Hi, My name is Priscilla, I am a high school student studying in a Christian school. In my bible class, we learned about YEC, OEC, and EC. Which of the three views (Young Earth Creationism, Old Earth Creationism, and Evolutionary Creation) is most familiar or comfortable for you? Why? I still don’t really know which one is comfortable for me. I’d like some help figuring out which one is comfortable for me. How do I better understand YEC, OEC, and EC? Thanks! 
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Welcome! I was YEC for about 17 years or so until I started homeschooling my kids. I ran into science and history questions that didn’t make sense from the YEC viewpoint. I went looking at YEC websites and got some books from the church library on the subject, but my concerns were not satisfactorily answered. Then I looked at the mainstream scientific views, and everything fit together and made sense.
Now it took me a while to see how exactly that fit in with Genesis 1-11. I started reading other interpretations, and eventually I was able to step back out of the YEC version of the text and see something entirely different. I got the same overarching message, of course, but in the details I started to get more out of the text once I put away the YEC version. I do think Adam and Eve are historical, though I think there’s a lot of figurative language being used there. I see a clear literary framework being used in Genesis 1. So overall, I see no conflict between mainstream science, including evolutionary biology, and the Bible. And once I allowed myself to learn mainstream science, it actually gave me even more awe and wonder for God’s creation. I didn’t have to say, “That’s not real” about things. I could now say, “God is amazing”.
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Hello Priscilla. For me I am and Evolutionary Creationist because for 1. there is huge evidence for evolution within the fossil record and the sources for it can be trusted and 2. I don’t have a problem with God working in evolution guiding ALL things back unto Himself (1st Corinthians 15:20-28). For the creation account given in Genesis 1. It goes into a manner of creation story that was common from the Ancient Near East and it merely states that Yahweh alone is the Creator God and He didn’t need the help of other gods or beings to help Him in creation. To better understand these things I suggest the “Lost World” series by John Walton (Links to the books that I feel will help you will be below.) In the end the idea isn’t over which “idea” is the right one, the idea is that we fall in love with our Heavenly Father who desires both friendship and relationship with us ALL. I hope and pray that wherever you are lead in this journey, that the Love of God our Heavenly Father and of Christ Jesus our Lord doesn’t leave your heart but that your Love for Him will only grow bigger and stronger. Peace and love in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.
https://www.amazon.com/Lost-World-Genesis-One-Cosmology/dp/0830837043
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Thank you I really appreciate it. 
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When thinking about the extent to which you should view the early chapters of Genesis as literal history or figurative, you might benefit from looking at 2 Samuel 22 (which is repeated in Psalm 18).
2 Samuel 22 tells the story of God rescuing David from Saul. In that chapter, God flies down on a cherub with smoke pouring from his nostrils while he hurled lightning bolts.
But we know from the other parts of the Bible that that is not how it happened.
For creation, we don’t have the actual history recorded like to do for David’s rescue.
In fact, we have two different creation stories with different orders and methods of creation. The first one is Genesis 1.1-2.4a. The second begins in Genesis 2.4b.
I think the evidence that God Has given us in creation supports evolution.
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I had been OEC, but more recent years I am considering YEC. If the Universe is a hologram, as some physicists are saying then there is no reason why it couldn’t be YEC. Here: Is the Universe a hologram featuring Stanford professor of physics Leonardo Susskind.
He explains it simple enough.
The truth is the truth whether you or I or anyone is comfortable with it or not.
The evidence can lead you to God, if studied with an open mind for long enough.
But how can you feel happy and worry free in Heaven or upon the New Earth, for a literal eternity of time, if you will only accept a God who is proven and no fact about God that goes beyond our ability to comprehend it?
Ultimately the Bible offends everyone!
- Telling the wise that they are foolish.
- Telling the good that they are vile.
- Telling the strong that they are weak.
- In effect telling all of us that we are not what we want to be or view ourselves as!
So you can reject the God who contradicts our wisdom and choose evolution and no God!
Or you can follow science till it leads you to realize that unguided evolution is ridiculous and then pick OEC.
Or you can just trust God, read the Bible and believe what it says and know that the infinite God of the Bible did not need a million years to create the universe, in fact he did not even need seven days, because he did it in six and then rested from his work, stopped the creation process, on the seventh.
That is a bogus argument – why didn’t he do it instantaneously? Why was he in a hurry? He didn’t have the time?
Written by a Christian physicist:
Perhaps one day, Dominic, you will realize that understanding that some of the scriptures are not meant to be taken as literal history is not denying the Word of God or rejecting the Bible.
The Bible does not offend me. I love the scriptures. The mantra that “it’s literal or it’s a lie” is Not helpful.
Many things in the scriptures are not meant to be taken literally.
Might I ask, Dominic, why you accepted the six days of the first creation story as literal history and rejected the second creation story with its 1 day of creation as literal history?
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The trick is to use science to interpret the Bible with no religious preconceptions whatsoever.
Why should God waste the time?
As for instantaneously?
When you wish to dismiss things you can come up with some pretty silly arguments.
God’s claim is six literal days, defined as evening & morning unless you think it took millions of years for the Earth to rotate 360 degrees back then?
During this process God claims he stretched it out like a tent hung over a frame or a cloth picture put upon a frame.
All atheism can do is to deny God and state that what is observed is the absolute limits of how rapidly change can occur.
Then when things like Mt. St. Helen’s occurs, you redefine your fastest change levels accordingly but only to the minimum allowable to allow for the observed, thus proven event.
If God were to create the Universe in front of you, having seen something too big to be measured you would simply claim it to be fake, a trick, a charade.
For you worship your own wisdom and your own understanding.
You seem to worship your own understanding as infallible. Did you not read in the other conversation, or did you read and just not comprehend, about the Hebrew word that is translated ‘day’?
The Bible actually does not deny the antiquity of the universe.
The word traditionally translated ‘day’ in Genesis 1 is a word for an indeterminate period of time, that period determined solely by context. The context in Genesis 1 is unique in all of scripture, the very creation of the universe, space and time itself, and it happened ONCE. A plea to a meaning in another later context is illegitimate.
Earth’s morning has long since passed and its day nearly spent. Its evening will be over when the bright Morning Star returns.
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@Priscilla_Ng the moderators’ opinions are the best you can hope for by a country mile on this site. And those of biologists. Unfortunately none have contributed here yet. I’m a mere biological sciences graduate with professional experience in microbiology.
Hi, Priscilla - I don’t know if you’re still checking back here on responses or not, but hopefully you found something helpful among those who already responded above. As you also hopefully discerned by now, we get some pretty wild viewpoints expressed around here too, which obliges you to read the variety of responses above critically and discerningly. And that is as it should be - since life doesn’t come neatly pre-sorted for us. (I won’t presume to weigh in on which views above I would hold at arm’s length - hopefully you are practicing that discernment for yourself.)
Whichever view you end up “making peace with”, I would only urge that you train yourself to hold such things lightly compared to the importance of seeking good relationship with others, which is (I think) the pursuit of Christ. Cultural wars and rumors of wars come and go, with many wanting you to commit to sides on things like the historicity of Adam and Eve or old earth or young earth, and they want you to believe that your faith is in jeopardy if you choose wrongly. The irony there is, your faith may actually be in jeopardy if you strap it to literalistic hermeneutics that simply do not square with scriptures or creation either one! But even if your faith seeking understanding has you journeying through mistakes and misunderstandings at times … join the club! We will be (and almost certainly still are) wrong about a great many things, and can thank God that his love shown in Christ never has and never will depend on us passing some scientific origins quiz. So if we make lots of buzz over that singular issue here, it is only to try to remove that stumbling stone so that you can get on with the business of following Christ in life. He, and he alone is our hope and our salvation; not our intellects, nor our correct interpretations of scriptures - which can be and are used by God - don’t get me wrong. But Christ alone is our cornerstone and that relationship is our faith. With that intact, all the other stuff will be sorted out in due time. Just do your best with it, all the while trusting Christ.
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