Was ‘young-earth’ an active, front-and-center agenda for you at that time - or just sort of a background, default artifact of the communities that had shaped your faith to that point?
I know you’ve addressed this before … but just to jog my memory.
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Speaking as someone who has no advanced degrees beyond my bachelor - I wonder if it wouldn’t be easier to get graduate degrees in modern times while still holding fast to fringe ideas because in the last couple generations, degrees have become so specialized as we move farther away from the golden-age of the ‘polymaths’ from a few centuries back? When one got educated back then, they were obliged to have their fingers in lots of pies. Today, unless you are deliberately pursuing something of a liberal arts degree, you have your fingers in almost no pies except your area of specialty. Is that accurate? [Not to mention that today, one can probably more easily find ‘degree-mills’ that cater to the ideologically-driven fringes, so that they can ‘flood the zone’ with credentials to both boost their own tribal legitimacy and/or dilute the respect that such credentialing once may have entailed - and so help erode societal trust in any institutional expertise.]
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It was a very big part of my life on one hand. In my spare time in lab, I was constantly reading or watching YEC material and this spilled out into things like evangelism.
However, my research had nothing to do with anything YEC related. Remarkably, I knew the rigor and hard work that goes into scientific research for my field, but essentially imagined astrophysicists just sitting around a dark room planning their nefarious old earth lies and publishing their lies in journals.
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Ah, the old adage of “learning more and more about less and less until you know everything about nothing.”
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Perhaps a slight overreaction, but not unwarranted. Scientists don’t want their journals to turn into a contest of who can mention their religious beliefs the most. They want science to be science instead of a battlefield for hashing out religious beliefs. As I said earlier, the vast majority of scientists don’t care what religious beliefs their colleagues might have as long as it doesn’t affect the science.
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I have seen in the personal acknowledgments section of thesis submissions where advisors, mom and dad, and God is thanked. In that context, doesn’t seem to bother any reviewers.
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The question is not whether or not a particular proponent has a PhD or not, although frankly most of them don’t (at least in the field they are opining on).
Nor is the question of whether or not you believe in what the YEC proponents believe in; that is why we have denominations that define the how and are in agreement with what you are teaching.
The question is why do “Creationists” demand everyone else believe in what they say, or you’re not Christian?
When I was undergoing the several-year process of becoming a Protestant Congregational Deacon; I had to take classes in Old & New Testament, as well as a lot of electives over a three-year period. One of the givens when I was being taught how to discern the meaning of scripture; is that you preach by scholarship and consensus, and by “proof” using outside sources. If you come up with an interpretation that no one else has, it is probably incorrect. Your congregants should be able to study in private what you preach in public.
The text says what it says, and interpretation is pinned to the simplicity of the Bible. You have to be very careful, of what you take out of it, and doubly careful not to add to it.
Lastly, you understand that the Bible was not written by one individual, and there are several hundred texts, canonical or not, that provided the information that we now have. The Bible therefore has been; edited, changed, and adapted as more information has become available.
You cannot say that a particular Book or Text (in this case The Book of Genesis); had only one “original” form and that it is the same exact content that has always been. We might be able to count the number of years and come up with a Young Earth, but we have no clear and concise way to assert The Book of Genesis’ accuracy.
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I met a guy whose thesis thanked the United States Marine Corps, specifically for imbuing the discipline necessary to complete a thesis.
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The head counselor in grad school, a guy with three PhDs, said of “King James Only!” Christians that the motivation was deep insecurity, that the fact that others believed in Christ but disagreed with the KJV Only central premise was in their minds threatening.
Heh – I took a seminar on Colossians at a Christian study center by a university and offered a novel take on “firstborn” based on the Greek. The director said ri-ight, like anyone else says that.
So the next week I was back with copies of analysis of the Greek word by scholars of philosophy of the first centuries BC and AD, commentaries by several Reformation-era divines/scholars, and a more recent article from a serious Christian magazine.
And no reason to judge its accuracy from the standpoint of any but the ancient worldview.
That’s where YEC screws up: they are starting with premises from a MSWV and assuming that it must all fit those premises.
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Me too! YEC in my past, through Ph D in physics and some years after that. Now I am quite sure that God exists outside of the space-time continuum in which we live, and thus, from His perspective, 13+ billion years, or 6000 years, or just one day are all the same!
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Neither titles nor consensus tell if a view is wrong or correct.
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I disagree. When you have close to 99.99% of experts who all land on the same consensus for decades fueled by dozens and dozens of millions of scientific papers and made stronger each year it carries far more weight then a few thousand mostly non experts who can’t get peer reviewed published papers into well respected journals because they fail to demonstrate the scientific method.
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I agree, if the consensus comes from experts who know more than we do, and can prove it (we don’t have to be the ones who prove them; just to note the standard). We can poll those without training and take the consensus, and have the blind leading the blind, in contrast.
Thanks.
A good point of the OP is that a medical school does not an expert in all subjects make. Thanks.
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I’d say it’s fairly accurate. There do exist scientists with broad interests and movement beteween fields is not uncommon, but there’s certainly more specialization needed today than there was, say, a century ago. Another factor is the high work overhead most scientists have to deal with in order to run a lab and keep it funded. Even having time to think about their own work can be a challenge. (I escape some of this last challenge by being that rare creature these days, a staff scientist.)
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At least here, people have the widest knowledge just after the high school, before they enter the universities.
During the first years in university, they learn much about their field of science and some related disciplines but forget something of what they learned in the high school. They have better knowledge about matters related to their field of study but not from anything else. Yet, they may think they know much.
Master’s studies are built with the expectation that the bachelor’s studies have given a sufficient knowledge about the basic matters. Therefore, master’s studies focus on going deeper within a relatively narrow field of science.
At this stage, there may start to form a doubt about how much you really know.
Doctoral education focus more on the necessary skills needed in research within a relatively narrow field of science. There are (or should be) also studies giving some general skills needed in labour markets but it is mainly digging deep around a specific question.
This phase often opens the eyes to mistrusting your former opinions and demanding better evidence-based information.
After a PhD (or comparable degree) the professional life may be demanding (if you get work or funding), with too little time for learning much beyond your work topics. Yet, the work experience accumulates more information and understanding of matters related to your work.
Somewhere along this phase, you start to doubt the knowledge and claims of others, in addition to doubting your former opinions. That increases the demand for evidence-based knowledge even more - opinions matters less, facts and good justification more.
At a senior scientist (professor or research leader) stage, the life may be quite hectic but the work experience has given a wider understanding of matters related to your profession. That means the width of knowledge has started to expand again.
At this phase, the person should have learned that, in addition of not knowing herself/himself, even other professionals often do not know the correct answers. For many, this gives a humble attitude towards claims and interpretations that have insufficient evidence. For some, the result is the opposite: the person may start to think that he can comment any subject like an expert, even if the topic would be beyond his expertise.
At the phase of retiring, many have formed a quite sceptic attitude towards all the claims and interpretations that are given as simple answers to complicated questions, even when the person giving the answer would be a highly respected professional.
I guess I am currently at this stage, which means that I value evidence (facts) and good justification more than opinions, titles or consensus.
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Where I attended university it was correlated with how far along in your degree program you were: freshman year was devoted to a widely-rounded education with some focus on your major, and each year got progressively focused on your major. As the Assistant Dean of Students there once put it, as a freshman your electives can be anything, but as a senior even your electives are within your major.
[I messed with that equation by dragging out courses plus switching majors.]
Especially as sophomores.
Where I was that happened starting in junior year; by the 300-level courses were focused on just one branch of science unless you were a double major (lots of computer sci double majors especially in physics and chemistry).
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That is not an argument.
Defining what a consensus is does not change the fact that appeal to authority or popularity is a formal logical fallacy. Neither titles nor consensus determines truth though I would suggest both are appropriate places to begin a serious investigation.
If you, as a non-expert, who cannot study all these issues yourself, and who has probably read a millionth of a percentage of the “dozens and dozens of millions of scientific papers” you allude to, want to defer to that consensus, that is fine. We all do this all the time in many different areas. You could further attempt to make the case that such a widespread consensus in natural science in the year 2025 is stronger than a consensus in softer sciences or the humanities— and even in science itself, more now than at any other point in history. You can certainly make that argument. But that is an argument that I should put my faith in the findings of modern science, not actual evidence a specific proposition by the scientists is correct. Apples and oranges.
It seems mighty circular to assume it can be proven because it is a consensus position. This is just adding another logical fallacy to the one in the comment you quoted. But I certainly feel little reason to distrust the findings of science in most areas, including most of evolutionary biology.
Vinnie
Without dispute, but are there any better ideas? Really, I have not personally verified the world in not flat, even though I have flown around it. Should I appeal to unqualifed opinions or fringe? Do I live paralyzed in a knowledge fog? How is my subjective layperson evaluation of evidence better than expert subjectivity?
It has been observed that scientific paradigm shifts often require a generation to really take hold and be built on. The replacement idea may later replaced as well, but that understanding will be successive. There is never really going back to discarded ideas intact - for instance, the wave description of light lost out and then returned, but in terms of quantum probability. Infinite divisibility of matter is gone forever.
So the real fallacy is that we can have absolute truth about nature. But it is worse to take from that we can know nothing of nature.
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No matter how you want to cut it. Idiots are the ones that typically stand in defiance to the collective consensus of scientific experts. Anyways, I’m just going to go back to ignoring you for another year. After the next year, when I assume I’ll ignore you again it will be for a lifetime. It’s always stupid arguments with you.
Lack of a better idea does not mean the previous idea is correct. This is not how truth is determined. It just means we lack a better idea. This is fuzzy thinking. If we want YECs to think critically, we should take our own medicine.
So you only believe the earth is not flat because most other people believe the same? Does that mean if most people thought the world was flat you would side with them?
I wouldn’t it. But I would make sure if I am offering an argument from consensus, I did so with full transparency and humility. I have no problem saying, “I am going to side with most of the scientific community on this issue.” Truth is not determined by consensus though. Data and valid arguments determine truth. We can choose to believe the consensus position represents truth and try to sway the others the same if we so desire.
On the flip-side, progress would never occur and paradigms would never topple, as they have countless times in the past if anything “fringe” was axiomatically rejected. How crazy Alfred Wegener must have seemed to the scientific community at large. Now this fringe idea evolved into the bedrock underlying modern geology.
We might claim we have more collective knowledge today than we did in the past and I would agree with that, but every paradigm that’s been toppled in the past has stood on the same ground. A little intellectual humility can go a long way.
Not spoken like a good scientist.
Until there is, I suppose. I wouldn’t infer too much based on that pattern. As far as light…
its a wave. Light is a particle. Light is not a wave. Light is not a particle. Light is a wave and light is a particle. This tells me our description or understanding of light is flawed at some level but we can model its behavior and make predictions extremely well despite that being so.
Plenty of extremely intelligent people are young earth creationists. Just as plenty of those who believe in evolution might fall victim to fuzzy thinking or logical fallacies (I believe this may be “idiocy” if I were to borrow your terminology). As for ignoring me, on a quid pro quo basis, this works for me, as I am mainly interested in acquiring more mainline Christian perspectives on this discussion board. I am not currently interested in your “fringe” Christianity. Maybe there is some irony in that.
Vinnie