Young Earth Creationism: New book "storms" it?

When I was teaching a course a couple of years back on why there is an intelligent design controversy, I had to address young earth creationism (YEC) [= Earth and its life forms were created in 7 days, 144 hours].

I tried to make two points:

(1) There is no possible way that the Darwinian narrative of the history of life can be true, whether we accept NASA's dating of the age of the Earth or not.

(2) I was not lecturing on the topic of YEC in order to attack YECs, but simply to outline the different ways people approach the evidence.

Now, my own view is that YEC is an answer to a problem that doesn't really exist. but I have also said the same about theistic evolution [= There is really a God but nature does not provide any evidence, so it must be received on faith alone].

Anyway, I was glad to see that, in "Storming Young-Earth Creationism: But is Genesis 1 the" only text at issue?, Marcus R. Ross, a creationist paleontologist at Liberty University, takes on The Bible, Rocks and Time by Davis A. Young and Ralph F. Stearley (IVP Academic, September 2008):

Young-earth creationism is a complex system. YEC's conception of history includes not merely a six-rotational-day Creation, but also a young age of the earth, miraculous creation of plant and animal life, a commitment to a historical Adam and Eve, a historical Fall with universal spiritual and physical consequences, and a global catastrophe.

Personally, I am glad that these people can have a civil discussion (no murders, no planes flying into buildings, etc.)

Who believes what about origins?:

Here's a .pdf of an article article by Marcus Ross in the Journal of Geosciences Education, attempting to sort out who believes what about origins. Ross writres to say,

The goal of the paper is to show how the different teleological (purpose/design) positions relate to one another, and why painting IDers as creationists (and vice versa) just doesn’t work.

Yes, yes, it's that Marcus Ross, who got a PhD even though the New York Times disapproves of his religious beliefs, who also offered some interesting insights into the Kent Hovind scandal.
(Note: It's a .pdf, so if you open it, you might not get back here using the back browser button. )

Thinkquote of the day: Who wrote this? You’d be surprised

Over at Uncommon Descent, a longish combox discussion started recently - which spread here after I reposted some of my own comments - on whether the intelligent design guys would gain or lose credibility if they kicked out the young earth creationists (YECs, the folk who believe that the Bible teaches that the earth was created in 144 hours and therefore it must be true).

My own view is that it is politically astonishingly naive to think that the intelligent design-friendly scientists who accept universal common descent would gain anything by starting a big fight with:

(1) a lay young earth creation ministry like Answers in Genesis (which says negative things about ID from time to time)

or

(2) an astronomer-run old earth creation ministry like Hugh Ross's Reasons to Believe (which also says negative things about ID from time to time),

let alone

(3) those YECs such as Paul Nelson who choose to work with the ID folk who accept conventional age of the earth and common ancestry.

Basically, anyone who adopts a non-materialist stance of any type on anything will be persecuted by the materialists dominant in science and public policy today. That's just a fact. Non-materialists who squabble among themselves waste time that could be going into developing their own positions more fully. This is a matter of political common sense and actually has nothing to do with the legitimacy or usefulness of YEC ideas.

In my book, By Design or by Chance?, I took a couple of chapters to examine, in a neutral way, the origin of young earth creationism - where and how did it originate and who does it appeal to?
As a movement among American Protestants, YEC originated in the early 1960s. (Note: William Jennings Bryant of Scopes trial fame - the real trial, not the Inherit the Wind movie - was an old earth creationist like astronomer Hugh Ross.)

I personally view young earth creationism as an attempt to confront the growing impact of materialism by adopting literalist Bible interpretation. I don’t think it's true and I don't think it works. Beyond that, I don’t think literalism is the best way to understand the Bible. I have been criticized by YECs for my views and also by self-proclaimed Christians in science who think that I should have ridiculed YECs - as if that was going to help me or my readers understand them better.

That said, the real issues are far more complex than many people realize anyway. Paul Nelson, that YEC biologist who does work with the ID guys, wrote to me yesterday, offering a quiz of sorts, by way of illustrating the complexity:

Quick! Who said this?

1. "The phenomenon of a monophyletic origin for the universal Tree of Life probably did not occur...At the macro-scale life appears to have had many origins."


2. "Darwin claimed that a unique inclusively hierarchical pattern of relationships between all organisms based on their similarities and differences [the Tree of Life (TOL)] was a fact of nature, for which evolution, and in particular a branching process of descent with modification, was the explanation. However, there is no independent evidence that the natural order is an inclusive hierarchy, and incorporation of prokaryotes into the TOL is especially
problematic. The only data sets from which we might construct a universal hierarchy including prokaryotes, the sequences of genes, often disagree and can seldom be proven to agree. Hierarchical structure can always be imposed on or extracted from such data sets by algorithms designed to do so, but at its base the universal TOL rests on an unproven assumption about pattern that, given what we know about process, is unlikely to be broadly true."

Well, if these people are arguing against the proposition that all life arose from a single randomly generated cell billions of years ago, they must be raving creationist lunatics, right?

The answers, as offered by Paul Nelson

1. Malcolm Gordon, a professor of evolutionary biology at UCLA (See his 1999 paper, “The Concept of Monophyly.” for the details.)

2. W. Ford Doolittle, in his recent (2007) Inaugural Article as a foreign member of the National Academy of Sciences

Are these guys young earth creationists? Not ruddy likely. Actually, nowadays, you do not have to be a young earth creationist or any type of creationist or ID advocate to disbelieve in universal common descent from a single ancestor. Plus, he says - just to complicate the picture - most of the young ID advocates over at Telic Thoughts are "vocal advocates" of universal common descent.

The problem with multiple origins of life by chance alone is that staggering complexities face the origin of life even once. Assuming it happened a number of times without design would seem only to add to the problems faced by materialism, rather than subtracting from them.

So we live in interesting times. I think a fight between ID advocates and young earth creationists would be a sideshow compared to the growing row between materialists and non-materialists.

If you want to understand why the intelligent design controversy cannot go away, read By Design or by Chance?.

My other blog is the Mindful Hack, which keeps tabs on neuroscience and the mind.

If you like this blog, check out my book on the intelligent design controversy, By Design or by Chance?. You can read excerpts as well.

Are you looking for one of the following stories?

My recent series on the spate of anti-God books, teen blasphemy challenge, et cetera, and the mounting anxiety of materialist atheists that lies behind it.

My review of Francis Collins’ book The Language of God , my backgrounder about peer review issues, or the evolutionary biologist’s opinion that all students friendly to intelligent design should be flunked.

Lists of theoretical and applied scientists who doubt Darwin and of academic ID publications.

My U of Toronto talk on why there is an intelligent design controversy, or my talk on media coverage of the controversy at the University of Minnesota.

A summary of tech guru George Gilder's arguments for ID and against Darwinism

A critical look at why March of the Penguins was thought to be an ID film.

A summary of recent opinion columns on the ID controversy

A summary of recent polls of US public opinion on the ID controversy

A summary of the Catholic Church's entry into the controversy, essentially on the side of ID.

O'Leary's intro to non-Darwinian agnostic philosopher David Stove’s critique of Darwinism.

An ID Timeline: The ID folk seem always to win when they lose.

Why origin of life is such a difficult problem.

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Should the ID guys dump the young earth creationists? Participate in studies?

When I crossposted this post, “The Arsonist’s Tale: Misconceptions about intelligent design” over at Uncommon Descent, I got some interesting responses, including a request that the intelligent design (ID) guys like Bill Dembski blow off the young earth creationists (YECs, people who believe that the Bible says that the Earth was created in 144 hours.)

Generally, people on the ID side do not fight over the age of the earth because they view it as a non-issue. That is, Darwinism won’t work anyway. But my correspondent thought that if the ID theorists who accept conventional dating for the age of the earth blew off the YECs, their reputations would soar. Would they?

Another commenter offered to actually study the diversity of views on the ID side, a diversity which is growing all the time as a matter of fact. A refreshing and timely change from the imaginative authors of nutball conspiracy theories. Yes indeed, that’s a great project for someone who knows how to distinguish a scholar from a tenured crackpot.

Anyway, I replied as follows, addressing thee key issues around both questions, as I see them:

Thanks for raising an interesting and timely question. I appreciate it.

That said, I don't agree that ID would be better accepted if the ID guys blew off the YEC guys.

To a materialist, ID would be "anti-science" if YEC had never existed, because a materialist understands science as applied materialism.

In my little parable above, the materialist is like the defense lawyer trying to get Ratcliffe off the hook. She espouses any position whatever on the fire, tandem or seriatim, except that Ratcliffe dunit and knew he dunit. That can never be, no matter what evidence is assembled.

Consider me as an example: I am at the opposite end of the spectrum from YEC.

I'm not even an ID supporter in the conventional sense. That is, I am not sure that current ID hypotheses are the correct way to understand the large amount of information in life forms that is obviously not adequately accounted for by Darwinian fairy tales. So I describe myself as a post-Darwinist.

There is considerable and mounting evidence that the materialism that Darwinism supports is not true, either. But determining what is true could take decades or centuries. The ID guys are making a start. I don't have a science background, so I do not attempt to evaluate their assumptions in technical detail.

My main stake in this controversy is to promote a more responsible debate, less dependent on the US culture wars.

But if you think for a moment that I am less likely to be attacked by materialists, Darwoids, et cetera, on that account, well, google my name and see what you come up with.

I am a traditional Catholic, so I don't even interpret the Scriptures in any way similar to the usually fundamentalist YECs. If I started a row with YEC, it would have to be over Scriptural issues as I have no familiarity with the technical issues. I am not a trained theologian either, but many years of Bible reading and Bible study offer some modest benefits.

Thus, I would have a big fight on my hands with members of another communion that would serve no purpose except to divide Christians.

Apart from that, the reality is that all non-materialists have something in common that they do not share with materialists. I think that ID types of whatever flavour would do well to keep that in mind.

Re a poll, I suppose you'd have to ask people if they would participate and see what happens.

You might set up a blog for the purpose and invite contributors whose identity can be confirmed.*

One caution is that it takes some study to determine the questions whose answers would yield useful information (which I assume you've done or are doing).

For example, I remember a historian of science who once tried to get me to post on the Post-Darwinist what he assumed to be the positions of various ID types - I guess in an effort to draw them out. I wrote to them first, and a number wrote back and said, in essence, "No, that's not what I meant at ALL."

I didn't publish the historian's guesses, and he was a bit put out with me. But what could I do? I can't publish stuff I know is false.

My other suggestion would be to interest a social scientist in doing a more scientific poll on the actual beliefs of ID types who meet previously developed criteria as opinion leaders, criteria that - ideally - have been used in other studies of social influence (degrees, books published, number of mentions in peer reviewed or popular literature, for example).

Indeed, I see the actual study of these questions as a promising development in a field heretofore dominated by conspirazoid cranks, for whom I have no time and little patience.


*Use the moderator keys early and often if you are spammed by Internet Darwinists, who usually have much more time on their hands than the regular type.

If you want to understand why the intelligent design controversy cannot go away, read By Design or by Chance?.

YEC ID supporter Paul Nelson defends record

Commenter Andy Groves, wrote,

"So I have a professional interest in knowing who Ebert is talking about"

[Note: He is quoting Denyse O'Leary, who was addressing an unsubstantiated accusation that young earth creationists who support intelligent design conceal their YEC views. Go here for the context.]

How about Paul Nelson? Paul is a YEC, but has not to my knowledge publicly stated that he is a YEC since becoming associated with the DI. He used to write YEC stuff under the pseudonym Peter Gordon, but hasn't done that for many years.

Paul has recently been demoted from a Senior Fellow to a Fellow of the DI, but he has said this is due to his tardiness in publishing his long-awaited monograph "On Common Descent".

Paul is a very nice chap in person, by the way.

In addition, since many members of the DI studiously/disingenuously avoid discussing the age of the Earth at all ("not my area of expertise" are usually the weasel words), it is very hard to tell whether they are YECs or not. But you probably know them better than me, Denyse. Would you like to go down the list of DI Senior Fellows and say whether you know for a fact whether they accept an Old Earth and a non-literal interpretation of Genesis?

I'm not saying that to try and paint them guilty until proven innocent, merely to illustrate the point that their public comments on this issue are hard to find.

Wednesday, September 14, 2005 4:31:32 PM

I don't normally respond to comments, but thought that this one might lead somewhere interesting, so contacted Paul Nelson for a comment in response and here it is:

Hi Denyse,

I like Andy, a lot (we met at the Soc for Developmental Biology meeting in Boston a couple of years ago), but he needs to get his history straight:

1. I became a fellow at Discovery in 1996, and published a chapter defending YEC with John Mark Reynolds (in the Zondervan volume Three Views on Creation and Evolution) in 1999. In fact, the submission of my chapter MS was delayed, much to the consternation of the Zondervan editors, because Discovery colleagues were urging me to drop out of the book. I've never made any effort to hide my YEC convictions, which are mainly theological in origin.

To my knowledge, I'm the token (i.e., only) YEC among the Discovery fellows.

2. I stopped using the pseudonym "Peter Gordon" as a 1st year graduate student (in 1985), because Kurt Wise advised me that using pseudonyms was bad practice for scientific dissenters. Nothing I wrote under that name, however, had anything to do with YEC in particular: I wrote book reviews (e.g., of Kitcher), articles on natural selection, and the like, but nothing about YEC. I adoped the pseudonym as an undergraduate because I had been graded punitively as a student for dissenting from neo-Darwinism, and wanted to protect myself while applying to graduate school.

Feel free to put all of this up on your site, and tell Andy that I hope to see him at SDB next year, if he's going.

Best,

Paul

For more on YEC, see Creation Ministries International.

If you like this blog, check out my book on the intelligent design controversy, By Design or by Chance?. You can read excerpts as well.

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