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Young Earth creationism

From RationalWiki
“ Despite a full century of scientific insights attesting to the
antiquity of life and the greater antiquity of the Earth, more than
The divine comedy

Creationism
half the American population believes that the entire cosmos was
created 6,000 years ago. This is, incidentally, about a thousand
years after the Sumerians invented glue.
—Sam Harris[1]
”
Young Earth creationism (YEC) is the belief that our planet and universe were Running gags
created, from nothing,[note 1] in six days, approximately 6,000 years ago, by the Biblical literalism
God of the Abrahamic religions. Adherents of young Earth creationism are known Young/Old Earth
as "young Earth creationists," or simply YECs. Intelligent design
Creation scientists
Their belief derives from a literal interpretation of the two creation myths in the
Biblical book of Genesis.[2][note 2] This means that young-Earth creationists Jokes aside
believe the six days enumerated in Genesis were standard 24-hour[note 3] days and
Bird evolution
use James Ussher's chronology (or a suitable alternative) to date the Earth's K-Pg extinction event
origins to only a few thousand years ago. Answers in Genesis claims science is Mitochondrial Eve
the work of fallible humans while the Bible is the infallible word of God. This Plate tectonics
must be true because the Bible says so.[3] Young earth creationists reject the
mountains of scientific evidence demonstrating the earth is older than a few Blooper reel
thousand years, as well as the various attempts to reconcile the stories in Genesis
with science, such as day-age creationism. Many Christians do not hold this view, Argument from design
as they accept much of the science done on this and grant the usefulness of Geoscience Research
Institute
allegorical interpretations.[4] Scientific storkism
Serpent seed doctrine
According to a study released in 2019, as many as 40% of Americans believe in a
creationist view of human origin within roughly the past 10,000 years.[5] v-t-e
(https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?
title=Template:Crenav&action=edit)
A firm belief in the biblical worldwide flood and in the story of Noah is also a
cornerstone of young Earth creationism. Proponents of YEC use this flood myth
to explain away almost all observations that scientists have interpreted as pointing to a significantly older Earth.

Creationists who believe in a created earth that doesn't conflict (as much) with science are called Old Earth
creationists. This category sometimes includes believers in theistic evolution despite acceptance of evolution
(albeit minus the methodological naturalism in the case of the guided-evolution branch of theistic evolution).

Young Earth creationism tends to flourish in conservative, fundamentalist, and Protestant Christianity and
occasionally in the Catholic and Anglican churches and in Judaism. Islamic creationists like Harun Yahya tend to
be old Earth creationists.

Contents
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1 Ellen said "Let there be woo!", and there was

2 When was creation?
2.1 Ussher
2.2 The Omphalos hypothesis
3 Problems
4 Demographics
5 See also
6 External links
7 Notes
8 References

Ellen said "Let there be woo!", and there was

Ellen G. White (1827-1915), co-founder of Seventh-day Adventism (SDA), can be viewed as the creator (no pun
intended) of YEC — not that many people noticed while she was alive, though.[6] White proclaimed that the Earth
was created in 6 literal days, and furthermore that The Flood rearranged the geological record, key elements of
YEC.[6] A fellow-SDA member, George McCready Price (1870-1963), published three books that helped
popularize White's pronouncements, Outlines of Modern Christianity and Modern Science (1902),[7] The
Fundamentals of Geology (1916),[8] and The New Geology (1923).[6][9] SDA members are basically required to
believe in YEC because of White, but Price's books brought her ideas to fundamentalist Christians. Among
fundamentalists, most dispensational pre-millennialists are YEC believers.[6] In 1961, The Fundamentals of
Geology was given a retelling by John C. Whitcomb Jr. & Henry M. Morris in a new and more credulous popular
book titled The Genesis Flood.[10]

When was creation?

Ussher
See the main article on this topic: Ussher § Ussher's chronology

“ How did Young Earth Creationists decide that the Universe was only 6,000 years old? A 17th
century monk added up the obviously dubious ages of generations of fictional characters from his
favorite folklore, and from that, he determined that the world was magically created on October
23rd, 4004 BCE.
”
—AronRa, How Dendrochronology Disproves Noah's Flood[11]

Although the book of Genesis does not mention any specific creation date, the 4004 BCE date of creation upheld
by young Earth creationists was calculated by the Anglican Archbishop of Armagh, James Ussher,[12] in 1658 and
John Lightfoot in 1644.[13][note 4] These chronologies involve meticulously tracing the lineages recounted in the
Bible (including Noah's supposed 900 years) back to known time, and compared Middle Eastern, biblical and
Mediterranean sources to come up with the surprisingly exact date of October 23, 4004 BCE. At 9:00 in the
morning, EST.

This figure would put the age of the Earth many orders of magnitude less than the scientifically agreed figure based
on radiometric dating among other pieces of evidence. Specifically, the actual age of the Earth is about 75 million
percent longer than the Biblical age of the Earth. To put this in perspective, those with the YEC worldview believe

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the world was created after the first domestication of the dog (and possibly the goat), after the first stones were laid
at Stonehenge, after people settled in Scotland and more. Evidence against a recent creation is quite simply
overwhelming.

In a typical case of moving the goalposts, many modern young-Earth creationists have blurred the date of creation
to "under 10,000 years" thus avoiding the nasty problems of a written history just over 7000 years old, and those
pesky comments that are "always under 10,000 years old." Being less specific also avoids any problems people
have with the actual genealogies in the Bible.[14]

The Omphalos hypothesis

See the main article on this topic: Omphalos hypothesis

Some branches of YEC explain away inconvenient evidence such as dinosaur fossils, ancient rock strata in the
Grand Canyon, and light from stars millions of light years away, as red herrings planted by God to test the faith of
believers.

This hypothesis, that God created the world, and indeed the universe, deliberately to appear much older than it
actually is, was promoted by the Calvinist and naturalist Philip Henry Gosse in his 1857 book Omphalos, giving
rise to the Omphalos hypothesis, although there are earlier examples of similar theories.

The Omphalos hypothesis reconciles the Biblical account of creationism with scientific findings which would seem
to contradict it, and in fact was probably created with this intention in mind. However, it doesn't fare well against
Occam's razor, since it presents a more elaborate explanation for scientific evidence than we would get from
interpreting evidence at face value. It is also unfalsifiable and resembles Last Thursdayism or the idea that we're
living in a simulated reality.

The Omphalos hypothesis also suggests a deceitful God and many creationists reject it for this reason.[note 5]

Problems
See the main articles on this topic: Creationism § Problems and Evidence against a recent creation

“ Nearly all peoples have developed their own creation myths, and the Genesis story is just the one
that happened to have been adopted by one particular tribe of Middle Eastern herders. It has no
more special status than the belief of a particular West African tribe that the world was created
from the excrement of ants.
”
—Richard Dawkins

The concept of the Earth being instantaneously formed only 6000 years ago obviously flies in the face of many
fields of modern science. The branches of science you have to ignore to believe in young Earth creationism are
numerous—containing practically all of known science—but most notably these sciences are biology (the theory
of evolution and palaeontology), astronomy (starlight problem), geology (volcanic formation, sedimentation, plate
tectonics), archaeology (historic development of ancient civilizations), dendrochronology (tree-ring dating), and
physics (radiometric dating).

These scientific fields are backed by centuries of research by the scientific method, are falsifiable (yet unfalsified)
and have accumulated vast quantities of supportive evidence.

Young Earth creationists challenge all scientific evidence for an old Earth with the unfalsifiable belief that God
simply created Earth with all the evidence of an old Earth already in place.
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Also, the Bible does not explicitly say the world was created
6,000 years ago, so they are interpreting the Bible, which they
generally insist must be taken literally.

Demographics
See the main article on this topic: Creationism §
Demographics

Young Earth creationism exists primarily among Christian,

Muslim, and Jewish fundamentalists, and is most popular in
the USA.

See also
Old Earth creationism
Branches of science you have to ignore to believe in
young Earth creationism
Fun:Statements that are wrong on the level of a Young
Earth
Evidence against a recent creation Are we talking Venusian, Earth, or Uranian days?
Intelligent design
The incontrovertible evidence of common descent
Leviathan
Challenge: Falsifiability of Creationism
Starlight problem
Creation Museum
Russ Miller
Got Questions

External links
YEC Resources:

Answers in Genesis (http://www.answersingenesis.org/)

Creation Ministries International (http://www.creationontheweb.com/)
Young Cosmos (http://www.youngcosmos.com/)
Carbon-14 Biblical literalist date 'calculator' (https://www.genesisandgenetics.org/carbon-14-biblical-date-
calculator/) — A 'tool' for converting scientific ages to YEC dates, where everything older than 2348 BCE is
converted to 2348 BC. It is basically an aid for YEC confirmation bias.

Refutation resources:

Talk Origins (http://www.talkorigins.org/)

No Answers in Genesis (http://www.noanswersingenesis.org.au/)
The Plesiosaur Site, Creationism (http://www.plesiosaur.com/creationism/index.php)
Why do people laugh at creationists? (http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=AC3481305829426D)
Why Young Earth Creationists Must Deny Gravity (http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=8bRvt0InhYk&feature=PlayList&p=5975FF2FEECF90D3&index=0)
The Skeptic's Dictionary on YECs. (http://www.skepdic.com/yec.html)
Ronald L. Numbers The Creationists University of California Press 1993
(http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0520083938/qid=1121130206/sr=8-
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1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/102-5232657-5324157?v=glance&s=books&n=507846)
Seventh Day Adventist Believe in Young Earth (http://skeptically.org/christianity/id9.html)
Creating Creationism Part 1 (http://www.reasons.org/resources/apologetics/history1.shtml), Part 2
(http://www.reasons.org/resources/apologetics/history2.shtml), Part 3
(http://www.reasons.org/resources/apologetics/history3.shtml)
Early Church Fathers on Genesis, This article from the DMD Publishing CO. site addresses and debunks the
young earth lie about early church fathers embracing the young earth concept
(http://home.entouch.net/dmd/churchfathers.htm)
Young Earth Evidence Rebuttals (http://www.epicidiot.com/evo_cre/young_earth_evidence.htm)
Exposing the Roots of Young Earth Creationism
(https://letterstocreationists.wordpress.com/2015/07/09/exposing-the-roots-of-young-earth-creationism/)
Letters to Creationists, by Scott Buchanan, July 9, 2015

Notes
1. Latin: ex nihilo.
2. There are references to other creation myths elsewhere
in the Bible, as in the Psalms and Book of Job, but
creationists mostly ignore those.
3. Once upon a time.people defined hours as fractions of a
day, but Science now offers a more precise definition in
terms of atomic seconds, so we can avoid the fallacy of
circular definition.
4. It should be mentioned in Ussher's defense that his
methodology was probably as sound as possible given
his time and premises.
5. Romans 1:20 contradicts this hypothesis. Romans 1:20
says "... being understood from what has been made..."
we can't really understand this world if the Omphalos
hypotheses was correct.

References
1. The Case Against Faith
(https://www.samharris.org/blog/item/the-case-against-
faith) by Sam Harris (Nov 13, 2006) Newsweeek.
2. Genesis (http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/k/kjv/kjv-idx?
type=DIV1&byte=1477), King James Bible version.
3. Don't call us young-earth creationists
(https://answersingenesis.org/creationism/young-
earth/young-earth-creationists/)
4. See the Wikipedia article on Hermeneutics.
5. Gallup, July 26, 2019, (accessed on October 2, 2019)
(https://news.gallup.com/poll/261680/americans-
believe-creationism.aspx)
6. Righting America at the Creation Museum by Susan L.
Trollinger & William Vance Trollinger Jr. (2016) Johns
Hopkins University Press. ISBN 1421419513.
7. Outlines of Modern Christianity and Modern Science
(https://archive.org/details/MN41649ucmf_2) by
George McCready Price (1902) Pacific Press
Publishing Company.
8. The Fundamentals of Geology and Their Bearings on
the Doctrine of a Literal Creation
(https://archive.org/details/fundamentalsgeo02pricgoog
) George McCready Price (1916). Pacific Press
Publishing Association.
v - t - e (https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Crebox&action=edit) Articles
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Young_Earth_creationism
9. The New Geology: A Textbook for Colleges, Normal
Schools, and Training Schools; and for the General
Reader
(http://documents.adventistarchives.org/Books/NG1923
.pdf) by George McCready Price (1923). Pacific Press
Publishing Association.
10. The Genesis Flood: The Biblical Record and Its
Scientific Implications by John C. Whitcomb Jr. &
Henry M. Morris (1961) Presbyterian & Pub. Co. ISBN
0825433266.
11. How Dendrochronology Disproves Noah's Flood
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=_KEfj3LLNSY&feature=youtu.be&t=101) (1:41)
12. James Ussher's Date of the Creation
(http://www.astronomy.ohio-
state.edu/~pogge/Ast161/Unit5/ussher.html), Ohio Sate
University
13. Bishop Ussher Dates the World: 4004 BC
(http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/ussher.htm), Lock
Haven University]
14. Evidence for a Young World
(https://answersingenesis.org/astronomy/age-of-the-
universe/evidence-for-a-young-world/) by Russell
Humphreys (June 1, 2005) Answers in Genesis.
about creationism [show]
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