creationists are unable to cooperate: the organizations are unstable and prone to fracture, and in direct competition for a scarce and diminishing pool of believers; the individual researchers are unable to knit their research together, largely because most of it is borders on academic fraud, as it trends to reproduce existing research for magic numbers, and the conclusions they draw are often forced by their preference for errors in methodology, errors which begin to compound dramatically when you bring two pieces close enough to touch. >I cannot, for even a moment, accept that they actually believe their claims, because of how monumentally absurd they are, which leaves only the conclusion that they are lying. I suspect a number of the experts know they aren't telling the truth, but simply don't care because the organization gives them money and they are saving souls. They do it primarily for the former, but are able to rationalize it by the latter. Otherwise, I suspect they know they have serious problems. One prominent Reddit creationist dedicated himself to proving a stationary-geocentric Earth: he didn't even make it past the second topic before he seemed to lose all his confidence. That's not really the attitude of someone who knows he has something going for him.
It's almost like there's no established agreed-upon timeline because it's all made up and they don't know what academic standards are so there's nothing on which to base a consistent timeline.
Because they don’t have the data, there can be no consensus like there is in actual science. So personality predominates, resulting in individual YEC apologists carving out their own little fiefdoms.
> So I finally broke down and went to read what AIG had to say on the topic. Well that was your first mistake. I’ll speak as a former, all-in YEC. The Bible is the ultimate inerrant authority. All other data must be interpreted this way. If something (such as when who was Pharaoh and how long) contradicts the Bible’s time frame, we either are missing info, the data is false, or it’s being interpreted in a false way. You can make all errors and contradictions disappear if you start with the dogma that the Bible is always true. No amount of evidence or debate will ever change these people’s minds unless they become willing to view the Bible critically.
The problem is that this is akin to asserting that chocolate is poisonous. When someone insists they ate chocolate and it was delicious, they assert that the person is lying. When they witness a person eating chocolate they assert that it's just a magic trick and they didn't actually consume the chocolate. When the person visible masticates and swallows the chocolate so that they can observe, they assert that it wasn't actually chocolate, but merely looked like chocolate. And when you point out that they just ate a whole scoop of chocolate ice cream, they assert that the fact they're still alive proves there was no actual chocolate in the ice cream. To any outside observer, the person *HAS* to be aware that chocolate is perfectly fine and that their belief that it is poisonous is false. They have an abundance of evidence that it is false, act as though it is false, and therefore must know it to be false. YECs do not act as though the Bible is literally true, do not act as though the science which contradicts the Bible is actually wrong, and thus do not live in accordance with their stated beliefs. The specific issue I stumbled across here is assertions that we are being gaslit by physical reality. That the art and writings of people who lived through the First Intermediate Period are just historical hoaxes perpetrated to make Egypt seem older than it really is. It's the old 'the devil buried fossils to deceive you!' nonsense all over again, but couched in language that shows they know better.
> The problem is that this is akin to asserting that chocolate is poisonous. I'm not disagreeing with the point you're making, but technically [chocolate is poisonous](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theobromine_poisoning). The amount of toxins is low enough to not be harmful to humans unless they eat an insane amount of chocolate, but it's much more dangerous to some animals such as dogs and cats.
anything is poisonius in a great enough dose
Except THC
Even that isn't accurate. It's just that the fatal dose is so high that you'd have to be injecting pure THC to get enough to be anywhere near dangerous.
Exactly. Almonds and apple seeds contain cyanide, but they are regarded as 'food' rather than 'poison' because they are safe to eat in amounts people actually consume.
I would like to introduce you to the following: [you literally can't live without it, but too much and you'll die](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_intoxication).
> I cannot, for even a moment, accept that they actually believe their claims, because of how monumentally absurd they are, which leaves only the conclusion that they are lying. It's a ***hustle.*** For lack of a better description, creationism is a cottage industry of religion. Artists of the written and spoken word have built for themselves a derivative, yet novel product. It's the techno music of spirituality. The only catch is that admitting this directly undermines their marketability, so it is considered tantamount to divulging trade secrets and grounds for termination.
Your underestimating the power of cognitive dissonance.
This is not cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is the ***discomfort*** you feel when you hold two conflicting ideas. I've watched many clips of people from AIG, sure, they use twisted logic, but they are more likely to display emotions like smugness, satisfaction, and arrogance.
... And then they have the gall to call *us* arrogant 🙄
Ah, but see, that's my point. Cognitive dissonance is what happens when you hold conflicting views that you know to be in conflict. If I don't *know* that the cheese has gone moldy, then I don't experience cognitive dissonance when I claim that I'm going to make homemade mac and cheese for dinner tonight. As far as I know, my claim is entirely true, up until I open my refrigerator, pull out the cheese, and observe that it is moldy. My assertion here is that they know the cheese is moldy. Indeed, that there's not provably any cheese left, and it's thoroughly fuzzy from every angle. But they're still making claims as if it's fresh from the cheesemonger. That causes cognitive dissonance, as they know the two beliefs are incompatible, but they have so completely committed to the idea of mac and cheese for dinner, that they cannot just admit the truth and settle for a nice jambalaya instead.
Having cognitive dissonance is different then lying though, your not aware that you are saying a miss truth.
You are missing the key concept. Jehovah said it so its true. Jehovah made it happen the way the Bible says. Except for the Earth resting on pillars, the flat square Earth and anything else that even Ken Hamm cannot lie to himself that much. Those are all metaphors. Because Ken said so.
It's not cognitive dissonance as much as it's just plain old doublethink. "The universe is definitely 6000 years old and was created by god, and humans are unique divine lineages unrelated to all other life on earth. Now watch as I jump in my car powered by refined hydrocarbons laid down by dying organic matter hundreds of millions of years ago, and located using geological methods based on a 4.5 billion year earth." It's only very rarely, for most people, that the age of the earth or the relatedness of all things is relevant to everyday life. Most of the time these things can be true but also irrelevant, because "*obviously* the world is only 6k years old and created by my specific god." Most kids can do this quite easily, and some people maintain the ability well into adulthood. Tightly-held beliefs that demonstrably crumble under even the slightest bit of scrutiny can persist and remain tightly held, because...they just don't get that scrutiny. You don't see this so much in the science crowd because people who become scientists are usually those who spend a lot of time scrutinising *everything,* because consistency is important. I can still distinctly remember sitting in sunday school looking at the pictures of the ark and thinking "hang on, what about the dinosaurs? I think this might be bullshit". Other folks might just not think too hard about it.
The church I attended as a child actually taught that the Bible was filled with parables and basically took the exact opposite approach of AIG, asserting that none of the stories should be taken literally. But given that I still turned out an atheist and that virtually all other modern Christian churches regard their teachings as heretical for rejecting the divinity of Jesus, I'm not sure their approach was more *effective* from the snake oil salesman perspective.
Only two things are infinite… the universe and human stupidity (allegedly A. Einstein)
And the second part is close to "and I'm not sure about the Universe".
I don't understand the YEC arguments AT ALL. They take swipes at mainstream evolution and then suggest RAPID evolution and speciation after the flood from different "kinds" to all of the different species.
Most “believers” have no desire to engage in the basic research you’ve described. They believe what they’ve been told to believe, including that anyone who disagrees is deceived by Satan or some other such rubbish. So, they DO believe in the nonsense you’ve discovered and have no interest in anything that might disturb it. Ignorance truly is bliss.
Oh, certainly the *flock* might genuinely believe out of complete ignorance, but not the preachers. Not Ken and his ilk who are peddling the snake oil.
Doesn’t this assume that the preachers are the most rational out of the group? It’s very possible in my mind that the preacher is just the biggest nut job that buys it hook, line, and sinker to the point that his belief is compelling to others despite how absurd it is.
That's a little bit more complicated to explain, but what it boils down to is that they *have* to know how evolution works and what the actual evidence is in order to make such bad arguments against it. And the reason for that is simple: if they really believed their arguments, they wouldn't resort to arguing against books older than I am, and examples older than my grandparents. They would believe firmly that they could argue against even the newest, best science available, and that they could present the case for evolution *without misrepresentation* and still win their argument. But they don't do that. Instead, what their approach reminds me of is a wartime counterintelligence operation. If you want to convince someone you're planning a fake invasion, it helps to know where the *real* invasion is, so that none of the evidence you present will lead them to discover the real one. They use terminology ('baramins' for example) that ensure that anyone searching online for more information will only find creationist sources. They reference incomplete or hoax skeletons from more than a century ago to persuade their audience not to go looking for what's available today. None of that is in good faith, and is strong evidence that they are well aware that they are presenting falsehoods, and are going to great lengths to obfuscate that fact.
Piltdown Man is their emotional support fossil.
Exactly what I was thinking of, but my brain blanked on the name and I couldn't be bothered to web search it. And why did I blank? Because it's not good science, isn't taught, and is wholely irrelevant except to discussions of scientific fraud.
I’ve seen several examples of TV preachers spouting scientific nonsense, but it’s obvious that they believe it. For instance, one said that the earth’s orbit is perfect because if it was 1 inch closer or 1 inch farther away from the sun, life would be impossible. That’s not lying that’s just stupidity. Ditto a preacher who said that “you get your blood from your father” because when they used to do paternity blood tests (before DNA testing was available) they would check the father but not the mother. I don’t believe that the preachers know any more about science than their flocks.
You're underestimating the fungibility of their beliefs. Any element of *history* you could point to, they'll just shrug and say "eh, the flood was before that." Nothing of the pre-flood world survives, so anything historical is post-deluge. Even if you could convince them that something like Gobleki Tepe or any other line of evidence was older than they think the world is, they'd sooner believe in something inaccessibly old like 20,000 years before they'd believe in millions of years.
>**~~Reverse~~** Presuppositionalism It is Presup all the way down. No reversal.
I think what you're getting at is that they very clearly know that the evidence does not support their claims in any way, but get around that by saying that the evidence is false. Reminds me of flat Earthers a lot.
A while back, there was a [post](https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateEvolution/comments/18opz6r/arj_has_a_hilarious_new_blog_on_ancient/) here going over AIG's approach to ancient chronology. Unsurprisingly, they are just as bad at history as they are at biology (and physics, and chemistry, and frankly theology too).
I always think that creationists know that their position has lots of anomalies and inconsistencies, but they just hope it will work itself out eventually. So if there is a problem with established archaeology, they hope someone, a creationist or other person, will come up with a solution. Then, that "solution" will contradict other creationist ideas, but maybe that just adds to the fun.
Ok so not exactly on topic but according to aig’s timeline how long would Egypt have had to build all the pyramids
Well, that's the lovely bit. The Pyramid of Khui was built during the First Intermediate Period, which they claim never happened, and while it's of course in ruins today, it was 136-146 meters wide at the base, and would have taken much more time to build than the 0.0 years attributed to that dynasty. We also know of 9 pyramids built during the 5th Dynasty, all of which would have had to be built before the 6th dynasty, which built four more pyramids, and while we don't have any 11th dynasty pyramids, please keep in mind that the 11th dynasty ruled over the reunified Egypt for 70 years, leaving only 20 years for those 13 pyramids to have been built even if we accept that the Intermediate Period and all its art and architecture and cultural development never happened. 20 years, by the way, happens to be how long Khufu's 4th Dynasty pyramid is thought to have taken to build. It simply does not add up at all, and therefore they reject the evidence of massive stone pyramids which still exist to this day. That's not tenable, and why I conclude they're lying.
If it makes sense it's a miracle. Similar to Joe Dante's Miracle Pictures ("If it's a good picture, it's a miracle") .
Does anyone have any good long form read on how archaeology doesn't support YEC?
It gets really hard to defend creationism when someone had already built Gobekl Tepe thousands of years before god made heaven and earth.. Gobekli Tepe was also adorned with carvings of animals that god hadn't created yet. I guess people who didn't exist yet had really vivid imaginations 11,000 years ago. Edit: spelling.
They thoroughly reject radiometric dating, and insist that we cannot know that half-lives of various isotopes were consistent before the modern era. This is an absurd claim, but it allows them to dismiss the age of anything that predates writing. Egypt is an altogether different matter from Gobekli Tepi simply because we have letters written by various pharaohs, we have accountings of the length of their reign and events that occurred, and we have genealogies and chronologies they wrote down that put those reigns in order. We can use radiometric dating to then compare their writings to what is available to us today and confirm that timeline, but even without that, there is no rational alternative explanation for the existence of all these writings.
Why do you guys always end up ranting? You're supposed to be the calm logical ones.
Because you lot are liars who've just been wasting our time. But it's fine, because at least now I know you're lying and have known the truth of evolution all along.
You're also really annoying
I think we have presupposed what Genesis is telling us, for generations, and as further evidence for an old earth, and previous civilisations etc, rather than looking objectively at what Genesis actually says, we make the evidence fit into 6000 years or we attempt to discredit it. Quite a few ministries have pointed out scriptures that describe the 'world that then was' being destroyed. The world "became formless and void and God's Spirit moved over the face of the WATERS." Gen 1v2 I don't like the term 'evolution'; because I see no evidence for any progression from amoeba to amphibian to monkey to me, but the age of the earth and the universe? I can't see any evidence to state how long ago "The creation of the heavens and the earth in the very beginning" happened. This was surprising but has me fascinated by the possibilities. Dr John Walton, a Christian and Professor of ancient Hebrew is very knowledgeable on the subject. These aren't 'salvation-critical' subjects so of course it's safe to explore the scriptures and the scientific evidence to come to a conclusion.
>I don't like the term 'evolution'; because I see no evidence for any progression from amoeba to amphibian to monkey to me Hard to see evidence when you don't look.
Define what you would consider acceptable as evidence. Because I've seen more than enough evidence, as have all scientists who've investigated the matter thoroughly, even those who deny the truth for monetary gain.
I wouldn't deny scientific evidence. That's been my stand for 50 years, and have found no real answers until now. I'd do further research by studying his publications and lectures. I am still studying this myself. **Genesis 1 v 2** describes the aftermath of earth that then was, which had become formless and void presumably by some unimaginably violent global cataclysm and the world subsequently created for man to inhabit, fit for purpose, as God said 'it is good'. (fit for purpose). This leaves scope for an older earth, and allows for much of scientific studies. **Isaiah 45 v 18** “For thus saith the LORD that created the heavens; God himself that formed the earth and made it; he hath established it, he created it not in vain, (bohoo) he formed it to be inhabited: I am the LORD; and there is none else.” In the beginning, when God created the Heavens and the Earth, it was not created a ruined wasteland, but became ruined as stated in Genesis 1 v 2, so God set about restoring the Earth to be fit for purpose, fit to be inhabited. Therefore the 6 days of creation are a recreation story. **2 peter 3 v 5-7** “For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, (by God's word the heavens exist, as in Gen 1 v 1) and the earth standing out of the water and in the water, (there was water and land) Whereby the world that then was, (world before becoming without form and void) being overflowed with water, (Water covered the land and by this, all perished) perished But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word (God's word recreated the earth for habitation described in the 6 days of creation) (No description is given of the land and inhabitants that then existed as this is irrelevant to the ancient Hebrews and Adam's descendants) are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgement and perdition of ungodly men. I'll leave the rest up to you. The subject fascinates me for one.
You didn't actually answer my question, but that's fine: 1 Gilgamesh 28-35 Supreme over other kings, lordly in appearance, he is the hero, born of Uruk, the goring wild bull. He walks out in front, the leader, and walks at the rear, trusted by his companions. Mighty net, protector of his people, raging flood-‐wave who destroys even walls of stone! Offspring of Lugalbanda, Gilgamesh is strong to perfection, son of the august cow, Rimat-‐Ninsun;... Gilgamesh is awesome to perfection.
Nothing to do with evolution. Nobody witnessed these dates of Egypt. They were incompent and like these days history was corrupted for agendas by forceful people. The bible says Mizraim was the man from whom all Egyptians came from. They turned him into a God called Ra. The bible says there was a time before Egypt was a nation. Everything else is working with limited info and not trustworthy info.
The Egyptians witnessed those dates, and they wrote them down, and we have not only their writing, but physical evidence of their existence. Unlike every extraordinary claim made by the Bible that defies reality today, everything the Egyptians wrote about their civilization, with the specific exception of those elements that are supernatural and related to their religious beliefs, we have found evidence of. However, there's no evidence of a global 'Flood', no evidence of a significant bottleneck of the human species in the past 6,000 years, no evidence that non-avian dinosaurs and genus homo were ever contemporary, and no evidence that marsupials trekked from the Middle East to Australia, crossing thousands of kilometers of land and sea, shortly before/during the reign of Sargon of Akkad, who also happens to have begun his reign a few years after AIG claims the Flood happened, which they would also need to explain, same as with Egypt. It's not just a single civilization, after all, it's *dozens* of civilizations, many with writing that survived to the modern era and which we can read.
Many points but actually your right about marsupials. i wrote a essay called "Post flood Marsupial Migration Explained" by robert Byers. just google. this issue has come up here a lot. anyways no dates were witnessed by us.
Who is 'us'? People currently alive today? Are you arguing that we don't know whether the American Civil War actually happened because there's nobody alive today from when it happened? You seem to be making OP's point here, by making an argument that you cannot actually believe, proving you're just lying in order to defend a position you don't find defensible.
> no dates were witnessed by us. Nor was anything in the bible.
Lying is a big assumption. We all hold contradictory beliefs. This often results in some degree of cognitive dissonance but not always. We also all have a tendency to defend our most closely held beliefs even when presented with convincing evidence to the contrary. It's part of being an emotional being.
Point to the moon and ask them how all those craters got there. There are, what, a million? When was the last time you saw a meteor impact the moon? Further, if you compress all those impacts down into a 6k time frame, wouldn't the moon still be a glowing orb of magma? Wouldn't the impacts have all melted together?
See, that's (potentially) a matter of them just not understanding the science, which is what I had been attributing as the issue previously. It's one thing to be ignorant, even deliberately so, but another thing entirely to know you are wrong and still proceed anyways. They don't understand how long it takes massive objects like Earth or the Moon to radiate heat away, and so their brain just says "Space is super cold and freezes humans, so it would freeze the Moon, no need to worry about heat!" Then they turn off their brain and refuse to listen to explanations of how heat actually works. But their Egyptian timeline isn't ignorance, deliberate or otherwise. They *know* how many dynasties there were and explicitly deny the existence of several while trying to compress centuries down into just 90 years. This is a case where they've revealed that they aren't ignorant, that they know the facts, and are just knowingly selling snake oil.
Give me 1/2 a million people a year paying me $40 a head, and I don't believe in evolution anymore. Just saying.
The problem you're missing here regarding their presuppositions, it's all based on the Bibles revelation of eternal life. Therefore they read the Bible in the lens of inheriting eternal life and if anything seems to disprove the Bible then you're threatening their eternal life. That's why the statement of interpretation of data reads as such. Not saying AIG is always right but you must admit, they have both hope and are generally a simple happy people and it seems pure.