I’m pretty sure MacArthur and Wilson are still strongly YEC. How do you see the rest of the field? James Smith is EC and I would have guessed many of those NPCs 
are not strongly YEC and open to an Old Earth like Sproul was.
And then there is of course Packer the OG NPC
A little internet research, and I see this by Denny Burk
Ken Ham has an unwavering commitment to biblical authority and to the gospel. I admire that about him and do believe him to represent the most compelling position. I am grateful that he is out there fighting the good fight. He’s one of the good guys.
I can’t find anything obvious linking Owen Strachen to YECism, but there are numerous links to CRT and ESS.
James Smith is not in the same club, he’s in the Calvin University club with people like Kristin DuMez, which is a whole different brand of Reformed.
The Neo-Puritan Calvinists I am referring to have doubled down lately on the young earth creationist stuff. It better serves their culture warring against the things that scare them which I won’t bring up since we don’t want to steer the discussion into forbidden territory. They just had their Fight Laugh Feast “theology” conference at Ken’s Ark.
I am so out of the loop on this stuff and find it hard to align with anyone… I think someone said here that the more you get to know someone the less you like them or the less normal they are… that might have been @jpm
You should see the cost of the conference. Yikes. $325 per person or $725 for a family of 3, which doesn’t include a pass for Ken’s Ark 
Wait, it gets worse
“Ark Encounter Bouncer Tickets are to be purchased separately and are REQUIRED for the conference.”
$110
This is off-topic so we should probably start a different thread if you want to pursue it, but one of the speakers, a pastor from Wilson’s Idaho cult, spent a good portion of his talk trashing Francis Collins.
The saying is “everyone is normal until you get to know them better.” But, the implication of that is that everyone, including me, is a bit quirky, and hopefully we can accept those quirks and love them anyway. I guess that includes Ken Ham. Some people are easier to love than others.
This topic is always an interest to me and a seperate thread would be a good place to dig into it.
In the meantime, would you please explain your use of the term cult? I remember my old pastor who was getting his degree from Knox at the time, asked our Bible study group how a cult is defined, for me the answer was easy, but apparently it really surprised him that I knew it.
Doug Wilson runs a Christian patriarchy cult in Moscow, Idaho. When a religious leader runs all aspects of people’s lives and they can’t leave, you have a cult. I don’t think this is really the place to spell everything out, but you can google it and find stuff.
It’s looking like we are going to get into those areas where people misbehave… but just before we go off the deep end, how do you define cult?
From the article, I did find this in a closing remark about Francis Collins
I want to be clear: I know that people are complex. People are capable of sincerely holding contradictory views. And I have every reason to believe that Francis Collins sincerely believes what he has done is consistent with his Christian faith.
I also like this
Individual people really can be very complex and inconsistent. But over time, culture-wide, ideas have consequences. Individual people are not logically consistent, but generally speaking, cultures over time are logically consistent. Bad arguments, bad assumptions, bad presuppositions really will result in their logical conclusions downstream unless they are interrupted by God’s grace or repentance or both.
And that’s as far as I got
Sorry, but anyone who considers reading a Meg Basham article in the Daily Wire “research” isn’t even trying to figure out what’s actually true and I don’t believe them if they insist they put forth a good fatih effort to understand what Francis Collins believes.
I don’t “define” it. I think there is a continuum of cult-like dynamics and many Christian organizations fall somewhere on the continnuum. But the extreme end of the continuum is a cult, even if the boundaries between cult-like in some aspects and definitely a cult are impossible to delineate.
Some factors I think are key:
Groups that have high control, authoritarian leaders who are unaccountable and silence questioning. Groups that encourage or force people to cut themselves off from all other networks of support and rely on the group for their housing, education, commerce, employment, friendships, and spiritual guidance such that leaving affects their entire existence.
Groups that rely on indoctrination and the suppression of critical thinking to maintain their authority and isolate members from other perspectives by demonizing them or prohibiting contact.
Groups that cover up abuse and render victims powerless to pursue justice because of their fear-based authoritarian structures.
It was good to see the Vice article link to Wilson’s side of the controversy
The article is a new one for me. There was another one that was pretty big from Vice something about a spider or something… oh this is the article and this was Doug’s response to it
I have difficulty reading that as legitimate support for anyone.
I personally know people whose lives have been devastated by that man and his “church.” Not all stories make the internet, but the level of evil that goes on there makes my blood boil.
As Wilson has repeatedly done, has Francis Collins publicly responded to any of the charges that others have brought against him?
I don’t know. I don’t think it’s people’s responsibility to respond to every lie on the internet, especially when the sources in question are known for peddling conspiracy theories. If people don’t know the difference between stem cells and “aborted babies,” I don’t trust their analysis of anything.
I’ll probably reread what Sumpter says about aborted babies. I’d probably disagree with him on when life begins, but that is besides the point.
Has Francis Collins made any public comments about handling COVID in retrospect?
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
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