@RichardG , I’m tagging you, because this relates to your most recent post in this thread as well.
[Highlighting mine. – KJD]
Fragile faith is not necessarily shallow. Perhaps you didn’t mean to imply that it is, but that’s my first (second and subsequent as well) readings of your reply. I’ll come back to this problem eventually.
First to return to YEC. Why is it, as we know it now, even a thing? And what is the thing it is?
Why:
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Biblical literalism – we (yeah, sure, I’ll include myself in the camp) literalists can’t fit what we think the Bible says about the nature of humanity and our relationship to God together with what the biological sciences have been making more and more clear for over a century, and bio sci tells us things that are antithetical to what we have understood about humans through our reading of the Bible.
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Key theology based in that literalism – Theology of salvation as I know it is tied to a literal understanding of A&E, etc. (I am NOT arguing for or against that theological understanding, but to point to it as absolutely foundational for large segments of Christian theology.) Before a scientific understanding of human origins and cosmology were well-researched and established, this was a reasonable and reasoned approach. Largely, it was THE approach.
What?
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A scaffold – At first it seemed an explanation of origins that “works” with theology based in biblical literalism; it was used to strengthen the faith of the faithful in the pews, while attempting to weaken (in the eyes of the faithful) the strength of scientific evidence for a rational understanding of cosmology and human origins.
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An apologetic – Now it has moved from an attempt to maintain and strengthen (literalistic) biblical faith to a method of providing a rational foundation for biblical faith in order to promote the faith.
No one that I know of has expressed the What so clearly as adamjedgar, whom I quoted here:
Finally, returning to the concept of the fragility of faith; there are serious reasons that endless attempts at rationalizing Christian faith are being made today and there is an entire industry, not just an interest or an area of thinking, but a literal industry based in (rational) Christian apologetics.
Our time and place in human history no longer provides the assumed undergirdment for faith of any kind. Foundational cultural assumptions of God/god/gods, the supernatural, relationships between them and us do not exist anymore. It’s a product of our own intellectual inquiry. Our intellectual culture, now devoid of such undergirdment, requires justification for belief on new – rational – terms. And Christians are scrambling to keep on that hamster wheel, which takes many shapes and forms, including but certainly not limited to YEC, ID, “Debate Team Tactics” etc, etc.
But faith is not a matter of the kind of rational inquiry. Faith, like the Edmund Fitzgerald, is a full iron freighter, not to tossed and fro, but supported at each end by the crests of waves in a terrible storm. What used to provide support in the form of universal cultural assumptions is gone. This is a kind of fragility that has been imposed on an ancient faith from the outside, and which has left believers scrambling to deal with. The ship can be well made and strong, as the Fitz was, yet fragile in a differently hostile environment.
The point regarding fragility is not about strong or weak faith. It is about grasping our faith on sustainable terms in a milieu in which rational thought is valued ultimately, certainly above whatever genuine explanations we can give for our faith.