Response to Ken Ham and YouTube Comments by Andrew Snelling

After my article “Twenty-One Reasons Noah’s Worldwide Flood Never Happened” was published in the March/April 2018 Skeptical Inquirer, the creationist organization Answers in Genesis produced a YouTube video in which Andrew Snelling criticized some of the reasons I presented in the article for why such a worldwide flood could not have happened (see https://answersingenesis.org/blogs/ken-ham/2018/04/02/christian-equips-atheists-debate-christians/). Snelling, a geologist, is director of research for Answers in Genesis. As a lead-in to this video, Ken Ham pointed out that there were many people working for Answers in Genesis with PhDs who are well trained in science and who support the interpretations presented by Snelling, and he implied that my science was not as good as theirs.

In the course of the video, Snelling argues that I have preconceived uniformitarianism views that differ from the biblical ones that the young-Earth creationists have. However, in either case, because the creationists call themselves “creation scientists,” our differences in opinion must be based on scientific evidence and not necessarily on our positions with respect to interpreting the Bible. The young-Earth creationists interpret it with a literal translation, whereas I and most other mainline Christians who are scientists do not believe that the Bible was written to be a science textbook. I believe that the Hebrew authors of the Old Testament of the Bible were inspired and wrote their books based on their understanding of what they thought they knew during the time in which they lived. I believe that the Bible portrays who God (the Creator) is, why he created the universe, the Earth, and life (including humans), and how to obtain salvation. It does not answer the questions of when, where, and how creation was done. Science answers these questions.

In Ken Ham’s introduction and in the video, there was no attack on me for being a Christian, but he, Snelling, and others from Answers in Genesis were irked that I had published the article in Skeptical Inquirer and gave ammunition to atheists to attack the young-Earth creationists. Snelling essentially threw down the gauntlet, so to speak, and challenged me to give real scientific evidence. Not replying to his challenge is really not a choice for me, as he claimed that I had not “done my homework.” Therefore, in this follow-up response I have chosen five of the twenty-one reasons to demonstrate that Snelling has not done his scientific homework. There is not enough space in this short response to give scientific justifications for all twenty-one reasons I provided. Here are the five reasons that I address.