Young Earth Creationism Vs. Science (Statler Waldorf Contd)

[Statler Waldorf]

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One thing that has always puzzled me about the idea that the Earth is only about 6000 years old is the dinosaurs. If indeed the Earth is as young as these people say it is then it follows that 99.999% of the Earth's history has been populated by humans. And if Genesis is anything to go by, civilisations in one form or another have been around for that long also.

Why is it then that none of these different societies that must stretch back to the dawn of creation make any mention at all of these fabulous creatures that roamed practically every square mile of the Earth's surface. Even if they didn't call them dinosaurs, which of course they wouldn't have, they must still have run into them. I mean, they where everywhere and many of them were the size of houses. I mean, how could you miss them?

But no, the only animals that seem to get a mention are the likes of cattle, sheep, goats, fish, lions etc. etc.

No mentions of the likes of T-Rex, Stegosaurus, the Sauropods (you really have to have your head buried in the desert sand to miss those), Triceratops and all the others. Nothing about them in the bible, no mention of them in other ancient texts, no cave paintings, no tools or weapons found fashioned from T-Rex teeth or Stegasaur spines. Nothing.

If the Earth really is 6000 years old and people and dinosaurs lived together how is it that none of these people seem to have noticed them?

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It’s good to see you have an inquiring mind, I like that. Actually all of civilizations did speak of Dinosaurs, all the time too. The dragon legends are such a perplexing problem to evolutionists that even Carl Sagan wrote a book trying to answer the question “how could all of these civilizations come up with dragon descriptions so similar?” In his book (The Dragons of Eden) his only explanation was that these are somehow ancient memories from our reptilian days. This explanation is of course absurd because there is no empirical evidence what-so-ever that memories can be inherited. A far better explanation is that these large terrible lizards were in fact dinosaurs. Keep in mind that some very credible historians such as Marco Polo and Josephus spoke of Dragons. The Chinese calendar has twelve animals eleven of which we know existed the last of which is a dragon. The word “dragon” is used almost more than any other animal word in the bible, sometimes figuratively and sometimes when describing real creatures. So why would these animals fall into mythology? Well in the early 19th century the consensus view was that species were fixated, there was no such thing as extinction. So when people heard these stories about large lizards that seemed to not be living anymore, they assumed they were tales of mythology. When dragon stories are actually examined they are very rarely treated by the people of the day as mythology but actual real living animals.

The thing that scares is that dragons appear in almost every religion in on incarnation or other

Probably it's just people fusing dinosaurs bones together trough

I don’t’ think it’s anything to be scared about; maybe your worldview just needs revision.

People in earlier civilizations did some amazing things, however I don’t think advanced paleontology was one of them.

Its not my theory Statler, it doesn’t have an ownership. Just lots of hard working scientists validating on it a daily basis. You claim you are not arguing from incredulity and respond with “ugh”, "fairly tales" and “is absurd” and give no further evidence nor argumentation. You are condemned by your own words.

Apparently the scientists on the creation side of the aisle are not hard working or something. Ok how about this? I am sure you are aware that arguing from incredibility deals with denying something because it is too incredible, I am not doing that. I am poking holes in your theory by pointing to evidence that cannot be correctly interpreted by it. There’s a big difference.

I have given you falsifiability tests, to which I’ll address again in another of your rejoinders below. Every piece of evidence presented never appears to be enough, because when predictions can be made and the evidnce does not concur with YEC; you ignore them. For instance c14 dates in coal (taken at the face value you seem to want to take them at) would date the coal seams to 40k years ago. Are you now going to accept YEC is wrong at 6k years (an error of nearly a factor of 7).

You are interpreting the evidence using your model and trying to use this interpretation to argue against my model, that doesn’t work. When carbon dating is calibrated taking into account a global flood which of course is part of my model it yields ages in the thousands not the tens of thousands. Besides, you can’t say my model is incorrect because the date is off by a factor of 7 when that very same date is off by a factor of 37,500 when compared to the model you accept as true.

You started the jokes by claiming all dinosaur remains where only a few thousand years old. It was naughty, but allow my some latitude. If you choose to ignore stratigraphy, paleontology, geochemistry (including radiometric results from a variety of isotopes - queue hysteria) which all yield a powerful explanation that is at odds with the YEC hypothesis, there is little I can do in addition to educate you.

The YEC side can explain everything you just cited very easily using a young earth model. These explanations are far more valid than “Well soft tissue can just last that long in spite of everything we have directly observed to the contrary.” Wishing away young earth evidence by just point to other evidence that you like better isn’t even a logical argument. At least the YEC side has explanations for the claimed old earth evidence.

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Yes I guess I missed it (and do you know what the world of science must have too, given the accusations of scientific conspiracy you claim keep this information from people) and yes I am skeptical. There are however some theories that seem a little hard not to accept provisionally and in science provisionally is as good as you get. I’m not sure why you keep banging on about my worldviews…I like facts, evidence and theories that are testable. Just a sneeking suspiscion that you may be the one with the fixed “worldview” (whatever that means) and a desparate to validate it…and I mean DESPARATE.

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I just realize that science is not infallible and the majority of scientists have been wrong in the past and will be proven wrong in the future. You seem to believe that somehow scientists don’t use a worldview to interpret evidence, this of course is contrary to the very nature of evidence.

Oh no! I’m not doing your work for you. The facts have already been established by these disciplines. They are ALL consistent with the ToE. You should be the one raking through the scientific papers picking out the facts and establishing why YEC is a better theory than the ToE. Requires a bit of hard work on the part of the creationists, as opposed to the typical armchair commentary and incredulity we normally hear.

Oh so you can’t provide any evidence to support your claims? I didn’t think so. That was easy. I already provided 25 pieces of evidence on here, the least you could do is try and find one!

You know when I said …Just one specific example the humble sea urchin…. That would mean it is one specific example and not the entirety of the “amazing evidence” you no doubt will ignore. The attempt to minimize the argument by using dismissive language like “little sea urchin story” is at best contemptuous and your rejoinder non-sensenical. If there was a freshwater flood off the continents into the oceans, non marine sediments would have buried bottom feeders like sea urchins in the lowest sediments. Infact they only appear in the middle upper sedimentary layers of the Triassic and in marine sediments such as oolithic limestones. If you care to visit sites in Gloucester (in the UK) you can dig them out the cliff face for yourself. Try to stick to the arguments instead of getting emotional.

Actually the flood model requires the initial movement of water from the oceans to the continents, not from the continents to the oceans. This water would then recede back to the oceans due to the upheaval of many of the prominent mountain ranges today (explaining marine fossils in the Himalayas). I was not getting emotional, I was pointing out the inconsistency of your logic. If you believe that the fact we do not find sea urchins “earlier” in the record means they didn’t exist then you would have to also conclude that Coelacanth didn’t exist for the last 65 million years because we never found it in the fossil record. A better logical conclusion is that because fossilization is a very rare event one cannot use the fossil record as evidence for when animals did and did not exist.

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If I have erred please make the argument. You complain I don’t point out fallacies, then complain when I do. An Appeal to Authority is a fallacy with the following form:
1. Person A is (claimed to be) an authority on subject S.
2. Person A makes claim C about subject S.
3. Therefore, C is true.
This fallacy is committed when the person in question is not a legitimate authority on the subject. More formally, if person A is not qualified to make reliable claims in subject S, then the argument will be fallacious . Netwon and Kepler were brilliant, but not experts in evolutionary biology, biology, natural theology or anything else vaguely related to this thread. The accusation stands.

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If you’ll notice I appealed to the greatest minds on the Creation side of the aisle (Newton and Kepler) and two of the most prominent figures on the Evolutionary side of the aisle (Darwin and Dawkins). All of which, agree with me, that supernatural creation and naturalistic creation (Evolution) are the only two possible answers to the origins debate. Now if you do not feel that Darwin was a proper authority on his own theory- then maybe you are right, maybe I did commit that fallacy. However, I think it’s pretty clear he was an authority on Evolution.

Why are you asking me to do your work for you again. You are making the claim that there is only YEC or Evolution, so you must demonstrate that via argumentation. All you are doing is saying these people said it is, therefore thats good enough for me. Firstly I don't know that they did, if it is true then you should be easily able to demonstrate it. YEC has less credibility than OEC, but you haven't disproven the view of the Raelians either. So come on lets hear you debunk them and any other argument via deduction or induction.

You can’t refute my claim that supernatural creation and evolution are the only two possible answers to the origins question? Then my argument stands un-refuted. (Old Earth creationism is a form of supernatural creation so you are proving my point). Like I said before, once you admit that supernatural creation has to be the only explanation due to the impossibility of naturalistic creation then we can talk about why it has to be the God of the Bible and why he did it in 6 days 6000 years ago. Get to Step 1 before we move to step 2.

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What are you talking about? So you asked for evidence I presented plenty from just the very narrowest of spectrums of evolutionary biology, genetics and paleontology and you have no response again. You set the test, I met it and I do not hear you accepting the ToE as the best theory for explaining the facts.

Either you have moved your goalposts or you have not stated the goalposts clearly enough. So state them. The key word is, guess what the poster child of creationist nonsense; so called "information", so lets hear you hammer some detail out:

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Not moving the goalposts, I asked for an increase in information and you showed me an article that did not define information correctly.

-What EXACTLY do you mean by “information”?
-How do YOU quantify “information”?
-Why is the amount of information “important” rather than the sequence of nucleotides in the genome?

Well information theory is a huge and sometimes overwhelming new scientific discipline. I can give you some very quick answers to these questions but if you want satisfactory answers I would suggest you read some of the greatest work on the subject like Werner Gitt’s book, “In the Beginning There Was Information”. He does an excellent job of demonstrating exactly how semantic information is quantified in DNA. If you don’t want to buy the book I believe AIG has it up on their website for free.
A short definition of information though would be “Specified Complexity.” This is just a short working definition that is usually very helpful. The actual Universal Definition of Information deals with four necessary conditions- code, meaning, expected action, and intended purpose. Semantic information is more measured in quality rather than sheer quantity like Shannon information. I find the best way to think of it is as books. Books hold a certain ‘amount’ of information, this information can be measure by it’s meaning or it’s ability to inform. So putting two copies of each page in a book would double the amount of Shannon information but not semantic information. Throwing random letters here and there in the book would most likely decrease the total amount of semantic information while increasing the amount of Shannon information. The article you pointed to was dealing only with Shannon information. Unfortunately for the evolutionist, the human genome holds an enormous amount of semantic information. There has never been an natural process observed to increase the amount of semantic information. So naturalistic means are cannot adequately explain the DNA molecule. I already typed more about that than I was hoping to, I would encourage you to read more on the topic.

You throw the term canard around a lot. This really is one, I do not need to defend abiogenesis to defend the ToE.

Well considering it is part of the General Theory of Evolution I would expect you to defend it if you accept the theory. If you can’t defend it that’s ok too though, but you don’t really have a rational basis for accepting the theory then.

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Again, what are you talking about, you're arguments are becomming very ragged? The common ancestor to modern day coelocanths was first seen in the Devonian. The instance of a present day coelacanth is testament to its adaptability, survivability etc. Evolution predicts the animals change over time in response to their environment and random mutations, it says nothing about whether animals thought previously extinct (through no modern day representatives) will suddenly be found in environmental niches. The same is true with the crocodilians, they have speciated for sure since the creatceous but come down from those very ancient times almost unchanged morphologically. Except becuase they live in near shore environments, rivers lakes etc; there is better fossil evidence. Find a living dinosaur tomorrow, it does not falsify the ToE; find archaopteryx nesting in your tree, it does not falsify the ToE; find sabre tooth tigers in the tundra, it does not falsify the ToE; find tiktalik in the local swamp, it does not falsify the ToE...got it yet?...just in case....

....the ToE has never stated that animals that we think are extinct wont be found again.... and if you believe it has; find just one published scientific paper stating it.

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Well this is a bit of an oversimplification of the GTE, animals changing over time is something that is part of the theory but is also something that is accepted (and was first proposed ) by creationists. The actual GTE, also states that all of these animals derive from a single common ancestor, this single common ancestor also arose by naturalistic means. However, as I pointed out before finding humans in early layers would not falsify the theory because there were times in the past where this was thought to have happened and evolutionists just came up with more rescue mechanisms to hold onto the theory.

And again it is not my theory, but I really wish I'd have been bright enough to uncover it!

I am calling it your theory because you believe in it, just like you don’t call Christianity someone’s religion because they came up with it themselves.

The sound of an argument clutching at some very distant straws. I have no idea what you are talking about, the operational, origin science distinction is arbitrary and unfounded. You have evaded the question. I’ll ask again a try a different tack. If science is open to ‘supernatural’ interpretations, name one scientist proposing, one theory that is supernatural in origin or working on a theory which includes the possibility of supernatural agency.

What! You don’t know the difference between operational and origins sciences!? I thought it was very simple, operational sciences deals with observations in the present that are repeatable; it tries to explain how the world works today and will work in the future. Origins sciences (a.k.a historical sciences) deals with what happened in the past based on inductive reasoning, it is not repeatable or directly observable.

There are hundreds of scientists who propose this theory; it’s called the creation science community lol. Besides these guys (and gals), many in the ID community are open to supernatural explanations for origins, it’s only the strict naturalists who don’t like this approach.

And finally…..still un-retracted and bypassed in your last response. You have stated that you are more qualified than myslef, without knowing anything of my background. You have stated that I hold views only to fit in with my "worldview", and have also invented 'goalposts' moved them yourself and then claimed that I moved them.

Yes, is this a statement or question? I am thinking that the fact you don’t know the difference between operational science and origins science is a pretty good indicator you didn’t receive a proper education in the field of science considering those are basic definitions.

Again, your hiding behind generalities, provide a site that displays this evidence.
The fact is that possibility of rapid burial during localised flooding events, and other short-term depositional episodes is in full agreement with these features and the surrounding geology while your claim of global catastrpohsim cannot even hold water here.

Ahh the old, “There was no global flood, just localized flooding all over the Earth at the same point in time” argument. You are just trying to cram the evidence into your paradigm. The fact of the matter is that thousands of fossils span across eons of time’s worth of strata and there is no real explanation for it using a deep time approach.

Statler, What on earth are you talking about?

I just got back from some fieldwork, the site included rocks of the Carboniferous (More than 1000 years ago ) Interbedded with the Limestones & Mudstone we observed highly bioturbated beds so just by coincidence I can show your claim to be bullshit.

Kind of funny how a few weeks ago you told me that personal stories don’t mean anything but now you are using personal stories. Special pleading.

Maybe I did not formulate the argument correctly, I am not a geologist so sometimes I don’t get my terminology correct. Here is the article that talks about the issue…

[url] http://creation.com/the-three-sisters-st...-australia[/url]

I'm starting to think you haven't even bothered to find out how mainstream geology etc... is conducted. The principle of Uniformatarianism is used as a genral guide to processes i.e. the processes operating today are the same as those that operated in the past.

There is no assumption about constant rates for these kind of processes. Conversely, with radioactivty the rates of those processes are relatively constant. These are two seperate phonomena an you cannot expect the blanket application of a principle across them.

I know what uniformitarian is. So even though you have not observed radioactive decay rates throughout Earth’s history you assume they have been constant? Then even though you have not observed coastal erosion and sedimentary accumulation rates in the past you assume they have changed? Again, you are just cramming the evidence into the paradigm. The YEC side can at least explain why these rates have been different in the past; you just assume they have arbitrarily because they don’t fit your desired age for the Earth.

Thats the problem, they haven't. On the whole the RATE group just refused to accept the points against them or repeated their erroneous conclusions.

Actually they have articles refuting every claim made against their work, maybe you should read them.

Why should we expect the critics to re-do faulty work? The RATE group were claiming to have made a breakthrough, their work was roundly criticised, they failed to adequately justify it. Therefore it was disregarded. The onus is on them to prove their work is sound, not for anyone else to do it for them.

That’s like sitting in the back of the class and telling someone, “Oh you did that problem wrong.” Then they defend the way they did it and ask you to prove it’s incorrect and all you say is, “why would I waste my time doing it correct? I already said that you did it wrong.” The RATE group produced peer-reviewed work; there has not been any peer-reviewed work to refute their findings, so their findings stand un-refuted. Again, it’s a shame you are not as skeptical of everyone as you are Creationists, you might be a bit more objective in your reasoning if you were.

]Do you even read my posts? Because you should look at it again. Notice the words solid evidence? Nowhere have I indicated that scientific facts are based on consensus, I have said they are based on solid evidence. And your usage of the word "believe" is inappropriate. Scientists do not have beliefs. They make conclusions based on evidence. "Beliefs" are what YOU have.

How do you define solid evidence? Remember don’t’ appeal to consensus when you do this!
Actually scientists do have beliefs, they start off with axioms (senses can be trusted, one’s memory can be trusted) which of course are beliefs.

Actually, I probably would have said "What an interesting idea! Is there any evidence to support it?".

LOL! Yeah that’s you, Mr. Objective.

Any examples in the last century?

Majority of scientists were wrong about space and time before the General Theory of Relativity. Majority of scientists were wrong about the inner workings of the cell before the discovery of DNA. Both of those were in the last 100 years.

And the way people like you "interpret" evidence would make it impossible to ever convict anyone of anything.

I have a worldview that is very internally consistent, don’t hate me for it.

And radiometric dating is also done by direct observation.

Nope, all dating methods make claims about the past, which is not directly observable.

No, but we can directly observe the results of radiometric dating.

Directly observing claims about the past does not mean you can directly test the validity of those claims. Not the same thing.

Comparing radiometric dating with growth rates for people? Now THAT is a horrible analogy...

Nope not so. They are both dating methods that use very similar starting assumptions. It’s a very strong analogy actually.

Yes, I'm wrong... the planet is really only 6,000 years old and I'm too blind to see it.

It’s not a matter of being blind; you can’t observe the age of the Earth remember? You just have a worldview that interprets the evidence incorrectly.

Okay... now show me a legitimate scientific source that agrees with your contention that these things are all evidence of a young Earth. Good luck!

Logical fallacy, you have defined a “legitimate scientific source” arbitrarily as one that agrees with your position. I can play the same game; show me a legitimate scientific source that says the Earth is old! Good luck! (Keep in mind that I have defined legitimate scientific source as only young earth creation journals).

Can you provide a scientific source that reached this conclusion? Because I'll bet you can't.

Sure, the Journal Of Creation reached that conclusion. By definition it is a scientific source, so that was easy.

So you can't cite a legitimate scientific source. Didn't think you could.

No I can, just not one you think is scientific because as I already pointed out you are committing a logical fallacy.

Why isn't it evidence that Lincoln was alive in 1920? Couldn't I interpret this evidenceand reach that conclusion? And you say Lincoln's death was observed? How do you know there wasn't a conspiracy to cover up the fact Lincoln had survived the assasination attempt? I must also point out that there have been instances where someone's death was "observed" and that person later was found to still be alive.

I don’t know that for sure, and neither do you. I can say that there is strong empirical evidence to suggest that Lincoln was killed long before 1920 since empirical evidence is based on observation.

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You seem to have the misconception that we can't know something for sure unless it is observed. That is a crock. In fact, we can know things much better when they aren't observed! Which would you give more weight? The testimony of a woman who claims she was attacked by Tom Smith? Or the results of a DNA test that indicates the skin found under the woman's fingernails most certainly was NOT from Tom Smith? According to what you're trying to sell here, you would throw out the scientific results, believe the testimony and convict Tom Smith.

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You are comparing observable evidence with observable evidence so this is a false analogy. We can directly observe DNA testing and repeat it; we cannot do this with the age of the Earth. However, in a court of law witness testimony is considered stronger than circumstantial evidence just like in science.

And how does this relate to finding a boulder at the base of a cliff and concluding the boulder fell from the cliff?

Someone had to observe that boulders fall off cliffs in order for you to use any kind of reasoning about where the boulder came from.

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I always love it when the creationists toss out the "in situ" explanation for starlight propagation to explain the universe "looking" old when it is only 6000 years old.

They always fail to extrapolate to the logical conclusion that if this is indeed the case then their god is the greatest deceiver of all (satan can only look on in jealous admiration).

And if their god is such a monumental liar how can we trust anything else he says?

Also if it is all "created" why did god feel the necessity to create supernova remnants?

That would be like building a new house and putting broken light bulbs in it

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Oh really? Creationists always fail to recognize that problem? You should read the quotes below then...

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“One idea which has been put forward to address this problem is that God created the information about such events in the ‘light’ beam on its way to Earth. However, this would imply a deceptive act by God if the event had never actually occurred. Most creationists would not support this idea.”

- Mark Harwod
Creation.com


“But if God created the light beams already on their way, then that means none of the events we see in space (beyond a distance of 6,000 light-years) actually happened. It would mean that those exploding stars never exploded or existed; God merely painted pictures of these fictional events. It seems uncharacteristic of God to make illusions like this. God made our eyes to accurately probe the real universe; so we can trust that the events that we see in space really happened. For this reason, most creation scientists believe that light created in-transit is not the best way to respond to the distant starlight argument.”

- Jason Lisle
Answers in Genesis

“If God created the beams of light en-route, then they did not originate at the stars. This would indeed eliminate the distant starlight problem. However, this proposal introduces biblical and philosophical difficulties of its own. I suggest that it is reasonable (and in fact necessary) to suppose that distant starlight did in fact originate from the star, and was not created in transit.”

- Jason Lisle
Answers in Genesis

“Others have claimed that God created the light en route, but this would mean that supernova 1987A never actually happened, but rather that God created the image of the exploding star en route to Earth. Moreover, it would mean that the progenitor star never actually existed even though we have been able to see its image throughout time. While some 'appearance of age' is essential in a supernaturally created universe where things were created functionally mature, would God create the image of a star that never actually existed, or a supernova that never happened? Perhaps we cannot completely eliminate this possibility, but it nonetheless seems a remarkably uncharacteristic act for the God of the Bible.”

-Robert Newton
Creation.com

“A common response from believers is to say that God could have created the light ‘on its way’. But light from distant stars also carries information—galaxies rotating, stars exploding. So if that information never left the star, but was created ‘en route’, this means that in a 6,000-year-old universe, anything we see beyond 6,000 light-years away would be a phony light show.1 This is because the information in the light beams recording those events would have necessarily been created ‘en route’, thus the events would never have taken place in the actual stars themselves. In other words, it would involve a God of truth creating a completely unnecessary false history.2 It’s really not far removed from the embarrassing suggestion around Darwin’s time that God created the fossils in the rocks.”

- Carl Wieland
Managing Director of CMI

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It's not arguable. It's laughable. Science makes no distinction between origin and operations. If it happened, or could happen, it is in purview of the one unified methodological naturalistic science. If you claim something to be supernatural, it means it never happened, nor could ever happen, but you are pretending it did happen; or it did happen, or could happen, but you are contented with being an ignoramus as far as that part of the methodological naturalistic science is concerned. Pretending something that never happened actually happened is not legitimate in real science. Being contented with being an ignoramus is not legitimate in real science. So a supernatural explanation in science is not legitimate in any circumstances.

What a supernatural explanation is in "origin science" is relevant because "origin science" is bullshit, not science.

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Wow you contradicted yourself in a reasonably short post which is a bit amusing. First you say that science makes no distinction between origins science and operational science but then you proceed to claim that origins science is not science. Wait, I thought science made no distinction between the two?

In all actuality science does distinguish between the two. Operational sciences are our empirical sciences they require direct observation and repeatability. Matters such as common descent and the age of the earth are obviously not observable and certainly not repeatable, so they fall under what we would call historical sciences or origins sciences. Methodological Naturalism was developed in order to be used in the operational sciences; it is used by both Creationists and Evolutionists. Methodological Naturalism was not developed to be used in the origins sciences however. The very father of modern science and the scientific method Frances Bacon had no issue with believing a supernatural creation was the best explanation for the universe and life on Earth.

In fact, the philosophy of Naturalism itself has serious short-comings. It provides no basis or explanation for the preconditions of intelligibility (Laws of Logic, Morality, or Uniformity of Nature). So the naturalist really has no basis to tell someone they should be rational or appeal to logic because their worldview has no basis for morality (a “should” claim) or the laws of logic themselves. So if the philosophy of Naturalism were true, all knowledge would be impossible. So when you make statements like, “Scientists should only be naturalistic” you are actually disproving your naturalistic position.

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You got it! Finally, it ALL makes sense. God is the Deceiver!

I thought you didn't think God existed? Then how can he not exist but also be a deceiver? Just goes back to the two tenants of atheism- "God does not exist and I hate him."

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Lol this is really how Fundamentalist justify dinosaur bones

Quite frankly I expected a bit more out of you than that.