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Comment by vscode-rest | Hacker News Reader

I take it you have data against creationism?

Or that it is somehow less “scary”?

Indeed, there is quite a lot of data against (Biblical/young-earth) creationism.

Everything from "humans' chromosome 2 is a fusion of two other chromosomes, and we see those two other chromosomes still present in chimpanzees and gorillas and bonobos", which argues for common descent, to "when zircon crystals form, they accept radioactive uranium but violently reject the lead that it decays to, and modern zircon crystals have lead-uranium ratios indicating that they formed billions of years ago", arguing for an old age of the universe. And many, many, many, many other pieces of evidence.

Chromosomal similarity argues for solid engineering principles just as much as it does common decent. Do you have any data to suggest that the almighty did not take a working chromosome 2 (made in their own image, perhaps), and reuse it in these other animals you reference?

Nothing about the human body argues for solid engineering principles.

Presumably you have some data to back that up? A product designed by the worlds top biological engineers that is more effective?

> Do you have any data to suggest that the almighty did not take a working chromosome 2 (made in their own image, perhaps), and reuse it in these other animals you reference?

Why would an almighty god leave markers in our Chromosome 2 that look like they are from chromosomes 2a/2b in other apes?

It's not just that there's a huge genetic similarities between the chromosomes. Which there are! Chromosome 2 also has an extra, deactivated centromere, which was used in the copying of the previous chromosome 2b, before the fusion. And, remember that chromosomes typically have telomeres at their ends to keep them from fraying apart. In a fusion event you'd expect some telomeres from the end of the ingredient chromosomes to end up in the middle of the resulting fused chromosome. And this is what we see.

Of course God could have created our chromosome in such a way that it looks very much like the fusion of 2 chromosomes from our shared ancestor with chimpanzees, down to the addition of an extra centromere and telomere region. But why would he?

But, I've also got to say, man, please don't be surprised if I don't respond much. I have no offense intended towards you, but from my perspective, arguing with a young earth creationist is about as productive as arguing with a flat earther. There are about 6 orders of magnitude of difference in age between an Earth that's about 6k years old and 4 billion, and those differences should be readily apparent all over the natural world. And they are! We see an incredible wealth of evidence for an old universe.

But... well, horse and water and all that. I can't expect to change your mind any more than I'd expect to change a flat-earther's mind.

I get that you don’t understand why a creator might do things they way they might have done. I don’t either. But surely you admit your own lack of understanding is not a scientific proof point?

If I said “I don’t understand why the big bang happened”, would that be evidence it didn’t?

Are you familiar with the idea of Last Thursdayism?

Certainly.

Which is why I contest anyone who makes claims like “smart people like me know that Science says the earth is N years old and everyone who disagrees is too dumb to understand these indisputable facts”.

For reference: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47394235

There's a buttload of data against creationism. There are living trees older than the typical date given for the creation.

Oldest tree I see is reported as 5,000 years. Common creation date is held to be roughly 6000 years ago.

Not that I think the age estimates folks have has much basis is reality. But this is a particularly empty nothing-burger.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_trees

I’m sure you’ll say the older ones are wrong, of course.

https://www.conservation.org/news/methuselah-still-the-world...

Why do these disagree? Are the metrics perhaps under some debate, even amongst the Scientists?

That one isn’t counting clonal trees.

Ok. Not really sure what you’re getting at here tbh. But I assume you have read some paper that said that this tree had some isotope of some material, and you’ve taken that to mean the earth is older than 6,000 years?

There are trees much older than 6,000 years, I provided a link with details, and you don’t know what I’m getting at?

No, you have data that you’ve interpreted to mean that the trees are older than 6,000 years old. What is that data, and why have you interpreted it in that way?

The cool thing about Wikipedia is that the bottom of every article has a bunch of references.

So you don’t know. But you have faith someone did their homework.

Me too!

It's not faith when a bunch of different people all did the homework and came up with the same answers. Especially when they're all part of a system that rewards new discoveries, and they did the homework in very different ways.

There are mountains (both literal and metaphorical) of evidence for an old earth. The only evidence for a young earth is a book which contradicts its own creation story in the first two chapters.

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