That should give some pause to those pontificating about the theological implications of science, including YECs visiting here who are presuming to teach.
1 Like
I have asked my own versions of those questions over the years.
What features would a geologic formation need in order to be inconsistent with a young Earth and/or a recent global flood?
What features would a fossil need in order to be inconsistent with separate creation of humans and other apes?
At times, I have been given an honest answer, that there is no evidence that would change their mind. I actually appreciate that honesty.
There are times when it feels like one of those cultural conflicts where no one remembers who fired the first shot or who wronged the original who. At some point, people decided that they werenât going to admit they were wrong in order to save face which pushed YEC into a larger cultural war where it was more about group identity than actual science.
4 Likes
And maybe some brainwashing, too, self-facilitated.
The first shock I got when I was a highschooler, realizing that mine was not the high ground as a YEC writing protests about the laws of thermodynamics in the margins of my biology tests, was when the teacher wrote to me (it was a correspondence course from the US to kids living overseas) kindly but bluntly that I was being âcynical.â She pointed out that she, too, was a person of faith, and that I needed to be more open to the science. I needed that bluntness. I still donât know how to do that right, though!
It was that kind bluntness that started opening me up to evolution and objective thinking the most, followed by others in my community college and state university geology and cell and molecular biology classes.
1 Like
This is a great thread!
Yes, this â if someone hasnât grown up in the YEC world, it can be very difficult to understand why some people are so driven to defend something that is scientifically indefensible. For me, it wasnât just a scientific idea. I wasnât even that into science â I feel like Iâm rediscovering science and curiosity lately and itâs been wonderful â but everything was tied together in my worldview, which was tied together with my education, which was tied together with my family and identity. Once one of those threads starts unraveling, it affects all of them â I donât blame people for going to great lengths to prevent that from happening, but itâs a shame that it ends up that way.
I often donât either â partly because I donât have the time but also because some participants engage in a way that frustrates me. But â I appreciate those who calmly engage anyway and I know many are doing so with a view thatâs beyond just answering arguments of a specific person in the here and now â theyâre keeping in mind that in a public forum there are an awful lot of people reading who will never comment or even join, and so responses can be just as much for lurkers as they are for the conversation participants. But that can make it even harder to leave false claims unanswered even if theyâre not well thought out.
4 Likes
That is very well put. Over and over again, as I think this over, I think that the thread that started unraveling my worldview was the realization that the teacher was really nice (something I thought we had the high ground on) and was hurt a bit by my judgmentalism. The bravery she had to tell me, also helpedâbut primarily her kindness.
2 Likes
Yes â when judgmentalism becomes normalized it can be hard to remember that at the other end of the judgments are people just like us, and our thoughts and expressions affect others beyond us â college taught me a lot about that too, far beyond just regular classroom learning.
2 Likes
Looking closer at your application of Deuteronomy 25
Fairtrade is one of the essential hallmarks of any human society seeking to protect everybodyâs interests in a civilized way.
There is, a positive promise that commitment to honesty in trade will bring the covenant blessing of long life in the land (v. 15); and, on the other hand, there is the negative warning that dishonesty stands under the covenant curse as something âdetestableâ (an abomination) to Yahweh (v. 16).
In the parallel law in Leviticus 19:35, the law is based on the fundamental identification of Yahweh as the God of the exodus. These theological sanctions remind us of the OTâs scale of values, in which the same strong word (âabomination to Yahwehââinsulting to his character) could be used as much about commercial malpractice as about idolatry, sexual perversions, and pagan cults.
The reason is that it is precisely such cheating and sharp dealing in the world of trade and commerce that lies behind so much of the exploitation and poverty of those whom Deuteronomy cares so passionately about elsewhere. The same zeal to expose dishonesty because of its social destructiveness inflamed Amos (Amos 8:4â6).
Your application is misplaced regarding conversations in bad faith.
Congratulations Paul, you are Number Eleven. And youâve just taken this argument up to ⌠eleven.
Everything else youâve said in this post may be valid and true, but it does not change the fact that fudging measurements is dishonest in every context, whether it involves fair trade or not. I shouldnât even have to quote the Bible to make this point, let alone quibble about the context or the societal or theological implications behind it.
I can see what YECs might be thinking when they play the âout of contextâ card here. They view âout of contextâ as one of their magic shibboleths that give them a free pass to reject anything in the Bible that contradicts LSDYECism, in much the same way as they think that âitâs just an assumptionâ or âitâs just an interpretationâ or âwere you there?â could refute any and every scientific fact that they donât like. In most cases, their magic shibboleths are at best vacuous and at worst flat-out wrong, but in this case it actively backfires on them, because by taking this line, they are effectively flat-out demanding the right to tell lies.
I could possibly, maybe, view such an argument as having been made in good faith if they were just being careless and hadnât thought through the implications of what they were saying. But to continue to try to defend this line after Iâve pointed out its implications (and outlined what a good-faith argument would look like into the bargain) ⌠words fail me.
4 Likes
@Paul_Allen1 â Itâs bearing false witness to the truth, in any⌠and every case. It could also be characterized as bearing false witness against your neighbor, as well, lying about the evidence.
2 Likes
Not to mention, when it comes to honesty, Jesus pretty much blows âcontextâ out of the water as any sort of relevancy when he overrules what was apparently the usual practice of acknowledging different standards. E.g. âOh - Iâd better tell the truth now since this is within the context of an oath ⌠but later on when Iâm not under oath, well, thatâs another matter.â We know what Jesus has to say about that.
5 Likes
Many believers in God have been drawn to Young Earth Creationism because they see scientific advances as threatening to God. But does He really need defending here? Is not God the author of the laws of the universe? Is He not the greatest scientist? The greatest physicist? The greatest biologist? Most important, is He honored or dishonored by those who would demand that His people ignore rigorous scientific conclusions about His creation? Can faith in a loving God be built on a foundation of lies about nature?
I just read that in The Language of God, emphasis mine. Chapter Eight, âOption 2: Creationism
(When Faith Trumps Science)â p.177.
1 Like
Hi again, James. Finally circling back on this threadâŚbeen a busy week. Your point is a good one, of course. I will, however, push back on one angle of it, and then see you and raise you on another.
I think one can in fact assert that thereâs evidence that actively contradicts both the virgin birth and resurrection â namely, that neither of these things have ever happened anywhere else, and that both defy all prior (and subsequent) human experience. When it comes to making the measurements that youâre fond of discussing, we just have a couple scenarios where the numerator in those measurements equals zero. Thus, the measurement likewise of course equals zero. We Christians are asserting that the numerator for each is actually one instead of zero.
Where Iâll see you and raise you on your point â and where my idea of making YEC-ism a claim of faith akin to the statements in the creeds admittedly breaks down somewhat â is this. The argument for a young earth as a miracle which defies all scientific support would be much cleaner theologically if the earth (and universe) appeared ageless. I imagine this is the kind of discussion that we might have found ourselves having were this 200 years or so ago. That is, the bible claims that the earth has a birthdate, yet to a naturalistic observer at that time it appeared to have been around forever. Since then of course, science has determined that the earth and universe are both (a) very old, and (b) old to a specific age. Thus, by making the measurements and doing the math, we now know that the earth and universe are not apparently ageless, but rather have apparent specific ages, and all supported by the mounds of evidence that you reference.
My overall point though, was to answer your original question about assuming good faith on the part of YEC supporters. And it seems to me that one is acting likely acting in reasonably good faith by staking out the position that one is holding fast to a high view of scripture and a standard of biblical exegesisâŚagain, not knowing how those folks in their white lab coats have it all wrong, but that some of those same scientists would also tell them that such things as virgin birth and resurrection also fly in the face of all we know scientifically.
2 Likes
Closer to 350. The first suspicions that history had a large chuck of pre-human time were in the late 1600s. By 1775 pretty much all geologists agreed that the earth was at the absolute least a few hundred thousand years old, probably much older, but there was really no way to tell beyond that.
@Paul_Allen1; @jammycakes; @Dale
Personally I think the application is entirely valid, since the case law example (weights and measures) sets up a wisdom principle that has wider application than economics alone.
Much like when Paul uses Duet 25:4 (âDo not muzzle an oxen as it is treading out the grainâ) as justification for a paying elders (cf. 1 Tim 5:17-18). Was Paulâs application also misplaced because he wasnât using it in the context of animal welfare?
Whilst on the subject of wisdom principles. How about Proverbs 14:5, then?
An honest witness does not deceive, but a false witness pours out lies.
To be knowingly inconsistent with oneâs measurements, to quote mine, to be selective in your data, and/or to gerrymander the numbers is deceptive, yes?
7 Likes
There is a big difference here. We donât have Jesus or Mary to examine, so there is no evidence that directly contradicts either the Virgin Birth or the Resurrection. This is not the case in geology, biology, and astronomy. We do have the end results of these processes, and we have evidence of their history. On one hand, we have a proposed miracle that is accepted on faith and not contradicted by evidence. On the other, we have a proposed history that is directly contradicted by mountains of evidence. I would argue that they arenât the same.
The first hurdle would be the history that occurred after the initial creation event. I would assume that this miracle wouldnât produce an Earth with fossils already in the ground, as one example.
2 Likes
Whilst I agree with you, T, I think a Young Earth Creationist would respond and say that the fossils are evidence of a global cataclysmic flood.
I would agree. Therefore, even YECâs wouldnât expect the Earth to appear ageless. They would expect to see a span of history since the initial creation event.
1 Like
Ok, Iâm with you now. A good point.