Video - Patreon Extras: Zoologist Reacts to Young Earth Creationist Arguments
Added 2024-02-27 20:34:47 +0000 UTCOver 45 MINUTES of BONUS content!
Comments
Well I finished the video and now I know 😂😂😂
Chad Dixson
2024-09-24 01:03:02 +0000 UTCI watched the extras backwards haha but I would love if you’d explained which religion you are subscribed to!
Chad Dixson
2024-09-24 00:47:44 +0000 UTCAs someone raised catholic and a dinosaur nerd I asked my priest about this at the age of 7. He said if God started it then that's all that matters
Shawn Robinson
2024-05-01 04:45:02 +0000 UTCReally loved this! Also, I received my 'Birds are reptiles' t-shirt recently and its great! Thank you so much!
Ewan Mathewson
2024-03-07 20:18:04 +0000 UTCNot to be dramatic, but as a Christian this is exactly the thing that keeps me up at night googling and searching for answers that make sense. SO GLAD this video came out. Ate up every single minute of the YouTube video and this Patreon extra. An additional thank you from the next generation of hopeful biologists - I’ve got a 8 year old son who loves this channel and often has questions about how his faith can fit into his deep love of dinosaurs and biology.
Landon Perdue
2024-03-05 14:23:35 +0000 UTCI'm another new patreon member because of this video. I've been watching for a long time and have met Clint at reptile expos and at his reptile room. I have always been entertained and fascinated by his treatment of different subjects, and this one is no exception. This video, however, now sets him apart as someone who is not only intelligent and well-educated, but someone who is fair and open-minded, and willing to take on difficult topics with civility and humor and warmth. Not only did he explain things very well--including principles of logic and reasoning--but he was straightforward while giving those he disagreed with the benefit of the doubt. These days there is so much yelling of one's position at others while plugging one's ears at the same time. This was refreshing and educational and mind-expanding all at the same time.
AnnieB
2024-03-04 23:50:17 +0000 UTCI loved this video! Just wanted to say I really appreciated your patience with YEC. At the end of the day, we are all doing our best to understand this amazing world around us. I think I've been way too harsh on YEC in the past, and I lost sight of the fact that some of my own views from childhood didn't change until somebody was patient with me. You're setting a really great example for your viewers. I would really love to see you make more videos like this, if you're into that kinda thing. I would watch the Bill Nye debate breakdown if you made it! But I would understand if this isn't the sort of content you want to make more of.
Shelby Tull
2024-03-04 20:36:55 +0000 UTCWow amazing thanks
Racer Routh
2024-03-04 12:26:15 +0000 UTCI’m sure Clint could answer the question about tails better than I could (my degree is anthropology, not biology), but it does happen every year that some human children are born with tails (some extra caudal bones and the flesh that surrounds them). It’s some sort of throwback mutation. I was really saying we couldn’t assume having a tail meant they were evidence of cross breeding with a tail-having species because it happens without that moreso than saying that it could happen from breeding great ape to great ape
Amber Hammerschmidt
2024-03-04 02:27:17 +0000 UTCThese are interesting points to consider -- but I'm too amused by your description of bonobo disappointment (over the choice of in vitro fertilization for this unethical experiment) and I CAN'T FOCUS. Too funny.
Miranda Brist
2024-03-04 02:03:22 +0000 UTCGutsick Gibbon gave it a go. Her YEC sources put it about the family level and she brought up dogs, bears, bear-dogs, dog-bears, hyenas, hyena-dogs, dog-hyenas, etc. Hyenas are closer related to cats as feliforms, the bears and dogs and beardogs/dogbears are part of the caniforms. How the definition she was given for Created Kinds was given separated them up really weirdly and not in line with how they fall genetically.
Samar Nadra
2024-03-04 00:34:16 +0000 UTCAlso, I have noticed more and more we call all members of genus Homo "humans" which means those are human x human hybrids, so ethically might be a fair bit different than human x chimp or human x bonobo (with the latter the ethics at least are almost all on the human side of the gene pool, because I think we can be pretty sure the bonobos are in favor of this, and disappointed it is in vitro not in vivo due to uhh factors that make them hard to train because they think we're rude). But I think the real ethical concern comes down to either we have a hybrid who is human enough that many people will believe they can and should be brought to term and live life as a human and might be ok-ish and we will have set the experiment up to not do that, or we will take human gametes and "corrupt" them with "lesser" ones and that someone might bring such a hybrid to term. Why would any ape x human hybrid have a tail? Apes don't have tails unless there is a mutation that turns on the gene that makes tails that got turned off. That would be human x non-ape monkey and that is a bit less likely to result in fertilization. I think we can probably rule out tails as a sign of a hybrid. Feral children tend to exhibit particular traits, and while a human-non-human hybrid would have those traits if they grew up around non-humans or in a human community but hidden away, these aren't the same traits you would expect from someone who has mental or physiological differences, because presumably a young enough feral child could learn a lot of necessary human things including speech consistent with what we know about child development, even a bewborn hybrid might never learn certain things. So we would have to find a possible hybrid who we can confirm doesn't just have lanugo or similar conditions, presumably doesn't have a tail, was raised by caring humans, is confirmed not to just be autistic or something, and then do a dna test. About the only way that will happen is if we agree to pay them to do all these tests, as part of a program to decrease the claims that weird kids are hybrids or whatever other folk beliefs abound and actually get them assistance to lead better lives.
Samar Nadra
2024-03-04 00:29:04 +0000 UTCYeah, I was told and literally sang in songs that if we didn't praise God/Jesus that even the rocks would cry out and tell us the wonders of His creation. Looking at all the real beautiful rock formations around me, they were definitely crying out (thankfully not aloud or in my mind, more speaking to my spirit or heart with how amazing and beautiful they are) and telling me how amazing Creation was, but they were also very much telling me 6000 years made no sense. They were the very things telling me dinosaurs were real and lived 65 million years ago (my info was a little out of date). The Beautiful layers of sandstone and limestone at the Grand Canyon weren't lying to me that Arizona used to be under the ocean way before the dinosaurs, but other rocks in other places that also said things like that also said that the dinosaurs were around and real. Why would the very rocks that Jesus said would praise Him and creation lie? God doesn't lie, Satan does. But Satan can't create things, so... I basically had this weird little loop going on that part like "yeah that doesn't make sense, and God did say not to trust people who say things that go against the Bible and they say the rocks are lying or God is, so they are wrong and lying. Funnily enough, if they had just stuck with "God wanted the rocks to look pretty" I may have believed them longer than I did. It is a bad argument, but it is wholly unfalsifiable both with science and with studying the Bible alone. Especially as the rocks do look pretty. I can't rule out that is part of why sandstone gets colorful under certain conditions.
Samar Nadra
2024-03-04 00:11:13 +0000 UTCAs a Christian who has dug into this a lot over the years as I realized a lot of things I were taught were Biblical weren't, or were added in translations much later ("homosexual" wasn't in any Bible until 1946, a documentary is coming out about that), but what I can tell you is the following: 1. There is like one verse I think that says not to wear the clothes of the opposite gender... but we don't really gender clothes that much anymore (e.g. women wear pants all the time), the way we do isn't how they would have when it was written (everyone wore skirts for one), and there is no reason to think that with trans people this means anything other than you *must* wear clothes of your gender rather than what people think you should wear. Also it probably had to do with not mimicking other religions like a lot of these things. 2. Another verse, this time in the New Testament, explaining how we are all alike in Christ, says in part "there is neither male nor female" 3. Traditionally Judaism had like 7 genders or something? They certainly didn't see anything wrong with following anything the Old Testament and its strict male and female roles and not fitting in those boxes. 4. It says repeatedly that God and Jesus loved the World. Not "the world minus these people who were born different" ... it says to allow foreigners to glean in your fields like the poor at a time when foreigners typically didn't believe in your religion, Jesus tells of the Good Samaritan when Jews really looked down on Samaritans because they were of mixed blood and had different beliefs. He went to women, children, the disabled, the poor, and the sinful (who at the time were all treated as lesser in some way, and as sinners) and was kind to them. Now trans people are scorned by society and said to be sinning or lesser, and Jesus probably would have come to the trans in this era. To be clear, this isn't meant to be converty, this is meant to be, "here are examples of why the welcoming and affirming Christians accept you, and the sorts of things the others ignore or add additional readings into to spread hate. I have serious issues with the hateful group, and was raised to think like them but it never really stuck and I got better and am welcoming and affirming now.
Samar Nadra
2024-03-03 23:58:26 +0000 UTCJoining the newcomers here... long time fan of Clint's Reptiles, but brand new to this patreon community because of this recent video. Not sure how many months our budget will be able to keep this up, but you deserve tons of kuddos', Clint, for putting this out. My "story" about journeying from YEC to a deeper understanding and acceptance of evolution is long and complex. When I told my husband (first degree is in physics from U of Minn.) that the "Mr. Rogers of reptile land" had released a video on YEC and Evolution, we both listened to it, together. And both of us have mad respect for the way you have handled it and really want to read your doctoral study on this issue!
Kristina A. Wilson
2024-03-03 19:01:33 +0000 UTCNew to Clint's patreon, but long time follower of his YouTube channel. I put a fuller reaction to his video on the public release one, but YEC was my hardened stance for the first 30 years of life. One of the things that started chipping away at it was the whole "God made it this way to deceive those who don't believe" theology. Specifically that kept going against two other theologies - The nature of God and the fact that Scripture says that natural revelation is the first way God shows himself to us. I.e. - the natural world. If you want me to accept that God deliberately made the world appear, scientifically, to be billions of years old, so that folks would be deceived... then you're going to lose my belief in that God.
Kristina A. Wilson
2024-03-03 18:55:27 +0000 UTCAlso side note, don't know much about indeterminate growth but is it theorized my bearded anole can keep growing???
Racer Routh
2024-03-03 18:09:28 +0000 UTCSo, I got a question about God, I'm not atheist, but I don't know enough about god to fully follow anything Christian, I'm trans I get told God wouldn't accept that and read the Bible, but by other Christians I'm told God made you and he accepts you, so I guess my question is what gets you to believe in God? And where do your beliefs lay with the Bible? If it's to personal I understand. Edit: nevermind, you answered it I shoulda finished the video haha
Racer Routh
2024-03-03 18:04:33 +0000 UTCI finally joined patreon for this video. =) Also random fact just bc i spend a lot of time watching videos from YEC trying to explain solutions the heat problem created by the flood(i.e. a lot of YEC contend that much of the geologic column happened during the year of the flood that makes the earth appear older than it is but this leads to issue of the immense amount of heat that would have been created by these accelerated processes. ) But often times I hear creation a little over 6000 years ago and then the flood was 4400 years ago.
SamM1994
2024-03-03 14:33:28 +0000 UTCWorth finally becoming a Patreon member for! Despite once being there myself, given the history science and natural philosophy, and the known beliefs of promient figures within it, it can still be surprisng when folks have difficulty reconciling the idea that a scientist would believe in God. I was always struck by the final line in On the Origin of Species stating that form "have been, and ARE BEING, evolved.". It evokes to me the idea that the process of evolution is one that involves a thing being acted upon by an outside force. While Darwin had no knowledge of genes and genetic mutation, it is not unreasonable to think he would have subscribed to the concept mentioned here, that God intervenes to cause key mutatons. That is of course assumsing that his phrasing was an intentional allusion to a Creator, which may be dubious. There are a few YEC arguements I've come across that I would love to see in a future video. Two involve radiometric dating. The first, and easier to refute one, is that it is simply innaccurate junk science. The second and more interesting is that when God created the Earth a few thousand years ago he created an AGED Earth. One that has all the evidence(rocks, fossils, etc) has been around for 4.5 billion years, but was sprung into existence as such. I don't quite know how this could be disproven but at the same time it is difficult to create an arguement about why God would do this. Finally, the idea of irreducable complexity. Theidea was covered In the context of the eye in a recent video but I've never found that to be the best examplar of the concept. The bacterial flagellum always seemed to be a more intersting and complicated example. Would love to see more on the YEC discussion around it and the topic overall! I did my undergraduate work in the history and philosophy of science after finding myself too squeemish in my biology labs. I was a cliche 18 year old keyboard warrior atheist at the time and expected my studies to reinforce those beliefs. As it turns out the opposite was true. While I never agreed with any YTC arguements and remain a staunch believer in evolutionary biology, my views on the compatibility of science and faith were flipped upside down.
David Aaron
2024-03-03 04:21:38 +0000 UTCBill Nye will always be “Speed Walker”…
C. Ryan Shryock
2024-02-28 19:17:53 +0000 UTCI am really glad you are discussing this. I have had to learn what I can about the actual history of the Earth mostly from die-hard atheists, which is fine, but the comments which normally on science videos are more science info are just fights over religion vs atheism and it really drains me. That isn't why I am there, I just need to make up for decades of lost knowledge, people, just help me learn! Personally I am a Christian, and was raised as a science-denying YEC. Not even this sciency- flavored version at first, just straight up "dinosaur bones were put there by Satan to trick us" level before the ICR came and gave a talk at my church. I had kinda shifted myself to non-evolutionary old-Earth creationism at that point in my teens (archaeology alone solved that) and mostly went to see what nonsense they would claim. I could see through their claims easily by that point but was polite. My dad insisted on getting me something, so I have a video about Mt. St. Helens somewhere by them, because eruption footage is cool. I didn't know until your video that science types were like "uh yeah that is what happened to trees like that, what's the problem here?" 😅 I went to college in Washington and took geology and astronomy and learned some actual science behind this stuff, that I wasn't allowed to learn growing up (even one of my science teachers in school was like "I don't believe in evolution but I have to teach it")... even though I took all the science classes I could (I wanted to be an entomologist as a kid). My next church went hard into trying to refute evolution and prove creation (OEC not YEC) on their own, and they did a... passable job on the latter at least I guess. Then I went through a long period of exegesis (since I don't happen to speak ancient Hebrew and my Koine Greek is minimal, I went for alternate translations from different traditions to see how it might look from a different perspective) and study of the Bible and science on my own and discovered that common Jewish readings don't even call creation vs evolution into question, they argue out of nothing or out of chaos, and see it more as a "God did this but it doesn't say how, so why can't the big bang and evolution be how?" ... this shook me to my core. I looked at my interlinear... sure enough it doesn't appear to give a how. That is when I formulated my divine architect hypothesis. The Genesis accounts are humans writing down their understanding of how God orchestrated and planned and set in motion the process that became the universe, but they weren't privvy to the details of how, but we *are* and that how is most likely (unless science finds out it is more complicated of course) what we have learned about the Big Bang and evolution and stratigraphy and the expansion of the universe and all that. They weren't *ready* for the how, we are. And thus I am a science-affirming Christian (to borrow a term from Gutsick Gibbon). I do also think it is possible God nudges evolution or the actions of certain species in certain ways or gives them the spark of intelligence they need to achieve a new step, where we don't quite know _why_ a thing happened, just that it did and how. Why did the first tetrapod think land was worth going on? Why was lystrosaurus everywhere? Why did that cell eat that cyanobacteria and not digest it? Same deal with mitochondria. What was the spark that made humans go "hmm what if we steal the fire from that big fire over there with a stick and use it for warmth?" and then to put food over it? Why did we pick up sticks and rocks and clay and shape them? Obviously it is a mix of instinct, intelligence, and curiosity, but some of the decisions humans have made that have turned out great for us seem foolish... why did we eat any part of any nightshade, like tomatoes or potatoes or peppers or eggplants when we would have known everything else that looked like that was deadly or made you see deities you probably didn't want to bother randomly. Basically, I am willing to accept that the human tendency to be like "I am gonna do this weird and probably dangerous or pointless thing because I can" in defiance of logic or survival instinct might be a key part of our intelligence and should have been selected against rather than for normally 😉 so that is the sort of place I can see a possible nudge. My current church is like "we know some of you see the 7 day Creation as 100% literally true, and some see it as simply a poetic allegory and a wide variety of views in between... you are all welcome here" and that's that. They don't talk about it, because it isn't the linchpin of our faith, but actually helping people and doing good in the world for all people. Arguing with people over technicalities keeps us from making sure they have enough to eat after all, and fighting about this isn't showing love. I hope the pushback isn't too intense. I have seen the hate comments some of the others posting videos on this topic have received. It is to the point that Gutsick Gibbon makes monetized videos reading and reacting to hater comments so she can profit from their hatred.
Samar Nadra
2024-02-28 17:38:45 +0000 UTCI'm an atheist, and it doesn't bother me that you're both a scientist and believe in some god. I don't think the evidence supports beliefs in supernatural, but that doesn't invalidate your education, knowledge, or understanding. You don't come here and say "I don't understand, therefore god!" *THAT* would be an unscientific, illogical position for anyone. On the other hand, tomorrow, bona fide proof of something supernatural could be found. Then it wouldn't be supernatural any more, I suppose, by definition... but in that way, a god could be shown to exist. Did a god set off the big bang? Maybe. Who can say? I don't think the evidence points that way, but let's be honest... the evidence doesn't disavow that position either. Did the Christian god set off the big bang? That's a more specific question and answering it in the affirmative would require more specific evidence that isn't there. Could such evidence be found? Maybe. If it is found, then I'd follow the evidence. Until it's found, I don't feel the story adds to the discussion. To me, a good explanation has advance knowledge in some way. If you wanted to say... "birds were formed when Yhwh waved a magic wand on a slug". OK, show me the wand. Show me evidence that such a wand existed. Show me evidence that similar wands existed. Explain why we don't have speciation wands now. Explain the mechanism of how the wand works. In short: complete the story so it explains why it's a better story than others. There's no reason a person who believes in gods couldn't do that.
Hapalochlaena Lunulata
2024-02-28 13:39:53 +0000 UTCRe. the question about upsetting everybody - I'm more-or-less an atheist and more-or-less a scientist, and wasn't at all upset by this! I thought it was fascinating. And wonderful to see a scientist embody real openness and curiosity rather than defensiveness in dealing with science hostility. On the question about how to disprove created kinds - i.e. that there isn't one, simple root to the genetic tree of life but many, highly complex ones - isn't the answer that you can't *disprove* this, but that it fails to explain non-functional genetic similarities between groups, where relatedness does give an explanation for this? And so it's just not the best explanation of the data?
tansie
2024-02-28 11:27:31 +0000 UTCOooooOooOoo....Looking forward to watching these!
Anna R Dunster
2024-02-28 04:12:17 +0000 UTCOk, also if you need ANY encouragement to pull that superbowl of a debate apart piece by piece, play by play, yes I am indeed into that kind of thing and I bet it would scratch an itch a lot of us have had for a long time.
Miranda Brist
2024-02-28 02:33:36 +0000 UTCWhat Clint said about being "agnostic about how evolution occurs" and open to interventions in the evolutionary process by a higher power-- honestly I almost cried. As someone who was raised YEC but now sees God in the sheer awesomeness and weirdness of phylogenetic trees ... it so perfectly expressed the the way I've come to try to co-hab faith and evolutionary science in my own mind. :) Thanks so much for sharing your reflections on this side of the topic! Also I agree that the biggest hurdle for YECs in terms of having a good faith discussion is whether or not their debate partner is an atheist. It's too big of a worldview gap for them and it creates instant distrust.
Miranda Brist
2024-02-28 02:06:31 +0000 UTCAgreed!! This is some tasty content!
Miranda Brist
2024-02-28 00:54:46 +0000 UTC'It's ethics that's causing you to not perform the experiment'... and the way some laws are now acting on those things. The ethics are hella complicated, though. We do have fossil evidence of interbreeding between some of the hominin and homo ancestors, but in terms of the more modern (call it historical) claims of hybrids, I don't think there's enough data to know if they were a feral child, a mutant, or a hybrid. Especially since human's can be born with tails, rare-ish though it is.
Amber Hammerschmidt
2024-02-27 22:00:37 +0000 UTCAre there non-People of the Book YECs, yes, but they tend to be a looooot quieter since they are followers of religions the vast majority of creationists think are blasphemy. But I do 100% know pagans and heathens who take their lore just as literally as the creationist movements.
Amber Hammerschmidt
2024-02-27 21:47:57 +0000 UTC*during the discussion of multi-strata preservation* ooo, pick me, pick me! This is a lot more common once you slide form paleontology into archaeology because humans are prone to making lots of impacts on their environment. Dumps being one of the largest sources of contiguous data, there are cases where you can see 'modern' dump on top of frontier-era dump on top of late indian era stones on top of paleo-lithic stones and then see, say, a firepit dug out through a few layers.
Amber Hammerschmidt
2024-02-27 21:41:12 +0000 UTCSooo! Bonus video or extra to help clarify foe people watching the news on green anacondas recently. Vast differences between 2 morphological features and behaviors. The difference found was essentially 2 groups with each of their mDNA being similar within those groups and yet about where studied, 10% different. That's significantly more than us and the bonobo/chimp. The existing species was given the new name. Minor mention in study but for cool reason. They did find some larger specimens during the study. Also... for bonus points not mentioned in the news, study believes the yellow anacondas may actually be from the same species. Some from previous studies may have been misidentified, but the genes show how closely they are. Pretty awesome study but NOT for the reason the news reports. But for us phans.
Katie Meyer
2024-02-27 21:11:19 +0000 UTCThis is the conent I've always been wanting to see but was afraid to ask for!
Ewan Mathewson
2024-02-27 20:43:03 +0000 UTC
