The Base Rate Errors of Young Earth Creationism

 

The basic logic from any propositional statement is that the conclusion must follow from the premises, and that an argument must be both valid and sound. An argument is valid if its logical structure ensures that the conclusion follows from the premises, but an argument is only sound if it is valid, and all its premises are true. Consequently, an argument can be valid but not sound, but if sound, it is valid too. For example:

P1: All gorillas are yellow

P2: Bruce is a gorilla

C:  Therefore Bruce is yellow

This argument is valid, but not sound. It has a valid structure (the conclusion logically follows from the premises), but the premise that all gorillas are yellow is, of course, false.

A sound argument would be:

P1: All gorillas are mammals

P2: Bruce is a gorilla

C:  Therefore, Bruce is a mammal

When making arguments that purport to be valid and sound, you have to make sure all your base rates are properly examined, and you also have to ensure you have the right number of premises to reach the right conclusion. The optimum number of premises would be a number sufficient to provide enough information to support the conclusion, but contain no extraneous premises that are redundant to the process. There are lots of premises we could add that give additional information about Bruce, which are unnecessary in determining whether Bruce is a mammal (“Bruce lives in a zoo”, “Bruce likes to eat fruit”, etc) ; but equally, the removal of one premise (“Bruce is a gorilla”) undermines the argument, as there are now too few premises to reach the conclusion.

Turning now to young earth creationism - pretty much all of their erroneous conclusions are defective because of initial base rate errors. Remember, if you have a base rate error, your subsequent probabilities and propositions will be faulty, while still seeming internally consistent to you. From much experience in dialogue with them, here are the primary base rate errors that I’ve noticed young earth creationists make, and the problems they cause.

Base rate error 1: Biblical literalism without context, nuance, or proper interpretation.
This is the primary base rate error that influences the majority of their other errors. Once you fail initially to discern the proper depth of meaning in texts like early Genesis, and later Biblical references to them, then you’ve just laid the foundation for a litany of basic errors in reasoning, and numerous faulty conclusions.

Base rate error 2: God’s word is perfect and without error, therefore if I think it says something, it can’t be questioned.
This base rate error underwrites so many of their associative errors, and works in conjunction with number 1. Because YECs read these key verses without context, nuance, or proper interpretation, they just see ‘God’s word’ without any critical analysis, and therefore if God’s word can’t be wrong, they must be right, and evolution must be false.

Base rate error 3: Failure to understand that the Bible is not a book that informs on scientific facts.
If your base rate error leads you to believe that scripture is making scientific claims, then these misinterpretations will lead to all kinds of faulty conclusions in contradiction to known scientific facts. Every pseudo-scientific claim YECs make is based on this base rate fallacy, and bootstrapped by base rate errors 1 and 2.

Base rate error 4: The evolution = no God fallacy.
Once base rate errors 1-3 have got under their skin, then this one naturally gets embedded too. YECs think evolution over millions of years means just random naturalism and no need for God (to them, it sounds too much like atheism), so any established scientific facts that support evolution are ignored or dismissed because they threaten the concept of ‘creation’ (and from which, the whole bogus institution of ‘creation science’ takes root and spreads its weeds).

Base rate error 5: If it doesn’t support a young earth, it must be false.
By now, the YECs are so conditioned by numbers 1-4 that the final base rate error to embed itself with all the others is that any Biblical interpretation, scientific propositions or rational argument that doesn’t support young earth creationism must be false. At this point, their brains will be so disordered that they will only be able to conclude that a) You’re not really a Christian; b) You’re a Christian who doesn’t take God’s word seriously enough; c) You’re a Christian who has fallen for an atheist deception; or d) You’re a Christian who is contributing to the secular decay of Christianity.

These bate rate errors form the bedrock of almost all the Biblical, interpretive, scientific and historical mistakes that comprise young earth creationism. All their monomaniacal scriptural fundamentalism, their pseudo-science, their ill-informed books, articles and videos – they are driven by the above base rate errors that start them off on the wrong track.

I hope that’s a useful account that will help you engage with young earth creationists (if you are not one), and help you to fix the faulty thinking (if you are one).