Fear and Transitioning from YEC

Faith & Science Conversation
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Hello everyone!

I recently graduated from a conservative school, where they are proponents for YEC. While I agree with and respect my schools teaching on the Bible, I’m now coming to the realization that they’ve interpreted Gen 1-11 too literally, and the Theory of Evolution seems be well-supported by the evidence (as does an old earth). I still hold to the Bible as the Word of God, and Jesus as the resurrected and ruling Son of God.

As I make this transition, I’m finding a lot of fear in me. I’m afraid I’m not “special” anymore, since I wasn’t created specially. Nature now scares me, because I don’t understand it and the age of it is incomprehensible to me. I’m confused by human emotions - I want to believe that “love” is more than just chemical processes, more than something that has evolved over time to keep us alive by bonding.

Has anyone else dealt with this? Or have you had people in your life that you know who have walked through similar things?

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Hi, GRZ - and welcome!

Many here have - and it isn’t a “quick walk” but more like a life journey. So you’re in the right place. And by that I don’t mean that our community here is some kind of “bed of roses” for people who feel and think as you are doing. This is a public forum with a plethora of (not always harmonius) voices. So there will be some here glad to try to reinforce your fears and scare you away from considering things differently than you have. But a great many voices here have made very similar journeys to what you’re describing right now, and are finding much consilience and relief at not having to try to maintain so much cognitive dissonance and denial of so much scientific reality.

Speaking to what you said about fear, I can at least share for myself that fear has become a very recognizable friend/foe that I can at least be aware of and hold it at arm’s length so that I can try to focus on more sober and Christ-centered voices and hopefully follow after those more faithfully. You are right that there are a lot of “driving processes” involved, and many times those have helped keep us alive! As a wise somebody once noted, “Fear can help keep you from getting eaten by a tiger, but it’s a lousy guide for how to do life for forty or fifty years.” (And the fear-pushers are always there to remind you that if the tiger gets you, you won’t have forty or fifty years … but then after forty years of trying to live like that, and realizing that tigers aren’t actually crouching behind every dang tree like the fear-mongers want you to believe, then you realize the wisdom of the original caution against letting fear always be in the driver’s seat.) All that’s a long way of saying, you can re-acclimate your mind toward not having so many spurious “anchor points” that you may have been taught were indispensible before. And after finding some support and community (maybe even here!) of people who have successfully focused on what’s (who’s) most important - that is: Christ, you can hopefully find a new equilibrium and not feel so unsettled by fears. But feel free to bring up those fears in detail as needed! You are indeed so much more then “mere chemical processes”, and I agree with you that Love is so much more than all that too. But I’m no longer threatened by the notion that God’s created chemical processes are all part of that glorious creation and opportunity to love. The spiritual is real - and it is also incarnate in our flesh-and-blood physicality too. I hope you find some good support - not just here, but in any such physically present community that you can find too.

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Hi GRZ, and welcome to the forum! Thanks for sharing about your experiences with how you view science and faith. The fear you’re describing sounds very familiar to me. In my upbringing, the idea of a “worldview” was very ingrained in us, and it was so important to have every little piece in place “correctly,” but it felt good and safe when everything seemed to fit together. Going through a faith shift of any kind can be scary because it can disturb this feeling of “rightness” and things don’t feel as neat and orderly as maybe they once did.

For me, in spite of all the internal discomfort this has caused me, it’s also been a reason to ask questions about what my faith was ultimately placed in. Did I believe in God simply because I felt safe? I’ve had to wrestle with what faith even is, which has been hard, but in some ways it’s also been a relief to let go of a lot of things that I subconsciously thought I had to hold together in order to have faith in God. (Pete Enns’ book “The Sin of Certainty” was a helpful perspective in this.) I agree with you about nature often feeling incomprehensible, but in many ways God is incomprehensible to me, and I have in many ways tried to make the supernatural more palatable and understandable to me in order to feel safe. Now I’m trying to make sense of the gray areas between “I feel safe because I totally understand this” and “I’m scared because I can’t understand this at all.”

I do remember how often young-earth creationist ministries and thought leaders used our human “exceptionalism” as an argument against evolution, so that was a tough perspective for me to deconstruct. I try to remember that we are more than just our DNA, and so sharing ancestry with animals is not some kind of argument against us being special, at least not to me anymore. Science is useful and fascinating, but it’s not all or the final word. Figuring out how it interacts with faith is tricky and something many of us are still working out. Thanks for joining us on that journey – I hope you’re able to fine some helpful perspectives and at the very least know that you’re not alone! I believe God meets us where we are, and sometimes these kinds of faith wrestling give us the opportunity to see God as bigger than we did before.

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Welcome Roae. It is good to have your voice here. Many have followed this path, so there is a lot of experience here to draw from. One thing you didn’t mention but is a real issue, is how the change in worldview affects relationships with friends and family. Sharing here may help navigate those issues, as we have all been there. I find your generation is a bit better at not making it an issue perhaps than those of us who are older.

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Hi Roae – you’re not alone, not here and not among Christians generally.

There have been many advances that led people to question how special we could be. Christians faced this long before Darwin. Whenever some new truth grew the conception of the world, people would face a choice of whether to let their conception of God grow as well. The heavens, full of myriad galaxies, strike many as too large for God to care much about Earth. But is that because the heavens are too big or because an image of God is too small?

And speaking of images of God, how could we reflect God’s image when studies of human physiology showed that we’re built just like other beasts? I think some Psalms point us in helpful directions when facing our insignificance. For instance,

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars that you have established;
what are humans that you are mindful of them,
mortals that you care for them?
Yet you have made them a little lower than God
and crowned them with glory and honor. (Ps. 8:3–5)

According to this psalm, no feature of humans makes us special: God’s intention and attention makes us special. God gave humanity an undeserved promotion. It’s a gift! If we allow this psalmist’s mindset to become our own, no scientific finding that underscores our connection to other beasts can threaten God’s care for us. It was never based on our merit. We don’t have to stand taller than others on a planet that looms larger than others for God to notice us.

This seems to be a pattern. When God chose a special people and delivered them from slavery, it wasn’t because they deserved it or were the strongest, most numerous or most useful – only God’s love explained it (Deut. 7:7–8). And when David considers God’s thoughtful care for him even before he was born (Ps. 139), it’s not because he’s going to be a big deal. Instead, David’s God is big enough to give such focused attention to everyone. No advance in embryology can choke a faith like David’s that discerns God’s knitting needles crafting every one of us.

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Thank you so much for your response! It’s encouraging to know that others are walking this road. You make a great point about readjusting our anchor points. It reminds me of what Paul states in 1 Corinthians, that there are some things that are of “first importance” - Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. He is our Anchor, the Forerunner and Perfecter of our faith, and putting our hope in other things can prove to be shaky. Thank you for your reply!

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welcome

Not created specially?

Is a painting “not created specially” if the artist used brushes? what if the artist programmed a computer to make his painting?

I think this is a means and Maker problem: the existence of a means does not separate a creation from its maker; the reality of biological birth does not separate a person from the Creator. God uses parents, and all evolution does is make it a long list of prior parents – it’s still God at work.

The age is awesome! It just tells us that when the scripture calls God “the Ancient of Days”, "ancient is . . . really, really ancient.

I love Jesus. No chemical process can cause that.

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Or of scriptural reality. I come to things from the text, and so I’ll point out that the text does not support YEC – you have to start with rationalistic assumptions to get to YEC.

Like Yahweh told the Israelites, He didn’t choose us because we were numerous or mighty or wealthy or wise, He chose us because He loves us.
Which is pretty darned special!

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This is so true. I’m finding it difficult to talk through my friends and family because they deem evolution both invalid and incompatible with the Biblical story. Biologos has been SO helpful as I navigate this. And thankfully, my friends are also willing to discuss with me, even if their journey takes a while (just like mine has!)

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Oh, this is so helpful! It also makes sense that no feature (eg cognitive ability, specific genetics markers, etc) would paint a comprehensive picture of the image of God, since some individuals may not possess these qualities (eg, the mentally handicapped). Not only that, but this way if viewing it gives God the glory He deserves, “so that no one can boast”. Appreciate this insight!

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That’s super helpful. Also, your reference to “Ancient if Days” is very helpful - gives a newer meaning and deeper awe of the Lord.

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Actually, I think we may be more special than you have been imagining, and science is revealing many of these things.

First our unique appearance is from becoming the sparse hair (often called hairless) primates because we evolved as the long distance running hunters due to our cooling system using sweat.

Then we mastered the use of fire to cook food giving us a far more efficient means of acquiring nutrients – and thus giving us more time for other activities.

We domesticated not only plants and animals but ourselves as well in order to capitalize on the most powerful of evolutionary strategies: cooperation.

Finally and most importantly we evolved to use language. And it is important to understand the difference between language and mere communication. Language has representational and abstraction capabilities to rival that of DNA and thus become a medium for life in its own right. This is the life of the human mind which passes on an inheritance to the next generation without the limitation of no inheritance of acquired characteristics. Thus we change significantly on a much shorter timescale than evolution. We are in fact another form of life altogether than the biological (in addition to the biological of course).

P.S. You might notice some of things which I do not mention which have more traditionally been taken as making humans special. These are intelligence and morality. This is because you will find there are some problems with these. In the case of intelligence, there are two difficulties. One is that we lost some of our intelligence when we domesticated ourselves. The second is that we are finding with AI that intelligence isn’t as great or as special as we thought. In the case of morality, I believe we are finding that this is inherent in all communal organisms. You might think that our morality is different and you would be right, but I think it all points back to language and the ability it gives us to master abstractions.

P.P.S. This shift from intelligence and morality as making us special likely has interesting implications for religion as well. You can say that Christianity has been coming recognize the limitations/difficulties of both intelligence and morality also. Consider the problems of legalism and excessive obsession with dogma and even with scripture (for which I can ironically quote John 5:39). And thus we have been shifting to a more experiential understanding (power of Christ to change lives) and the importance of faith.

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my posts in response to these kinds of thread almost always get removed…moderators dont want anyone being brainwashed apparently…despite the removal of my posts proving that the opposing side are intent on exactly that!

So, if this post doesnt get removed…here is my response to you:

(actually ill start a second post because at least then they have two to remove instead of just one and perhaps said conscience might win the day)

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Christ said in Matthew 24

36 “But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son,[f] but only the Father. 37 As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. 38 For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; 39 and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.

Christ is making reference to the Global Catastrophe in Genesis 6&7 for a reason. He is using real history as an example of what will happen to those who do not believe in Him!

The significant dilemma for you in relation to the above is this…

Christ is talking about a GLOBAL Second Coming.

The Second Coming is neither Allegorical nor is it local!

The account in Genesis includes times, places, days, people, peoples ages…the detail is historical…this is also proven more comprehensively by all of the biblical genealogies (read them all if you dont believe me). The genealogies in the Bible illustrate the human timeline from Adam and Eve right up to the birth of Christ. Even if we agree with the claim that there are some discrepencies…it is simply not possible to add millions of years of history to those discrepencies. for example, did you know:

Methuselah new Adam
Methuselah was Noahs Grandfather
Shem, Noahs Son, was alive at the time of Terah (Abrahams father) and likely lived through until at least the time of Jacob (Isaacs second son)!

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After the time of Jacob and Esau, we have a very detailed biblical lineage of all of the signficant figures and stories right up until the time of Christ…so the claim that these lineages arent literal is simply nonesense!

NEXT…

The apostle Peter claims in his 2nd epistle:

2 Peter 1: 20 Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation of things. 21 For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

Whether you agree or not, both Christianity and Judaism agree that the greatest prophet (other than Christ obviously) was Moses

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So if Moses, when writing the book of Genesis, writes that the earth was created in 6 days, he received that revelation from God in Heaven directly…there is no human interpretation there beyond a natural reading of Moses words.

How do we know this?

  1. read Exodus 20:11

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  2. Read Matthew 24 (already quoted at the beginning of this post)

  3. Read 2 Peter 2:4-9

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  4. Read Revelation 21 and tell me that the Second Coming isn’t a Global event and whilst you are at it, note that in Revelation 21, God tells us that there will be a new heavens and a new earth where there will be no more crying, pain, suffering, death…

The reason why conservative Christians are usually YEC is because, theologically there is no way to consistently read the bible and not be YEC!

Now despite the above, Christ fortunately gave us an easy way around the dilemma you face…its not science.

Science will not teach you a thing about salvation. If you are truly of the belief that you need to follow science to find God, then you are being fooled.

Whilst the heavens declare the glory of God, they do not teach us the gospel. We get that directly from the Bible and the Holy Spirit leading us to its truths.

Now there is an upside to yor problem there…All you have to do is the following:

  1. Follow the parables and adhere to them
  2. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved

The patience of the saints in Revelation 14:12 is a wonderful promise for us…(well i like to see it as a promise anyway)

**

12Here is a call for the perseverance of the saints, who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus.

**

  1. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved and,
  2. Keep the commandments of God (commandments don’t save us, but they are a result of number 1 here.)

Thats all you have to do…nothing more.

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A post was split to a new topic: Does intelligence make us special?

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Oh yes.

Decades ago, I was about your age and also recently graduated from a conservative school. I started asking if a global flood made sense. At the time I was taking sociology classes and realized that what I considered my personal outlook was as shaped by my church upbringing just as much as other people groups I was studying. Could I rely on that? I was thrown into a six week anxiety attack where I could not sleep, and lost the ability to direct my thoughts. I stepped up exercise just to hold on to some area of forced self control. So yeah, it was a scary time. It was also lonely. Who was I to talk to? Friends? I did not want to spread doubt. Pastors? I already had more qualification than any I knew.

All this is a singular transition long past. I am not given to depression, life has been good with many special moments, and I have learned that it is OK to not have tidy answers to everything or have everybody agree with me. I trust in God for what I do not understand.

On thing I might add to other responses, is that when such a shift in perspective such as you have related is experienced, there is rarely any going back and unawaring and unknowing what you have learned. It may seem confusing now, but should come to feel liberating. Blessings.

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I will add that this departure from a worldview in which one is indoctrinated growing up is not exclusive to religion (let alone Christianity). I am an example of this. I often say I am a child of the 60s raised by extreme liberals of that time with peace marches, abundant criticism of the Christian establishment, free love, the familiar smell of marijuana, communes, and even communism. And yet now I have rejected much of that and embrace Christianity.

However, I don’t know if the depression you experience is likewise experienced by those in my situation – and I wonder if this is because what I was raised to believe is generally a more negative outlook on life. Or perhaps the shift of thinking isn’t as big, because I started with scientific worldview and still have it (at least that part of my worldview is unchanged). Despite the lies of many (what I call the atheist-creationist alliance), they are very much compatible. Indeed, I personally could never have accepted Christianity if it were not for evolution – for the harshness of evolution and the harshness of the Bible fit together perfectly (and thus I find the this particular criticism each level at the other to be rather amusing).

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Translating that in class (words from memory):

Student: “How ‘ancient’?”
Student 2: “Reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeally ancient!”
Student 3: “It can mean ‘aged’.”
Student 4: “Aged for days? Sounds like an ad for wine.”
Student 2: “Ancient of Days wine, aged for days . . . in the attic!” (note: the Hebrew sounds like “attic”)
Prof: “Wine ages better in the cellar. Now back to Daniel. This is an Aramaic loan word…”
Student 2 “And it’s reeeeeally ancient.”

So when I read “Ancient of Days” now, I always think of

On this mountain Yahweh of hosts will make for all peoples
a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine,
of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined.

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This is false. ALL my grad school religion professors were extremely conservative Christians, and only one was YEC-ish (he believed in a mega-ancient universe and planet, but not in mega-ancient life).
Plus I have known many scholars who would tell you that there is no way to consistently read the Bible and be YEC, because YEC requires starting with a rationalistic humanistic a priori premise, while an actual conservative would ask what the Bible is before making adopting any premises.

Adam, you just did what the Pharisee Christians in Acts 15 did, adding to the Gospel.
This is why your posts get deleted: you’re not trying to help the person, you’re pushing your own agenda and it leads away from the Gospel.

Paul summarizes the Gospel more than once:

…his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we have received grace…

…that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures…

Which is why there is no need to have fear in transitioning from YEC: Jesus is Lord, and He is ours and we are His.

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I have been where you have been. My research of the evidence from scince when aligned with the scriptures from Genesis 1-11 convinces me that the science while altering the interpretation of Genesis 1-11 is a truer interpretation. Most importantly, the new interpretation does not negat Christian theology that Adam brought sin into the world and Jesus paid the price for mans sins. Be encouraged. You are on the right track. I am in the process of publishing a book on this very subject. Thank yiu for bringing this up.