Does anyone even listen to creationists these days?

[Rhyfelwyr]

That's fine. Anyone could answer this. No, I am thinking about the timescale here. 6 days - 6000 years old earth. How is Andromeda visible on our night sky?

Cannae answer that myself and I don't want to insult you with an Answer in Genesis copy/paste. Maybe we can have that debate in the future.

Er, well, ice ages tend to be global phenomena, so, yes. No indication of "forced", by the way - just enabled.

Long before the end of the last Ice Age the majority of the earth was still suitable for agriculture and was mostly temperate/desert/tropical. Most major crops can be grown in different climate zones and would easily grow in many places even with the more rapid temperature fluctuations.

Laughably false in every respect.

Nope, its a fact (gave you a link to an evolutionary site so you can't complain - note how their "response" totally misses the point). Dating living snails from 2,000 to 27,000 years old, living penguins to 8,000 years ago, the body of a seal that died 30 years ago dated to 4,600 years ago. And then even secular scientists themselves say radiocarbon dating is only useful for relative dating beyond around 3,500 years.

Not only are you misapplying a principle, but you are misunderstanding the basic nature of gradualist/Darwinian evolutionary theory. "Gradual" just means as opposed to saltational or punctuated. The movement of a car across a highway is gradual, yet its speed may range from 0 to 100 k/h at any given time or in any given interval.

I am fully aware of the principles of bottlenecking, watersheds etc, and how these could present a staggered pattern of progress. The problem is you have to give reasons for why these happened, and I disagree with the explanation (climate fluctuation during the Ice Age) that you have given.

Yes. Here's a nice page for the global temperature for the last 100.000 years. Notice how relatively stable the temperatures became when the ice age stopped.

It can also be worth remembering that pretty much all ancient cities and most civilizations died out because of starvation due to temperature changes.

And I still don't get the jump from "God gave humanity the new idea of agriculture" = "The earth is very young". I mean the killer of the young earth theory was geology, rather than biology and evolution.

Right, and I am to believe that a reduction in this climate fluctuation suddenly presented the exact same demographic pressures in completely different ecosystems with different wildlife, crops, climates and landscapes all across the world at near enough the exact same time? Never mind the fact that most of the staple crops can be grown in quite different climates and would surely grow in much of the world even with the sort of fluctuations your graph presented.

As for how this relates to the Young Earth argument... well I think the sudden emergence of civilization across the world fits with the Biblical narrative of an intelligent people with basic technologies for civilized urban life rapidly settling the earth, as opposed to the evolutionary theory of milling around doing nothing but surviving in loose tribal arrangements for hundreds of thousands of years before all of a sudden becoming civilized in the last few millenia. I want to develop a systematic history that shows this, then expanding upon it to show how the original monotheism degenerated into polythiesm and then atheism, how the original godly governments descended into tyranny. Pretty much the story of Romans 1:18-25, I call it the fall of man within the fall of man. Go against the grain of pretty much every secular theory on ancient history. But I'm rambling and need to go now...

[HopAlongBunny]

I think this debate illustrates something very nicely:

Science supports my view = Science is the measure of truth
Science does not support my view = Science is actually a worthless standard in discussion of such issues

http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...ly-from-facts/

[Beskar]

I think this debate illustrates something very nicely:

Science supports my view = Science is the measure of truth
Science does not support my view = Science is actually a worthless standard in discussion of such issues

http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...ly-from-facts/

Summed up by my signature:
"Belief doesn't change facts. Facts, if you are reasonable, should change your beliefs."

[Montmorency]

Long before the end of the last Ice Age the majority of the earth was still suitable for agriculture and was mostly temperate/desert/tropical. Most major crops can be grown in different climate zones and would easily grow in many places even with the more rapid temperature fluctuations.

Population density, as I said earlier. The end of that era as a global phenomenon brought about a population boom throughout Eurasia.

Nope, its a fact (gave you a link to an evolutionary site so you can't complain - note how their "response" totally misses the point). Dating living snails from 2,000 to 27,000 years old, living penguins to 8,000 years ago, the body of a seal that died 30 years ago dated to 4,600 years ago. And then even secular scientists themselves say radiocarbon dating is only useful for relative dating beyond around 3,500 years.

Are you going Kadagar on us? Read the source you linked.

The problem is you have to give reasons for why these happened

Er, why? Just like we must follow every generation of every species through all time or else clearly God dit it? What?

Pick up a pebble off the street. Say it weighs 40 grams. If you can not explain why it does not presently weigh 41 grams, or elaborate on its state of formation at any instant in its history, then surely Satan must have created it to tempt you into sin.

Make sense?

exact same demographic pressures in completely different ecosystems with different wildlife, crops, climates and landscapes all across the world

Similar biomes in just a smattering of places (e.g. temperate/subtropical major river valleys) would be sufficient to discredit your argument. Especially considering that local plant variety and other ecological factors would account for difference in crop dominance for particular areas.

Just consider how long it really took agriculture to take hold, despite more than 10,000 years of extensive ancient and prehistoric contact between societies and kinship groups. Just consider how Africa and Australia, insofar as fully-tropical biomes, developed agricultural societies both extremely late and sporadically (e.g. the West African river valleys as a notable exception to the absence of agriculture in old Africa). Even now, Africa is pretty piss-poor for agriculture, when taken as a whole.

As for the American Indians, most of them did not develop agriculture until the colonial period, again due to the details of geography - though do note that the North American Indians seem to have been on the verge of developing extensive agricultural societies shortly before that point. Ultimately, when we think of American pre-Columbian agriculture, we think of what turn out to be relative sweet spots: tropical mountain-ranges and the well-watered basins between mountain and coast. So it is not surprising that, where there was a sort of midpoint between the most conducive Eurasian geography and the least-conducive African geography is where extensive agricultural cultivation came to be practiced in the Americas, and furthermore at a point later than Eurasian agriculture but earlier than African agriculture.

Another important factor in the ecology of agriculture was the domestication and domesticability of suitable local animal life, but this lines up with the above.

Thus, after the ice age, where the geography was right, the leap to cultivation was not just inevitable, but quite simple to make. Elsewhere, it needed additional contributions. From there on, it was a matter of geopolitics and reaching subsequent population threshold(s).

Never mind the fact that most of the staple crops can be grown in quite different climates

Just to be pedantic, you obviously can't compare modern strains of agricultural material to the undomesticated varieties societies first began to experiment with. Plus, you ignore your own point on crop diversity.

[Ironside]

Right, and I am to believe that a reduction in this climate fluctuation suddenly presented the exact same demographic pressures in completely different ecosystems with different wildlife, crops, climates and landscapes all across the world at near enough the exact same time? Never mind the fact that most of the staple crops can be grown in quite different climates and would surely grow in much of the world even with the sort of fluctuations your graph presented.

Global temperatures will have a global influence.

Agriculture is only worth it if there's high enough population density, since hunter gatherers gets the food they need faster.

Agriculture makes you settled.

The transition between hunter gatherer and full agriculture seems to be a few thousands years.

Before writing, any information that's gotten irrelevant disappears after a few generations.

Smaller temperature changes has been proven to destroy cities and civilizations.

Your crops might still grow in the new climate, you only need to move several hundred kilometres.

Combine it all you'll need a relatively stable period for a few millennia to make the transition. If no such periods occurred earlier, then it's no wonder the transition never happened.

[Montmorency]

Before writing, any information that's gotten irrelevant disappears after a few generations.

And this is really important when combined with population density.

It's actually possible that isolated groups of Ice Age humans, or even earlier hominids, may have tried their hand at agriculture, or at least horticulture, with some fleeting success.

If they did, they always failed to spread it. Why? Because the climate made it easy to fail, with respect to both carrying capacity for the population and the actual cultivation itself.

If there's one group of a few dozen that can practice at least primitive gardening, and no other group can do it for a few hundred miles, then what happens if there's a small disaster and the group gets scattered or wiped out? A lean winter because they over-relied on the new techniques? Or maybe the one elder who really understood how to make it work died in an accident or to a predator, or to disease, and took the skill with him or her? And even if none of that happens, it's still highly unlikely that any other nearby group could pick it up through contact, because low density means low contact, less opportunities to spread, higher difficulty of transmitting the knowledge and techniques, and steeper 'gradient of credibility' in the first place.

So it's not even about the "invention" of agriculture, or whatever. The end of the glacial period simply made the possibility of agriculture as productive and sustainable.