Re: I am a "young earth" believer ... showing you a flaw on your site

AN

----- Original Message -----
From: AN
To: Stephen E. Jones
Sent: Monday, February 20, 2006 2:48 PM
Subject: A possible flaw?

AN>Hello,
>My name is AN. I am here to inform you of a mistake I have seen in your website.

Thanks for your message. As is my long-standing policy, I am copying my response to my blog CreationEvolutionDesign, minus your personal identifying information, and minor changes.

AN>I am a "young earth" believer and am a Christian. I am not trying to "attack" you or offend you in any way, I am just showing you a flaw on your site.

Thanks for your concern about the possibility of me being offended if my views are attacked. But after more than a decade of debating creation/evolution on the Internet, with over half of that on evolutionist-dominated groups, I am not offended if my views are attacked, and indeed I look forward to it, as an opportunity to improve my Old-Earth/Progressive (Mediate) Creation position. But in this case there is no flaw on my website, and indeed you actually confirm what I say (see below)!

AN>I noticed in the "problems with your earth" section (I believe it was)

First, I wish to make it clear that I do not regard it as a high priority for me to attack Young-Earth Creationism. This is evident in the lack of effort I have put into that unfinished page, Problems with Young-Earth Creationism (YEC) and my introductory statement in it that "I do not personally regard attacking Young-Earth Creationism (YEC) as a high priority, compared to attacking our common enemy, naturalistic (atheistic) evolution."

AN>in where you stated that 8,000 years isn't enough time for all of the species to have micro-evolved into the various "groups", for lack of a better word, that are here now.

What I said under the heading: "Inconsistencies of Young-Earth Creationism" is that it is inconsistent of YECs to attack naturalistic evolutionary mechanisms, because YEC depends on them to work even more rapidly than the evolutionists do:

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Stephen E. Jones: Problems with Young-Earth Creationism (YEC)

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3. Inconsistencies of Young-Earth Creationism

1. Requires a higher rate of evolution than even evolutionists claim

If YECs claim that Noah's Flood was global, then all today's land animals must be descendants of pairs of animals on the Ark. But to fit all the world's land animals on the Ark, it needs to claim that they were a smaller number of "kinds". However, then YEC requires a higher rate of evolution than evolutionists themselves claim for the "kinds" on the Ark to give rise to today's land animals (as well as those it claims became extinct after the Flood, e.g. dinosaurs), in the ~8,000 years since the Flood:

"Creation scientists teach that all animals ate only plants until Adam and Eve rebelled against God's authority. Because carnivorous activity involves animal death, they presume it must be one of the evil results of human sin. Accordingly, they propose that meat-eating creatures alive now and evident in the fossil record must have evolved in just several hundred years or less, by natural processes alone, from the plant-eating creatures! The size of Noah's ark and the limited number of humans on board (eight) present an equally serious problem for them. Even if all the animals aboard hibernated for the duration of the Flood, the maximum carrying capacity by their estimates for the ark would be about thirty thousand pairs of land animals? But the fossil record indicates the existence of at least a half billion such species, more than five million of which live on Earth today, and at least two million more lived in the era immediately after the Flood, as they date it. The problem grows worse. Shortly after the Flood, they say, a large proportion of the thirty thousand species on board dinosaurs, trilobites, and so on-went extinct; so the remaining few thousand species must have evolved by rapid and efficient natural processes alone into seven million or more species. Ironically, creation scientists (quietly) propose an efficiency of natural biological evolution greater than even the most optimistic Darwinist would dare to suggest." (Ross H.N., "The Genesis Question: Scientific Advances and the Accuracy of Genesis," NavPress: Colorado Springs CO, 1998, pp.90-91)

Bear in mind that YECs claim that all supernatural creating was completed by the sixth literal day of creation, so all that they have left after that is natural processes. So it is therefore inconsistent of YECs to criticise the same natural processes of speciation that evolutionists propose when YEC itself depends on them!

2. Attacks Darwinian random mutation and natural selection but then depends on it

A prominent YEC of the 1920s, Byron C. Nelson (grandfather of YEC philosopher and ID theorist Paul Nelson), in a book reprinted up to 1980, and endorsed on its covers by leading YECs Whitcomb and Morris, claimed that the mechanism which transformed the "kinds" on the Ark into today's species was "Natural selection, working upon Mendelian or `genic' variations", i.e. Darwinian random mutation and natural selection, which Nelson called "a true evolution":

"Light has been thrown upon the whole problem of animal distribution and adaptation-or what may be called `a true evolution.' After the Flood each species began to `mutate' and new forms began to arise. Among the cattle varieties were produced having short hair, such as is found in the Zebu of India or the Red Africander. Such a coat being better adapted to a hot climate, these varieties migrated to warm, equatorial regions. Other varieties were produced having long, warm coverings of hair, such as the West Highlander and Galloway, or the prehistoric wild ox of northern Europe called the `auroch.' These varieties migrated northward. Natural selection, working upon Mendelian or `genic' variations, produced all the evolution there is. Such evolution is strictly in accordance with what is taught in all Scripture." (Nelson B.C., "After Its Kind", Bethany Fellowship: Minneapolis MN, Revised edition, 1967, pp.119-120)

So again it is inconsistent of YECs to criticise Darwinian random mutation and natural selection when their own position depends on it!

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AN>I may be wrong, for I do not have any degree and am just a student with an extreme fascination of Creation and the many facets and the kind...but, If you recall the finchs from Darwin and "proof" of Evolution, they could actually change verious characteristicks of their beaks within a year. To me, that proves that within a year there could be many different kinds of animals, and within 8,000 years the millions of varieties as today.

Thanks for confirming my point! Even the most enthusiastic Darwinist would not claim that the mechanisms which produced variations in the beaks of finches (e.g. on the Galapagos) "within a year" could "within 8,000 years" produce "the millions of varieties" of animals alive "today."

Especially when the Darwinists now concede that there are only "six species" of finches on the Galapagos "... in place of the current 14, and additional study might necessitate yet further reduction":

"Writing in Science in 1992, the Grants noted that the superior fitness of hybrids among populations of Darwin's finches `calls into question their designation as species.' [Grant P.R. & Grant B.R, "Hybridization of Bird Species," Science, Vol. 256, 1992, pp. 193-197] The following year, Peter Grant acknowledged that if species were strictly defined by inability to interbreed then `we would recognize only two species of Darwin's finch on Daphne,' instead of the usual four [Grant P.R., "Hybridization of Darwin's finches on Isla Daphne Major, Galapagos," Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B, Vol. 340, 1993, pp.127-139]. `The three populations of ground finches on Genovesa would similarly be reduced to one species,' Grant continued. `At the extreme, six species would be recognized in place of the current 14, and additional study might necessitate yet further reduction.'" (Wells J., "Icons of Evolution: Science or Myth?: Why Much of What We Teach About Evolution is Wrong," Regnery: Washington DC, 2000, pp.172, 312n)

AN>If I am wrong, or not actually, please e-mail me back if time permits.

See above.

AN>I would love to speak more of this. Thank You

Unfortunately it is my long-standing policy not to get involved in private discussions on creation/evolution/design issues. And since July 2005, when I started my blog and terminated my Yahoo group of the same name, so that I could have more time to write my book, "Problems of Evolution," it is now not my policy to have public discussions of those issues either. There are a number of Yahoo groups where you could discuss creation/evolution/design issues. A YEC-run one is TrueOrigin and an evolutionist-run group is CreationEvolutionDebate. However, be prepared for a certain level of ridicule and abuse (not to mention your YEC position being strongly attacked) on evolutionist-run groups.

AN>God Bless,
>AN

God bless you too. I have two pieces of advice to you in respect of creation/evolution that has stood me in good stead these last ~39 years I have been a Christian: 1) remember that YEC is not the only possible Christian creationist position. Even the atheist Darwinist philosopher Michael Ruse criticised his fellow atheist Darwinist Richard Dawkins for ignoring the fact in his attacks on Christianity that since at least 400 AD (well before the rise of modern science), Christians have been interpreting Genesis 1 non-literally:

"It is true that Darwinism conflicts with the Book of Genesis taken literally, but at least since the time of Saint Augustine (400 A.D.) Christians have been interpreting the seven days of creation metaphorically." (Ruse M.E., "Through a Glass, Darkly." Review of "A Devil's Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love," by Richard Dawkins, Houghton Mifflin, 2003)

and 2) since God is the ultimate Author of both nature and the Bible:

"If we believe that the God of creation is the God of redemption, and that the God of redemption is the God of creation, then we are committed to some very positive theory of harmonization between science and evangelicalism. God cannot contradict His speech in Nature by His speech in Scripture. If the Author of Nature and Scripture are the same God, then the two books of God must eventually recite the same story." (Ramm B.L., "The Christian View of Science and Scripture," [1955], Paternoster: Exeter, Devon UK, 1967, reprint, p.25)

if our interpretation of one book of God (e.g. nature) is intractably at variance with the other (e.g. the Bible), then that is a sign from God to us that we are on the wrong track and need to change our interpretation. Remember the Bible itself says that it is possible to have a zeal for God that is not based on knowledge (Romans 10:2) and so we can be unwittingly fighting against God (Acts 5:39), when we sincerely think we are fighting for him.

Stephen E. Jones, BSc (Biol).
"Problems of Evolution"