When you listen to the entire program, the comment about Hiroshima and our cars and etc., all make perfect sense. The words ripped out of context make no sense. It's typical creationist quote mining. Something they're very practiced at. (Paul Nelson is a YEC)

Notice that no link was provided to the original source? Well I went digging, and I found this, which is Powell's long explanation of radioactive decay, and how it relates to Hiroshima, and how it relates to atoms, lights and uniformity in general. (See 1:13:00-1:14:00) The summary video at the end of the series has him repeating what he had earlier said, although much less articulately and (honestly) stretching it a little for the sake of hyperbole. The quote Paul provided to Krauze is from this video, (1:35:00). It makes little sense if you don't listen to his earlier explanation of how physics ties together radioactive decay to atomic behavior to lights (and thus electricity) –> cars.

It doesn't surprise me in the slightest that this turns out to be a purposeful relief of context, wherein he explains what he means by the Hiroshima reference and uniformity (more accurately, he should've said, 'you can't expect your car to work'). Paul Nelson provided this quote to Krauzeand didn't bother to tell us where to find it. I'm not surprised, because the man's overarching point (See 1:13:00-1:14:00) is a solid one, and this one quote is Powell's rather exasperated attempt to "talk back" at creationists on their level of rhetoric.

Come on, guys, I think we all knew the man isn't as stupid as this one naked quote (unclothed in context) makes you want him to be.

First of all, when she talks about "cars not starting," it seems that she forgets that car engines are an engineering effort, and therefore she has the Salem Hypothesis to contend with (the second wording, specifically).

In addition, it is interesting that there are several basic technologies and research programs that are founded by or pioneered by Creationists. Genetics, for starters. Anyone who doubts this should read the last few paragraphs of Mendel's "Experiments in Plant Hybridization". Most of the pioneering work in the MRI was done by a YEC, Dr. Damadian (I forget his first name). Finally, one of the key players in transgenic crops is a YEC, though he was not a YEC when most of his work was done — Dr. John Sanford. This is always an amusing tidbit when evolutionists state that knowledge about how transgenic crops work would be irreconcilable with Creationism.

YEC is definitely a minority viewpoint, and all of OEC, YEC, and ID are minority viewpoints in scientific circles, but that doesn't mean that Creationism and Creationists not made significant contributions to science in general and biology in particular.

No, the problem shows up with other people, too. But I mentioned religious believers because we're talking about young-earth creationism in this thread, and YECers are known for hanging onto their beliefs in the teeth of contrary evidence.

Imagine if everything about our world was the same except that the Bible, when read literally, said that the universe was two million years old instead of less than 10,000 years old. I can guarantee that we'd still have YECers, but they'd all believe that the earth was two million years old, and they'd heap scorn on anyone who thought it was only 10,000 years old.

Such is the desire to affirm the correctness of one's holy book.

My beef with many religious believers is that they have picked a hypothesis, but instead of asking whether their hypothesis continues to be the best hypothesis, they simply ask whether their hypothesis can be reconciled with the new data as it comes in.

Hi Keiths,
Do you only have this problem with religious believers?
You could take out "religious believers" and place almost anything in there and it could hold under some level of scrutiny.

If a car is brought into the debate at all, it should be to promote evolution (in a vary narrow sense…behavioral adaption). If living animals adapt to their environment in such a way that benefits them, as every evolutionary psychologist would have us believe, then shouldn't humankind benefit itself by shaping matter into a vehicle that affords them great mobility?

What does a car have to do with ID? Nothing.

Why is it not possible that the universe is thousands of years old but gives the appearance of being billions of years old?

I think the universe looks old to a certain extent, but it doesn't necessarily have to be billions of years old. I think there's a certain threshold whereby you can't tell how old it really is. The universe is not like a person. You can tell how old a person is because you know how long they live, and the respective signs of their age. However we don't know how the universe was formed, we have never observed how it formed or how it's going to end, or how it even began.

One example are spiral galaxies. Why are they still spiral? Shouldn't the inside arms rotate faster than the outside arms resulting in a huge blob of stars if they were very, very, old? Well of course maybe it takes too long for that to happen, so 13 billions years isn't enough. Moroever we don't even know when spiral galaxies started.

Another example is the earth. Why hasn't all the land eroded into the oceans yet? Shouldn't erosion by the sea and rain cause all land masses to erode to the bottom of the sea given a billion years? Why are the seas and the land masses so different in elevation? Afterall a billion years sounds like enough time to flatten all continents to a few volcanic islands like Japan. Granted, I don't know how tall the continents were in the past, nor do I know if a billion years is enough to do just that. Even worse perhaps there's a continent forming mechanism (like meteor impacts) or something that could form large continents.

My point is, you can reasonably say that you think that the universe is only 10 million years old. Or 10 thousand. Or 10 billion. Or perhaps it's always existed! Heck, I can't tell just by looking at it. How do you tell the age of such things apart from that they were there some time before you were born?

It's been a while, man. How've you been?

Good! How about you? How are things on the Global Warming Blog (aka Uncommon Descent)?

Granted, I can't really think of any other reason than deception or a test of faith for why a god or some other creator would make a universe that appears old but is not. Nevertheless, from a deceiving appearance, it does not follow that the creator has lied or that deception is the only possible explanation. There might be some other reason.

True, but I would make the same argument as before. As humans, we can never be absolutely certain about this or many other issues. The best we can do, as mere humans, is to pick the hypothesis which best fits the data, and to keep our eyes open for new data, new hypotheses and new criticisms from our fellow humans. We have to remain willing to abandon a hypothesis if a better one shows up. (In the case of YEC versus modern science, I'd say the choice is pretty clear).

My beef with many religious believers is that they have picked a hypothesis, but instead of asking whether their hypothesis continues to be the best hypothesis, they simply ask whether their hypothesis can be reconciled with the new data as it comes in. The answer is almost always yes, as the "deceiver God" example illustrates. But the fact that a hypothesis can be reconciled with new data does not mean that it continues to be the best hypothesis. They end up hanging onto an inferior hypothesis when better ones are available.

Some believers might be tempted to argue that this might be true of scientific hypotheses based on scientific data, but not of religious hypotheses which are based on Revealed Truth. However, this doesn't really evade the problem, because we are still fallible human beings, and our decision that some book, or some vision, or some religious experience is Revealed Truth is potentially just as fallible as any scientific hypothesis.

Certainty, at least of empirical truths, is not our lot as human beings.

I looked at your first comment more closely, and I seem to have overlooked your specific mention of "YEC science". It appears this would render my previous comment irrelevant. My bad.

Keith,

It's been a while, man. How've you been?

I agree with you until you get to this point:

Even more importantly to most YECers, if the universe is young, but appears old in every respect, then the Creator is trying to deceive us or test our faith

It certainly appears that this is the case, but it is not necessarily the case. Granted, I can't really think of any other reason than deception or a test of faith for why a god or some other creator would make a universe that appears old but is not. Nevertheless, from a deceiving appearance, it does not follow that the creator has lied or that deception is the only possible explanation. There might be some other reason.