The struggle of leaving Young Earth Creationism and a plea to Biologos

With all due respect, I will disagree with you. I’ll let me previous response speak for itself. Take care

My biggest problem with YECism:

I’ll read thru that blog…thanks

? I didn’t cite any blogs.

In your post is had a link to “Did bones actually become fossilized in the sediments of “ancient” epeiric (inland) seas on continents?” which is what I referred to as the blog and also included the quote from Augustine.

Ah. That is just another forum topic, not actually a ‘blog’. And that one gets rather long and might not be worth your time to slog all the way through it. (I would rather you look at the objective evidence one, at least the early part of it since it’s not short either ; - )

Thanks…I’ll read thru that one in the coming days.

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Further to your *s Tom, they are perfectly orthodox based on the Reformed, Western, literal, ‘plain reading’, historical-grammatical hermeneutic. Somehow the Eastern mindset, i.e. Orthodox, regards the very same texts, used in their hymnody, as allegorical and goes to enormous lengths to deconstruct and reconstruct their meaning based on that Westernly heterodox assumption. Their reconstruction is not damnationist.

A perfect false dichotomy. Rome sits near the pivot with purgatory. A minority in the Reformed West are so horrified with PSA that they incorporate the Orthodox allegorical approach.

But orthodox Reformed, literal minded, plain reading PSA must have YEC with original sin.

None of which relates to God as He is, to transcendence as it is. To the actual meaning of the incarnation-resurrection.

Why would anyone since the Enlightenment want or need to believe in God the cosmic child abuser, child sacrificer?

There are several fairly orthodox and Reformed here that do not demand YEC with original sin. And we relate to God as he is and as he relates to us. That could not happen without the actual meaning of the incarnation-resurrection. Take the incarnational George Müller for example. Maybe some others need more skeptical theism.

It was a gotcha thing. “Look here’s Christians who say they believe the Bible and think kooky stuff. What do you say to that?” He doesn’t have to say anything to that because people believe all kinds of nonsense and use the Bible to justify it. Who cares? The only thing he needs to “answer” for are his own beliefs.

You’re fine, Tom.

The BioLogos organization has a statement of beliefs and all the staff and moderators here subscribe to them. The things that are published on the website have gone through an editorial process and either reflect the position of the organization or ideas they would like to be conversant with. However, this is a discussion forum open to the public, posts are not moderated before they are posted, and anyone with internet access is welcome to throw their two cents in. Some of the participants are not Christian, and those who are represent a very wide swath of belief from many different Christian traditions besides American Evangelical. And some people lack social skills at times. Although many people here will agree with you that the Bible is inspired and authoritative, they may have very different ways of interpreting various passages and applying the truth of the Bible in practice.

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But that is just it. The ancient Hebrews did not know the earth rotates and revolves, nor could they be expected to. They had no word for inertia. Their perception was, like yours and mine, that the ground upon which they stood was fixed in the most fixed understanding of fixed, which was honest and true in the spiritual application of their lived experience.

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Yes–as @DOL Dr Lamoureux notes, it was the “science of the day.”
The Bible & Ancient Science: Principles of Interpretation: Lamoureux, Denis O.: 9781951252052: Amazon.com: Books

By the way, welcome, @kocheesh . Your interaction is exemplary and greatly appreciated! God bless. Randy

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Hi,
If you guys are interested, I’m actually doing a Zoom lecture on my book The Bible & Ancient Science: Principles of Interpretation at Ambrose University.
It’s next Wed at 9 PM Eastern Time.

Here is the link to register:
https://ambrose.edu/event/3568

Here is the Handout:
https://sites.ualberta.ca/~dlamoure/holamoureuxbas.pdf

Pre-Reading from the book (3 main principles):
https://sites.ualberta.ca/~dlamoure/bas467.pdf

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For kicks, there’s this historical “reference”: Orlando Ferguson’s ‘Flat Earth’ Map.

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Having a Baptist spiritual upbringing, where dancing was shunned or even forbidden, I have no such skills or graces. I see much smarter, wiser and much much more inclusive minds than mine at work here, and with far greater grace than I possess.
I will be content to watch and learn.
As for a demonstration of epistemological strategies, this seems to have fallen into your lap.
@CuriousBatman can see just what you had mentioned, in the works now.
“Your *s”?

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Looks more concave/convex to me lol
Wait! Do I see :sun_with_face: on a stick coming out of the north pole? :thinking:

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Thank you Christy…I know I am guilty of lacking social skills and not exercising restraint and grace all to often…appreciate yours and others understanding here, Tom

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Thank you Randy for your welcome and encouraging words…God bless! Tom

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I could not agree more with that statement, but there is so much more to ponder. This topic is interesting to me. I admit to having been dismissive towards YEC, never giving much thought to any credibility of their viewpoint. At the risk of offending many serious students of our Scripture, the YEC view has been to me a form of “science-denial” bordering on “flat-earthers” type of thinking. So let me first offer an apology for my very closed and biased former dismissal (especially to @kocheesh). So as I now try to truly think through the issues that result in this barrier, I cannot resist the notion to boil it to 2 options. Either the YEC’er: a) refuses to accept science and/or b) he/she is reluctant to admit to, and embrace figurative language. These take the form of metaphor, euphemism, hyperbole, allegory, parable and simile as we see so often in the Bible.

Figurative narrative, not intended to be literally interpreted, comes in two contexts of extreme: The YEC takes (it seems) Genesis literally except where doing so appears to be impossible, while conversely an EC person (perhaps a BioLogos interpreter) assumes that Genesis should not be taken literally except where not doing so appears to be impossible. Both of these extremes may lead to error, of course.

Examples of most obvious (possible) errors:

  1. The YEC error in the extreme is to refuse to acknowledge the fact that the universe is 14.8 Byo, earth around 4.5 Byo, human-ape common ancestor at ~6 Mya, and H.sapien around 300,000 years ago.

  2. The scientific Christian person (not intended to represent the BioLogos position) in the extreme may refuse to accept anything that does not fit into the current laws of physical possibilities, such as the resurrection of Christ not to mention a virgin birth or turning bread into wine and other miracles we (mostly) accept.

For any of us to raise these questions may mean that the YEC’er questions our theological purity (a quote from the Morton piece). Morton took a long time, nearly 10 years, so I can now see that even the most accomplished scientist may struggle with what now, to me, seems so obvious. As Morton says…“nothing that young-earth creationists had taught me about geology turned out to be true”. I would have thought he would come to that conclusion in about 5 minutes, not 10 years.

The story written here (Confessions of a Failed Young-Earth Creationist) by Daniel Stork Banks in 2014 was a good read, but once again it is hard for me to relate to the conflict between science and theology as “being a struggle”. To me, they fit perfectly together. As he says…“Young-earth creationism simply fails every empirical test that mainstream science demands”.

So now my personal ‘evolution’ pushes me toward a much more understanding and accepting nature of the paths taken by YEC, even while I remain steadfast in my conviction that they are wrong. I see better now where they are coming from, the reasons for their notions and their strong commitment to our faith. And to Tom’s statement quoted above, the compatibility of the two beliefs is complete with only two assumptions: God started it all, natural laws of physics took over, evolution thus was God’s creation and the Bible so often uses figurative language. It’s that simple.

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When did God start it? And what is ‘it’?