Whoops, I am late to this thread. I started this post 3 weeks ago and just had time to sit down and write it.
My personal journey out of YECism had a few features that I think may be helpful for some as well as my experience teaching many students who come from YEC backgrounds for 6 or 7 years now. But one thing to keep in mind is that you could have all the best arguments and presentation of truth and provide all sorts of other ways of reading the Bible and at the end of the day, your friends may become even more entrenched in their YECism. Sometimes it still shocks me that I can have some students take an entire semester on some topic, and still repeat exactly what they said at the beginning of the class, as if the entire semester was a waste of time for both of us. That is not usually the case, but it does happen more often than I wish and sometimes, people get really angry. As in storming out of class or coming up with games to mock me or trying to get me fired. So, just be aware that you can get a wide range of reactions, some of which are pretty rough.
- For myself, one of the things that really started to break down my YECism was having to teach a course on cosmology. Previously, my understanding of cosmology was filtered solely through YEC sites, and “researching” a topic basically meant trying to parrot YEC thought leaders. Really understanding these topics required expertise far beyond what I was able to do by myself and they certainly sounded so smart, as if they expertly understand these complex topics better than secular scientists (or those deceived people you know, actually doing the research). However, when I went to teach this course, I didn’t want just to repeat something I didn’t understand (either from YEC writers or practicing scientists). So I really, really tried to understand how we know what we know, which often meant trying to read actual scientific papers themselves instead of filtered through a YEC lens. This turned out to be my downfall as I found the actual science to make a lot of sense. It clearly was done with the rigor that science I saw myself and others doing, and wasn’t just some feeble attempt to explain away God.
- I eventually came to realize that I had been fooled by YEC writers. I don’t think they are actively lying, in the sense they know they are repeating falsehoods. I think their belief in YECism is so strong, that it can quickly and easily deal with information that challenges it. Morton’s Demon comes to mind. I think I’ve written about this myself here before, especially in terms of the extreme arrogance (at least I experienced) inherent to YECism.. This is the real difficult part of talking to anyone very entrenched in YEC. They of course very strongly believe that God’s word trumps anything else and to even question the interpretation of Genesis is akin to question whether God’s word is even true. I often show students a quote from Bernard Ramm saying that to question Gap Creationism in America in the 1950s was unthinkable. Unfortunately, realizing that I’d been fooled by YECism, I began to feel bitter towards their falsehoods, and that was a very unhelpful sort of attitude to carry into conversations. Some people could related to feeling lied to and liked my initial approach, but it was generally unhelpful to have such a focus on things wrong with YEC science.
- Instead, I generally try to focus on explaining how we know what we know and being honest about what we don’t know. This is generally more disarming for many YEC students since all they’ve ever heard about are “uncertainties” in scientific explanations. It is also a strange thing for many of them to hear what goes into modern scientific explanations. Many of them have never heard someone talk in a positive way about various scientific theories. This point is really important as I do it in the manner of “this is our best explanation at present and why.” Sometimes I will write on the board lots of observations that need explaining about our universe and how a single unifying idea (like the big bang theory) explains it all. I encourage students that they can replace the big bang theory, but they would need to explain all of this data. I’ve found this to be largely missing from YEC writing about science. They just simply try to dismiss modern science, yet largely lack explanations of their own. For example, they say that the amount of cosmic lithium is like 3 parts be billion less than what the big bang theory can currently describe, yet ignore the fact the big bang theory explains the other 99.999%+ of the elements very well. The creation alternative is “God sped up regular physics” or just "made the elements as is (in such a way that is easily matched by the big bang theory.). YET…
- This is where I would lose many students if I didn’t include various ways of reading Genesis alongside science. I think it is important to do this in a way that is not attacking YEC readings but is a neutral presentation of different perspectives with why and how people defend their positions. It is very refreshing and exciting for many students to see other ways of reading Genesis, and I try to put things in their hands. I also have a teaching I made on four different ways that people deal with science and faith conflicts and strengths and weaknesses to each. I put the task between them and God to synthesize the evidence and I think they appreciate me not telling them what to think. Sure, at the end of the day, many people still keep on believing what they originally came in with, but I hope to sow some seeds of excitement about God’s creation and how it is much more exciting and complex than anyone, including scientists, could have ever imagined.