I had a doctor tell me that some large percentage of really important things that are found in doctor visits come up as the patient is about to leave and says, “Oh, one more thing…”
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Takes that long to work up the courage to talk about the stuff you’re pretending isn’t happening.
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True. It is sort of a standing joke among doctors. Usually your hand is on the door ( or you closed your note on the computer) and the patient says something like “Oh, by the way, is it any problem that there is blood mixed with my poop?”
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I believe that was Columbo’s signature line!
[TV detective for those like me who usually culturally clueless about such things.]
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The scary thing is that in retrospect, we’re sort of being tested before discussing it–“is this doctor really going to listen to me? Do I trust him? do I feel comfortable with him?”
I remember Randall well – his blog helped me find ways to detach myself from creationism, ages ago.
Last Gallup poll puts 40% of Americans as agreeing with the statement the God created humans in their present form within the last 10,000 years. Although the number of people who believe that God did not guide evolution is increasing, so it seems the number of people who reject deep time is increasing as well. Why is the gulf widening? What gives?
I know why I believed creationism: I was steeped in it. But that’s not the case for most of the population. My theory, though cut from We Believe In Dinosaurs, is that the general lack of science education and science awareness allows science denial to prosper. I broke out and updated an older post:
Do you think that’s right? Or is there another reason that creationism maintains so much strength despite its absurdity?
Newton’s Third Law of Motion states, “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.”
The harder that people like Neil deGrass Tyson push their godless science, the greater is that force that opposes them. Very simple newtonian physics.
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There was a thought passed around some time back that God would return when all believed one way or the other. Either humans would be all “God like”. Which has never happened in today’s cosmology. Or human imagination would be so depraved, God would have to remove all of humanity from existence.
The struggle between humans currently is the point that God even exist. That is neither totally evil, nor totally “God like”. The idealogy and humanity agreeing with each other is widening over this issue. Meaning we will be stuck in the middle for a very long time, postponing God’s return for an unforeseeably long time. Evil is not really turning one’s back on God, because humans have concluded they can be morally righteous without God. So what is faith in God in reality? If evolution only happened after the fall of one human who was without sin, but only had to sin once, where does that leave the knowledge of science? Is faith in science the true faith, or is faith in God’s Word the true faith.
There is no proof that evolution can result in better and more perfect beings, at least on it’s own, without some outside force guiding the process. But history does not gives us any hope that that is or ever was God’s plan.
If the original premise is that humans either have to have faith in God instead of evolution instead of being totally perfect or totally evil, does that change the dynamics of the premise? It would seem that only those who interpret the Bible literally with Faith in God are the only hold out.
Yes. You have a lot of really smart kids being homeschooled in a way that completely shelters them from scientific consensus. It perpetuates the system where people point to them and say, “Look at so-and-so. He (usually not she 
) is super smart and he is a creationist, so obviously we have intellectual credibility.” Never mind all the smart kids who went off and actually studied science and changed their minds. They just are compromisers.
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It may be simply that creationism is one more marker of group affiliation. Liberals believe in evolution, so conservatives don’t.
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This is a great quote from your article:
Despite the intense wrongness and consistent failures of young-earth creationism, the effort required to maintain the appearance of research and investigation will always be less than the effort required to thoroughly debunk it.
And when the effort required to maintain the appearance of research and investigation involves full-scale education makeovers and entire curricula that completely integrate a young-earth view with every school subject out there (somehow), then merely “debunking” it is very very difficult.
I think it also depends on what people are primed to expect – growing up as a Christian I was taught that we were supposed to be different and should expect “persecution” and pushback from “secularists” (i.e. anyone who disagreed with us), so experiencing challenges to YEC were just part and parcel of the whole faith experience.
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I think Steve is correct that it is seen as a tribal marker for many, and we are in a phase in society where divisions in many areas are more pronounced. However, I am encouraged by some polls that show a slight but definite movement away from the YEC position. Also, surveys show that the way questions are asked make a difference, and if given a chance to include God in evolution, the percentage of people in the US who think humans were created as we are now drops to 18%.
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I have noted that believing in YEC has much similarities to what happens in science. Scientists may know much about their research field but otherwise rely on what others have told. Someone we trust (expert of the field) tells what (s)he has learned and maybe gives some pieces of information that make the story convincing.
The same happens in churches: most people have not studied evolution, geology etc. themselves, they rely on information they read and hear from sources they trust. Christian books telling about YEC may sound very convincing if you don’t know much of these things. And there seem to be more easy-to-read books advertising YEC than EC, even in Northern Europe. Loudest voice wins. Much of the content of these books is ‘invasive’ stuff in the sense that the material includes parts that have been copied from YEC sources in USA. Many believers read these and may accept, especially if trusted persons support YEC.
The most problematic part of the YEC teaching seems to be that YEC is somehow tied to the reliability of the Bible (their interpretation about Genesis and salvation). If you abandon YEC, you say that what Bible tells is not true. Also, abandoning YEC undermines their interpretation of why humans need salvation. Without a convincing alternative interpretation told by trusted believers, many are unwilling to openly oppose the YEC interpretation, at least in small churches.
So, I hope there would be more of those willing to write and actively spread convincing, easy-to-understand media among the believers that now tend to accept YEC. I guess that especially the younger generation would hope to get such material because the biology teaching in schools starts from evolution.
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Regarding your comment on actively spreading convincing easy to understand information…
I was challenged by a CRU director to create a one pager to explain the view that Science points to God. I did so but won’t attach it here but in summary it goes as follows:
The deterministic philosophy brought on by Classical Physics tends to disprove God and supports the cause and effect evolution view taught in schools. God existence then requires that He as God is breaking all of these rules that He created.
BUT Quantum Physics and Relativity have displaced the notion in classical physics of determinism, and replaced it with the fact that observation creates matter, and time is relative. So a timeless triune God is the observer of the 6 day creation of the universe per His view of time, and we looking back see billions of years from our view of time. Youtube videos on the double slit experiment and time dilation can be used as media tools to support this. Is this convincing enough??
So YEC and OEC can both be right, but indeed YEC’s will still have to give up the idea of no animal death before the fall - which is in my view loosely inferred by various bible passages.
I sometimes wonder whether this whole YEC vs OEC is brought on by Satan, but per God’s purpose, perhaps this eventually gets us to a unified view that eventually unites us all as Christians following Jesus?
In one closing comment, I have since come to the conclusion that we should not attack YECs, but rather simply state our view of truth and then let the chips fall where they may. If they choose to have ears to hear and eyes to see, then they through God’s grace will get it. If not, dust off your feet and move on.
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