Young Earth Creationism, the idea that the Earth is only about 6,000 years old, is an incredibly

wrong scientific claim. It's also an especially dangerous one, because to accept it, you also

have to reject so many other sciences, everything from physics, to geology, to biology, to atmospheric

science, and the list goes on and on. Here is why it's so wrong. The Young Earth is today

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You're listening to Skeptoid. I'm Brian Dunning from Skeptoid.com. How to argue with a creationist.

Debating with a creationist is actually really easy, because they only have a few standard

arguments and haven't come up with any new cogent ones for some time. These standard arguments

have been published, time and time again, and a practiced creationist can handily draw them

like a six-gun at the drop of a hat. All of their arguments are silly in their wrongness,

and easily debunked, and if you're prepared in advance, it's easy to beat down any creationist

with a quick verbal body slam. You're not going to change their mind, since creationists

do not base their opinions upon rational study of the evidence, but you might help clear

things up for an innocent bystander who overhears.

So here are the standard arguments for creationism, and the standard rebuttals from the scientific

consensus, starting with my favorite, Evolution is just a theory, not a fact. This is an

easily digestible sound bite intended to show that evolution is just an unproven hypothesis,

...