Jonathan recently posted some excerpts from young earth creationist teaching materials. Have a look at this example:
Virtually every single sentence on this page is misleading or a straight out lie. But one passage that particularly stuck out to me was this one:
Animals that could swim or float would survive longer in the water. Other animals may have been able to move to larger grounds. The animals that lived longer were buried in the top layers of the rock.
I have heard this YEC “explanation” for the fossil record before, but it still amazes me every single time I see it. The reason for that is, that it is not only utterly wrong, it is so transparently wrong on so many levels that I find it baffling how anyone could buy it.
And it requires virtually no education and very little critical thinking skills to see that this explanation makes no sense whatsoever. The statement is wrong on many levels, and for some of those, a rudimentary education and understanding of Biology, Geology and Physics is required. But even if you slept through all of your high-school science classes, never read a popular science book and have never been to a Zoo or a museum of natural history, you should be able to immediately see that this YEC explanation cannot possibly be true.
All that would be required (to name just one example out of countless possible ones) would be the vague idea that Dinosaurs once lived on this planet a long time ago (let´s ignore for the moment whether “long” means 65 million years or a few thousand years ago) and that their fossilized remains do not occur in the top rock layers – it would already be enough to have seen Jurassic Park.
Now, the YEC explanation we´ve seen above asks us to belief that the animals in the top rock layers were better at reaching higher grounds (for terrestrial animals) or surviving a flood (for marine animals) than the ones in lower layers. So, we are supposed to believe that every single elephant (for example) that was alive when the flood happened was better at reaching higher grounds than every single dinosaur. An educated person knows that elephants and dinosaurs never lived together, but even if you assume that they did, the YEC explanation for the fossil record fails spectacularly.
Every single elephant, no matter how young, old, sick or injured, was better at reaching higher grounds, than every single dinosaur, without even a single exception ? Elephants would be better at reaching higher grounds than the fast, agile and lightweight velociraptors ? Elephants would be better at reaching higher grounds than the flying pterosaurs ? Elephants would be better at surviving a flood than the marine plesiosaurs? (pterosaurs and plesiosaurs are technically not dinosaurs, but let´s not get distracted by taxonomic nitpicking)
There are YEC explanations that are hard to refute without a good understanding of the respective scientific disciplines, but this one? Does anyone really believe that ?
The term “flat-earther” is frequently used for people that hold completely absurd beliefs. But understanding why the earth cannot be flat actually does require more knowledge and thinking compared to understanding why the YEC explanation for the fossil record cannot possibly be true. Congratulations young earth creationists, you make flat-earthers look smart and educated compared to you.
