Arguments that Young Earth Creationists should avoid.

The other day I posted about arguments against Young Earth Creationism that just do not work. You can find that post here. I got two primary complaints, first that I had not shown proper nuanced forms of the arguments I had issue with. This is a fair point, and I am happy to admit that the arguments I discussed are invalid in the form I presented them, but arguments of that type are not necessarily invalid. My complaints in the other post were about the tokens represented, all of which I have heard. Every argument needs to be evaluated on its own merit.

The other complaint I encountered was that I said nothing negative about arguments used by Young Earth Creationists. After all, when I talked about Baptism I took issue with both the side I disagreed with and also those who I did agree with. (You can see that, here.) Why did I not do the same with Creationism? Well,  my policy on blog posts is that I do not want to write a post longer than what I would want to read if I were clicking on the link. I personally do not prefer long blogs, if I want the full scale arguments I will buy and read the book. So, in order to write a blog post that addresses both sides of the Creationism argument, I would have to break that rule. However, I am happy to write on both sides, and had actually already started this post when I published its cousin the other day. So, here it is: Arguments that Young Earth Creationists should avoid.

Exact dating of the earth using OT genealogies

I really appreciate everything Answers in Genesis does. I support their ministry and I look forward to getting out to the Creation Museum once their Ark Encounter project is complete. However, they use one argument, extensively, that just is not conclusive as they would like it to be. An example of this argument can be found here. The issue here is not that the majority of modern Biblical scholars think these genealogies are not exact, it's that the text never claims that the list is exhaustive. Before we start to worry that this leads us down some slippery slope, consider the genealogies we have in the New Testament. We know that they are not. Now, I understand that the Genesis account is a different language in a different time, but let's keep in mind that we still have a framework here for an divinely inspired genealogy that doesn't  include every single name.

So, here's the rub, if it is possible that a Biblical genealogy can be less than exhaustive, then it is illogical to argue that the earth must have a certain age because a genealogy in the Bible includes names and ages that add up to that age. The information available does not give us the deductive conclusion that this argument is attempting to give. The AIG article above would have been completely fine if it had gotten to the end and said: "Thus, based on the evidence available, we think that a no gap genealogy is the best conclusion" there would be no issue. However, too often this argument gets tossed out by Young Earth Creationists as an indisputable proof, and this is not a rational conclusion. 

Yom

In the Baptism post, linked above, we have a discussion on the use of the word baptizo in the New Testament, and the logical fallacy of assuming that a word has the same meaning every single time. (We cited D.A. Carson's work on exegetical fallacies.) Too often YEC adherents do the same thing with yom, insisting that it means a 24 hour day. I think that it does mean a 24 hour day, here, and I quite like arguments that try to show that grouping the word 'day' with qualifiers about evening and morning indicates that 24 hours is the time period being described. But, again, this is not a deductive argument, so using this argument as a indisputable proof is logically invalid. 

Don't argue that Young Earth Creationists have science figured out!

We don't, and that's perfectly okay. If we as Creationists have scientific theories that do not work, we should be honest and reasonable enough to admit it. There's nothing wrong with seeing a scientific question that has not been answered yet and saying: "This topic needs more scientific research." Science has been done by Christians for centuries, and they never had all the answers. There's no reason to think that we suddenly have it all figured out now. If we want to reproach Old Earth adherents for acting as those their science doesn't have serious gaps we absolutely cannot do any differently for our own theories. That would be a special pleading fallacy, and I've seen it happen way too often. I am not a scientist, but I've seen enough science that comes to Young Earth conclusions to be satisfied, as a Philosopher and Theologian, intellectually in being a Young Earth Creationist. 

Conclusion

Being correct does not give you the right to use invalid arguments. In fact, I often tell my students that those with the correct conclusions bear a greater responsibility in their argumentation, because bad arguments tarnish the reputation of the truth. It is the same reason why I get infuriated when I see people claim the Bible is the Word of God and then try to prove it by KJV Onlyism (here). Defend the truth, but do so in a way that has integrity.