I would like to encourage you to continue your commitment to gracious and civil dialogue about the Christian Faith and Science. It stands in contrast to some organizations (you will know the ones I’m talking about) that level unkind, and sometimes laughable, accusations against BioLogos. I believe that people see this and take notice and see your witness to who Jesus Christ is.
If anyone is interested, here is my experience: I didn’t grow up in the church and, while it would have been a good thing to have more of the teachings of Christ at that age, I didn’t have the baggage of the American/Canadian church with respect to YEC. When I came to Christ as a young adult, I joined an evangelical church in Canada. I enjoy fellowship with many Christ- followers to this day. My denomination doesn’t have anything about the age of the earth in its doctrinal statement - just the basic doctrines about God and creation. It seemed like many people I came across were YEC, but it became clear that they hadn’t thought about it deeply.
My education was in Mathematics/Computer Science, and I had little background in Biology. When I came to Christ, my head was in a different space, so I too didn’t think very much about YEC, and I just tacitly accepted it to be a “part of the group”.
One day, a representative of a YEC organization (I’m not absolutely sure which one) came and spoke at my church in a Sunday service. I may not have thought much about YEC, but I recognized pseudo-science when I saw it. As far as I can tell, my rejection of YEC began that day.
When I retired from my career, I started reading about Natural History with the wonderful essays of the late Stephen Jay Gould. (While Gould may have called himself an agnostic, he was not anti-Christian, like some others that are easy to spot). I found that I could fairly easily separate evolution, as a well-proven scientific principle of Biology, and “evolutionism” as a worldview. Then, I came across the book “Language of God” by Francis Collins, and I was greatly relieved that I didn’t have to feel conflicted between my scientific background and my nature in Christ. Of course, this led me to this excellent resource.
I think there may be many people in the church that haven’t thought much about YEC, but just accept it to feel a sense of belonging. If the subject comes up, I try to be mindful of where their mind is at. If they aren’t open to accepting an old earth, I just leave the topic, respectfully. I am grateful that my Pastors do not consider YEC to be an essential doctrine of the Christian faith. On the other hand, if people are open to talking about the topic, I am willing to share my sense of awe and wonder at God and His creation, and its majesty over incomprehensible periods of time, as we have learned from many honest Scientists and Natural Historians.
If this helps anyone in their interactions with people with different views on the Natural World, it would make me happy.
). And a lot of it is mental too – we would still sometimes go to museums or watch secular documentaries, but had just become so conditioned to ignore or mentally replace words like “millions” or “billions,” which is probably why some still get physical responses to that even after changing their mind.