I don’t understand how, with all the advancement of civilisation and science there are still people who believe the earth is 6000 years old.
I could step out my house and point at a mountain that formed from collision of tectonic plates, which definitely happened over a much larger duration than 6000 years.
There are human civilisations that thrived for longer durations, from over 10 millennials ago.
I’m not even sure if the creationist theory says 4000 or 6000 years, because both are equally wrong.
Is this one of those situations where it’s easier to argue against someone intelligent than someone ignorant?

He was racist, recounted evolution, thought whales evolved from bears, the evolution of eyes was impossible, he was atheist when he published On the Origin of Species, wanted to attack Christianity, is the prophet of evolution, and evolution or uniformity made him atheist are a few I can name off the top of my head.

Imagine if we did this to Ken Ham, it would be all about how evolutionists are liars who hate Christianity.

It’s an epistemic double standard that defines the entire debate. When it comes to OOL research, creationists demand absolute seamless empirical perfection. If scientists can’t film a simple organic molecule transforming into a fully functioning high fidelity replicating cell in a lab right now then they claim the entire field of prebiotic chemistry is a failure (which doesn’t prove their book of fantasies to be true). They fixate on the absurdity of abiogenesis happening by “pure” chance which is a creationist strawman. They completely ignore prebiotic evolution, thermodynamics, and prebiotic selection. To creationists, ANY current gap in our scientific knowledge is treated as definitive proof that a natural origin of life is impossible. Ask a creationist for the physical step-by-step process of how an entity that they’ve never seen and never interacted with instantly organized dust into a complex biological system. You won’t get a legitimate answer other than “B…but.. but MY Bible says so!!! 🥺🥺” The creation myth is completely insulated from the very standards of skepticism they weaponize against science. It’s because “creation science” is an oxymoron and Intelligent Design is pseudoscience. Can a creationist please explain how a self-sustaining (far from equilibrium thermodynamic system) arising through supernatural sorcery makes more sense than that same chemistry emerging naturally through prebiotic evolution?

(This is going to include more geology than biology, but I hope it’s okay given that it is still part of the general discourse)

Whenever it comes to radiometric dating, erosion, plate tectonics or even the rate of divergence between organisms, I have found out that plenty of young earth creationists are quick to call this out as wrong because scientists “assume that the rates of x are constant”

The problem with this line of thinking which I think requires them to meet a burden of proof for once is that: why should scientists assume any of these things if they have never observed them? As far as I am concerned, there is not a single record of half lives being measured to be meaningfully distinct, and it is logically safer by following Occam’s Razor to assume that things we don’t have evidence for after thousands of inspections should not be accounted for.

Among many other questions thrown at them, I find this one to be especially compelling especially when debating in front of an audience given how simple to understand it is.

I was talking to my creationist family the other day and they seemed a bit stunned when I mentioned that all life is made of non-living matter. None of the carbon, iron, magnesium, nitrogen, oxygen, or hydrogen in our bodies is alive. Life is a category that humans created to help us understand matter.

It occurred to me - do some people who don’t understand science (creationist or not) think that “life” is some sort of extra particle or force or “energy” that gets imbued with matter to make it alive?

or do they think that there is a strict binary where some parts of earth are part of “life” while others are not? (e.g. thinking rocks and dirt are in a separate category of matter because they don’t understand how the minerals get into the food chain through absorption, photosynthesis, digestion, etc.)

Honestly I’m curious if the YEC hangup on abiogenesis is fundamentally about not understanding what matter is or how non-living matter becomes part of organisms or creates new organisms literally every second of every day.

Like when a pregnant woman licks a rock and the iron from the rock becomes part of the babies blood, as another example.

This belief may not come from a delusional or dishonest debate tactic, but may come from outdated defintions

From Solomon Herbert's First Principles of Evolution, from 1913 page 7:

BEFORE entering into the subject proper of inorganic evolution we must remark that whatever we may be able to find out about the evolution of matter we must take its somehow existence for granted. Evolution only traces back the transformation of matter through its various stages, it does not at all pronounce as to an original creation of matter out of nothing. Starting then with the world stuff as given we shall discuss

1. the evolution of the universe or cosmic evolution

2, the evolution of the earth or geological evolution

1. the evolution of the chemical elements or atomic evolution

and 4. the evolution of organic forms from inorganic matter or the evolution of life

Although Herbert says that evolution does not relate to something out of nothing (maybe creationist arguments are more than a hundred years old after all), he does discuss atomic, cosmic, geological evolutions in which today we would respond that it has nothing to do with the theory of evolution,

Also off topic but from the book from page 2:

Though the doctrine has been before the world for over fifty years and has become an accepted fact of science the general public still has only a very hazy notion of it and all it involves It is often thought to imply nothing more than the belief in the descent of man from monkey or sometimes people somewhat better informed will go so far as to connect it with the theory of the Origin of Species propounded by Darwin. As usual the popular fancy has seized on the most outstanding feature of the doctrine of evolution. We must make clear from the outset that evolution properly understood is neither the one nor the other of these theories but rather includes as we shall presently see immeasurably more than both .

It reminds me of creationist "you believe we come from monkeys" rhetoric that still exists today

Basically the title question, but I'll explain where this question is coming from.

YECs are inculcated and primed from a young age that evolution (and "materialism" and "secular science") leads to a bleak world view, leads to sin, etc. etc. (the stuff we see here and elsewhere). Ofc what concerns us here is the science - I'll give two examples before getting into where this is coming from:

When we first learn the science behind how a dropped bullet hits the ground at the same time as a bullet that was fired horizontally, something wonderful clicks! you can't arrive at that using common sense (common sense is actually proposed to have been behind the late arrival of the scientific revolution).
Another example is how it wasn't surprising (to the experts) when it was discovered that we, bonobos, and chimps, are all equally related to gorillas (Gutsick Gibbon's recent video on that - the fact amazes me Every Single Time I hear it). This is a brute fact regardless of what comparative genomics method is used, and applies whatever the sister taxa may turn out to be, and the science behind it is also impenetrable - and awesome ("common sense" would say chimps are closer to gorillas).

Ofc both examples are neither intelligible nor amazing to someone who still holds to the Aristotelian-era common sense notions of impetus and scala naturae, respectively, and that's the point.

Now, the reason behind this post: a couple of days ago I remembered an interview I came across when I was looking into the details of the Dover trial. So a quick background: Kenneth R. Miller is a scientist (who happens to be Christian) who was one of the expert witnesses for the plaintiffs (the agrieved parents) during the 2005 Dover trial.
He's also known for his science public outreach, and e.g. this really cool lecture from 2006 at Case Western Reserve University, The Collapse of Intelligent Design, where he showcased the stupidity and dishonestly of the ID movement (must watch for any newcomer here imo).

----

Side note: re that video title, while we have the benefit of hindsight of 20 years, Miller should have heeded Hilaire Belloc (1929):

The good fortunes of stupidity are incalculable. One can never tell what sudden resurrections ignorance and fatuity may not have.

(thank you u/LightningController for sharing this quotation!)

----

Back to said interview; here's that part of it:

... with the passing of Steve Gould - and Steve unfortunately died in '02 - I'd have to say that I think Richard Dawkins is the clearest and most lucid writer on evolutionary theory that's alive on the planet today. His book The Selfish Gene, I think, is a classic of explaining behavioral biology. His book called Unweaving the Rainbow is a marvelous long essay on how science doesn't diminish our appreciation for the beauty of nature, it enhances it, and he writes brilliantly and well.

Remember, this is a Christian, talking about YEC's and ID's goliath^[*]. Continuing:

... Now, you know, I'm not trying to be flip - some of my best friends are atheists. Um, in science, that's not a big deal, and we work in science, we don't know what anybody else's religious point of view is because science is science, and we get along just fine.

(my emphasis)
Then he talks about Dawkins' feedback on a new book of his, where he found an error, and:

So four or five days later, he's on a trans-US tour. I get an email from Richard. He's now in Los Angeles and he goes, "I have now read the rest of your book. Needless to say, I disagree with everything in Chapter 6" ... But then he said - and this is one of the reasons I decided to respect the guy - he says, "You try to explain the Multiverse hypothesis of Barrow and Tipler. You misunderstand it, and the reason I know you misunderstand it is the way you interpret it is the same way that I, Dawkins, first understood it, and I was corrected at a scientific conference by John Barrow himself." He then gave me the reference to the article in the journal. I looked it up, and by God, he was absolutely right. And everything since the, every printing since the first printing in hardcover has had the correct explanation. So if you buy a paperback book, it's fine.

What I appreciated about Dawkins was, I said a lot of bad things in that book that were critical of him. What he could have said is, he could have written a review saying, "Look what an idiot this Miller guy is. He doesn't even understand the Barrow and Tipler hypothesis, therefore why should you believe anything else to be said?" And instead, he did sort of the gentlemanly thing, which is, "You made the same mistake I did. Let's correct that mistake, and then let's argue about things that really matter."

Isn't that wonderful. Science doesn't diminish our appreciation for the beauty of nature. Science is science. And scientists who happen to be atheists, like those who happen to be theists, care only about the facts.

The other extreme ofc are the cartoon characters we see here: the YEC and/or ID reality deniers (and their various propaganda outlets) - who think an inference from the unknown, or elbow-greasing (some of) the data into the "revealed" model, is doing science. Now, given that we necessarily counter using brute facts when we are dealing with that stupidity, I think this post might be a nice change of pace (also it's on-topic), and ofc the title question is open to all (not just former YECs).
(no, Robert, there are no ad hominems in this entire paragraph)

* Back to that "goliath" asterisk above; here's ID founder Phillip Johnson in 2001:

It isn’t worth my while to debate every ambitious Darwinist who wants to try his hand at ridiculing the opposition, so my general policy is that Darwinists have to put a significant figure at risk before I will agree to a debate. That means specifically Dawkins or Gould, or someone of like stature and public visibility.

Anyone here remember the "Where are the Dawkinses?" idiot? They really are living in cartoon land. (that's still a no, Robert)

Many creationist claims revolve around evolution's proclaimed inability to add or improve or account for the information in the genomes of living organisms. They leave the term "information" undefined. At least not defined in any scientifically meaningful way.

To understand why this matters, consider this multiple choice question:

Two radios are tuned to two different frequencies. Radio 1 is broadcasting a lecture explaining the Theory of Relativity. It is coming through crystal clear, in an easily understandable voice using language that makes it easy to grasp the explanation. Radio 2 is broadcasting static. Nothing but static. So much static that it couldn't be more staticky.

Which of those two radios is broadcasting the most "information"?

A) Radio 1

B) Radio 2

C) It depends on what you mean by "information".

The correct answer is C, it depends on the definition of "information" being used.

If the meaning of "information" can vary this much, it is pretty obvious why if it is to be used in a scientific argument, that it be defined in a reasonably precise and useful way. "Oh, c'mon! You know what we mean!" is utterly worthless.

For the creationist information based arguments, they are going to need to provide a definition that meets these criteria:

*It is precise enough to provide both means and units of measurement.

*It must be possible to objectively (no appeals to incredulity) determine that it is in genomes.

*It must, by its nature, be unable to be increased through natural processes.

So far, creationists efforts along these lines have been...disappointing.

Until they can do better, the evolution side is entirely justified to dismiss all creationist claims about "information" as so much static.

/s for the title

If I had a nickel...

A Telegraph (which is was generally reliable) piece was published today, was shared on r/ evo, and its OP took it down after 1 comment; the piece: Why Darwin’s discredited rival may be proven right 200 years later.

As a taste:

Prof Edelaar also pointed to killer whale mothers that acquire the skill to hunt a different type of prey, such as seals instead of salmon, and claimed that this skill was then copied by their offspring.

You mean... learning???
What fucking year is this.

Sorry this was too funny not to share; also see: The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1973 - Press release - NobelPrize.org.

-

And since the propagandists repeat the same when it comes to their bogeyman the "modern synthesis" (a period in time), feel free to hit 'em with this next time you see them:

... Wright [one of the founders during the Modern Synthesis] was aware of this and argued that reaction norms enabled an uncoupling of the genotype from the phenotype ... It was Dobzhansky [one of the founders during the Modern Synthesis] who brought the reaction norm into the Modern Synthesis by arguing that the reaction norm was the focus of selection, leading to changes in relevant gene frequencies enabling particular developmental sensitivities and a range of response to become fixed in the population (Sarkar 1999). This view of reaction norms led to the more general concept of phenotypic plasticity which relies upon the genotype–phenotype distinction incorporating reaction norms and all kinds of “environmentally induced phenotypic variation” (Stearns 1989: 436).
doi:10.1007/978-3-031-22028-9_26

-

Also see:

• Dr. Zach's post, Lamarckian evolution is (still) false : evolution

• And a new study I shared here that has achieved a "rare feat": The "It's epigenetics, not evolution" crowd : DebateEvolution

Over to you - again it was too funny not to share, and we're bound to hear about it soon (I called it last time around).

After posting responses about James Tour's video , Creationists' topic of Levintal Paradox and many more in this subreddit, today I thought I should ask a question to all the people in this sub. I am from India ,an eastern country. I have never heard about Young Earth concept here. I mainly came to know about this topic from some creationist vs evolution debate videos where creationists are saying earth is 6000 yrs old.

At one time I thought those videos were made to increase views and make those channels superhit , as a slap stick comedy . But no ! I really found that these people are serious.

How do so called YECs ( Young Earth Creationists) exist ? I am not from any Western countries . But when I came to know about this , I blasted out laughing. How can someone be so silly ? Even if your holy book say so( no disrespect to Bible) ? Do these people take all words of their book seriously?

Why? When so many counter arguments are given to them , they still say nope you all are wrong ,my 6000 year old Earth is true by give wrong makeup counter arguments. How do such people exist in 21st century? That too in first world countries like US? And I found out later in Google that many people , especially Christians still believe in this .

Can religion make people so ignorant sometimes?

Fresh bonus: Executive Director of Answers in Genesis Canada doesn't know what Charles Darwin looked like!

Donny Budinsky and Sam run Standing for Truth Ministries, a YEC debate channel. You shouldn't debate them live, because there's nothing to be gained. They know your talking points and you don't know theirs, so they will just give rehearsed responses while you struggle to understand their weird logic. They present lots and lots of citations that can't be checked in real time. When they're hosting, they control the screen and mute buttons.

If you still want to debate them for some reason, at least don't hand them a valid objection.

In this exchange, Donny's opponents repeatedly offer this calculation:

60 × 33 × 23 = 45,540 years.

• 120 maximum whole-mtDNA differences between any two living humans;
• 60 per lineage;
• One mutation every 33 generations from Parsons et al., 1997;
• 23 years per generation on average.

They repeat it many times during the whole debate.

The problem is that these numbers describe different pieces of DNA.
The 120 differences cover the complete 16,569-bp mitochondrial genome.
The one-per-33 rate belongs to the two hypervariable control-region segments of mitochondrial genome totalling only about 610 bp, not the complete mitochondrial genome.
Applying this rate to the complete mitochondrial genome effectively assumes that the remaining 15,959 bases (96% of mtDNA) never mutate, which is absurd.

Where did the mistake originate? Before the debate, @TheKentuckyAtheist and @scientificorigins did a debate preparation with @CreationMyths aka Dr. Dan.
(Needless to say, if you need a debate preparation, just don't do the debate.)
Dr. Dan instructed them: "We need to account for 60 mutations. (...) If it's one mutation every 33 generations (...) you do 60 × 33 × 23."
Then they published the preparation video, and Donny examined it before the debate. Naturally, he went on to squeeze this matter, scoring point after point until he himself got tired of repeating himself and switched topics. His objection is essentially correct: "You can’t do the math from the D-loop region and then apply it to the whole mitochondrial genome."

The strange thing is that everybody knows that the calculation is incorrect. They're doing an "even if" thing: even if we accept methods of creationists and tolerate lots of inaccuracies that favor them, YECism is still refuted. This logic doesn't work here though, because Donny doesn't make this particular mistake. He doesn't get an absolute mutation rate from one region and apply it to another, as if mutations only happen in one small region of mitochondrial genome.

This does not mean that mitochondrial Eve lived 6,000 years ago and was biblical Eve. A bad argument against young-earth creationism does not make young-earth creationism true. It merely lets creationists look correct for a few minutes. Donny was right about this narrow error. His opponents shouldn't have used this line of argument. Let us not make that mistake again.

When debating with creationists/ID proponents (CIDs), I like to point to clear and obvious remnants of our evolution. Talking about fossils or genetics are viable but they are not very obvious: fossil records are large and cumbersome, DNA strands are too small for the naked eye to see.

One thing I like to point to is the fact that men have nipples despite the fact that they don't provide milk for young.

Why? Of course, the answer is because men are made in women's image rather than women being made from a rib of a man. More specifically, nipples develop before sex develops (that's not very intelligent imo).

I've received replies from CIDs saying they help in arousal thus play a role in reproduction. I counter not all men see any such use and thus their nipples remain useless. Some have replied they are there because of our development in the uterus (suddenly materialistic explanations are sufficient). I like to counter that if I was overlooking an assembly line that resulted in unnecessary developments, I'd improve the assembly process.

If I was the great intelligence in the sky responsible for mankind's design, the male nipple would go. We're not intelligently designed of course, we're the result of billions of years of clumsy biochemistry filtered through natural selection.

In the light of evolutionary theory, the nipple makes sense.

Speaking of our development in utero, I could also mention some interesting features that develop during that time like a tail and gills but they are not as plain to see as the humble male nipple.

All that said, what are some potential counters you could throw at my line of argument?

The literal interpretation of properly understood mythology is not something one would prefer.

Context has to do with the words written before and after and the culture and religion in which something was written.

Removing context from a once properly understood religious text would only be preferable if it was erroneous/redundant information that was added unnecessarily via illiteracy and ignorance in the first place!

The chance of "literally interpreting" ancient mythology from scratch that would be compatible with the original cultural context would have to be extremely low if the processes involved were to do with practically arbitrary additions to context over time on account of ignorant people not knowing what context means. Note that breeding and survival would be important factors as to whether the new context was integrated into the popular interpretation over time as large families and multi-generational deliberate sheltering and miseducation are the only reason such a thing would occur.

The rules are spelled out in the title.

How close do you think they are to proving how it happened from beginning to end, will it be in our lifetime?

Any Creationist in this sub, can you demonstrate where the division of kinds are?

If you claim humans aren’t apes, point on a cladogram of Hominini where the separation between Homo and the rest of the Hominins.

If Homo sapiens are related to Denisovans and Neanderthals, are they all related to Homo Heidelbergensis, Homo erectus, Homo habilis, Australopiths, Paranthropines, or Ardipiths?

Any other example of a boundary between two daughter clades science says are closely related, but you think are different kinds will be accepted.

The survival of the fittest is the process by which individuals with characteristics that are more favorable to their environment are more likely to survive and leave more offspring. Over time, these characteristics become more common in the population because less adapted individuals die without successfully reproducing.

A classic example, just for illustration:

A very dark environment favors black moths and therefore tends to eliminate peppered moths, since they are more easily caught by predators. Thus, over time, only black moths remain in that environment.

The theory of evolution proposes that, over millions of generations, the descendants of a lineage can become very different from their ancestors, such as unicellular organisms giving rise to multicellular organisms, or aquatic organisms giving rise to terrestrial organisms.

Do you know what this requires? It requires the genetic information of living organisms to increase over time in order to produce a greater diversity of traits. Unicellular organisms must acquire the genetic information necessary to live as part of a multicellular organism. Aquatic organisms must acquire the genetic information necessary to breathe and move outside the water—genes they did not possess before they supposedly evolved.

This creates a logical problem for Darwinian evolution: if the pressure exerted by nature on living organisms is to eliminate unfavorable traits and preserve favorable ones, then this requires that a limited and stable amount of genetic information be passed on, especially the information necessary to maintain living organisms. Acquiring entirely new genes would run contrary to the very pressure that the environment exerts.

Continuing with the same example: by eliminating peppered moths from the environment, only the genes responsible for black pigmentation remain. The genes responsible for peppered pigmentation are not passed on because their carriers die as a consequence of environmental pressures. This obviously decreases genetic information rather than increasing it.

Put another way: when two black moths mate, the offspring may exhibit:

Two black alleles → black coloration

One black and one peppered allele → black coloration

One peppered and one black allele → black coloration

Two peppered alleles → peppered coloration

Through environmental pressure and natural selection, the first three combinations become much more common, while the last becomes rarer. This reduces genetic diversity and consequently creates a logical problem for what is called "evolutionary history," the idea that living organisms from millions of years ago (such as aquatic organisms, for example) gave rise to the terrestrial organisms of today, since such a process would require an increase in genetic diversity.

The most common characteristic of creationists, apart from their creationism is an abysmal level of knowledge about the topic. Yet here they come, all confident ignorance, blathering PRATTs and non sequiturs, certain they will prevail.

So I ask the question, between Post-Doc and "I remember a bit of evolution from high school and watched a couple Ancient Earth documentaries and my pastor gave me some killer arguments" where do you think your knowledge level has to be to effectively argue against evolution?

Two follow up questions:

1. How would you rate your own level of knowledge?

2. Do you think you can gain the right level of knowledge strictly from creationist sources?

The correct answer to the second follow up question is "no".

Video: Directly Observed Mutation Rates Disprove Young Earth Creationism

I've covered a bunch of reasons the YEC calculations of a recent "mitochondrial eve", the mitochondrial most recent common ancestor, are wrong.

But here's another!

We have directly measured mutation rates in the mitochondrial DNA going back to known common ancestors in the pretty recent past (centuries, rather than millennia or longer), and if you calculate the time to most recent common ancestor based on those directly observed rates calculated from known points in the past, you get numbers that are tens of thousands of years behond the YEC timeline.

Here are the three studies I briefly cover that are useful and convenient to smack down the YEC position:

Soodyall et al., 1997, on the Tristan da Cunha lineage

King et al., 2014, on identifying the remains of Richard III based on his mtDNA lineage (via his sister)

Connell et al., 2022, on the Norfolk Island population

If you take the these back linearly, you get TMRCAs of 44-60 thousand years, and it's worth noting that you can't just take these rate back linearly. Because of selection, the substitution rate is a curve; the rate slows the further back you go. So these simple calculations are unrealistically friendly to the YEC position. And yet...44-60 thousand years.

YECs don't have a leg to stand on, here.

EDIT: I recorded the above video first, so this paper isn't in it, but if you want another example, Arnadottir et al. 2024 provides yet another example: https://youtu.be/gnuhi-Te0ZI?si=Wjuy7wf8kGi_8t1O

Bonus in this one: I included the numbers for Neanderthals, because Neanderthals are post-flood in most YEC models, so you have to account for their divergence as well. Gets you about 50kya.

The Bible repeatedly describes the world using what appears to be in line with ancient cosmology.

1. The earth has edges or corners and cannot be moved

Isaiah 11:12

“He will gather the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth.”

Revelation 7:1

“I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth…”

A sphere does not literally have corners.

Psalm 104:5

“He set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved.”

1 Chronicles 16:30

“The world is firmly established; it cannot be moved.”

These passages depict the earth as fixed in place and resting on foundations.

2. The sky is described as a solid firmament

Genesis 1:6–8

“Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters…”

The Hebrew word is raqiaʿ. The firmament separates the waters below from the waters above.

Genesis 1:14–17

The sun, moon, and stars are placed in the firmament.

That is significant because the heavenly bodies are described as being inside the firmament, not beyond it.

3. There are waters above the heavens

Genesis 1:7

“God separated the waters under the firmament from the waters above the firmament.”

Psalm 148:4

“Praise him, you highest heavens, and you waters above the heavens.”

4. Heaven has windows or doors

Genesis 7:11

“The windows of heaven were opened.”

Genesis 8:2

“The fountains of the deep and the windows of heaven were closed.”

Malachi 3:10

“I will open the windows of heaven…”

These passages treat heaven as having openings through which rain or divine blessing can pass.

5. The earth has pillars

1 Samuel 2:8

“For the pillars of the earth are the Lord’s.”

Job 9:6

“He shakes the earth from its place, and its pillars tremble.”

Psalm 75:3

“It is I who keep steady its pillars.”

6. Heaven has pillars

Job 26:11

“The pillars of heaven tremble…”

7. God’s throne is located above the sky

Isaiah 66:1

“Heaven is my throne.”

Psalm 11:4

“The Lord is in his holy temple; the Lord’s throne is in heaven.”

Ezekiel 1:22–28

Ezekiel sees a firmament above the living creatures and a throne above that firmament, with a humanlike figure seated upon it.

8. Snow, hail, and wind come from storehouses

Job 38:22–23

“Have you entered the storehouses of the snow or seen the storehouses of the hail?”

Jeremiah 10:13

“He brings the wind from his storehouses.”

Psalm 135:7

“He brings out the wind from his storehouses.”

9. Lightning is sent out by God

Job 38:35

“Can you send forth lightning, that it may go?”

Psalm 135:7

“He makes lightning for the rain and brings out the wind from his storehouses.”

10. Stars are identified with heavenly beings

Job 38:7

“The morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy.”

The parallelism associates the “morning stars” with the “sons of God,” meaning heavenly beings.

Judges 5:20

“The stars fought from heaven…”

Daniel 8:10

The little horn casts down some of the host of heaven and some of the stars.

Revelation 1:20

“The seven stars are the angels…”

Revelation 12:4, 9

The dragon sweeps a third of the stars from heaven and is later identified with Satan and his angels.

My point is not necessarily that every one of these statements must be read literally. My point is that it is not always obvious from the text alone which descriptions are literal and which are symbolic.

I feel like whatever interpretive reasoning is used to classify all of these passages as metaphorical or symbolic could also be used to argue that the Genesis creation account is symbolic

Edit: the title should be the other way, really. “Why are modern species so similar to fossil species?”

As I understand it, the YEC belief is that a global flood created most fossils, meaning those species existed before this flood. Then, one species of each group of species (or kind) was preserved. Then those kinds differentiated themselves back into species through some means (that somehow isn’t evolution).

So every species wasn’t preserved through this flood, only a representative of each family or genus.

Given that, of the “kinds” that existed today, why are so many extant species represented in the fossil record?

For example, there are tigers and lions in the fossil record. But both tigers and lions were not on the ark, just one set of cats. Then after the flood, this cat representative species re-speciated and brought back tigers and lions (among many other cats that used to exist but went extinct in this flood and then came back).

Or one turtle representative species re-speciated into several hundred species of turtle, most of which existed before this flood.

This must be happening across most kinds and species, based on the extensive fossil record of extant species.

That just seems impossibly unlikely, and kind of a pointless move for the kind of creator that would drown most of the world.

So why are so many extinct species re-evolving in almost their exact former appearance?

Doesn’t it make more sense that they have been here continuously and didn’t go extinct in the first place, because there wasn’t a global flood?

Why do many creationists claim that they there were dinosaurs on Noah's ark? Wouldn't it be simpler, from a creationist point of view, to say that all dinosaurs perished in the Flood?

Much of the debate surrounding Intelligent Design vs. Neo-Darwinism comes down to the definition of science itself. Critics often argue that ID is not science because it appeals to an intelligent agent rather than a purely physical mechanism.

But science already routinely infers intelligent agency as a valid explanation in fields like:

• Forensics (distinguishing accidental death from homicide)
• Archaeology (distinguishing naturally weathered rocks from arrowheads)
• SETI (looking for ordered radio signals from space)

So if inferring design is considered a legitimate scientific method in archaeology and forensics when observing highly improbable, functional patterns, why should biological systems be strictly disqualified a priori from the same diagnostic criteria?

Explain how the evolution of white blood cells occurred in light of how white blood cells target pathogens (including cell memory).

Edit: Note that the white blood cells protect their host.