Why I Never Had a Faith Crisis Over Science

[Kendel]

Wood seems to be a complicated guy.
As far as the idolatry goes, I think he’s speaking Penner’s language. I wouldn’t be surprised if he had read Penner.
I whole-heartedly agree with what I bolded here. This is exactly what we were talking about over in the thread for The End of Apologetics. The apologetic arguments themselves have replaced our witness to what Christ has done. The arguments become idols, when belief in the arguments replaces belief in Jesus. In the discussion we were having about TEA, it didn’t matter what the arguments were, but that the arguments were what one assented to, put one’s faith in.

All emphases and bracketed additions are mine.

@T_aquaticus

[Quoting Todd Wood]

I greatly fear that our faith in Christ has been replaced with an idolatry of apologetics. I fear we’ve stopped believing in Christ and started believing in arguments about Christ (or the Bible or creation or what have you). I fear we’ve bowed to the world’s demand that we believe only that which is rational. We’re certainly no longer content with merely saying “I don’t know.” We have to have answers, and endless (and often pointless) argument has become our substitute for simply telling unbelievers what Christ has done for us.

I have actually expressed in different words, the very same sentiment he expresses here:

@T_aquaticus

What if we teach the next generation that there is no evidence for evolution? And what if we’re wrong? What do you think will happen when those kids find out? I think what will happen is the same thing that always happens. They’ll be disillusioned and fall away from the faith.

Whenever people have learned to believe that YEC and AIG, or ID, or whatever are the support for their faith, later to find out it’s not true, they may conclude that the faith they built on those “apologetics” was as faulty as the foundation.

Where I live, I can see that there are a number of options for dealing with this.

1. Remain where your beliefs will not be challenged, where you are surrounded by other people who support your YECism, dig deeper into anti-intellectualism, ban more books, insist that YEC be taught in the schools, separate from “the world” more, etc. Your YEC-founded faith might survive.

2. Come in contact with challenging information and people. This can now go a number of ways, certainly more than these five

examples:
a) Lose YEC. Maybe because you meet healthy Christians (maybe different race, different country, different Christian upbringing) who don’t hold to YEC, who can demonstrate a robust faith in Jesus Christ, independent of any C-ism, or you figure it out on your own.
b) Loosen your grip on YEC and look for other reasons for faith in Jesus. Be willing to learn to live with tensions.
c) Lose YEC and the faith it supported. There are surely lots of variations on this, which may include: feelings of betrayal, feeling foolish, feeling guilty for having been gullible, any assortment of feelings that could go with loss of faith.
d) Fight all the harder to maintain YEC in the face of the evidence against it. Because you are trying to hang on to your faith.
e) Do what Todd Wood has done:

@Randy

However, Dr Wood seems to be completely ignoring overwhelming evidence, just not subverting it (in contrast to AiG), to keep his worldview of YEC.

When he says things like this [from the blog post link about idolotry]

That’s why I want my students to know the truth about evolution. It’s not bogus. It’s not a failure. There’s lots of evidence in its favor. But that just doesn’t make it true. Have faith in the risen Christ, and it will not matter what scientists tell you (or anyone else, for that matter).

Randy, I think you understood perfectly what he was doing. Just that what he is doing doesn’t really make sense.

For some reason [which is to maintain a literalist Bible reading], he feels he must pit faith in Christ against evolution. He’s not able to reconsider his hermeneutics.

(This is personal for me; Scott and I have had to discuss the girls’ AIG Sunday school lessons with them, because there was relentless indoctrination that if you weren’t YEC, you weren’t a real Christian.
The church also holds a discussion group by invitation of a student sponsor at the local public high school, which uses the same AIG apologetic methods. The non-christian kids think it’s nuts, but the pizza is free, and it’s entertaining. The YEC kids are well-prepared and know all the talking points and lists. The other Christian kids are just frustrated and confused. But the pizza is free. They’re hoping for SOMETHING to hold on to. They were looking for more than pizza.)