The message of Jesus was founded on the OT scriptures going right back to Creation. “Haven’t you read the Scriptures?” Jesus replied. “They record that from the beginning 'God made them male and female.”, and “As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man,”
Or as Dawkins puts it, "‘Oh but of course the story of Adam and Eve was only ever symbolic, wasn’t it? Symbolic?! So Jesus had himself tortured and executed for a symbolic sin by a non-existent individual? Nobody not brought up in the faith could reach any verdict other than barking mad!’
Rather than undermining Christian faith YEC defends the foundation of Christian faith.
If Genesis is the foundation of Christian faith, maybe we should change our names to Genesisians.
In order for Adam’s sin to be a symbol of human sin, human sin has to exist. And there are far more references to humanity’s sin when it comes to the atonement than references to Adam’s sin. The Bible says Jesus died to take away the sins of the world (John 1:29), as a ransom for many (Matt 20:28), and for our sins (Rom 4:25, 1 Cor 15:3, and lots of other places). Why quote Dawkins sympathetically as a Christian if it’s one of the many times he is showing his ignorance of the Bible? That’s bad form.
What would actually be an interesting contribution from a YEC on this thread is if you could explain how your YEC beliefs actually made your faith more secure or resilient or something to counter the claim that it creates a brittle faith. By stating that a literal interpretation of Genesis is the foundation of Christianity you’re pretty much affirming the atheists observations. It’s a brittle faith that crumbles with an interpretation of Genesis. It’s not a faith that seems to rest first and foremost on the person and work of Christ, which would be what I would assume Christian faith is supposed to be built on.
I don’t disagree with you here (I do believe the Bible teaches that God made us male and female, and that there was wickedness in the world during Noah’s day), but neither of these things are specifically YEC – the stories of Adam and Eve and Noah can exist just fine in an old-earth scenario.
You should realize that if Jesus is the Creator of the cosmos and overwhelming evidence in his creation supports an old earth and common ancestry, YEC has a much bigger problem than EC could ever have with anything Jesus ever said about Genesis. It’s commonplace for YECs to imply that it’s kind of a toss-up when you look at the scientific evidence, so Jesus definitively settles the score for us in favor of YEC. If you think that Jesus as Creator of the cosmos would expect us in our day to hold to a YEC view, you need to account for why he made the cosmos in such a way that the preponderance of evidence overwhelmingly favors a drastically different view. Remember that Jesus was speaking to an ancient people with an ancient scientific understanding to deliver a timeless message that would transcend the ancient historical context.
“Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.”
I’m seeing a contradiction. Do you practice that?
Given what Jesus said, do you therefore endorse the order of appearance of different types of organisms offered in Genesis 1 and reject the very different order offered in Genesis 2?
I am one of those who P.Z. Myers is describing, except I learned creationism from and earlier generation of YEC’s, like Morris, Whitcomb and Gish. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I realized there was good reasons to believe in an old creation, and I read about the different Old Earth Creationist beliefs, Gap theory, Day-Age theory, and whatever else was popular at the time, and was wondering which one of them might be true. Then I re-read the young Earth arguments again and was convinced that the Bible definitely taught a young Earth…submit. So I did.
Fast forward. When I found out YEC definitely isn’t true and they are sometimes lying to defend it, the whole wall did fall, but I wouldn’t say it was a brittle wall. It is more concrete block wall that is very strong as long as it is intact, but if you knock a few blocks out of the foundation at the corner, soon the blocks above them will loosen and fall out too.
For me, it wasn’t evolution (biology) that was the straw that broke the YEC camel’s back. It was mostly geology. And then there is the dishonesty YEC’s will stoop to to rubbish science and discredit anything that breaks their Young Earth timeline.
Another problem that seems insurmountable for YEC’s is the “Distant starlight problem”. They have explanations to explain it away, none of them are good, but they successfully fool the average Christian into believing that YEC still might be true. It is a shame.
Do you feel that you lost your Christianity along with your young earth creationism? We hear all the time that people realize Christians they respect have been lying to them about science and it calls into question everything else they have been taught. That’s why some more strident voices believe YEC should be vigorously opposed. But most of the people I know did not throw the baby out with the bathwater, they renegotiated their faith in light of scientific facts (some more painfully than others) and came out on the other side, faith intact. (Or they manage to live very peacefully with the cognitive dissonance and at least pay lip service to YEC even if they have some personal doubts.)
So I tend to wonder if some of the alarmist claims about YEC ruining the church are overblown, or just a few people projecting their personal experience on everyone else (which is probably what I’m doing in the other direction, I know). So I’m always trying to listen for stories that support their narrative.
Welcome Tim. Are you in a science field by any chance. I’m not but so many here are and I have learned a good deal here.
I never was a YEC so that never was an issue for me. I can’t tell if you’ve accepted OC or have given up Christianity altogether. I’m an atheist with an interest in why belief in God has been as prevalent and widespread as it has. I look to psychology to find a place for a God compatible with the natural world and think I’ve found Him a home as a co-product of consciousness along side what I take to be my conscious self.
“Do you feel that you lost your Christianity along with your young earth creationism?”
One led to the other in a short time, at the end of 2 or 3 years of research.
What started it was taking vacations to the western US and looking at the landscape as a YEC, many things made the unwelcome thought come to me that “This didn’t happen in 6000 years”. When the internet came along, I decided to settle once and for all whether YEC and “flood geology”, or Christian Old Earth creationism and just plain geology was true. I had no idea it would lead to this.
First I realized that Noah’s flood never happened at all. The population of humans wasn’t down to only 8 people in about 2347 BC.
All animals weren’t down to a couple of pairs of each kind, living in one area of the world in 2347 BC.
If the flood isn’t true, the related story of the Tower of Babel isn’t true either. All humans weren’t living near one tower, speaking the same language about 100 years after the the flood.
If those stories aren’t true, the Bible is not inerrant, and not even close. It was probably after those realizations that Adam and Eve, the Garden of Eden and the Exodus followed. That all happened in a few days. My head was spinning, trying to think about what it all meant. Those things were all from the Old Testament, and honestly it would be better if some of those stories weren’t true, God ordering genocides and such.
Then I realized that Jesus talked about “The days of Noah” as if the worldwide flood had actually happened, and I knew it didn’t, so Jesus was wrong too. Houston, we have a problem.
So, the Young Earth Creationism went first, but the dominoes quickly fell leading to me concluding that Christianity isn’t true. Maybe if I hadn’t been raised so fundamentalist it would have ended differently. I hear of people who are taught that science and Christianity are not in conflict, and they don’t see the issues I see after a lifetime of hearing the ultimatum that evolution and Christianity can not both be true.
Anyway, I wish biologos and other old Earth organizations success at winning over Christians from believing the very wrong YEC teachings.
Sorry about my pointed reply that I had up here, @Tim_Matter. Instead of welcoming you to continue sharing here (my job as a moderator), I instead launch into an attack of your position. I should (and usually do) know better. I guess I’ve been jumpy around here lately as maybe some other forum participants would probably agree too.
Your shared experiences are welcome here, whatever status of faith or non-faith you identify with.
MarkD- I’m not in any science field, but if I had been inclined to do that for a living, I may have decided against it because of Young Earth Creationisms anti science attitude. Anything that contradicts a 6000 year old Earth, and global flood about 4500 years ago that left only 8 people and a few pairs of each kind of animal alive on Earth, can’t be true. I didn’t realize it, but that cuts out most sciences that end in *ology, along with known history.
“I can’t tell if you’ve accepted OC or have given up Christianity altogether.” I’ve given up on the Abrahamic God altogether, and I don’t feel the need to investigate if any of the other gods people believe in are true.
If there was a true God, mine was it. I don’t think a deistic god can be disproved, but not much is claimed about him/it except that he/it is the “first cause”. At least he is not threatening to burn people in hell for not believing in him.
If you want to know more, is there somewhere off biologos so we can talk about thing that are off topic for this website?
You can always message MarkD (or any of us) by clicking on our icons and clicking the blue ‘Message’ button. Then only the recipient(s) that you choose will see your message and be able to respond to it in kind.
Melvin_Bitikofer- [post removed, with apology]
I was thinking of a reply when it disappeared. I saw you say the same thing before.
I guess I am disagreeing or agreeing with the YEC playbook point by point. It’s hard for anybody to be wrong all of the time.
yeah … none of us is brilliant enough to be wrong all the time! I like to remember that too.
If you still wanted to see and react to what was there, I didn’t mean to deprive you of a chance to give answer, and I could probably send it to you as a private message on request. But as far as public forum behavior goes here, … I thought my behavior there was probably cringe-worthy. I’d better scuttle off to get some sleep. Blessings to you.
Thanks Tim for sharing. The wall does seem to come tumbling down for many. I was also raised as a YEC. I suppose my experiential knowledge of Christ prevented the wall of my faith from being significantly impacted as was confronted by the science. I remember going through the same questions “If x didn’t actually happen, how can I trust what the Bible says about y?” But rather than throw out the baby of faith with the bathwater of YEC, I looked for solutions to harmonize my faith with science. The science challenged me to reconsider my long-held biblical interpretations (required for a YEC view). It was freeing to discover that these interpretations were flawed on their own merits, and that I had been reading the Bible wrongly all along. This has actually led me to greater confidence in the trustworthiness of the Bible when understood rightly in what it is trying to teach. It never was a book about science. God accommodated to the pre-scientific understanding of the ancient world to teach us how to be in relationship with him and carry out his purposes as his image-bearers.
Young Christians are leaving the church – Here’s why
When asked why they didn’t believe, many said their views about God had “evolved” and some reported having a “crisis of faith.” Their specific explanations included the following statements:
“Learning about evolution when I went away to college”
“Religion is the opiate of the people”
“Rational thought makes religion go out the window”
“Lack of any sort of scientific or specific evidence of a creator”
“I just realized somewhere along the line that I didn’t really believe it”
“I’m doing a lot more learning, studying and kind of making decisions myself rather than listening to someone else.”
Chris, I agree with you. These are commonly stated reasons for abandonment of faith. From the YEC perspective, what would you suggest ought to be the solution(s)? (I am not being antagonistic to you here, but sincere. My best friend is YEC.)
But there need be no conflict if their faith was not presented to them as requiring the rejection of evolution and science. Why should religion depend upon what empirical facts can be discovered by way of science? Why should religion make empirical claims?
EVERY year around this time, with the college year starting, I give my students The Talk. It isn’t, as you might expect, about sex, but about evolution and religion, and how they get along. More to the point, how they don’t.