What is the YEC answer to the lack of shorter lived isotopes?

Rei, (and Percy, since I've read most of the posts here.)Here's how I deal with the young earth ideas in Genesis.God says that He created the heavens and the earth, but He doesn't say, explicitly, when (vs 1). When asked by Kabbalists, and the fundamentalists I have heard of who took the trouble, the answer received was, "a very long time ago." Some Kabbalists even got an estimate approximating that of the cosmologists.But, as the story unfolds, the earth was laid waste and destroyed. Now, this is often translated "formless and void," but the Hebrew words used here are translated elsewhere as "laid waste and destroyed." That this could happen at this point in Genesis is later confirmed by the pre-existing presence of a destroyer, Satan, who shows up without being "created" (except as part of the heavens and the earth in verse 1) in Chap. 3. Then, in six days, about 6000 years ago, God restored the creation that had been destroyed.The beauty of evolutionary theory is that it takes a long time, and describes a process of the production of biological and physical diversity. But that process could be either a creation or an evolution. Selection could be either natural or artificial. Genetic change could be either random mutation or genetic engineering. Data that indicate either selection or genetic change support both theories. If creation is true, we learn something about the way God, the Creator, works, about His nature, what we can expect from Him, even from the theory of evolution. It's like Newton's laws of force and motion. Not exactly true, but useful for many practical purposes.That the restored creation retains the agedness of the original is thus a restatement of your option 1 into, "God deliberately set up the universe in its orginal old age, because that's the way it was when it was destroyed, the way He wanted it to be. He wanted us to know how He went about creating things, so that when we (His image) would create things, and would choose to do so in a Godly fashion, we would know how that was." We have the six day restoration story, so that when we found something that was laid waste and destroyed by evil (either our creation, or His), and wanted it restored, we could know that a "miraculous" fast restoration was always possible.This view of creation, when dealt with scientifically, I call evolition, to contrast with evolution. Giving the two theories these similar names seems to defuse in my mind the idea that the theories are of different natures and cannot be studied using strong inference. In strong inference, one takes two competing explanations, and deduces opposing predictions from the two. Then, the predictions are tested, and the theory whose predictions are confirmed gains in plausibility compared to the theory whose predictions are not. In this case, we might (!) predict from the theory of creation, from evolition, that those who "forget God" as is done with most evolutionary thinking will be artificially selected against by the artificially selecting Creator, still busy at work shaping His creation. That is, evolutionists ought to have a lower fitness, less reproducing offspring, than those believing in a Creator. From the theory of evolution, we (might, again) get the opposite prediction. That is, if a Creator can be safely forgotten, not being relevant to fitness, etc, then those who waste time on the idea, or are deluded or deceived (i.e. creation believers), being less aware of the truth about forces that determine fitness, would have fewer reproducing offspring. This assumes of course that intelligence "evolved" through natural selection, being a trait that produced clearer, more accurate perceptions and expectations of "selection pressures."In this simple test, the human group with the largest known fitness, Mennonites and Amish, being creation believers, confirm the truth of the evolition theory. Except for Robert Trivers, a unique evolutionary biologist who explicitly took his theory to heart and went out to have a large biological fitness, evolutionists are probably lower than the general population in reproductive success.Don't want to make too much out of this test, of course. Just presented as an example of how one scientist is going about seeing which theory is most plausible.

Zephyr,Your cautions are appropriate, and accepted. But hear mine. You say things like "completely ruin" and "proves nothing." which suggests that you have an "all-or-nothing" (dogmatic) inclination driving you. I disagree with most of your ad hoc explanations of the predictions, which doesn't mean too much. What is interesting is that you decided to weaken the argument that way, instead of coming up with a contrasting set of predictions confirming evolution over evolition.Stephen

Zephyr,The relatively high reproductive rates in some third world nations does not, as you point out, represent true fitness, which is best estimated using reproducing offspring. You'll recall that I drew attention to Amish and Mennonites, who average over 9 children per couple, 85% of whom stay "in the faith" and go one to also average 9 children per family. All the while stewarding the land as well as it is stewarded anywhere. Actually, I also look at Switzerland, a K-selected population, as also having, under the terms you suggest, a rather fit population. Be interesting to compare the Swiss W before and after they took up with evolutionary thinking. But evolutionists are like Shakers, hardly reproducing at all, but converting many to their belief system. Unfortuneately, the "broad road/narrow road" prediction of biblical creation actually predicts this sort of "fitness" for evolutionists. So, it does not really separate the two theories.Nor was I psychoanalyzing you. Just drawing attention to the rules you are playing by. Ad hoc ideas have a very weak influence on debates, until they are tested by predictions, at least as I was taught the game.You might benefit from Julian Simon's "The Ultimate Resource" from Princeton. Also, note in passing that the "overpopulation" hypothesis has been around a long time, has made many predictions, none of which have been confirmed. Why do you find it plausible? Reason? How do you separate reason from rationalization?Please recall that this is no place, epistemologically, for persuasion. I can help you understand certain ideas, and can point you to information you might not otherwise have. Whether you want to understand, or to cure ignorance, is a choice you now have. I have helped you be freer, given you more intellectual choice. Of course, if you choose to be more deeply opinionated in your views, my comments are less than useless.Stephen

Zephyr,You say, Glad to hear it! And to have been mistaken in my judgment.Stephen