Arguments against Young Earth Creationism that just don't work...

Maybe you are reading this as an Young Earth Creationist, maybe not. I have no idea. What I do know is that even if you believe Young Earth Creationism is wrong, there are some common arguments against it that simply do not work, logically.

The Book of Genesis is not a scientific text!

Cards on the table, I am a Young Earth Creationist, and I am intellectually satisfied in being so, my reasons for it are primarily theological, but those are a very different discussion for a very different day. One of the most common arguments I experience against YEC is that the book of Genesis is not a scientific text, or in other words, it is not trying to make technical scientific claims. Therefore, it would be wrong to base a scientific hypothesis on it because it was never intended to be scientific.

Every YEC I have ever known is simply dumbfounded by how anything anti-YEC is supposed to follow from the statement 'Genesis is not a scientific text.' Our response is and always has been, to put it eloquently: 'Duh'.The fact that this text was not written for the purpose of science by its original author does absolutely nothing to show that it is not literal in what it says happened. 

My wife and I like watching the show 'Mythbusters'. Every week, the team takes on three or four myths and test them scientifically to see if they have any merit to them. For instance, one week they tested whether or not you could stick your hand in molten lead without burning it. As it turns out, you can: 

Something called the 'Leidenfrost effect' makes this possible. There also happens to be a specific minimum temperature that the lead has to be heated to for this to work. This 'myth' can be a good analogy for what we are talking about here. Nothing in the myth said anything about the very important scientific detail of minimum temperature, because the 'myth' was not trying to be a scientific hypothesis. However, that does not mean that it is not literally true that you can put your hand in molten lead without, well, losing it. 

So if Genesis is not trying to a scientific document, but it is trying to give us a historical account, then it can be literally true that the earth was created in six consecutive twenty-four hour days without it being a scientific hypothesis. Thus, saying that the Genesis creation account is not a scientific account does nothing at all to prove that it is not literal. 

"That's a poem if I ever saw one..."

This little quote comes from a Christian musician in the group 'Gungor' very recently about why he believes that the Genesis creation account is not a literal account. The reasoning goes, presumably, that if it is a poem it cannot be a literal account. Is this true?

I apologize to my British friends for this particular example, but the following is an excerpt classic American poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow called Paul Revere's Ride: 

"Listen my children and you shall hear

Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,

On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;

Hardly a man is now alive

Who remembers that famous day and year.

He said to his friend, "If the British march

By land or sea from the town to-night,

Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch

Of the North Church tower as a signal light,--

One if by land, and two if by sea;

And I on the opposite shore will be,

Ready to ride and spread the alarm

Through every Middlesex village and farm,

For the country folk to be up and to arm."

Then he said "Good-night!" and with muffled oar

Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore,

Just as the moon rose over the bay,

Where swinging wide at her moorings lay

The Somerset, British man-of-war;

A phantom ship, with each mast and spar

Across the moon like a prison bar,

And a huge black hulk, that was magnified

By its own reflection in the tide."

What we have above is definitely a poem, and a quite good one, but it is also chocked full of historical fact. http://www.paulreverehouse.org/ride/real.html has a brief retelling of the actual account. From Longfellow's poem we get actual history. There is no logical reason why something must be historically fictitious simply because it is poetic. Because of this, any argument that says "It is a poem, and not history.." commits a logical fallacy, the two genres are not mutually exclusive. 

But all scientists believe the earth is old...

I love it when two fallacies happen at once, that's the kind of nerdy that a couple years of study in Philosophy will get you. The most obvious of the two is called an argument ad populum. This fallacy ('argument from the people' for the English speakers out there) asserts that because the majority of people believe something, it must therefore be true. In this instance it is appealing to the majority of a specific people group, but it is still a fallacy. There is no logical connection between the number of people who believe a theory to be true and whether or not that theory is actually true.

On a more fundamental level, look at the historical track record of science for numerous example. The Sun did not revolve around the Earth when the majority of scientists believed that it did, and by that same logic the fact that a lot of scientists now believe the earth is billions of years old does not in any way prove that it actually is.

That being said, the arguments put forth by the majority of scientists do carry weight and have to be engaged, but these arguments are to be judged on their own merit, not by the number of people who already support it.

The other fallacy here is what is known as a 'No True Scotsman' fallacy. It goes like this: one person says "No Scotsman likes coffee" two which a person can reply "Well Farquar is a Scotsman, and he likes coffee a lot". The first person responds: "Well, no True Scotsman likes coffee."

The meaning of Scotsman is a man of Scottish descent, and the arguer has claimed that all men who fit this description feel a certain way about coffee. When shown a Scotsman who does like coffee, he simply insists that this person is not a genuine member of the category in discussion.

I've heard Old Earth adherents say: "All scientists believe in Old Earth." To which I reply "Jason Lisle (PhD in Astrophysics from the University of Colorado) is a scientist, and he does not believe in Old Earth." The reply I've heard so many times is "All real scientists believe in Old Earth." This is logical nonsense, a desperate attempt to eliminate dissent from the discussion. 

Conclusion

In brief, we have shown in a very basic way that some of these complaints about YEC are simply invalid arguments, they are not based in reason and should be discarded by those who use them against YEC and not taken seriously by those who support YEC. There is no strength in these arguments, by themselves. Nothing here is in any way proof of Young Earth Creationism. Just because an opponent of YEC uses a logical fallacy does not mean that his side of the argument is wrong, he or she simply happens to be logically invalid. YEC needs, and has, its own positive arguments, but those are beyond my purview today.