Nornagest comments on Steelmanning Young Earth Creationism - Less Wrong

2 Post author: ChrisHallquist 17 February 2014 07:17AM

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Comment author: Nornagest 18 February 2014 07:56:12PM *  1 point [-]

The problem with that is that YEC of the biblical literalist type (e.g. most of "Answers in Genesis") doesn't limit itself to the claim that the earth is 6,000 years old. It has to argue that the entire Genesis creation narrative -- spirit of God walked upon the face of the waters, Adam and Eve, global flood, and so forth -- is at least accurate enough that a tortured but in some sense literal interpretation of the Bible can be said to describe factual events. That's a much taller order, and rules out a lot of reasoning of the "God added dinosaur fossils as a test of faith" type.