Is there any good evidence for biblical (YEC) creationism?

Paul_Price

If the God of the Bible exists, we can deduce from that fact that biblical creationism is true (since this is what the God of the Bible said he did).

Both debaters are required to answer the question "What constitutes good evidence for the existence of the God of the Bible, And why? " as part of their response.

I believe there is most certainly good evidence for the God of the Bible, And this comes in the form of two different categories:

1) General evidence for the existence of any supernatural god (because Yahweh is a supernatural God)

2) Specific evidence that the Bible is true as compared to competing religious texts

As I wrote in the article at creation.com/detective-approach, (Quoting)

The obvious sorts of things we might look for. . . would be things like:

>Evidence for design, Rather than randomness, In the cosmos
>Evidence for design, Rather than randomness, In our earth and solar system
>Evidence for design, Rather than randomness, In life

As the apostle Paul wrote,

"For his invisible attributes, Namely, His eternal power and divine nature, Have been clearly perceived, Ever since the creation of the world, In the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. " (Romans 1:20, Emphasis added)

And in Hebrews 3:4,

"For every house is built by someone, But the builder of all things is God. "

Beyond this, We would also look for signs that God had communicated to us (i. E. In a body of Scripture). Why would a god bother to create something like our planet Earth, Fill it with life including human life, And then do nothing else and remain totally silent? It seems very straightforward that if a god exists, We should expect to find evidence of communication from this god to us.

As it turns out, There are numerous competing claims of alleged divine revelations throughout history (and these competing claims are mutually exclusive because they contradict one another), So we would also need to look for clues like miraculously fulfilled prophecy to authenticate this Scripture as genuine. The Bible passes this test.

There would probably be other markers to distinguish true divine revelation from frauds; in the case of the Bible, We have a single coherent message with a beginning, Middle and end which was given to dozens of authors over a period of thousands of years. This in itself is extremely impressive, And indicative of divine authorship. But we should also expect that God's communication would be unique in its accuracy, And its ability to be confirmed by the available evidence.

These are the obvious signs, But there is something a bit less obvious as well: the fact that we are able to think rationally and have knowledge at all actually points back to and depends upon God. If there were no God and therefore no designer for human life, What would that say about the usefulness of our brains for properly understanding truth? We would have no way of being certain of anything at all.

If there is no ultimate Authority governing the cosmos, Does the concept of "truth" really hold any meaning at all? If we deny God's existence, We are actually undercutting the validity of our own reasoning altogether. In the final analysis, all human knowledge depends upon God.

All of these lines of evidence mentioned above work together to form a strong cumulative case. Let my opponent decide which, if any of these, he/she wishes to dispute.

Dataforge

Before getting into the cross examination, I feel it would be best to first address the question "What constitutes good evidence for the existence of the God of the Bible, And why?".

First of all, the evidence must be for the supernatural claims of the Bible, not its natural claims. There's little doubt that the Bible is accurate about a good deal of the natural world, such as people, places, and events of its time. But what's in content is the extraordinary supernatural claims of the Bible, such as a 6 day creation, raising from the dead, seeing the future, teleportation, telepathy, ect.

To be valid evidence, it must specifically and directly point to the events of the Bible. It would not be enough to simply be compatible or non-contradictory to the Bible. It must effectively rule out other possibilities, to a reasonable degree. A good question to ask when evaluating this evidence is "What are the chances that this could occur without the Bible being true?"

This is just a short answer, for now. I will elaborate further in my constructive.

Cross Examination Questions:

Regarding prophecy, most non-believers find them unconvincing because they are vague, self fulfilling, and/or only make safe and likely predictions. Either that, or it cannot actually be confirmed that the prophecy has been fulfilled, such as the prophecies about Jesus that were only fulfilled elsewhere in the Bible. Or, finally, the prophecy may have been written or altered after the event in question. Are there any Biblical prophecies that you believe don't fit that criteria?

Regarding the coherence of the Bible, what do you think it would possible for a group of people at the time to write a coherent book, over several centuries, and several authors, without the need of divine inspiration. If it is not possible, then what would it require that people of the time did not have available? Note that this is specifically regarding the coherency of the Bible, not other specific arguments for the Bible's accuracy.

Regarding rational thought depending on God: Do you believe that logical concepts are capable of being verified, even by a fallible mind? If not, how do you believe it's possible that, for example, we could be mistaken in believing that 1+1 = 2? And if reasonable analysis can mean we're not mistaken about that, then what sorts of logic and reasoning do you believe a natural, fallible mind could be mistaken on?

Also, note that these arguments are not specifically for Young Earth Creationism, as the title of the debate states. I am happy to debate these points, but just let it be known that this is more a general debate about the existence of the God of the Bible, and not the specific time and method by which he created the universe.

Dataforge

What constitutes good evidence for the existence of the God of the Bible, and why?

As I said in my cross examination, evidence for the god of the Bible must be evidence specifically for the supernatural events in the Bible. It must directly point to the god of the Bible, and rule out other options to a reasonable degree. It must be unlikely to exist without the proposition being true.

The most obvious and direct sort of evidence would be a demonstration of God's power. After all, God is described as being omnipotent and omniscient. He could do nearly anything we ask to demonstrate these traits. He could demonstrate it directly, by appearing before us, or performing a genuine miracle. He could demonstrate indirectly, by predicting an unlikely prophecy in the Bible.

Failing that, there is the potential for evidence for the supernatural events listed in the Bible. If there were some sort of global flood layer in the geologic column, indicating a worldwide flood 4,400 years ago. If dating methods all agreed that there was nothing older than 6,000 years.

What does NOT constitute good evidence for the existence of the God of the Bible?

So far, all of the evidence presented for the existence of God is weak, at best. Keeping mostly in line with the arguments presented by my opponent in his opening statement, these are the sorts of arguments that don't provide strong evidence for God, and why:

Safe prophecies: When dealing with prophecy, you must remember that an omniscient being could tell you literally anything about the future, to the most minute details. God could write in the Bible the exact date, location, and magnitude of an Earthquake. He could tell us scientific knowledge that was completely unavailable at the time, like all planets of the solar system, E=MC2, the composition of atoms. So why then do all the supposed prophecies of the Bible predict safe and likely events? Anyone can guess that a given empire will eventually fall, or that a warmongering power will conquer cities.

Prophecies that are only fulfilled by creative interpretation: If a prophecy says that Babylon will be turned to swampland, then you would expect to see an actual swamp in its place. Most people would not call part of the cities ruins being below the water table a swamp.

Self fulfilling prophecies: These sorts of prophecies are more like inspirational commands, rather than unlikely predictions. If one were to tell a group of people that they should take a city, or spread the word of god, you would not be considered prophetic if they succeed in that task.

Prophecies made in one part of the Bible, that are fulfilled in another part: The writers of the New Testament certainly had access to the Old Testament. So it means nothing that they could write that Jesus fulfilled all sorts of Old Testament prophecies. But that means nothing if we can't confirm that Jesus actually fulfilled said prophecies.

Modal logical arguments: Things like the argument from contingency, and other first cause type arguments. This is a fairly large topic, that I will go into further if my opponent wishes to pursue this line of argument. But for now, I will just summarize that generally these logical arguments make series logical mistakes, either by wrongfully assuming premises, and/or showing conclusions that don't follow from the premises.

Weak "miracles": The god of the Bible is capable of performing literally any supernatural act. He could raise someone from the dead, regrow an amputated limb, move the stars across the sky. Literally anything. So a presented miracle needs to reflect that power. It would not be sufficient to show something that could reasonably happen naturally, such as a cancer going into remission, or successful person attributing their success to God's guidance.

Scriptures that are coherently written, and free of contradiction: Writing a book like the Bible to be coherent, especially over centuries, is certainly impressive. But it's not something that's impossible without God. Any writer, even thousands of years ago, is capable of reading and editing a series of books.

Assertions about the world being amazing, or complex, and therefor requiring a creator: As the apostle Paul wrote, God is clearly perceived through his creation, and thus we are without excuse. This may sound convincing to someone who is already converted, but someone who is not is unlikely to be swayed. For starters, we are all aware of natural mechanisms by which the world as we know it could form. I'm aware that my opponent does not agree that those natural mechanisms work, but arguments against such cannot be distilled down to a few easy soundbytes.

A natural mind is fallible, and thus can't reasonable conclude that it is natural: This one is potentially a very long winded argument, regarding the philosophy of knowledge. As it appears, our brains are at least mildly fallible, but not so much that we can be deluded about everything without even realising it. For example, if you take a simple mathematical concept, like 1 + 1 = 2, there's no way we can be wrong about that. We have a solid idea about the concepts of the numbers 1 and 2, and the logical operators of + and =. Perhaps someone might say that we could have evolved brains that are so fallible that we could be mistaken about that, but that would be a tough argument to sell. The same can be said about other simple logical concepts.

If you accept that we can confirm the reality of simple logical concepts, then you would also have to accept that we can use those simple concepts to confirm more complex concepts. Indeed, our collective knowledge appears to be a case of bootstrapping. Using our knowledge to confirm and learn more knowledge. And though we are often wrong about things, we have systems in place designed to find and correct the things we are wrong about.

Note that this whole list is in no way exhaustive. It just a basic explanation of why my opponents evidences are not valid evidences for the god of the Bible.

Paul_Price

Cross Examination:
Part 1- Responses to Opponent's Questions

Are there any Biblical prophecies that you believe don't fit that criteria?

You have a self-fulfilling bias built into your criteria; the Bible is not a single work by a single person from a single time period. It is a collection of 66 documents that were written at different times and places over a period of thousands of years by many different authors. With that fact in view, it becomes unacceptable that you disqualify reports of fulfilled prophecy on the mere basis that these reports are also included in the Bible. The fact that they are historical reports that confirm a prophecy was fulfilled was no doubt part of the reason they were included in "The Bible" in the first place. Therefore I reject the assumptions behind your question. I will mention a couple of prophecies that we can confirm have been fulfilled. 

> The messiah will come and suffer and be physically tortured beyond recognition, and the rulers of the world will take notice of him and he will atone for the sins of the world with his blood. He will be unjustly condemned and his death will include being "pierced". 
(From Isaiah 53)

>Detailed description of the scene of the Crucifixion written hundreds of years prior by King David, including details such as having people gamble for his clothing as he is dying. Jesus quotes from this passage Himself while on the cross "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?", just to drive home the point.

(From Psalm 22)

>The exact name of the Messiah was foretold in Zecharaiah 6:9-15. (Yehowoshua (Joshua / Jesus), "The man whose name is the Branch", 'The Branch' being a Jewish messianic title.

>The Messiah's exact place of birth, Bethlehem, was foretold in Micah 5:2


what do you think it would possible for a group of people at the time to write a coherent book...

Impossible? No, not impossible I suppose, but I would say that based on everything we know of human nature, and all other examples of which I am aware, such a thing would be highly unlikely without Divine guidance. The Bible was composed over an extended period by people who were far removed from one another and in some cases even spoke different dialects and languages, and lived in different places. Even the atheist/agnostic professor Jordan Peterson is extremely impressed by the coherency of the Bible and says so in his lecture series on the topic.  If the authorship were human alone, it would seem nearly inevitable that later authors would want to change or 'correct' things they didn't like about what was said by previous authors, or the difference in culture might cause them to wildly vary the thrust of their message resulting in an overall incoherent "work".

Do you believe that logical concepts are capable of being verified, even by a fallible mind?

Certainly not. They must be presupposed before you can even think at all. Just to make a statement "1 + 1 = 2" you are already presupposing the law of non-contradiction. You cannot test the very principle you need to use in order to conduct a test. It's circular. Everybody must have a starting point, (set of axioms) that are not themselves subject to test. If logic were not reliable, we could never know or understand that fact because we can only use logic to test logic. How does this present a problem for the atheist? Because without an unchanging, eternal, omnipotent, omnipresent and benevolent God who upholds the universe in a consistent way, we have no solid basis to assume that logic is valid. It's just a blind faith in logic with no grounding for that faith, if you don't believe God exists. I can easily conceive of a possible world where logic did not hold, yet if we are living in that world we could never know it. All rational thought and knowledge depends upon the foundation that God provides us.

this is more a general debate about the existence of the God of the Bible,

As I defended in my previous debate with ctr0, the God of the Bible demonstrably reveals in the Bible that 'young earth creation' is the means by which He created. When you say "the God of the Bible", you are already talking about young earth creation.

Part 2

Questions for my opponent

1) Is it a possibility that Yahweh could exist and yet simultaneously not choose to directly appear to you personally in a miraculous way?

2) Imagine it is the year 30 A.D. If God appeared to you in a miraculous way and did something supernatural to prove He is God, what would you be able to do to communicate this fact to others? How would you be able to communicate the fact that a prophecy made long ago had been fulfilled? How would people living 2000 years later be able to discover what you communicated?

3) You have been using the word "supernatural" without defining it. What is supernatural, and how do you know? How would you differentiate something supernatural from something that happened as a result of natural laws that have not yet been discovered or understood?

Paul_Price

I would like to again thank my opponent Dataforge for his participation in this very profitable exchange.

In my opening argument, I listed out "evidence for design in the universe, evidence for design in the solar system, and evidence for design in life" as possible ways we could determine the existence of God. Dataforge has claimed that "we are all aware of natural mechanisms by which the world as we know it could form". This comes as news to me! As far as I am aware, there are NO viable mechanisms to explain just about anything we see in the world around us without ultimately appealing to design, rather than chance. I invite the reader to check out '15 Questions for Evolutionists' to see examples of the kinds of fundamental things that naturalism is unable to answer:  https://creation.com/15-questions-for-evolutionists

Dataforge is attempting to pull a gigantic bluff with this very small dismissive statement. Each one of these "questions" could be brought into a full debate of its own, and obviously neither of us will have time to go over all of them here. Let's mention just one obvious example: abiogenesis.

In the documentary movie Expelled, Ben Stein challenged Dr Richard Dawkins, a promoter of atheism, on the fact that there is no known mechanism or explanation that could naturalistically account for the origin of life from non-living matter. Dawkins' response was "We're working on it". This is an admission that currently no acceptable explanation exists. Evolution is a debate in and of itself, and one I'd like to take part in in the future. But if life cannot even get started at all, then evolution cannot get off the ground. Based on this, we can see from this one example alone that Dataforge's statement was inaccurate. If there is no reason to think something could happen WITHOUT design, then when we do find it happening (or having happened), that counts as evidence OF design.

My opponent mentioned two things that would convince him of God: a global flood layer, and dating methods. Allow me to take a moment to address both of these things.

Flood layer

What would we expect to find, if there were a Global Flood?

Billions of Dead Things
Buried in Rocks
Laid Down By Water
All Over the Earth

This is exactly the evidence we DO find. We even find marine fossils on the tops of the world's tallest mountains today. If this is not evidence for a global flood, then the question is, what ever could be? All throughout the fossil record we find indications that it was laid down quickly by water, rather than gradually by slow deposition over millions of years. This evidence is summed up nicely in the documentary movie, Is Genesis History?

Examples of such evidence include but are not limited to:
Layers show no evidence of erosion between them (flat lines)
Fossils penetrate multiple layers
Fossils from within the layers still contain soft, flexible tissue and blood vessels (which could not survive for millions of years)
Geological formations are global in scale, covering entire continents, and even being able to be identified from one continent to the next
Many formations exist such as natural rock arches for which there is currently no gradualistic explanation

There will not be enough time or space for each one of these to be debated I'm sure, so if my opponent objects let him select one or two he takes issue with.

Dating Methods

What my opponent fails to consider is that he is cherrypicking the data when it comes to dating methods. Radiometric dating was developed with an old-earth already in mind, and with that belief already built into the process as a starting assumption. There is much work still to be done by creation scientists in this area, because while we know the method is not reliable we are not always certain exactly why scientists are getting the results they do get, and this is a subject of ongoing debate and theorization.

However, the reliability of dating methods using radiometric logic can be tested in a couple of ways:

>We can run tests on rocks of known age, i.e. recent lava flows

>We can run different types of radiometric tests on the same samples to see if they corroborate each other

For example, rocks from Mt. Ngauruhoe in New Zealand that were laid down in eruptions between 1945 and 1975 were tested with different methods. The lowest of the results was less than 270,000 years, while the highest result was around 3.9 billion years![1] These various methods disagreed with one another by an astronomical margin (not to mention all being wildly off the mark in terms of the true age). Yet they are all supposed to be scientifically-accurate dating methods. There are many other examples of such discordant results using these various methods, even when testing rocks of known age.

Why do I say Dataforge is cherrypicking the data? Because there are many other means by which we can estimate the age of the earth, or more accurately, a maximum age range for the earth, besides radiometric techniques. These methods all produce wildly discordant maximum ages that do not serve to confirm the secular deep time paradigm.

Examples:

The rate at which salt is flowing from the continents into the ocean can be measured, and when all factors are accounted for, the oceans could not be any older than around 62 million years.

https://creation.com/salty-seas-evidence-for-a-young-earth

Same as above, only measuring nickel concentrations. Maximum age for oceans: around 6500 years.

https://creation.com/nickel-concentration-indicates-youthful-oceans

Both of these dating methods are just as valid as any other: they are using the principle of uniformitarianism to extrapolate backward based on current rates.

In reality, all dating methods depend upon assumptions which may or may not hold true. The best way to know what happened in the past is to ask someone who was there and can give a reliable eyewitness testimony, and that is what we have in the Bible.

Finally, I would like to briefly remark on my opponent's attitude to evidence for the Bible:

evidence for the god of the Bible must be evidence specifically for the supernatural events in the Bible. 

This is a biased standard. How do we know if a supernatural event occurred in the past, if not by the testimony of those who saw it happen? And how do we determine the reliability of a person's testimony? If they are faithful and accurate when describing known things and 'natural events', we have good reason to trust their testimony when they, in those very same reports, witness supernatural events.

---

[1] Mason, J., Radiometric Dating, Evolution’s Achilles’ Heels, chapter 6, Creation Book Publishers, Powder Springs, GA, 2014, p. 203.

Dataforge

First, to address the cross examination questions:

1) Is it a possibility that Yahweh could exist and yet simultaneously not choose to directly appear to you personally in a miraculous way?

The answer is of course "Yes". Indeed the position of many theists is that God deliberately wants his existence to be plausibly deniable, in order to encourage faith and virtue without certainty. However to take that position would seem to be conceding the affirmative of this debate.

2) Imagine it is the year 30 A.D. If God appeared to you in a miraculous way and did something supernatural to prove He is God, what would you be able to do to communicate this fact to others? How would you be able to communicate the fact that a prophecy made long ago had been fulfilled? How would people living 2000 years later be able to discover what you communicated?

I'm sure this question is leading to the answer that my opponent believes happened: Write about it, tell people about it, and encourage others to spread the story. But of course, this would only insure that others knew the story, it wouldn't necessarily be convincing. If my goal were to convince people, especially 2,000 years later, I wouldn't trust the annals of folklore. I would make sure reputable record keepers of the time investigated and confirmed my story. I would see that it was confirmed as soon as I could. I certainly wouldn't wait years before publishing it. I would record details, locations, collect archaeological samples. Of course, even if I did all of that my case may still be deniable, but it would be better than relying on people to just believe because I say so.

3) You have been using the word "supernatural" without defining it. What is supernatural, and how do you know? How would you differentiate something supernatural from something that happened as a result of natural laws that have not yet been discovered or understood?

Supernatural is best defined as being beyond the abilities of nature, usually far beyond. Unfortunately there's no concrete definition of how to determine the limits of nature. For example, one might argue that quantum activity defies nature, and is thus supernatural. But it would seem to be cheating if you're only able to defy nature at the quantum scale, or with enough energy that one of these supposed supernatural events would destroy the entire Earth in a microsecond. Fiction and fantasy are full of supernatural events, such as teleportation, telepathy, conjuring from nothing, raising from the dead, all with simply a thought, and without any observable disruption to the nearby space time continuum.

Rebuttal:

Can the Bible be used as evidence for the Bible?

This is a point that my opponent and I disagree on. My opponent claims that a prophecy can be counted as fulfilled, even if the only record of its fulfillment is in the Bible. He also claims that we can trust that a written record is accurate about supernatural claims, if it were also confirmed accurate about natural claims. This is a position that is, to be direct, downright absurd. It can essentially be distilled down to the statement "Everything written is true". Or, perhaps a little more charitably to my opponent, "Everything written is true, if said written works are right about some other things".

Take this statement: "I just saw a ghost." Do you believe that I actually saw a ghost? Obviously not. What if I said "I just saw a ghost, and Donald Trump is the president of the United States." Does the addition of a confirmed accurate statement make it any more believable that I just saw a ghost? Obviously the answer is no. If my statement were read 2,000 years from now, would it again be any more believable that I just saw a ghost?

What if I added some prophecy to that statement: "That ghost told me that my friend Roy is going to get mugged on the way home from work, and his muggers will play a game of tic tac toe to see who gets his sneakers." Then, a couple of days later I write "My friend Roy got mugged, and those muggers played a game of tic tac toe to see who gets his sneakers." Would you now believe that the ghost I saw has prophetic powers?

If I wanted to convince you that I saw a ghost, and you were rightfully not convinced by me simply writing it down, then I would have to present evidence that confirms my written statement. Anyone would agree, including my opponent I'm sure, that my written statement is not sufficient evidence on its own.

Granted, my opponent may have other reasons to believe that the written statements in the Bible are accurate, which do not apply to my claimed ghost sighting. But this should show that simply being written in the Bible is not evidence in and of itself.

Biblical Prophecies

My opponent has presented four examples of what he believes to be valid prophecies:

The soldiers gambling over Jesus' clothes during his execution, and other specific details of his execution. Despite my opponent claiming that the prophecies presented can be confirmed, the only record of this actually happening is in the Bible. Let me repeat that the writers of the New Testament almost certainly had read the Old Testament. There is absolutely no reason that they couldn't have just written that things happened that the Old Testament prophecised, even if they didn't actually happen. I don't know if my opponent believes this to be impossible or not, but it would be quite a stretch to argue that it is.

The messiah would be horribly tortured. This is an example of a safe prophecy. The sort of thing that anyone can guess, because it's very likely to come true. Horrible tortures and executions were common in the ancient world, especially in the ancient Middle East. Getting lashed and crucified is a vacation compared to some of the things that ancient could do to you. Predicting that someone would be tortured and executed in some horrible way back then, is like predicting that someone is going to go to prison today.

Jesus' name, and place of birth. First of all, the place of birth of the actual Jesus is not certain. This is another example of something that can't be confirmed. But, even if you grant that it is, both of these are examples of self fulfilling prophecies. Simply because no one could be considered a messiah unless their name is Jesus, and they were born in Bethlehem. If your name is Bill, and you're from Cincinnati, no one cares, because they're looking for a Jesus from Bethlehem.

Keep in mind that with messianic prophecies, the predictions only have to be fulfilled once, by one person. And that is again assuming that these prophecies were actually fulfilled. Throw enough messiah candidates against the wall, and eventually one will have all the traits you're looking for.

The Coherency of the Bible
I don't think many can argue that the coherency of the Bible isn't impressive. But impressive doesn't mean divinely guided. I asked my opponent what would it take for people in that age to write a coherent Bible without divine intervention. I don't believe this was fully answered, likely unintentionally. But he did say that human writers would have likely edited  previous versions, and its messages would have varied depending on the culture of the writers.

The question that begs is how do we know the versions of the Bible weren't edited and altered when it changed hands? It's been suggested that there are entire books missing from the Bible, that did not make it into the final cut. Regarding the culture changes, you won't find many messages in the Bible that are consistent all the way from Genesis to Revelations. Even the stark difference between the moral teachings of the Old and New Testament reflect the attitudes of their time. So it's odd that my opponent would claim these are temptations that the Bible's writers apparently avoided.

But even so, I struggle to see how giving into these temptations would make a less coherent book. If the previous books of the Bible were edited over centuries, wouldn't that make them even more coherent?

Can we have knowledge without God?

I asked my opponent to explain how we could possibly be wrong about 1 + 1 = 2. He did not answer that question, and I don't believe that question has an answer. He is correct in saying that we must presuppose the law of non-contradiction. But that is again something we can verify, because we have a solid understanding of what contradiction is. To deny that is to deny that we are capable of forming and processing concepts, which is of course absurd.

My opponent also claims that logic can only exist in a consistent universe, which is likely true. But then he also claims that a consistent universe could not exist with a god. Which is of course unjustified. My opponent likely assumes that no God means chaos, but this is only an assumption of his, and not something that is justified either logically or evidentially.

Are there natural mechanisms for the origin of the universe as we see it today?

As I said before, I am aware that my opponent does not believe these proposed natural mechanisms work. Debating these natural mechanisms is a whole separate debate on its own. As this is the last round in this debate, this is not the time to go off on a new line of argument. This also applies to my opponents arguments on dating methods, and the flood layer. So rather than create a new line of debate, I will only be summarizing these points.

The purpose of my previous statement was not to assert the truth of these natural mechanisms, but rather to explain why simply claiming that the universe is amazing is not, in and of itself, convincing evidence of the god of the Bible. As I said, the whole debate cannot be condensed and resolved in a couple of soundbytes.

The flood layer

I have debated my opponent on what we would predict to find in this flood layer before. That debate was almost as long as this one, and could have gone on longer were it resolved. In the previous debate on the matter, I pointed out to my opponent that a flood layer would include fossils from different eras found together, such as a human and a trilobite, for example. These flood layers would have no footprints, burrows, meteorite craters, or anything else that would be impossible to find under a rapid burial.

My opponent is disingenuously playing down what we would predict in the global flood, into something remarkably similar to what we would predict if there were no global flood, and the world were billions of years old.

In my comment on my opponent's previous debate, I said that creationists do not follow the standard scientific protocol of determining what a hypothesis predicts, and then finding evidence for that prediction. After all, doing that runs the risk of falsifying your predictions. Instead, creationists play it safe. They look at the evidence we already have, and cherry pick pieces that they can claim as being predicted by their beliefs. This is exactly what my opponent has done by ignoring the predictions of the global flood layer that have been falsified.

Do dating methods support a 6,000 year old Earth?

Remember that the position of this debate is whether the evidence supports Biblical creationism or not. It is not about whether the evidence supports a 4.6 billion year old Earth or not.

Only one of the dating methods presented by my opponent is claimed to support a 6,000 year old Earth. The others support a significantly older Earth. However, as my opponent takes the position that dating methods are inaccurate and unreliable, it would seem that he is conceding that dating methods are not evidence for a 6,000 year old Earth.

Final statement

This debate is, as it stands, inconclusive. I would prefer another few rounds to hear and discuss more of my opponent's thoughts on Biblical prophecy, Biblical coherency, the transcendental argument, and whether something being written in the Bible is, in and of itself, valid evidence for the Bible.

Though I believe I satisfactorily explained why each of these proposed evidences are invalid as my opponent has presented them, I believe my opponent has more reasons that he has not articulated at this time. Should my opponent agree, I would be happy to have another debate to resolve these topics, after a bit of a cool down period.

Paul_Price

Many thanks to my opponent Dataforge for a tremendous debate. The purpose of this debate was to answer the question: Is there any credible evidence for Yahweh, the God of the Bible, and by extension, for biblical creationism?

I have been giving my case for the affirmative, while Dataforge has been arguing for the negative. Yet what I wish to briefly show in this final section is that, using the statements of my opponent, we can see that Dataforge has conceded the affirmative case: we have all the evidence we should expect or need in order to affirm the existence of Yahweh.

I asked my opponent whether it is strictly necessary for Yahweh to appear directly and personally to him, and he agreed it is not. Therefore it is not necessary for us to require that we personally witness a miracle of God ourselves in order to accept He exists. We must turn to other sources of potential evidence.

At the start, I identified a few areas we might look in: design in the universe, coherency of the Bible, knowledge, and fulfilled prophecy. Let's recap these areas each in turn, while acknowledging the statements in each of these areas made by my opponent.

Design in the universe:

While my opponent claimed there are naturalistic explanations that work to explain everything we see around us, I challenged him by showing that is not the case, and in his final arguments he made no attempt to rebut my challenge, conceding the point in effect. Perhaps we can have another debate in the future that focuses only on this aspect.

Coherency of the Bible:

I argued that the Bible is impressive in its coherent message spanning thousands of years and many authors, and my opponent has said that he agrees; however, he contradicts this by claiming without supporting evidence that the moral teachings between the Old and New testaments do not comport with one another. I completely disagree with this assertion; the God of the Bible gives a consistent message throughout the Bible: we are justified by our faith and not by doing works of the Law. Since my opponent declined to provide any evidence for his claim, this is as far as we need to go here.

Knowledge:

I explained that human knowledge ultimately depends upon God. My opponent in his final arguments claimed I did not answer his question in this area, but I invite the reader to go back and examine my statements to find that I did. I explained that if we were wrong about it, we could never know that we are wrong, because without the laws of logic we cannot test the laws of logic, and to use logic to test logic would be circular. Instead we must presuppose it from the outset, and only a universe with God makes sense of a consistent and trustworthy set of logical laws that cannot be broken. My opponent hinted that perhaps a universe with no Authority would still display the same properties as a universe which IS governed; but why? How? Can you imagine a country where there was no government, no laws, and no policemen, yet it was filled with inhabitants? Would we have any reason to expect anything but anarchy in such a situation? Without God, there is no reason to blindly assume that the universe is going to behave in consistent and predictable ways. This is part of the reason that science has flourished primarily in countries with a monotheistic, Judeo-Christian worldview: it is precisely this worldview that provides a suitable philosophical foundation for doing science.

Source for further reading:
https://creation.com/origin-of-science-christian

Flood layer:
My opponent claimed that the fossil record should show fossils from "different eras" found together, and since it allegedly does not, it must not be a Flood Layer.
But this, too, is circular reasoning! How are the 'eras' determined to begin with? That's right! Based upon examining the fossil record. What my opponent fails to consider is
1) The 'eras' may not be time-based so much as they are geography based. We find a gradation of different types of life as we look vertically in the fossil record (generally speaking, of course) simply because the Flood advanced across the world in stages and buried different environments successively. That's why we find 'swamp-like' and marine creatures first in the record. Swamps are located closer to the shore.
2) There ARE numerous examples of "out of order fossils". Each time these are found, the solution is to either ignore it as 'an anomaly' or simply revise the 'era' dates to accommodate. In this way, it is all circular reasoning and is non-falsifiable in practice. 

For an in-depth look at this topic:
https://creation.com/geologic-column-general-order
https://creation.com/the-fossil-record-and-precambrian-rabbits

Dating Methods:
My opponent claimed he would believe in God if dating methods did not contradict the Bible. I responded by showing that 'dating methods' are unreliable means of determining the ages of things, and I showed examples of the discrepancies we find there. In the final round my opponent attempted a dodge by trying to pretend I was the one who brought them up as evidence FOR the Bible in the first place, but he offered no rebuttal to my response on this topic, so I will consider this point conceded as well.

Bible prophecies and miracles:

This is the big one here. My opponent said he wanted to see evidence for supernatural miracles to confirm the Bible is true. I then asked my opponent to explain exactly what HE would do, were it 30 A.D., and he witnessed such things. How would he communicate this?

Dataforge then conceded that he would have done exactly what the Apostles did:

"If my goal were to convince people, especially 2,000 years later, I wouldn't trust the annals of folklore. I would make sure reputable record keepers of the time investigated and confirmed my story."

The Apostles did exactly this. We have 4 separate records kept of the life of Jesus: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Luke was a historian, and he begins his record thus:

Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught.

"I certainly wouldn't wait years before publishing it."

Compare our historical records in the Bible with any other ancient work of history, and I think you'll find there is simply no comparison. On ancient standards, the amount of time that elapsed between the records and the events themselves was like a blink of an eye. Within living memory. This was a culture that was not nearly as dependent on written records as we are today: there was much more of an oral transmission, and people (especially the Jews) were highly skilled in passing down information orally and committing it to memory. If we are going to reject the Bible on these grounds, we must also be consistent and throw out all our knowledge of all ancient history (and no serious historian would agree to do this!)

For a great introduction into the reasons why we know the New Testament is trustworthy, see the book Cold Case Christianity by J. Warner Wallace.
https://coldcasechristianity.com/


I would record details, locations, collect archaeological samples. 

We have all of these things! The Bible is full of details and locations (and there are archaeological finds that corroborate these details). The details we find in the Gospels serve to 'accidentally' confirm one another in a phenomenon termed 'Incidental Coherence'"

Explanation of 'Incidental Coherence':
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHz6Tadvk1s

 "Let me repeat that the writers of the New Testament almost certainly had read the Old Testament. There is absolutely no reason that they couldn't have just written that things happened that the Old Testament prophecised, even if they didn't actually happen."

Of course they read the Old Testament. They quoted from it extensively to show people that the prophecies contained there pointed to Jesus.

Let's consider this allegation: Dataforge is suggesting that the best-selling book of all time, the most influential and morally profound work of literature in all of history-- was just a bunch of lies made up by con men. Do you find that credible?

For this to be true, the men who wrote the New Testament didn't even believe it themselves, because they knew that they had just made the whole thing up. This is not how historical analysis is done. We don't just throw out people's testimony and historical documents because "they could have made it up"!

Do you have any reason to suspect they would have made the whole thing up? Is there any evidence they had a motive to lie, and did create a conspiracy? The answer to these questions is no. The Apostles had no motive to lie, and the New Testament is chock full of examples of embarrassing details that liars would not have written or included. If you read the New Testament, the Apostles by their own testimony seem like buffoons most of the time. They never seem to get things right. They misunderstand Jesus nearly every time he opens his mouth, and then Peter denies Christ 3 times. Then they give up hope until Jesus appears alive, which they should have expected but did not. The point is this: the New Testament looks nothing like a forged, made-up set of accounts.

Here is a maxim I'd like you all to keep in mind, which I got from Dr Phil Fernandes:

Men do not die for what they know to be a hoax!

Most of the original Apostles of Jesus were killed by the Romans on account of their testimony of Christ. None of them recanted or confessed to a conspiracy. They simply had no motive to make up a story that went contrary to their Jewish expectations of a conquering Messiah, and then get themselves killed for this fake story.

So I would like to conclude the debate by saying that by Dataforge's own standards, we should believe the Gospels and submit ourselves to Jesus Christ as Lord, and to Yahweh as our Creator. I pray my opponent will do exactly that, and I pray God's blessings on you all. Thanks for reading!