Radio Daze

Googling 'radio-dating' will pull up far too many websites promoting creationist ignorance, where ignorance can be defined as "a lack of knowledge, or a willful lack of desire to improve the efficiency, merit, effectiveness or usefulness" of one's beliefs.

Fact: radiometric dating places the solar system's age at around 4.6 billion years (based on meteorites which formed from the accretion disk at roughly the same time as the Earth). The oldest rock (detrital zircon) found on Earth dates from 4.4-4.3 billion years ago.

Not only are creationists ignorant of the facts of science, they are guilty of logical fallacies in :

● assuming that denial of facts provides good grounds for cogent arguments when, in fact, an argument from incorrect or false premises will never constitute an acceptable argument. For example,

Dogs are blue (false even for the "Australian Blue")
Your pet is a dog
Therefore, your pet must be blue

It would also be fallacious (though less obviously so) to argue
All dogs are black (mistaken 'universal')
You have a pet
Therefore, your pet must be black

(Your pet could be a black cat, though the argument stumbles onto the truth of blackness based on a different species, or your pet might be a White Alsation or a Yellow Lab. If your pet were a Black Lab, the conclusion would be correct for the wrong reasons and the argument remains a fallacious example of ignoratio elenchi)

The Earth was created by God in six days,
Bishop Usher calculated that the Earth is 6,000 years old based on the Scriptures
Therefore, scientific measurements must be wrong,
Therefore, God must have created our "young" Earth in six days
Therefore, God must exist and is our Creator

or, the other version:
Scientists are all atheists
Therefore, scientists have falsified the age of the Earth
Therefore, God must have created our "young" Earth in six days
Therefore, God must exist and is our Creator

(not all scientists are atheists, and even if scientists were atheists, if the evidence indicated a young age for the Earth then scientists would follow the facts)

● circularity (as above), which is an argument chasing its own tail : claim that A → B, B, so A.
Scriptures tell us that God created the world in six days and the Bible states (by Bishop Usher's calculation) that the Earth is only six days old
(We deny scientific dates and claim that) the Earth is very young
Therefore, God created the world

(Even if the Earth really were very young (it isn't) it would not necessarily follow that God created the Earth because some other cause might have operated.)

● argument from denial (as above)

● fallacy of false dichotomy employing an either-or dichotomy : The basic dichotomy created by Young Earth Creationists is that either God created the Earth in six days and it is only 6,000 years old, or scientific measurements are correct. This argument ignores the very, very, very remote possibility that God exists and did create the very, very, very young Hadean Earth in six days, but that He did so 4.6 billion years ago. Further the false dichotomy ignores the possibility that God exists but did not bother Himself with the creation of planets. Obviously other possibilities exist and it is uneccessary to list all possibilities to make the point about false dichotomies. Creationist arguments are false dichotomies as soon as two alternative explanations (one claimed to be correct and the other claimed incorrect) are provided as the only possible explanations when more than two possible explanations exist.

● tu quoque attacks on any who accept the facts of scientific evidence that run along the lines of, "No, it's you who are wrong, you just don't want to see the Truth!"

● 'ass-backward' arguments – creationists begin their reasoning with a firm belief in God's existence (not a priori, but received) and an insistence that the Bible (internal contradictions notwithstanding) must be literally true, then they decide that any fact that runs counter to their firm, emotionally based beliefs must necessarily be false, and then they set about ridiculing or denying that fact. Unfortunately for those who insist on believing in Biblical metaphysics, scientific facts run counter to most of their received beliefs.

As I said – ignorant.

proof-disproof muddles

Argument from Ignorance, or argumentum ad ignorantiam:

This fallacy muddles the true-false dichotomy with the question of proof or disproof, and as such is a form of false dilemma where only two options are presented when several options exist. The ignored options include false claim-not disproven, and true claim-not proven, while the implied dichotomy confines options to false claim-disproven or true claim-proven. If only the world of thought were so simple.

Fallacious arguments from ignorance erroneously claim either that lack of proof must render a claim false, or that lack of disproof must render a claim true.

An Illogical Deceit example of this argument is embodied in the “irreducible complexity” claim that if evolutionary biologists cannot provide an explanation for “specified complexity”, then evolutionary theory fails, implying that biological evolution is not a fact, and hence implying that God (aka the ‘intelligent designer’) must be responsible for whatever biological mechanism is under debate.

The more careful claim of a pro-id debater would be that ‘id’ theory ought to be taught alongside science in the classroom. This is not a substantiable claim because nothing about 'id' theory qualifies it to be regarded as science. Merely disputing the content of science does not qualify as being science. While many proids appear not to understand the true nature of science, idists and fodis are mostly well enough educated that they ought to understand the advantages and limitations of scientific investigation.

Many creationism and ‘id’ debaters who display the argumentam ad ignorantiam logical fallacy do not make their reasoning explicit, such that the conclusion of truth or falsehood is merely implied, or the actual argument is buried in the wordiness typical of idist authors. Because idist authors write for a readership that is typically not well versed in science, idist writings necessarily contain very lengthy explanations. However, wordiness can also be a technique of verbal obfuscation wherein an argument – and its inherent deficiencies of logic – are obscured by rhetoric.

When the reader is not well versed with the topic under discussion, he or she will have more difficulty in determining whether or not the writer has provided an accurate, authoritative, and complete account of the topic. When the conclusions drawn by the writer fit with the reader's preconceived notions or feelings about the topic, then the reader is at risk of being misled. Knowledge of the fallacies of logic can provide a short-cut to determining the difficulties with an argument. A single fallacy of logic does not necessarily render the conclusions suspect. However, a plethora of fallacies do indicate that the argument, and hence the conclusions drawn, are fatally flawed.