The rise of "based" YECs

Oldest Kid is home for the weekend from college. We were just talking about this last evening. When those kids from our former church who are dutifully learning their fictitious taxonomy, and the canned “apologetic arguments” YECers use to “prove” the Bible, and the AIG Q&A books to ensure their salvation, figure out that the stuff they thought was holding up their faith (rather than the actual Holy Spirit) is a lie, then we can talk. Come on over. Let’s start looking at actual facts. Fight through it, work it out. These are not mutually exclusive, because Ken Ham says they are.

But that’s not usually what’s happening.

7 Likes

I’m confused as to why DeYoung is referring to this as “new” strategy to begin with. It’s not new at all… it’s exactly what many in the conservative Christian homeschool movement of the 80s and 90s were going for. It may have worked out well for some, but not so much for others.

4 Likes

True that is doesn’t work out for all. We have a few friends who filled their quiver, and the incidence of kids with unplanned pregnancies and bad marriages is uncomfortably high.

3 Likes

Yeah… I think in some cases general ignorance becomes a substitute for innocence. Even within families, there are no guarantees. I have several siblings who’ve gone on to Bible school and a couple married pastors, but have another who’s a “none” and simply avoids any religious discussion with family. And other families are similar. Not that families shouldn’t disciple – just that there’s no magic formula.

4 Likes

I don’t think I’ve ever met someone who was an adult and understood evolution and accepted it to suddenly decide it’s all wrong and became YEC. I’ve heard stories of it by YECist who claimed they use to believe in evolution. I can’t disprove it other than they typically can’t explain it very well so I presume they never really knew it.

I saw a few posts recently that stated in college many young adults raised in YEC abandon their faith but a portion of them ended up deconstructing jt and accepting science and faith as evolutionary creationist a few years down the road.

5 Likes

There is also a snapback phenomenon particularly in religions with an authoritarian morality. I saw it happen with my best friend who was LDS. This is where a member of that religion begins to doubt and they throw out all moral standards along with their religion. But since there are often really good reasons for those moral standards, throwing them all out leads to considerable trouble and totally messing up their life. As a result, they decide their religion was right after all and they go back to it.

I suspect this is behind some of these stories of people claiming they were atheist or believed in evolution before deciding they were wrong and becoming Christian. It is not always the case since there are also examples like C. S. Lewis who were atheist and really did convert to Christianity. I am not quite such an example since I don’t claim I was ever an atheist. I was just raised in an extremely liberal family with ample criticisms of the Christian establishment, and becoming Christian I certainly never even considered rejecting anything in science.

7 Likes

Theres already a bad name to Christianity. People like them just give the anti Christian community an excuse to hate them even more I think

1 Like

This is definitely not true of smoking. Smoking never had anything but my complete contempt, and my wife’s opposition was even stronger. And yet my eldest started with that crap, and I told him it was just plain stupid. The truth is that children will try things they are told is bad and young adults face crowds of people in college who will seduce or pressure them into all kinds of things. Parents don’t have the control which the above implies.

1 Like

Smokers tend to start in childhood. They think it makes them look cool and they want to impress their friends.

Pretty much. I remember people trying to peer pressure me to smoke. “What are you scared to try?” They never seemed to appreciate me pointing out that refusing to follow the crowd was a strange definition of fear…

8 Likes

Yeah, the irony is that among the immature, they can think that the greatest heights of stupidity is somehow impressive. It is like the dare. Put the word “dare” in front of the stupidest thing imaginable and somehow that make it a matter of impressive courage.

I certainly tried it in childhood… age of 7. But vanity was never one of my failings and I became increasingly averse to even second hand smoke. I never tried pot, by I found that second hand smoke (my exposure to which was plentiful at an early age) to be much less uncomfortable than tobacco smoke.

2 Likes

People revert to childish memes with adult aggression due to the internet.

2 Likes

Here is a C&H this reminded me of…

10 Likes

Eighteen! By then I’ll know better!

This logic is so real.

5 Likes

I want my home to be a safe place for this :slight_smile:

4 Likes

That sounds like brainwashing. Having a lot of kids and then indoctrinating them into it, just doesn’t sound right.

1 Like

Dr. Francis Collins converted to Christianity in his college years while studying for a science degree.

1 Like

As well as simply out-populating their perceived opponents in the Culture Wars. It’s simply a matter of statistics, which could eventually translate into votes.

The only one of those that I have followed through on was from a younger cousin. He dared me to pour some of each type of cereal (about 6 options to choose from) into my bowl and eat it. I did. I poured about a tablespoon each.

1 Like

I do prefer secondhand smoke to lots of mosquito bites, and have been along on a field trip where it was used to decrease such.