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I've spent many years studying YEC and interacting with YEC's. I've even spent some time on the YouTube YEC debate circuit. I've come to one over-arching conc

by lisper 4y ago

I've spent many years studying YEC and interacting with YEC's. I've even spent some time on the YouTube YEC debate circuit. I've come to one over-arching conclusion: the roots of YEC belief go down to the very foundations of one's philosophical outlook. Specifically, it is rooted in an acceptance of teleology [1]. It is a very long chain of reasoning from there, but this it the thing that most detractors of YEC miss: this reasoning is logically sound [2]. And because of that, you cannot successfully combat it with logic. You have to go to the very roots of the belief and address its foundations, which is to say, you have to deal with the fact that YEC's accept teleology as a philosophical foundation, and it is very hard to dislodge someone from that position without also sending them into a spiral of existential despair. That is the reason that these beliefs are so persistent despite being so violently at odds with [EDIT: the scientific view of] reality. --- [1] Teleology is the assumption that things have a purpose. The divergence between teleologists and whatever its opposite is (scientists?) is that the latter starts by asking what is the cause? and the former starts by asking what is the point? Everything can be traced back to that initial flapping of the butterfly's wings. [2] An extremely abridged version goes something like this: a cursory inspection of the world around us seems to indicate that it was designed. So let us adopt that as a hypothesis. What would be expect to see? Well, one thing we would expect is that the designer might have provided a manual to go along with his/her/its designed creation. And lo and behold, there is such a manual. Actually, there are many such manuals. Collectively they are referred to as holy texts. The logical rabbit warren branches out from there.

WFHRenaissance 4y ago
The Catholic Church is able to merge telos and evolution. YEC should try harder.
- aidenn0 4y ago
  Per TFA, apparently not in Brazil...
hammock 4y ago
What is teleology and what is the alternative?
- lisper 4y ago
  I've updated my comment to answer that because I figured not everyone would know. But the TL;DR is that teleology is the assumption that existence has a purpose.
  - gjsman-1000 4y ago
    Can you scientifically prove existence has no purpose?
    - moate 4y ago
      No, but that's not how science works. The general assumption is that the person making a provable conclusion (ie. that there IS a purpose) has the burden of proof. If I claim to have a magical invisible dragon in my garage it's on me to prove otherwise, not for you to prove it doesn't.
    - lisper 4y ago
      No, I can't. I can't prove anything scientifically. That's not how science works. Science doesn't prove anything. Science seeks the best explanations to explain observations. I see no evidence that existence has a purpose, and so the best explanation for that lack of evidence is that there is no purpose. But I can't prove it.
      - Mikhail_Edoshin 4y ago
        This is not the best explanation. This is a scientific explanation. Due to the nature of that cultural phenomenon science is only allowed to use statements of a certain kind: suitable to build rather precisely defined logical models and then draw conclusions that stay entirely valid under the same assumptions. This is a very useful abstraction in a way. Yet it is limited. Take good art, for example. Something like "A Christmas Carol". It it markedly unscientific. Yet it also explains certain things about reality. Things that are rather hard to arrive to in a scientific way. And maybe that explanation is actually better?
maria2 4y ago
How can something be both logically sound and violently at odds with reality? What you’re saying is that those who hold YEC beliefs have an inconsistent belief system, but the belief in YEC is constructed with valid arguments within that belief system. That’s like the opposite of logically sound.
- lisper 4y ago
  I should have qualified that with "violently at odds with the scientific view of reality" (I've gone back and edited my original comment). And it's not hard to see how this can happen. Quantum mechanics is pretty violently at odds with most people's intuitions. > those who hold YEC beliefs have an inconsistent belief system No, that is absolutely not what I am saying. Their belief system is, for the most part, logically sound, and so it is consistent. But it is violently at odds with science, and so they end up with conspiracy theories to explain why scientists believe in evolution so overwhelmingly. Conspiracy theories are improbable, but they are not inconsistent.
  - mfer 4y ago
    > it is violently at odds with science What is science in this context? Is it the scientific method? Is it the popular view among scientists as a whole (many of whom are not experts in areas they don't work in)? Is it the view of scientists in a niche? What happens when scientists in a niche disagree (they do all the time)? I'm guessing you mean the popular view of scientists and most people see it conveyed through media, pop culture, etc. If physicists believe/agree with/state evolution what's the science foundation to look at them as an expert to trust? Would I trust a mechanical engineers view on circuit design because they are an engineer just like electrical engineers? Being curious I've read works from physicists who view an ancient universe and YEC (they really do exist). I've done this in good faith to try to understand how intelligent people with advanced degrees can come to different conclusions. I bring this up to show the complexity, views, and assumptions to what we quickly call science.
    - lisper 4y ago
      > I'm guessing you mean the popular view of scientists Yes, though your use of the word "popular" puts an unfair spin on it. There is overwhelming consensus (like 99%) among working biologists (who are in the best position to evaluate the evidence) that evolution is true. Yes, there can be complexity and nuance. But evolution is quite literally one of the least controversial issues in all of science.
Teknoman117 4y ago
For the uninitiated, what is "YEC"? Google wants to define is as "Young Entrepreneur Council" but I doubt that's what you're referring to. Edit: Thank you kind internet strangers.
- gjsman-1000 4y ago
  Young Earth Creationism
- mikedelago 4y ago
  I believe it's "Young-Earth Creationist" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Earth_creationism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Earth_creationism
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- BuyMyBitcoins 4y ago
  Young Earth Creationist. It’s a kind of creationism that posits the world is somewhere around 6,000 to 10,000 years old. That number was arrived at through interpreting scripture as inerrant and correct. This is in contrast to other forms of creationism which have different interpretations of just how long events that happened in the scripture took place. For instance the days of creation need not be modern 24 hour days.
adamsmith143 4y ago
> It is a very long chain of reasoning from there, but this it the thing that most detractors of YEC miss: it is logically sound. OF course it's not and most counter arguments knock it on it's face at that point. Any idiot can see that just because something looks designed doesn't mean it has a designer. >[2] An extremely abridged version goes something like this: a cursory inspection of the world around us seems to indicate that it was designed. So let us adopt that as a hypothesis. What would be expect to see? Well, one thing we would expect is that the designer might have provided a manual to go along with his/her/its designed creation. And lo and behold, there is such a manual. Actually, there are many such manuals. Collectively they are referred to as holy texts. The logical rabbit warren branches out from there. Except all the actually useful manuals were built by man and not provided by a Designer.
bryanlarsen 4y ago
I've only done it twice, but both times were with very logical people, engineers. My conclusion was that we had different base assumptions. They assumed that an omnipotent God existed. With that assumption, it's quite straight forward to build a logical case for evolution.
- lisper 4y ago
  > They assumed that an omnipotent God existed. I actually doubt that they assumed that. Much more likely their belief in an omnipotent God was based on some more fundamental assumption, like that the Bible is true.
  - bryanlarsen 4y ago
    Yes they believed in more than the omnipotent God. However, the omnipotent God was the base assumption in their argument. It didn't require belief in the Bible as a base assumption for their argument to hold together, only a belief in an omnipotent God. The robustness in their argument was probably so it would hold up for both literal Bible adherents and figurative Bible adherents. IIRC it was some sort of adaptation of an argument for a literal Bible. IIRC it was something like this: If you believe in a figurative Bible you believe in an omnipotent God. If you believe in an omnipotent God, then (steps elided because I can't remember them, but they were logical), thus proving a literal Bible thesis and a figurative Bible thesis were equivalent.
    - lisper 4y ago
      OK, I've never met a religious person who admitted to this as their base assumption, and I've talked to a lot of religious people (I run a weekly Bible study). It seems like a really weird thing to assume. But my experience is obviously not exhaustive.
      - bryanlarsen 4y ago
        That's not their base belief. It's their argument's base assumption. Nobody ever states their true base assumptions when arguing anything. Most people don't know the base assumptions of the argument they are making. It takes a lot of analysis to tease it out.
mfer 4y ago
What I find interesting in all of this is the number of assumptions that are made on all sides. The assumptions are often not documented or discussed. It's easy to look at religion or YEC to pull out the assumptions. Yet, I've found assumptions show up in all views on the topic.
jvanderbot 4y ago
This point will be nitpicked , and I'm tempted to do so myself, but it only goes to show how deep rooted the conflict is when this appears at its face value to be contradictory with very reality.
standardUser 4y ago
This makes a tremendous amount of sense to me. Sorry to be political (what a crime), but I think it's a useful framework for thinking about the modern conservative movement. So much of the right now defines itself not with a cohesive ideology or specific set of policies, but rather in knee-jerk opposition to anything their supposed enemies believe. When your starting point is "these people are 100 percent wrong no matter what they say" you are now forced to explain why. And the result is a whole universe of shared lies and conspiracy theories (and people trying really hard to create some consistency or reasoning to back up those lies).
threatofrain 4y ago
The belief that everything has a purpose is not very distinctive among Christians, so within a church, what separates young earth believers from the rest of the church?
- lisper 4y ago
  Taking seriously the idea that the Bible -- and the book of Genesis in particular -- is the revealed Word of God.
  - threatofrain 4y ago
    That is not much of a differentiator. Genesis is the most well known book in the entire bible. Accepting that this book is spiritually and formally canonical is a very low bar.
    - lisper 4y ago
      But that is not what I said.
      - threatofrain 4y ago
        By spiritually canonical I mean that it's the word of God revealed to man. These are extremely popular beliefs among Christians and not at all differentiating. I personally have not found YEC believers to be morally, spiritually or philosophically distinctive from other Christians. They just have different beliefs and other Christians generally don't care and thus do not challenge them. Of course these are not the same kinds of people who show up to YT debate circuits because that's a very distinctive kind of person.
        lisper 4y ago
        You've lost the plot. You asked me: > what separates young earth believers from the rest of the church? and I answered: > Taking seriously the idea that the Bible -- and the book of Genesis in particular -- is the revealed Word of God. The operative phrase there was "taking seriously". Many Christians profess to believe that the Bible is the revealed Word of God, but they don't really take it seriously. They play fast and loose with semantics and hermeneutics. YEC's don't. They believe that if the Bible says that the world was created in six days, then it means what it says: it happened in six 24-hour days. You crunch the numbers on the rest of the Bible's timeline and the result you get is a universe that is ~6000 years old, and so that must be the truth because God wouldn't lie. If the science says otherwise, the science must be wrong.
version_five 4y ago
I like the point that "logic" is not going to win the argument. I see so often people arguing against those with vastly different views and basically talking to them like children, like linking to articles or studies that explain a belief that is obvious and well known. When the source of disagreement is as you say far deeper, often outside the realm of fact and down to philosophy, and just gets ignored in favor of assuming people that disagree must be stupid

by lisper 4y ago

WFHRenaissance 4y ago

The Catholic Church is able to merge telos and evolution. YEC should try harder.

aidenn0 4y ago
Per TFA, apparently not in Brazil...

hammock 4y ago

What is teleology and what is the alternative?

lisper 4y ago
I've updated my comment to answer that because I figured not everyone would know. But the TL;DR is that teleology is the assumption that existence has a purpose.
- gjsman-1000 4y ago
  Can you scientifically prove existence has no purpose?
  - moate 4y ago
    No, but that's not how science works. The general assumption is that the person making a provable conclusion (ie. that there IS a purpose) has the burden of proof. If I claim to have a magical invisible dragon in my garage it's on me to prove otherwise, not for you to prove it doesn't.
  - lisper 4y ago
    No, I can't. I can't prove anything scientifically. That's not how science works. Science doesn't prove anything. Science seeks the best explanations to explain observations. I see no evidence that existence has a purpose, and so the best explanation for that lack of evidence is that there is no purpose. But I can't prove it.
    - Mikhail_Edoshin 4y ago
      This is not the best explanation. This is a scientific explanation. Due to the nature of that cultural phenomenon science is only allowed to use statements of a certain kind: suitable to build rather precisely defined logical models and then draw conclusions that stay entirely valid under the same assumptions. This is a very useful abstraction in a way. Yet it is limited. Take good art, for example. Something like "A Christmas Carol". It it markedly unscientific. Yet it also explains certain things about reality. Things that are rather hard to arrive to in a scientific way. And maybe that explanation is actually better?

maria2 4y ago

How can something be both logically sound and violently at odds with reality? What you’re saying is that those who hold YEC beliefs have an inconsistent belief system, but the belief in YEC is constructed with valid arguments within that belief system. That’s like the opposite of logically sound.

lisper 4y ago
I should have qualified that with "violently at odds with the scientific view of reality" (I've gone back and edited my original comment). And it's not hard to see how this can happen. Quantum mechanics is pretty violently at odds with most people's intuitions. > those who hold YEC beliefs have an inconsistent belief system No, that is absolutely not what I am saying. Their belief system is, for the most part, logically sound, and so it is consistent. But it is violently at odds with science, and so they end up with conspiracy theories to explain why scientists believe in evolution so overwhelmingly. Conspiracy theories are improbable, but they are not inconsistent.
- mfer 4y ago
  > it is violently at odds with science What is science in this context? Is it the scientific method? Is it the popular view among scientists as a whole (many of whom are not experts in areas they don't work in)? Is it the view of scientists in a niche? What happens when scientists in a niche disagree (they do all the time)? I'm guessing you mean the popular view of scientists and most people see it conveyed through media, pop culture, etc. If physicists believe/agree with/state evolution what's the science foundation to look at them as an expert to trust? Would I trust a mechanical engineers view on circuit design because they are an engineer just like electrical engineers? Being curious I've read works from physicists who view an ancient universe and YEC (they really do exist). I've done this in good faith to try to understand how intelligent people with advanced degrees can come to different conclusions. I bring this up to show the complexity, views, and assumptions to what we quickly call science.
  - lisper 4y ago
    > I'm guessing you mean the popular view of scientists Yes, though your use of the word "popular" puts an unfair spin on it. There is overwhelming consensus (like 99%) among working biologists (who are in the best position to evaluate the evidence) that evolution is true. Yes, there can be complexity and nuance. But evolution is quite literally one of the least controversial issues in all of science.

Teknoman117 4y ago

For the uninitiated, what is "YEC"? Google wants to define is as "Young Entrepreneur Council" but I doubt that's what you're referring to. Edit: Thank you kind internet strangers.

gjsman-1000 4y ago
Young Earth Creationism
mikedelago 4y ago
I believe it's "Young-Earth Creationist" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Earth_creationism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Earth_creationism
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
BuyMyBitcoins 4y ago
Young Earth Creationist. It’s a kind of creationism that posits the world is somewhere around 6,000 to 10,000 years old. That number was arrived at through interpreting scripture as inerrant and correct. This is in contrast to other forms of creationism which have different interpretations of just how long events that happened in the scripture took place. For instance the days of creation need not be modern 24 hour days.

adamsmith143 4y ago

> It is a very long chain of reasoning from there, but this it the thing that most detractors of YEC miss: it is logically sound. OF course it's not and most counter arguments knock it on it's face at that point. Any idiot can see that just because something looks designed doesn't mean it has a designer. >[2] An extremely abridged version goes something like this: a cursory inspection of the world around us seems to indicate that it was designed. So let us adopt that as a hypothesis. What would be expect to see? Well, one thing we would expect is that the designer might have provided a manual to go along with his/her/its designed creation. And lo and behold, there is such a manual. Actually, there are many such manuals. Collectively they are referred to as holy texts. The logical rabbit warren branches out from there. Except all the actually useful manuals were built by man and not provided by a Designer.

bryanlarsen 4y ago

I've only done it twice, but both times were with very logical people, engineers. My conclusion was that we had different base assumptions. They assumed that an omnipotent God existed. With that assumption, it's quite straight forward to build a logical case for evolution.

lisper 4y ago
> They assumed that an omnipotent God existed. I actually doubt that they assumed that. Much more likely their belief in an omnipotent God was based on some more fundamental assumption, like that the Bible is true.
- bryanlarsen 4y ago
  Yes they believed in more than the omnipotent God. However, the omnipotent God was the base assumption in their argument. It didn't require belief in the Bible as a base assumption for their argument to hold together, only a belief in an omnipotent God. The robustness in their argument was probably so it would hold up for both literal Bible adherents and figurative Bible adherents. IIRC it was some sort of adaptation of an argument for a literal Bible. IIRC it was something like this: If you believe in a figurative Bible you believe in an omnipotent God. If you believe in an omnipotent God, then (steps elided because I can't remember them, but they were logical), thus proving a literal Bible thesis and a figurative Bible thesis were equivalent.
  - lisper 4y ago
    OK, I've never met a religious person who admitted to this as their base assumption, and I've talked to a lot of religious people (I run a weekly Bible study). It seems like a really weird thing to assume. But my experience is obviously not exhaustive.
    - bryanlarsen 4y ago
      That's not their base belief. It's their argument's base assumption. Nobody ever states their true base assumptions when arguing anything. Most people don't know the base assumptions of the argument they are making. It takes a lot of analysis to tease it out.

mfer 4y ago

What I find interesting in all of this is the number of assumptions that are made on all sides. The assumptions are often not documented or discussed. It's easy to look at religion or YEC to pull out the assumptions. Yet, I've found assumptions show up in all views on the topic.

jvanderbot 4y ago

This point will be nitpicked , and I'm tempted to do so myself, but it only goes to show how deep rooted the conflict is when this appears at its face value to be contradictory with very reality.

standardUser 4y ago

This makes a tremendous amount of sense to me. Sorry to be political (what a crime), but I think it's a useful framework for thinking about the modern conservative movement. So much of the right now defines itself not with a cohesive ideology or specific set of policies, but rather in knee-jerk opposition to anything their supposed enemies believe. When your starting point is "these people are 100 percent wrong no matter what they say" you are now forced to explain why. And the result is a whole universe of shared lies and conspiracy theories (and people trying really hard to create some consistency or reasoning to back up those lies).

threatofrain 4y ago

The belief that everything has a purpose is not very distinctive among Christians, so within a church, what separates young earth believers from the rest of the church?

lisper 4y ago
Taking seriously the idea that the Bible -- and the book of Genesis in particular -- is the revealed Word of God.
- threatofrain 4y ago
  That is not much of a differentiator. Genesis is the most well known book in the entire bible. Accepting that this book is spiritually and formally canonical is a very low bar.
  - lisper 4y ago
    But that is not what I said.
    - threatofrain 4y ago
      By spiritually canonical I mean that it's the word of God revealed to man. These are extremely popular beliefs among Christians and not at all differentiating. I personally have not found YEC believers to be morally, spiritually or philosophically distinctive from other Christians. They just have different beliefs and other Christians generally don't care and thus do not challenge them. Of course these are not the same kinds of people who show up to YT debate circuits because that's a very distinctive kind of person.
      - lisper 4y ago
        You've lost the plot. You asked me: > what separates young earth believers from the rest of the church? and I answered: > Taking seriously the idea that the Bible -- and the book of Genesis in particular -- is the revealed Word of God. The operative phrase there was "taking seriously". Many Christians profess to believe that the Bible is the revealed Word of God, but they don't really take it seriously. They play fast and loose with semantics and hermeneutics. YEC's don't. They believe that if the Bible says that the world was created in six days, then it means what it says: it happened in six 24-hour days. You crunch the numbers on the rest of the Bible's timeline and the result you get is a universe that is ~6000 years old, and so that must be the truth because God wouldn't lie. If the science says otherwise, the science must be wrong.

version_five 4y ago

I like the point that "logic" is not going to win the argument. I see so often people arguing against those with vastly different views and basically talking to them like children, like linking to articles or studies that explain a belief that is obvious and well known. When the source of disagreement is as you say far deeper, often outside the realm of fact and down to philosophy, and just gets ignored in favor of assuming people that disagree must be stupid