- Jan 30, 2014
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In another thread, I said I was going to start a new thread with testimonies of people whose abandonment of Christianity was at least in part triggered by investigating young-earth creationism and discovering that much of what they were told wasn't true. But after looking up several of such testimonies, I was struck by something I think is deeply important and gets to the heart of many of the discussions I'm currently involved in here.
The testimonies fall into a general pattern....
--Raised in a conservative, fundamentalist environment, including being taught young-earth creationism
--Told things like "if evolution/millions of years is true, then the whole Bible falls apart"
--Accepts these things and goes out into the world with a firm belief in YEC
--Encounters (often for the first time) contrary points of view, evidence, and beliefs...usually at college or online
--Starts own investigation of YEC and science
--Discovers YEC arguments are oftentimes wrong, and sometimes deliberately deceptive
--Eventually abandons Christianity under the "if evolution/millions or years is true, then the whole Bible falls apart" framework
But there's one common thread among all the testimonies that really stood out to me...the fact that all these ex-creationists had a deep, maybe innate, desire to figure out the truth of the matter. They saw that YEC was saying one thing and science was saying another, knew they both couldn't be true, and set out on their own to figure which one was right.
Not only that, but they were entirely open to the possibility that YEC just might be wrong, and if so, they wanted to know it.
To me, that's the key to this whole thing...a genuine, strong desire to get to the truth of things coupled with an ability to objectively consider what is found. Not everyone has that combination of traits. If a person has the mindset that YEC is what the Bible definitively teaches, and no amount of physical evidence can ever supersede it, then it's very unlikely that such a person will ever go down the path described above. It's just not in their makeup.
And let's be clear...I'm fine with that. If your way of figuring out the truth of this issue is "whatever a literal reading of the Bible says is true, nothing else matters", great. All I ask is that people with that mindset say so up front and from then on be consistent. If the physical evidence doesn't really matter to you, then don't ask people like me to find it, post it, and/or explain it to you. Don't try and argue that the physical evidence supports YEC (especially if you've never actually studied it). Pretending that the physical data is important to you when it really isn't is disingenuous.
The testimonies fall into a general pattern....
--Raised in a conservative, fundamentalist environment, including being taught young-earth creationism
--Told things like "if evolution/millions of years is true, then the whole Bible falls apart"
--Accepts these things and goes out into the world with a firm belief in YEC
--Encounters (often for the first time) contrary points of view, evidence, and beliefs...usually at college or online
--Starts own investigation of YEC and science
--Discovers YEC arguments are oftentimes wrong, and sometimes deliberately deceptive
--Eventually abandons Christianity under the "if evolution/millions or years is true, then the whole Bible falls apart" framework
But there's one common thread among all the testimonies that really stood out to me...the fact that all these ex-creationists had a deep, maybe innate, desire to figure out the truth of the matter. They saw that YEC was saying one thing and science was saying another, knew they both couldn't be true, and set out on their own to figure which one was right.
Not only that, but they were entirely open to the possibility that YEC just might be wrong, and if so, they wanted to know it.
To me, that's the key to this whole thing...a genuine, strong desire to get to the truth of things coupled with an ability to objectively consider what is found. Not everyone has that combination of traits. If a person has the mindset that YEC is what the Bible definitively teaches, and no amount of physical evidence can ever supersede it, then it's very unlikely that such a person will ever go down the path described above. It's just not in their makeup.
And let's be clear...I'm fine with that. If your way of figuring out the truth of this issue is "whatever a literal reading of the Bible says is true, nothing else matters", great. All I ask is that people with that mindset say so up front and from then on be consistent. If the physical evidence doesn't really matter to you, then don't ask people like me to find it, post it, and/or explain it to you. Don't try and argue that the physical evidence supports YEC (especially if you've never actually studied it). Pretending that the physical data is important to you when it really isn't is disingenuous.