The Problem with Young Earth Creationists
It is not only the atheist that has to commit mental gymnastics to ignore the elephant in the room. The young earth creationist (YEC) has to do the same! Unlike the atheist, the elephant isn’t God, it is ‘Not Enough Room on the Ark.’
The Ark isn’t big enough to take all the species that exist today. To solve this dilemma, the YEC believe that at the time of Noah, 2348 BC according to Ussher’s chronology, speciation – the formation of new species – hadn’t happened so God only to needed to take the original ‘kind’ onto the Ark; the ancestor of canine animals is all he needed to take on board and after the Flood, these pairs over time gave rise to coyotes, jackals, hyenas, wolves, foxes, and the domestic dog; a total of 36 species. He only took on board the original cat species that then gave rise to lions, tigers, leopards, cheetahs, lynx, jaguars, ocelots and the domestic cat; a total of 40 species. Cats and dogs are only two of the families of mammals, there are 153 families of mammals and a total of 5416 species!
Since almost all these 76 species of canine and feline animals have been included in various ancient literature or cave drawings from at least 500 BC, YEC would have us believe that this evolution, and the evolution of the other 5,000 species, happened in 1000 to 1800 years! To put this in perspective, can you imagine that 1000 years ago, when William the Conquerer invaded Britain, there was only one cat and one dog species and since then, these original ‘kinds’ have given rise to all the cat and dog species we have today?!!
The irony is that YEC are, quite rightly, anti-evolution and yet they expect us to believe that all these species evolved from the parent ‘kind’ in such short period of time. Absolutely impossible. Not even the most ardent evolutionists would believe that was possible.
In fact the truth is that since the advent of man, there has been no speciation. Of the 100 million species we believe have existed, 250,000 are recorded in the fossil record and since man came on the scene (10,000-50,000) years ago, there has been only extinctions. God has rested. No new species has been created.