My church seems to be endorsing YEC. How should I approach church leaders?

Faith & Science Conversation
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Not surprising that they do this. They believe the bible is God’s word of truth and want to adhere to that no matter what. It does say plainly in Genesis 1, Exodus 20:8-11 and Exodus 31:17 that God created everything in 6 normal human understandable days. So that’s what they believe is true - God said it!
Now, notice how you want to completely reject their interpretation of scripture!!! Doesn’t that strike you as ironic, given your lament against AIG and others? You want to enforce your interpretation of scripture on them - why is that? Who says your interpretation is correct? Who is the arbiter?

Man, I just have to ask this - are you a born-again follower of Christ?

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I guess before answering the question I’ll wait for you to explain to me why you think it’s a necessary question. Any particular reason on why I would not be based off of what you just pasted?

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It should also be noted that the other persons statement went over your head. The response was that AIG calls anyone who does not believe as them a heretic. As in they want you to be dumb and believe dumb stuff and if you’re like , “ no I have at least an 8th grade understanding of science “ they get mad and want you to have like a failing 3rd graders sense of science.

So as a evolutionary creationist I don’t think young earth theists are heretics I just think they are very uneducated when it comes to science.

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Can you point me to a video or writ in which AIG actually calls different believers heretics?
As for what they want you to believe - I think they simply want you to stop swallowing the billions of years hook, line and stinker and see an alternative approach. You might see it as “dumb stuff”, I see well-qualified scientists putting their research results in lay-man’s terms - and if you want the meat - go read the scientific paper yourself - after all - they did get their qualifications at a normal so-called secular university - at least most of them that I know of.

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There is an alternative you know. If you find out your pastor is a staunch YEC then It’s that you simply live with it. You have your view, they might differ from you on that issue. Tolerance is the key word here - just as they would be tolerating your viewpoint - even though they might wish you to see it their way!!!
On the other hand if it really, truly bothers you that much then it would be best to simply go look for another church where they love evolution - problem solved. You’ll be much happier there rather then starting an acrimonious world-view war and causing a lot of harm.
You can always go and visit your old friends and families now and again in the old church.

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If someone scientifically attentive to God’s creation is asked to believe the equivalent (in their ears) of: “the sky is not blue”, then reality becomes the arbiter for them. When the best responses they get are essentially: “that’s only one interpretation”, “Did you know that a lot of Marxists also thought the sky is blue?” or “well, stop looking up” … they usually end up coming to their own conclusions about all that.

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Uh, this?

If they want us to stop “swallowing billions of years hook, line and sinker and see an alternate approach,” then their alternative approach must consist of honest reporting and honest interpretation of accurate information, because that is what the Bible demands. Science has rules and honesty has rules, and if AIG want to challenge the scientific consensus that the earth is 4.5 billion years old then they must do so within the constraints of those rules.

Thus far, the “alternative approach” that they present does not even acknowledge the rules, let alone stick to them. What are the rules, you may ask? Start here:

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I’m not hunting down all the stuff. You can look at some of the other threads where it’s already been brought up.

Here the thing though. […content removed by moderator…] It’s pseudoscience. It’s anti intellectualism. It’s like 0.1% or less of the roughly 8,000,000 scientists world wide supported type of nonsense. It’s nonsense that can’t develop a single systematic process to explain everything we see from dozens of scientific fields. However on the other side we see 99.9% of scientific experts around the world from dozens of fields all independently finding support for one another.

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Do you understand the difference between making an argument and enforcing an interpretation, and the difference between maintaining a position and denouncing people as heretics?

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I see it as a YEC alternative reality and more pernicious than “dumb stuff”. The misrepresentation, quote mining, and selectivity, add up to false witness.

So somebody tells you that the reason hundreds of thousands of modern mammals and human remains are never found with any of the hundreds of thousands of dinosaurs and trilobites fossils is because they ran at different speeds, or bloated and sank differently, and you think, “yeah, that sounds convincing. I’m good with that”, because they have a degree?

The reason that YEC research is found wanting is not for lack of familiarity or bias. The topics raised have been discussed and discussed in depth. Top to bottom, from the RATE project to baraminology, the whole enterprise has not succeeded in advancing so much as a single, solitary, credible demonstration that the earth is young, or invalidated the convention view of earth history.

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@KevinRuiters Are you familiar with the RATE project? It was supposed to be the crown jewels of YEC science – a $1.25 million, eight year project that would finally, definitively, unequivocally falsify radiometric dating once and for all. It ended up doing the exact opposite.

Its two most significant findings were that (a) there really had been billions of years’ worth of radioactive decay since Creation, and (b) squeezing all that decay into a timescale consistent with a young earth would have released enough heat to raise the temperature of the earth’s surface to 22,000°C and enough radiation to kill Noah, his family, and everything else on board the Ark.

To any reasonable person, if that kind of admission didn’t falsify a young earth then I don’t know what would. But what did the RATE team do? They insisted that that had actually happened.

And what kind of evidence did they give for this extraordinary claim, that would have won a Nobel Prize if it actually had even a shred of merit? Tiny samples with huge error bars. A handful of fudged studies that misidentified rock samples, “corrected” readings without providing any evidence that they were in error in the first place, made arithmetic errors, and then denounced basic quality control procedures that are standard practice in every area of science, such as correctly accounting for contamination, as “rescuing devices” and “hackneyed defences.”

If you wonder why LSDYEC “creation science” is treated as a joke by the scientific community and an embarrassment by scientifically literate Christians, that is why. When I told one of my YEC friends on Facebook about it, even he thought it was some kind of atheist parody by people trying to “discredit creationism.” But it wasn’t anything of the sort. It was the YEC scientists’ own admission. I’m sorry, but stuff such as that is just patent nonsense. In fact, to call it patent nonsense is an insult to patent nonsense.

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Actually, yeah it is. That’s most of what this whole thread is about.

Please point to where I said, or indicated in any way, that I wanted to “enforce [my] interpretation of scripture on them.” Calling someone else out on inappropriate behavior is not the same thing as exhibiting that behavior yourself.

Who is the arbiter? No human, that’s for sure. Not them, not you, not me.

What a horrible way to approach another human being that disagrees with you. They have a different political leaning (those were all political issues you highlighted, not theological), and you question their faith?

@jammycakes already linked to this clear example, but it’s worth repeating.

No, the YEC “science” has been refuted over and over and over. But again, that’s not even my point here. I merely want my own church to hear out a reasonable position (without “enforcing” anything) and disassociate itself from organizations that don’t share its values.

If it only went that far, it would be fine. People can believe what they want.

Yep, tolerance is key. Intolerance (i.e. what AiG represents) is exactly the problem.

“Love evolution”? What does that even mean? I’m not trying to start a “war” I’m trying to educate people and discuss a topic that is important to me, with people that are important to me. Leaving my church would be a last resort.

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In answer ro the original O.P question…

What is your church statement of faith?
Read it!
If you dont agree, you have 2 options…

  1. Realise your secular science Old Earth views are errant or
  2. Leave church and find one you do agree with!

The worst thing you can do is think that secular evolution is going to be a positive journey for the rest of your church…the reality is, your original faith stumbled not because of science but because of poor theological understanding.
If your theology was sound, you would not have an issue with the error of secular scientific views.

I say secular because in your original question, you seem to be putting forward the exact argument atheists use to stamp out christianity (scripture lessons) in public schools.

My advice is leave and go somewhere else…you have no idea the harm you do by staying with heresy in the midst of a yec group.

Could i also add…until you realise Christianity is not a science, it is a philosophical world view…until you really grasp this concept you will.never understand how irreconcilable theistic evolution is with genuine scholarly biblical theology.

The issues TE faces are insurmountable and no matter how long into the future time progresses, human knowledge of biblical theology will never fix them.

The reasons for this are elementary and have not changed in 6,000 years.
The fact remains if we work backwards we have the following consistent amd irrefutable theme:

Second Coming - Jesus comes “physically” in the clouds of heaven to redeem fallen mankind back to himself. There will be no more death, no more suffering, no more tears

Crucificxion - Jesus “physically” died on the cross to pay the ransom for sin. “For the wages of sin are death”

Incarnation - God lowers himself “physically” to take on humanity to “physically” live among us

Creation - a physical event where the crown jewel was moulded out of the dust of the ground and God came near and physically breathed the breath of life into Adam’s nostrils.

Rebellion - The morning star (often referred to as Lucifer because that is what the name Lucifer actually means), rebels in heaven and is cast out of heaven to this earth.

It is an absurdly unintelligent theological interpretation to attempt to explain away all of the abovecalling it merely spiritual non literal events and remain consistent with all other bible doctrine. Ones entire theology falls apart…even i can bring in so many issues it essentially forces even you to become an atheist…as has happened to so many before you on this issue.

Even if one merely uses the errancy of bible writers argument finds reigious disaster…Bart Erhman being but one of many who has lost his way due to the obvious need to use bible errancy as a way around issues raised in his own journey (Barts were not evolutionary issues btw, but biblical errancy is the common denominator)

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And as you can see, @GhostlyFigure02, you have test cases right here who will echo the very things you hear from your church.

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Do you acknowledge secular gravity?

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Has anyone here claimed that Christianity is a science? I haven’t seen it. But church-sponsored geology trips, on the other hand, are much more likely to give that impression.

Most people here are quite comfortable with the idea that sometimes biblical authors talk about physical things, sometimes spiritual things, and sometimes both. It doesn’t have to be exactly the same through every single verse of the Bible. The fact that not grasping this would cause someone’s entire theology to fall apart is unfortunate and unnecessary.

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There is a word for groups that denounce facts as heresy. The word in question is “cult.”

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First of all, I have read the church’s SoF, and it is silent on the issue…as I mentioned in the original post. (Read it!)

Secondly, “secular science Old Earth views”? Either all science is “secular” in the sense that it doesn’t concern itself with the supernatural (being unfalsifiable), or there is no such thing as “secular science” – there’s just science.

Thirdly, if every church member left their church when a theological argument arose, there would be no churches. Each person would end up in a church with a single member: themselves.

How is wanting more discussion an argument for less discussion? That makes no sense. Anyway most atheists probably just want science to remain scientific, not to “stamp out [C]hristianity.”

Are you saying YECs are heretical, or me? Either way, I disagree.

I would argue that the rejection of the scientific method by YECs has influenced more people toward atheism than a theology that acknowledges the incontrovertible evidence for an old earth.

As for one’s theology falling apart, I believe the stance that a literal interpretation of Genesis as an accurate, historical account is the only valid interpretation is on much shakier ground than one that accepts an interpretation more in line with the cultural context of the original writings. Yours is the theology that rests on more recent (yes, YEC is the more recent interpretation) and less theologically sound ideas, not mine.

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Which is a budget most research teams working on anything to do with invertebrates that don’t have a medical connection wouldn’t even hope to receive, contrary to what some people seem to think.

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The worst thing about YECism is that it turns Jesus into God’s Plan B.

Since God’s plan was two creations from the start, the first was ‘very good’ and not ‘perfect’ – if it had been perfect, sin could not have entered it. It was subjected to futility from its beginning. The psalmist would not be praising God for providing prey for the lions in Psalm 104 if death in itself was evil, before or after the fall.