YEC on its face is false, and YEC steelmanned into something that could be true, for some tortured definition of “true”, simply doesn’t pay rent. Ham has basically admitted that his belief in YEC is not entangled with reality. Any attempt to steelman his position into a philosophical position by which YEC can be “true” leads directly into solipsism. To believe that there is such a thing as reality, and reality can be perceived by humans, is to reject YEC.
Creationists and evolutionists, Christians and non-Christians all have the same evidence—the same facts.
It’s hard to come up with an interpretation of that that is true. Clearly, Ken Ham does not have the same facts in his head as I do. Perhaps in some sense he has the same facts available to him as I do. Putting his claim in LW terms, he seems to be saying that he simply has a prior of P(Bible is true) = 1. But it’s simply a flat-out lie that YEC is just a matter of different priors. For instance, look at this page: http://www.christiananswers.net/q-eden/edn-thermodynamics.html . This is not merely a matter of “I agree with science about the facts”, it’s “I’m going to write a bunch of bullshit to make a claim that quite simply is not true”. As just one example, Ham presents the case of a dead plant not being able to use sunlight. He purports to prove a universal quantifier (in no case can energy being added to a system increase complexity) by presenting a existential quantifier (there is a case where energy being added doesn’t increase complexity). This is both invalid logic (you can’t prove a universal quantifier by proving a particular instance) and based on a false premise (even a dead plant, when exposed to sunlight, increases in entropy [ETA: I didn’t phrase that quite right. A dead plat, when exposed to sunlight, increases in “complexity”, at least for some meanings of “complexity”. Part of Ham’s strategy is to use words with contradictory definitions]). Ken Ham doesn’t disagree with scientists about what 2LOT says because he has different priors, he disagrees because he’s a liar.
Furthermore, look at how this debate came to be in the first place. There was a video on YouTube of Nye saying that YEC shouldn’t be taught to children. AiG replied with a video saying that YEC should be taught to children. You can’t “teach” priors. Either someone has the same prior as you, or they don’t. If you give an argument for your position, you aren’t changing their priors, you are changing their posteriors. The very fact that Ham believes that YEC can be transmitted from one person to another shows that he has implicitly admitted that this is not a matter of priors, or “presuppositions”, or whatever he wants to call it. You can’t debate priors, Ham agreed to a debate, ergo Ham’s YEC is not a matter of priors.
YEC on its face is false, and YEC steelmanned into something that could be true, for some tortured definition of “true”, simply doesn’t pay rent. Ham has basically admitted that his belief in YEC is not entangled with reality. Any attempt to steelman his position into a philosophical position by which YEC can be “true” leads directly into solipsism. To believe that there is such a thing as reality, and reality can be perceived by humans, is to reject YEC.
It’s hard to come up with an interpretation of that that is true. Clearly, Ken Ham does not have the same facts in his head as I do. Perhaps in some sense he has the same facts available to him as I do. Putting his claim in LW terms, he seems to be saying that he simply has a prior of P(Bible is true) = 1. But it’s simply a flat-out lie that YEC is just a matter of different priors. For instance, look at this page: http://www.christiananswers.net/q-eden/edn-thermodynamics.html . This is not merely a matter of “I agree with science about the facts”, it’s “I’m going to write a bunch of bullshit to make a claim that quite simply is not true”. As just one example, Ham presents the case of a dead plant not being able to use sunlight. He purports to prove a universal quantifier (in no case can energy being added to a system increase complexity) by presenting a existential quantifier (there is a case where energy being added doesn’t increase complexity). This is both invalid logic (you can’t prove a universal quantifier by proving a particular instance) and based on a false premise (even a dead plant, when exposed to sunlight, increases in entropy [ETA: I didn’t phrase that quite right. A dead plat, when exposed to sunlight, increases in “complexity”, at least for some meanings of “complexity”. Part of Ham’s strategy is to use words with contradictory definitions]). Ken Ham doesn’t disagree with scientists about what 2LOT says because he has different priors, he disagrees because he’s a liar.
Furthermore, look at how this debate came to be in the first place. There was a video on YouTube of Nye saying that YEC shouldn’t be taught to children. AiG replied with a video saying that YEC should be taught to children. You can’t “teach” priors. Either someone has the same prior as you, or they don’t. If you give an argument for your position, you aren’t changing their priors, you are changing their posteriors. The very fact that Ham believes that YEC can be transmitted from one person to another shows that he has implicitly admitted that this is not a matter of priors, or “presuppositions”, or whatever he wants to call it. You can’t debate priors, Ham agreed to a debate, ergo Ham’s YEC is not a matter of priors.