Examples of Ignorance of YEC

John Walton has proven that ignorance of basic teachings of YEC are endemic throughout the academy. Misrepresentation of YEC doesn't seem to be an offense in academic circles it seems, whereas I would think that misrepresentation of any other topic would be rather severely punished.

...everything we know logically repudiate the absence of death at any level prior to the Fall. Day three describes the process by which plants grow. The cycle of sprouting leaves, flowers, fruit and seeds is one that involves death at every stage. This system only functions with death as part of it. Likewise with animals: we need not even broach the topic of predatory meat eaters to see that the food chain involves. A caterpillar eating a leaf brings death. A bird eating the caterpillar brings death. Fish eating insects brings death. If animals and insects did not die, they wold overwhelm their environment and the ecology would suffer. Furthermore, if we move to the cellular level death is inevitable. Human skin has an outer layer of epidermis—dead cells—and we know that Adam had skin (Gen. 2:23) [John H. Walton, The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate (Downers Grove, IL, 2009), 99]

RESPONSE: YECs believe that there is a difference between biblical death, and biological death. Regarding animal death, see my review of Ronald E. Osborn's book Death Before the Fall: Biblical Literalism and the Problem of Animal Suffering, here.

For example, they [YECs - DHC] typically account for the visibility of the stars by suggesting that light was created in transit (Ibid., 107-8)

RESPONSE: I have no idea whether the "light-in-transit" theory has ever been embraced by any creationist scientist. I know that sometime in the 1980s(?), a theory of light-speed decay was proposed. Russell Humphreys then in the early 21st century thereabouts came up with his white-hole cosmology. More recently, John Hartnett came up with an entire alternate cosmology using the cosmology developed by Moshe Carmeli. Given that Walton's book is published in 2009 not the 1980s, his ignorance of modern creationist thought is sad.