I just want to bring people back from the dead.
this post was submitted on 27 May 2026
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People who believe in young earth creationism have completely rejected science already. They won't be convinced by any scientific argument.
I never really understood why people argue with them.
Like, take this instance as an example. They'd just say that God intentionally created pre-aged Uranium.
To whatever your detailed scientific argument may be, their argument can always be "God did it that way". You can win an argumenr against these people but you can never convice them that you did really just win the argument...
When asked why God would do such a thing, the answer is usually "To test your faith".
I was brought up Christian as a child, and went to church, but this answer is a prime example of what ultimately turned me away. Such behaviour didn't fit the image of God in my mind. My version of God was pure, loving and trustworthy, and wouldn't scatter "tests of faith" and other such trickery around my world.
Why would an all-knowing god need to test anything?
"Testing your faith" sounds like tricking people into not believing. Which is exactly what they accuse their devil of doing. This god sounds like kind of an asshole.
Same here. Was raised by a purely Christian family, anti-abortion and anti-gay and all of that.
I may actually still be believing in their God if their answers didn't always sound like made up fits-all generic loyalist bullshit.
Religion should be a way of better, more moral living based on principles, not a weapon to impose yourself on others and justify all oppression with "it's God's will".
A lot of religious people live that way, with the philosophy/self morality being the point.
…A whole lot don’t, though.
My baseline argument these days is that god does not exist, or if he does exist, he is an evil asshole that gives children bone cancer.
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That's not necessarily true. I managed to convert one who had doubts about the dinosaurs just by giving her information.
Some people were indoctrinated and aren't hopeless.
Speaking as someone who used to be a young Earth creationist, some of us are just born into it and are given lots of tools and incentives to maintain the faith despite, you know, all the evidence
Taking a class on the scientific method and reading a book on rationality was what got me to embrace doubt and decide that I only want to believe in something if it's true
Love of truth set me free
They don't know that Satan placed pre-decayed uranium in the earth to fool the righteous.
God requires faith!
And regular tithing!
I wonder how many people donate with the understand that their money goes directly towards reinforcing the dogmatic power dynamics?
How many people are like "man this religion shit is stupid, but I gotta instill the fear of hell into my wife and kids so they do as I say"
so my constituents stay, so my power stays, so my money stays
nice try with your """logic""" and """facts""" but you fail to consider the power of my personal interpretation of a book (and by personal I mean exactly the one some sketchy pastor said), check mate WITCH
Who reads books nowadays? Don't you have a YouTube video or something that can tell me what my opinion is without leaving the house?
I once had a friend who was a Jehovah's Witness who tried to argue that carbon dating was junk science ..
I don't think Jehovah's Witnesses know much about dating
Carbon dating gives you an approximate age under the assumption that the carbon you're looking at followed the same dynamics at all time points preceding the present moment. It does not prove in any way that the assumption is true.
The assumption doesn't lead to the potential for things that are 6000 years old being dated to millions/billions of years old though. The error margin is more in the range of 2 to 5%.
The error rate is also based on that assumption. If the carbon suddenly popped into existence 6000 years ago, then that violates the assumption.
The error rate is based on correlation with results from other methods of dating that don't have the same assumption.
What dating method doesn't rely on the same assumption of sameness across time?
Tree ring dating doesn't include that assumption. But also Potassium-argon or uranium lead dating require a different assumption of sameness across time, it would be highly unlikely for significantly different isotopes to experience similar issues of the same time periods.
If trees haven't always started from 0 and grown a new ring each year (barring weird weather phenomena), then how can we use it for dating? The only way that it works is if we assume they do.
A different assumption of sameness is still an assumption of sameness. And the "highly unlikely" claim you're making is also based on the same assumption, but applied to the universe as a whole. Why would you say that it's unlikely unless you've observed that the laws of physics have always been consistent during your lifetime and extrapolated that into the past?
I mean we can literally see into the past and observe the laws of physics being consistent, not sure what your point is?
The point is to hopefully get people to put some more thought into the position they hold and what they argue against so they can make stronger arguments. Contrary to popular belief, religious folks do listen to logic (at least, in my experience). But those who argue with them don't argue from a place of logic either, so obviously they're not going to be receptive.
Most religious idiots argue carbon dating is junk science or fake. Its like the single most commonality between every cult member.
My boss for example fully believes that the earth is 6000 years old and that carbon dating isn't real. Because and I quote "I am required by my faith to believe the earth is 6000 years old for it is in the Bible. If I do not believe it I will go to hell".
There is zero requirement for that in the Bible, that person is just an idiot who can’t understand things.
The thing is, if you're an all mighty god, you can create earth today to look like it's been here for billions of years, so these arguments are silly from the religious side. You can argue the method, but not the science.
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I grew up around young earth creationists, and was taught at school that carbon dating is inaccurate to the point of uselessness past a couple thousand years. But interestingly they did not believe in hell at all. (They just believe all non believers will be burned to death once, with finality. Not forever)
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Young Earth creationists have a special response that can be used to get around any problems. "That's just the way that God made it."
So dinosaur bone fossils are down there not because an ancient animal died, but because God put the bones there like that.
When you carbon date something, if it's measured age is too large, then God made it already partially decayed when he made it.
There's no need to debate science, then. So why do they say science is wrong, when it does zero good? I think it's because they are morons.
No, no, no. What actually happened was, Noah rounded up two of every creature to put on the ark in preparation for the great flood. But the dinosaurs -- who were totes alive at the same time as humans -- didn't get the memo. So, Noah shrugged and was like, "Oh well. You guys aren't going to fit anyways. Sayonara."
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Ahh yes, the trickster god running around with nothing better to do than bad faith tricks to getchya, completely plausible and definitely lines up with his general modus operandi from the rest of the bible!
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Uranium was used by dinosaurs to cast spells during the dark ages.
God put Uranium in the ground to test our faith.
I actually have a question on a similar topic
How does carbon dating work? Sure, things made in the past have some carbon-14 broken down, but don't the raw materials used in making today's products do just the same?
What makes carbon-14 break down differently in things made before and raw materials we use today?
As Thalfon said, the Carbon 14 decays at a predictable rate.
So where does the starting quantity come from?
Radiation from space (probably cosmic rays) interacting with the atmosphere causes some of the atoms to become a different isotope. Plants integrate C14 into their sugars and cellulose, and when they are dead and buried by sediment, no more C14 is integrated. While buried, the plant matter is sheilded from further radiation, the C14 decays at a predictable rate, and we measure that. Meanwhile, underground carbon like coal and oil is also sheilded from radiation and doesn't get converted to C14; instead any C14 decays into C12. Thus the problem with Carbon dating after the industrial revolution.
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It's not that it breaks down differently (in fact, we rely on it being consistent), it's how much it has broken down. Carbon-14 has a half-life of 5700 +/- 30 years (per Wikipedia), so if you see 1/2 the expected amount of carbon-14 then something would be around 5700 years old, with 1/4 the expected amount you'd predict 11400 years old, etc.
This relies on the amount of carbon-14 originally being predictable. This worked well in the past for living things (which from what I understand tended to maintain a consistent ratio of C-14 to C-12) or objects made from their organic material, but stopped being true around the industrial revolution when we started pumping the atmosphere full of carbon.
We use other isotopes, or other techniques in general, for very recent objects, or for things more than 50-60 thousand years old.
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If they could read, they would be very upset.
Bus needs to be repainted as a church bus.
Personally I believe that Adam and Even left the garden of Eden 6,000 years ago...
After hanging around eating fruit in the buff for 13.7 billion years, during which time the rest of humanity evolved from apes.
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