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Notes -
Does the young earth creationist publisher you know happen to be Andrew Snelling? I got a book of his once from a young earth creationist family member after I revealed I believe the earth is billions of years old, and while I of course disagree with the notion, I was quite impressed at the great length of the book, including several chapters spanning dozens of pages disproving every different form of carbon dating.
Nice analogy with trans advocacy.
No, Timothy Clary. He has a lengthy book now which I’m sure is very interesting; I saw a presentation of his which was very interesting and summarized several chapters but which occurred before publication date(it was already under contract to be released). I found it extremely thorough and well researched and I certainly couldn’t tell how it was wrong.
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I don’t find most of them impressive. The thing that bugs me is the way carbon dating and other radioactive dating is handled. When those tools provide a young-Earth friendly result, it’s reported, when it doesn’t, they tend to argue that radioactive dating is useless and cannot be trusted.
There are low effort and high effort young earth creationists. Most of the high effort ones put forth good enough arguments that you’d have to get a masters degree in whatever field(biology, geology, astrophysics, whatever) to articulate reasons for preferring the mainstream scientific consensus view, and have qualifications that are real enough but atypical of a university professor(like the aforementioned petroleum geologists). Of course there’s also high effort schizoposters like Walt Brown, but there’s a core of young earth creationist institutions which can hold their own intellectually.
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I also don't find most of them impressive. The vast majority of arguments against carbon dating have been totally poked full of holes years ago. But this particular book had a lot of work put into disproving each type. The author has a PhD in geology and has been working at this stuff for years, he no doubt believes it wholeheartedly and have been attempting to prove it his entire life.
That's not all to say he's right or anything. But I recently read that Scott article on his shuttering of the Culture War thread, where he states that you can take any view you oppose and there will be someone smarter than you putting arguments forward for it. That's who Andrew Snelling is to me.
This is the book I got from him, by the way. I just wish there was still some internet atheists madly disproving every creationist thing that gets put out. There isn't, because the evolutionists thoroughly won this one. I wonder if there will ever be another Great Awakening, or if Christianity will continue bleeding to death.
A bit parochial - Christianity is in decline in affluent countries but continues to expand in Africa and Asia, often accompanied by what most in those affluent countries would consider bizarre superstition far more fantastical than motivated reasoning against carbon dating.
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