Ken Ham is right - the jungle of fallacies is the real issue

In "A young Earth - it's not the issue!" (Answers in Genesis, Jan. 1998), Ken Ham writes:

Recently, one of our associates sat down with a highly respected world-class Hebrew scholar and asked him this question: 'If you started with the Bible alone, without considering any outside influences whatsoever, could you ever come up with millions or billions of years of history for the Earth and universe?' The answer from this scholar? 'Absolutely not!'

Let's be honest. Take out your Bible and look through it. You can't find any hint at all for millions or billions of years.

Take out your Bible and look through it. You can't find any hint at all for the earth orbiting the sun rather than the other way around.

Take out your Bible and look through it. You can't find any hint at all for the moon reflecting light from the sun rather than producing light itself.

Of course, it's obvious that we learn about the characteristics and properties of the real world which are determined by the real world itself. In other words, if someone says something about the real world, but when we look at the real world itself what we observe contradicts what the person said about it, then what that person said is wrong.

So whether or not "You can't find any hint at all for billions of years for the Earth and universe" in the Bible is utterly irrelevant to the facts of the matter, the relevant facts being determined by the relevant features of the earth and the universe themselves.

What we're witnessing in the rhetoric above ("Take out your Bible and look through it. You can’t find any hint at all for millions or billions of years.") is another manifestation of the standard fallacy of circular logic that is a fundamental component of young earth creationist belief: 'The Bible says X, so X is true, because the Bible says it, and it cannot be wrong, because the Bible is God's Word, because it says it is, so we're going to believe X no matter what the actual real world evidence is.' ("By definition, no apparent, perceived or claimed evidence in any field, including history and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the scriptural record" - Answers in Genesis religious faith statement.)

Ken Ham is right, the *real* fundamental issue isn't the religious doctrine of young earth creationism per se. The real issue is the manner in which religious faith itself relies on belief in ideas people have made up without good evidence for them and then relying on a jungle of fallacies to try to fake a lot of people out about such beliefs supposedly making some kind of sense. The heavy reliance on circular logic is one prominent example of the failure of religious belief.