The universe appears "old", but it is still less than 10,000 years old

[Statler Waldorf]

[Esquilax]

What? You’re trying to argue that God ordains natural disasters in order to stabilize the Earth’s population? Where do you get this from?

From the guy I quoted, who literally said that, and a number of other christians who've offered that argument to me out in meatspace.

[Owlix]

For those of you who believe the earth is in fact less than 10,000 years old;
What is your opinion of continental drift?
Did it really happen?
If yes, how does it fit in your timeline?

If no, how can you deny it?

Maybe god got frustrated with the 3d puzzle he was working on and just smashed it all together.

[Statler Waldorf]

From the guy I quoted, who literally said that, and a number of other christians who've offered that argument to me out in meatspace.

My apologies, I overlooked that part of the quote. That’s not a biblical position, so I am not sure where they are coming up with that idea.

For those of you who believe the earth is in fact less than 10,000 years old;
What is your opinion of continental drift?
Did it really happen?
If yes, how does it fit in your timeline?

The generally accepted creation position on continental drift is that the majority of it took place as a runaway mechanism during the year of the flood.

[Doubting Thomas]

They're also the same ones who claim that the speed of light changed between 6,000 years ago supposedly when the universe was created and now. It's nothing more than goalpost shifting, and they know there's no way to disprove it (or prove it, but they're not concerned with that).

They do not claim this either. I really wish you guys would actually learn the material before trying to address it.

Google is your friend:

http://creation.com/speed-of-light-slowi...-after-all\

Well over a decade ago, CMI’s Creation magazine published very supportive articles concerning a theory by South Australian creationist Barry Setterfield, that the speed of light (‘c’) had slowed down or ‘decayed’ progressively since creation.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Starlight_problem

To solve the starlight problem, some creationists have proposed a change in the speed of light; this proposition became known as C-decay. The idea was first systematically advanced by creationist Barry Setterfield in his 1981 book The Velocity of Light and the Age of the Universe. Setterfield claimed that, at the date of creation, light traveled millions of times faster than it does today and has been decaying exponentially ever since.

http://christianity.stackexchange.com/qu...-the-speed

My father, at that time, was convinced that the speed of light has been slowing down since the creation of the universe.

http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles...ight-prove

But some people have proposed that light was much quicker in the past. If so, light could traverse the universe in only a fraction of the time it would take today. Some creation scientists believe that this is the answer to the problem of distant starlight in a young universe.

etc, etc, etc...

You may admit that you are wrong now.

[Zazzy]

I am curious as to why you all of the sudden moved the goalposts. Your initial claim was that creationists do not do any of their own research; well then shouldn’t one single peer-reviewed article from any year be enough to refute that claim? Why is it all of the sudden ten articles from this year? I do not mind hitting your target but I want to ensure you’ll stop moving it first.

No goalpost shifts. You claimed that there was a double standard in play, whereby scientists could claim that there is an illusion of design, but creationists cannot claim that natural selection is the illusion, and that we may all be looking at this ass-backwards. All things being equal in the primary scholarly research arena, this claim would have merit. So it boils down to evidence. Scientists publish hundreds of peer-reviewed experimental papers every year that show that genomic change occurs (and for the most part, we can prove exactly how those changes occur) in organisms, and that selective factors dependent on environment shift allele frequencies, and hence biological structures, in populations. It is so well understood that we can mimic these in the lab and study the mechanisms.

So it would seem that you, if you'd like to establish that all things ARE equal, should show me at least ten (a very small number, and a number that can give a basic overview of the field) of the best primary scholarly experimental research papers by creationists detailing a.)that something aside from natural selection changes the genotypes and phenotypes of organisms, and b.) an exact mechanism for that other mode of change. These papers should (in order to establish that all things are, in fact, equal- to give your "double standard"argument merit):
1.) be primary research papers (NOT reviews of other scientists' work).
2.) be peer-reviewed by scientists knowledgeable in the field
3.) use currently accepted experimental techniques
4.) Include all standard parts of primary research papers: intro, M&M, figures, analysis
5.) have been published in the last few years (although if there's a particularly seminal work that's a little older, I'd be willing to look at it).

Those criteria are what I would expect from anybody making any scientific claim. If these papers are of good research and analytic quality, then you'll have a good standing to the claim of a double standard, and a retraction of my comment that creationists don't do their own scholarly research.

Then we get down to the fun part: putting contradictory experimental data side by side and letting the best data- and the most sensible explanation of that data- take the field. It's how scientists do it.

I'd prefer you post it publicly so everyone else can take a look at it, but PMs will do.

** Edit- I hope it goes without saying that these papers should actually be authored by creationists, and not be papers by evolutionary scientists that you are re/mis-interpreting to support creationist ideas.

[Owlix]

The part that's hard to remember, Zazzy, is that religionists aren't scientists. It's a wonder they accept the explanation for regurgitation.

[Minimalist]

Well over a decade ago, CMI’s Creation magazine published very supportive articles concerning a theory by South Australian creationist Barry Setterfield, that the speed of light (‘c’) had slowed down or ‘decayed’ progressively since creation.

Waldork will now explain why those are not "True Creatards."

[Kitan Etos]

That’s not a biblical position.

I am quite certain that it is.

After all, when God got mad that humanity was not behaving according to his demands, what did he do? He used natural disasters to destroy them.

Such a petty god, certainly unworthy of worship.

[Zazzy]

The part that's hard to remember, Zazzy, is that religionists aren't scientists. It's a wonder they accept the explanation for regurgitation.

Many, many scientists are religionists (which I understand to mean a person primarily guided by religious faith). My field is evolutionary molecular genetics, and many (maybe even most) of the fine scientists I work with are religious folks, who often do excellent lab work (although I don't hear very much about their religions in the work environment). I'm not trying to smack you down here, just to observe that those who can put up don't need to shut up.

If SW has a nice broad field of primary research by creationists, (I didn't even specify YEC to allow him latitude), then by all means, let's see a good cross-section of it, and see if it's up to the standards set by even a middling scientific journal. If he can put up, he doesn't need to shut up.

Plus, won't it be fun to see these papers! I hope you'll be with me in reading them.