A few years ago I wrote a satire piece titled Answers from Genesis: Reclaiming the Biblical Authority of Joseph’s Global Famine. It was meant to call attention to the fact that Hebrew words used in Genesis 41 to describe the severe famine at the time of Joseph are the same as those used in the Creation Account of Genesis 1 and 2 and Noah’s Flood in Genesis 6-9. An example of this language can been seen in verses 56 and 57 (ESV) of Genesis 41 which reads: “So when the famine had spread over all the land (erets) Joseph opened all the storehouses and sold to the Egyptians, for the famine was severe in the land (erets) of Egypt. Moreover, all the earth (erets) came to Egypt to Joseph to buy grain, because the famine was severe over all the earth (erets).”
My understanding of the original text follows the conventional interpretation of this passage by orthodox biblical expositors over many millennia; namely the term all the earth is used to indicate either the known world at that time (accommodationist) or is hyperbole to emphasize the importance of the event (i.e. everyone came from everywhere to come to the fair).
My purpose for the satire account was to illustrate that when young-earth apologists insist upon a static literal interpretation of certain words or phrases that support their positions, there can be great consequences. If they are fair and apply a consistent hermeneutic they must also interpret both the Great Flood and the severe famine in Joseph’s time as truly global (planet-wide) events. Furthermore, this interpretation would require that people from the entire earth would have been fed by Joseph’s storehouses of food. As such, even native North and South Americans and Australians must have also experienced this same seven-year famine and, minimally, representatives of each people group around the world would have traveled to Egypt to obtain food from Joseph.
The same observation might be made of Paul’s statement in his letter to the Colossians, when he says that the gospel already had been ‘preached in all creation under heaven’ (Colossians 1:23). Was Paul intending his audience to understand that the gospel had been presented to the Native South Americans or Aboriginal Australians at this time?
However, it has come to my attention that Dr. Nathaniel Jeanson, developmental biologist on staff at Answers in Genesis, has been promoting* the same literalistic reading of this passage that I was satirizing. First proposed in their in-house journal in December of 2019, (Testing the Predictions of the Young-Earth Y Chromosome Molecular Clock: Population Growth Curves Confirm the Recent Origin of Human Y Chromosome Differences) he has expanded upon those initial thoughts in a series of seminar-style videos made with Ken Ham in recent months (in particular see episodes 21, 22 and 23 of the series: The New History of the Human Race).
Through this media, Jeanson has expressed his conviction that the most consistent interpretation (i.e. the same hermeneutic that leads to young-earth interpretation of Genesis 1) of the Joseph narrative in Genesis 41 is that a severe, worldwide famine must have occurred several hundred years after the Flood, during the time of Joseph. In a bit of twist, as compared to what I had satirically proposed, he hypothesizes that at the time of Joseph people had not yet migrated to the Americas having just left Babel a few hundred years earlier (Note, this requires that the earliest that man arrived in the Americas would be just 3,800 years ago!). He uses a new secular-to-YEC “time calibration tool” he has created—more about this in our next post—to suggest that civilizations were geographically limited to the Middle East region at the time of Joseph. He also calculates, using his Y-chromosome method, a past population size for the whole world at Joseph’s time of between 5-10 million males.
Jeanson seems to have taken to heart—not to say that he has read it—the sentiment from the end of my satire piece:
“This is ultimately about the authority of God’s Word, which plainly teaches that the Famine of Joseph was global in extent. Indeed, if the text of Genesis 41 clearly teaches—as it does—that the Famine of 1700 B.C. was global and we reject that teaching, then we undermine the reliability and authority of other parts of Scripture, including John 3:16. God’s Word is trustworthy and authoritative in all that it affirms.
These and many more biblical, theological, and scientific considerations make the compromise of a mere local famine, so often promoted by liberal seminary professors, totally untenable. This is all ultimately about the authority of all of God’s Word, which plainly teaches that the Famine of Joseph was global in extent.
We all have the same data. It’s really a question of the worldview we interpret that data though and when viewed with the right worldview “glasses” the biblical and scientific evidence support a global famine.
It is time to recognize and defend the historicity of one of the most profound events that has taken place in earth’s history. No less than biblical authority is at stake.”**
I should say that I do commend Dr. Jeanson, over other young-earth apologists, for more consistently applying young-earth interpretive principles. Using the same logic and linguistics that cause him to conclude that the Great Flood was truly planet-wide, Jeanson applies the same to Joseph’s Famine and the Tower of Babel. If the “entire planet” was flooded, then, similarly, “all of humanity” gathered to build a tower and, also, to be fed by Joseph. Jeanson looks for confirming evidence in human migration patterns observed through remnant patterns of genetic variation, the correlation of climactic events that could cause famine (e.g. Ice Age) and even linguistic patterns.
Of course consistency in applying interpretive principles can be applied to the point of absurdity. If the interpretive principles were incorrect from the start, then consistency only results in providing a consistently wrong interpretation. (Garbage in, garbage out.) Anyone who seeks truth from scripture should determine if one’s own interpretation leads to unrealistic predictions (or situations). At a certain threshold, it may be that there is an issue with the initial interpretation. As with life, we should then return to see if there is an alternate, valid interpretation that is a better fit. That is an important observation that challenges each one of us but is especially pertinent to the young-earth hermeneutic.
What I was attempting to communicate in my satire piece stands. The hermeneutic that guides the young-earth understanding of scripture, consistently applied, will lead invariably to Jeanson accepting as dogma the extent of Joseph’s famine. There will be no physical evidence that can cause doubt about this interpretation of scripture for any such effort to use physical evidence to make that adjustment will necessarily also bring the young-earth interpretation into question. Rather, all evidence will be reinterpreted in light of the truth. That people lived in Australia during Joseph’s famine will be denied or else hypotheses for how people traveled from Australia to Egypt during those seven years will be proposed, in order to accommodate one’s scriptural interpretation, but not the other way around.
There can be no physical evidence that could dissuade Jeanson from abandoning what he believes* the scriptures demand. However, I believe that he may be open to testing the hypothesis that peoples had not settled in the New World prior to the time of Joseph. At least the geographical extent of peoples that make up the whole world should be an open and testable question within the young-earth paradigm.
Let’s help him settle that question in our next post when we evaluate the evidence for advanced human occupation of the New World at the time of the last Ice Age. An event Jeanson proposes may have been the cause of a global drought and famine referenced in Genesis 41.
*It is important to acknowledge that Dr. Jeanson says he is still exploring this idea of the universality of Joseph’s famine and universal migration to Egypt though he sounds fairly convinced of that interpretation. He realizes that this is not the traditional understanding of this passage but he believes that the language of the text appears to require this global famine as much as it does a global flood in Genesis 6-9 and that peoples came from all parts of the world, not just the locally-known world, to get food. It seems to be his starting assumption as he now explores how the evidence from creation and human history might be reinterpreted to fit the plain reading of the scriptures. Nevertheless, we should treat his proposals as provisional until he commits to this relatively novel interpretation of Genesis 41. Interestingly, one wonders if the physical evidence he seeks to confirm his provisional interpretation might influence his evaluation of the Genesis 41 passage?
If he can’t find supporting physical evidence of a global famine during this time or clear evidence in genomics that point to people having come from the whole earth back to Egypt will he reconsider his interpretation of Genesis 41? Will Jeanson allow physical evidence to suggest problems with an interpretation of the text? These are important questions that challenge each one of us, but are especially pertinent to one who holds the young-earth position.
** This text was copied from The New Answers Book 3 published by leading Young Earth Creationist’ apologetic ministry Answers in Genesis, except that I replaced references to Noah’s Flood with Joseph’s Famine.
Editing provided by Michael Callen
Naturalis Historia 
Poe’s Law in action!
Biblical timeline https://biblehub.com/timeline/genesis/1.htm puts the famine at 1875 BC.
You needn’t go as far as the Americas, since China is surely too far for people to have come to Egypt for grain, but if Jeanson won’t accept archaeology that’s not much help. Wikipedia gives the earliest clear date in China as 841 BC.
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Paul, where did you get the 841 BC date from? Conventional dating of modern humans in China goes back a lot further than that. 841 would work well in the YEC chronology because they would have gotten there after Joseph’s famine.
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Of course the convincing archaeological record goes back far before the creationist time for Joseph, but I was looking specifically for a known date. According to Wikipedia, 841 BC is “The earliest securely dated event in Chinese history”, and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Written_Chinese#Evolution says “The earliest generally accepted examples of Chinese writing date back to the reign of the Shang Dynasty king Wu Ding (1250–1192 BC)”. According to the same article, symbols suggestive of writing go back 5000 years before that, but since YEC would simply deny the archaeology I’m not sure this helps very much. Of course if archaeological evidence is acceptable, the North American record goes back far beyond the implied date of Joseph, and indeed the implied date of Adam and Eve
So I was hoping to torpedo Jeanson, but unfortunately it’s a bit of a damp squib
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I believe the reliable archaeological record of Egypt goes back over 5000 years, as does the record of many other areas, including N America, where there is extensive evidence that people were settled here at least 15,000 years ago, and growing evidence that the first arrivals happened >30,000 years ago. YECs of course dispute this, just as they refuse to accept the overwhelming evidence from many different dating methods that the Earth is over 4.5 billion year old. As mentioned before, even after ICR’s RATE project authors admitted that the Earth’s rocks record far too much radioactivity to fit a YEC time frame, instead of facing the logical conclusion if that, they proposed multiple illogical, ad-hoc miracles in weak attempt to salvage their view (and even after doing that, still could not explain most of the data). Moreover, with that approach they will not allow any amount or weight of contrary evidence to refute their view, and thus have destroyed any pretense of science in “scientific creationism.”
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Surely Col 1.23 means preaching to Martians too – if ktisis means creation means as in cosmos (It is often better as humanity.as in rom 8)
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Reblogged this on Peddling and Scaling God and Darwin and commented:
He ‘s got the whole world in His hands” – even during famines. Poor Joseph, he must have found it difficult getting grain to Latin america. Pity his sailors didn’t bring back some potatoes.
This blog takes a serious look on how Answers in Genesis deal with the world wide flood which Joseph dealt with while in Egypt. It is difficult keeping a straight face at times
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Here’s one I’ve always wondered about: when Jesus came to save us all, why wasn’t the whole world Jewish? The Bible tells us that after the Flood, the surviving adult human population was down to eight: Noah, his three sons, and their wives, all of them Jewish. Very devout Jews too, since 1) they were the only people worth saving in the whole world and 2) they had just seen their God wipe out the entire earth. If that didn’t make a believer out of you, nothing would!
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The rabbinical interpretation, for what it’s worth, Is that there were a series of revelations and covenants. Noah clearly received direct messages from God, Including a restricted list of commandments such as one against murder. Wikipedia has a good article on this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Laws_of_Noah. According to this religious tradition, the righteous among the Gentiles have always recognised the one true God. Genesis and Exodus then tell us how the special position of Israelite religion arose in part from God’s covenant with Abraham, and in part from the revelation at Mount Sinai.
In actual historical terms, all details in the Bible before at least the time of David are dubious. The primacy of YHWH and the identity between YHWH and El (or Elohim) was a gradual and much later development, as was the replacement of henotheism by monotheism; of the command to worship only one particular God by the belief that that God was the only one who exists.
Incidentally, to speak of “Jewish” at any time before the destruction of the Northern Kingdom Is historically incorrect. The Hebrew word, Yehudi, comes from Yehudah (Judah). I’m not sure what the oldest use of that word is.
Does that help?
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Love it! More stuff to be included in vol 2 of Rocks (their video series is lengthy but way too juicy to pass up).
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Incidentally, I believe Augustine used Colossians 1:23 to argue that the antipodes (undiscovered continents) could not be populated by humans.
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Another good post, Joel! I’d sum things up by saying that Jeanson’s ideas here are based on unnecessary hyper-literal translations of certain Hebrew words, while neglecting mountains of contrary scientific, historical, and linguistic evidence, but as with many other YEC notions, what else is new?
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again, for those hard of reading, the fact that a word in scripture with various possible meanings is used in different parts of the bible do not require that one possible meaning be used in all instances of usages. This is simple hermeneutics. Anyone with a modicum of effort can find this out. If the word “all” in exodus is the same hebrew word used in Genesis, this does not require that they have the same meaning in both contexts. It is context that determines this, among other things. The story in Exodus is local, focused on Egypt. In Genesis, it is the whole world. Two entirely different contexts and intentions. This word fallacy you employ is both ignorant and juvenile. Perhaps instead of laughing at your supposed cleverness you might want to spend some time actually understanding the bible and learning how to understand this ancient document, this compendium of 66 books. I am amused by and embarrassed for those who congratulate themselves for finding exactly what they were looking for and then parading this “accomplishment” and apparent victory to receive adulation and applause. Your arguments wouldn’t impress a single biblical or Hebrew scholar. Joel should be more mature and knowledgeable than this, but perhaps i presume too much, As for you Glen, whatever you think you know, do better.
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Chuck, since you are the one hurling insults and snide remarks, while Joel focused on evidence, it seems ironic that you accuse him of juvenile behavior, besides ending with a jab at me. While context is indeed important, I don’t see where you provided any evidence that the use of the Hebrew words for “all” of “land” in the Flood account must have been global, and contrary to your suggestions, many scholars argue that they don’t, or at least need not. Moreover, good analysis respects scientific and historical evidence, and in this case, there are massive amounts and types of evidence that contradict the idea of a recent global Flood, and the YEC paradigm in general. In any case, are you conceding that the Gen. 41 famine was regional rather than global, for all the reasons Joel argued? You say no biblical or Hebrew scholar would support Joel’s arguments, but that was his main argument, and most scholars agree with that, not with Jeanson’s views.
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well Glen, if i had the time to untangle your inaccurate recounting of what i said and conflating it with what Joel said, i would try. But it might take hours. Let’s get this clear, what i quite clearly said is that the fact that the Hebrew word for all might be used in both Genesis 41 and in reference to the flood referring to it’s extent does not nor would it ever DEMAND that it is being used in the same exact manner. This is a simple hermeneutical rule and you don’t have to be a scholar to know this. A course on Herm. 101 would teach you this.
Personally, I don’t give a rat’s butt what yec, oec, lsd, and xyz people believe about these texts. I care what the bible says. The reference at the beginning of Genesis is in a context that seems to clearly be extrapolating what is occurring on earth as a whole planet, thus there is no referent to specific countries, kingdoms, etc. because they did not at this time exist. The later reference is a time long after the flood where kingdoms and nations exist, thus the reference to Egypt and surrounding territories. To demand, in these two very different contexts, that the word “all” is being used to express the same identical meaning is not biblically or linguistically sound. As to who is arguing what here is irrelevant.
Perhaps, as i previously expressed, if you and Joel paid more attention to achieving an accurate understanding of biblical word usage instead of some shallow “victory” over a party you disagree with, a win that no doubt, as you express, makes you feel superior in some sense, to the extent that you can congratulate yourselves on being smarter or more clever, you would actually achieve an accurate understanding of what the bible says instead of what party a,b, or c says.
I did not call Joel juvenile. I said such reasoning as you and he employ is juvenile, childish in the sense of being quite ignorant about that upon which you pontificate. You can argue any point you want about any topic you want and i am sure i can find an “expert” or scholar who disagrees with you and agrees with me. This is just victory by consensus, and hopefully you are aware at just how often, in humanity’s short existence the consensus eventually becomes the minority view and then totally rejected.
And yes, i am saying that Genesis 41 is local in the sense that it encompasses Egypt and surrounding territories. Are you arguing that it encompassed the whole world? How would you know? How would anyone know. I tend to believe, “experts be damned”, that Noah’s flood was worldwide. That belief best fits the context of Genesis in the bible, which is my highest authority. That secular naturalistic scientists find no “proof” of this does not surprise me, considering their a priori biases do not allow for any kind of supernatural event. If the evidence was staring them right in the face, which it is, they would not see it and if they saw it they would reinterpret it or disregard it in order to conform with their particular worldview. Sciences are not infallible, Glen. They change constantly. What’s embraced today is often discarded tomorrow. So forgive me if i do not worship at the altar of scientism. It serves it’s purpose. It can be used to enlighten and give life and also to blind and kill.
What usually sets me off on sites like this is the smug arrogance often displayed, sometimes in concert with incredibly ignorant and contradictory rants that more often than not involve the same types of reasoning errors that the opposition is accused of using.
One last time Glen, the Hebrew word used for “all” can obviously, one can hope it is seen, mean all in the sense of everything, everyone, or everywhere. It can also be used, in context, to merely refer to a large area, or number, or a group, a sense of hyperbole used to convey largeness or extremeness. It’s that simple. That knowledge, in and of itself, would give neither you and Joel, or YEC adherents any automatic victory in your arguments, unless they were in agreement with usage of biblical language. And the fact that yec adherents believe that “all” in Noah’s flood passages means the whole earth and “all” in famine passages does not is no contradiction at all, nor is it an improper use or interpretation of the word. It is normal biblical usage and can mean either. Whether you or yec authors misuse it is your problem, not the bibles’. What i have been saying can be verified by consulting any book on biblical interpretation or word dictionary.
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Chuck,
Your comment that you only called Joel’s arguments “juvenile” rather than Joel himself seems to be a distinction without much difference. As I see it, both are insulting and unfounded, along with your other insinuations about our seeking adulations and my “smug arrogance”. Think whatever you like of me, but for the record, I saw no hint of anything “juvenile” or self-promoting in Joel’s writings. Indeed, I found his current article thoughtful and professional as usual, in contrast to your dismissive and discourteous remarks. Your claim that we are ignoring plain interpretations and failing to read carefully seems ironic, since you seem to be missing the main point of his article, while attacking “arguments” neither he nor I made. Joel can correct me if I am wrong, but as I understood he was not insisting (and neither was I) that the Hebrew word for “all” must be translated identically throughout Genesis, just explaining reasons why Jeanson’s suggestion that Genesis 41 describes a global famine is poorly founded. You implied we were disregarding what “all biblical and Hebrew scholars” hold, but again, most scholars do not believe the famine was global, as you yourself seem to agree. And on other matters (as the extent or nature of the Genesis Flood) many if not most biblical scholars (and the vast majority of scientists, Christian and otherwise) do not accept a YEC view. Now you suggest you don’t care what others think, but if so, why did you stress what “all scholars” supposedly hold? You can’t have it both ways.
Moreover, although it was not the focus of Joel’s article (and again he can correct me if I am wrong), but I don’t think he would insist any more than I would that the words for “all” or “land” in the Flood account must refer to either a global Flood, nor that they necessarily specify a regional Flood, based on linguistics alone. After all, not only can the word can have different meanings, but that to the people of the day, their region may have been seen as their entire world. As Joel seems to agree, even if you don’t, in these matters one should take all relevant evidence and factors into account, including the literary and historic context, and all relevant scientific evidence. When that is done, unless one wants to just chuck the Flood story as a baseless fable, it seems more reasonable to interpret the Genesis Flood as a regional event, or possibly a largely metaphorical account, rather than insist as YECs do that it was a literal global Flood occurring only a few thousands years ago. Not only is that linguistically unnecessary (see link below), but it starkly contradicts massive amounts of geologic evidence. While belittling Joel and I for supposedly ignoring plain interpretations, you seem to be largely ignoring that evidence.
Your quip about science always changing is a nice cliché, but also largely moot here. There is so much evidence that supports and old Earth and conventional geology while thoroughly refuting a recent global Flood, that any new evidence, while allowing refinements in our understanding of Earth History, is hardly going to flip that situation. It would be as likely as new findings overturning all the evidence for a round Earth, and showing the Earth flat after all. You imply you only care what the Bible says, but again, not only is that not always as clear as you imply, but if you were to use only that principle when judging the shape of the earth, you might well conclude (as many once did) that it is flat. After all, it refers to it’s “four corners” and says that Jesus could see all the kingdoms of the earth from one high place (at a time when there were people out of sight on a round earth). I’m not arguing that the Bible promotes a flat earth, just pointing out the perils of hyperliteralism and neglecting the vast bulk of scientific evidence in one’s Biblical interpretations.
https://www.oldearth.org/morton/global_flood.htm
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Your reference to flat earth is a prime example of what i consider “juvenile arguments”. If you truly believe that you can read the Genesis account of the flood and come away with a “local” interpretation makes me ask exactly what methods of interpretation you are using. The “this is what i prefer” method? Now, you may dismiss it as a myth, and this seems to be a more intellectually, from your standpoint, honest point of view. And i will restate my point again, and if you can’t actually disprove it, don’t bother addressing it. Science CHANGES. Does this mean the consensus that the flood is mythological or local will change? Doubtful. The Narrative that currently underlies evolutionary thought is not going to allow it, and scientists who disagree with that narrative either speak out and are censored, fired, etc. or they just go quietly on their way, keeping their true convictions to themselves. I love it how you, Joel, and the like, will always manage to find some fringe interpretation and then magnify it to make it seem like it is the majority christian or biblical view. I know of no reputable christian or biblical scholar who would argue that the Egyptian famine had to have affected the entire known world. Whoever Jeanson might be is irrelevant. Joel, et, al, has such a burr in the butt about yec and Ken Ham that a disproportionate amount of his life seems to be spent finding every little thing to disagree with. Of course, it is his life, so have at it.
Now, per your “juvenile” response, if you happen to believe that the only way to make a juvenile argument is to be totally juvenile yourself, then i guess i understand your point. I however, believe that even brilliant people, scholars, scientists, philosophers, etc often make arguments that are juvenile in nature, i.e. ignorant or illogical or incoherent. Richard Dawkins is often guilty of this.I did not attribute such a quality to you because you weren’t the author of the post. I left it open.
My point is that any argument that is based solely on word meanings is quite often doomed to failure. There are so many other things to take into consideration. If Joel wants to waste his time refuting some obscure author of a worldwide Egyptian famine viewpoint, he of course is entitled to waste his time.
Let’s be honest here Glen, you have a liberal, skeptical view of biblical writings. You are entitled of course. Just don’t pretend to be giving some objective overview of said topic. Be up front and honest. Let us know where you are coming from. I have noticed a tendency of site owners to be very obscure and even dishonest about where they stand on different topics. I realize you may poison your audience upfront, but finding out you are being deceptive will poison them far more quickly and deeply than being honest.
Your statements about “four corners” = flat earth displays that you obviously understood little to nothing about my post about understanding languages in their original settings and words with their variant meanings. If you can’t do this or are unable to do this, why bother responding. In fact, why bother even reading my posts? Just assume what you want, insert what you will, and argue with a phantom. You’ll almost always win this way, unless, of course, your arguments are juvenile.
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Of course Biblical interpretation is text based, hence the meaning of words. But there’s also a history to be taken into account, how prior writers regarded the texts, which indicated what they meant. The flat earth geocentric cosmology of the Bible and other ancient peoples had to adapt to the gradual acquisition of facts to the contrary, and how believers grapple with that process marks a divide between the metaphor-friendly “liberals” and more literalist “conservative” exegesis, neither of whom are comfortable with the idea that their religious documents can ever really be wrong on anything. They’re just rationalizing the issue in different ways, either by metaphorizing the text when forced to by the contrary data, or by junking the conflicting science or history as the Young Earth ideologues do.
This is on top of the inevitable problems that come from internal contradictions in the text, pretty much inevitable for any human-written document.
Joel was simply spotting how slippery the slope is for the literalist logic fielded by YECers on the Flood. That a global Egyptian famine is silly only reflects how generally aware scholars were with Egyptian history, compared to the relative disconnect from historical archaeology by the creationists. It’s only been in the last few years that its begun to dawn on YECers that their dogmas functionally force them to move all of Egyptian history down past the Flood. That other cultures (especially China) pose similar problems for them is insufficiently appreciated (so far) only because the creationists aren’t typically interested in anybody’s history other than the zone around the traditional Bible-mentioned real estate.
Attempts to tinker with such things too freely have pitfalls, as the pseudo-history of Joseph Smith’s Mormons most hilariously illustrates, but the process is not notably different from what goes on in the creationist subculture, trying to square the imperatives of a “never can be wrong” text with an increasing deluge (pun intended) of history and science conflicting with their antiquated narrative needs.
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Rj, based on the tone of your post one might assume you believe that yec proponents have just now, thanks to the enlightened like you, come to realize there may be some difficulties in their narrative. I can assure, to the contrary, that creationists, while attempting to remain true to their narrative, as secular scientists do in relation to their own, have been attempting to deal with difficulties for quite some time. You seem to believe that only creationists are blindly loyal to their take on things biblical while failing to mention that secular scientists can be and have been in the past blindly loyal to their own agenda (notice the refusal to admit fallacies and pseudo-science in their pet theory {actually hypothesis} of evolution. Refusal to admit error is not the private property of the religious. You seem to buy into Joel’s practice of trying to find the most fringe beliefs in christianity (defined even by christians themselves as such) and then present said belief as representative of said belief system as a whole. This is simply using straw man arguments and the genetic fallacy, one of the most often used methods of supposed “scientific” reasoning and argument. While i am not yec (nor oec) i am quite familiar with creationist writings, have dozens of their books on my shelfs, and not in a single one of them is there an interpretation that the famine of Egypt literally affected the ENTIRE world. I really would love to see Joel’s reference on this. I may be deluded, but i just have to believe, as a rational human being, that Joel’s expenditure of his time on anti-Ham et al rants is truly a waste of an apparently bright mind. Of course, it is his life, so have at it. Apparently he believes he has been called by the gods to endeavor on his one man crusade. Just, the both of you, quit letting your biases blind you and at least try to acknowledge that creationists of all blends (which include thousands, no tens of thousands of degreed scientists) are busy doing their science with as much integrity as non-creation scientists. And many of the points brought up on this site have been and are being addressed by creationists. Of course, you, quite subjectively have decided that THEIR science can’t be real science, so it’s wrong before it’s even written. That practice is little more than delusional self-comforting and hubris. But again, your lives, have at it. Pride goes before a fall, and self-assurance the gates of hell.
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Ah Chuck, you’re slinking into the point, what tropes are common in YEC and which aren’t, and why. It is indeed true that the global famine model wasn’t one of the arguments being offered by the creationists who spun off of Adventist Flood Geology. None of them cared about the human prehistory impact. The same may be said of creationists not really working through WHEN any of the ancient peoples lived; their games didn’t require working that out, though recently a few creationists have realized it actually is a problem that they have to think about.
But Jeanson is pioneering a new stage of revisionism in the field (he’s also claimed that creationists always accepted transitional forms, when they most obviously haven’t). Even creationist dogmas evolve over time. For example, Henry Morris 1970s creationism absolutely rejected continental drift, unlike current YEC that has tried to incorporate it, almost willy-nilly, and on a ludicrously compressed time frame that makes such movements physically impossible at such rates.
The issue is way more than just biblical exegesis and the YEC camp. Let me be clear: to be an antievolutionist in 2020 (YEC, OEC, or ID) requires having a mind capable of easily ignoring relevant information that raises problems for the core presumptions of the argument. This phenomenon may be observed in those three groups at the source level (what they cite and discuss and what they don’t). That many young earth creationists wrestle with the staggering heat problems with their models shows their awareness of the problem. That none can allow the obvious conclusion (that the reason why there are these mutually contradictory and unresolvable thermal conundrums is that their initial assumption, that the earth and the radioactive material in it can really be as young as they want, is just wrong) is the point of relevant mental block.
There are similar mental blocks that run across the antievolution spectrum, regarding “Map of Time” (working out WHEN they think stuff happened), and especially the inability to seriously conceptualize speciation and what they would ever accept as a clear example of a transitional form between taxa.
Many creationists (David Cananaugh and Todd Wood come to mind) are bright and agile minds, attentive to some details at least, but in the end they are committed to non-negotiable theological presumptions that they insist on believing in no matter what the facts are. This may be consistent, but is not a notably sound road to viable scientific discovery.
Other creationists are considerably more obtuse, from Jeanson to Snelling, and as a non-YEC non-religious example, Michael Denton over on the ID side. These “detail fiddlers” (a term I first used to describe what Duane Gish engaged in in his antievolution books on paleontology) ultimately snag up on those details, as data suppression or misrepresentation crop up routinely in their arguments.
I have no reason to think any of these people aren’t quite sincere in their convictions. But I, and others of a source scholarship turn of mind, cannot avoid noticing their peculiar behavior, and taking some intellectual enjoyment when explaining this to others.
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