Now that my Thanksgiving dinner has at last fully digested I suppose I can get back to making the occasional post here on my blog.
For the last few months I have been investigating the claims made by what are called "Young Earth Creationists." I am not going to try and rehash the details here but thought I would update you on where I am on the subject these days.
Young Earth Creationists are folks who read Genesis 1 & 2 as a sort of science text and attempt to make sense of the world in light of this. They claim that the earth is, at most, 10,000 years old and that it was created in 6 literal days as described in Genesis.
My own church, the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, seems to hold this very view of things, though, as far as I know, it is not something that will get one tossed out on his ear if he doesn't buy it. At least I hope that is so. I'll let you know if I discover otherwise.
The Young Earth Creationists (YEC) endeavor to explain the geologic record, all of those layers of rocks and fossils, as being nothing more than a result of the worldwide flood that Noah and his family survived. They try to explain all of these hundreds (or is it thousands?) of layers of sediment, with fossils that seem to show an evolutionary history of descent with gradual change as simply an artifact of a single massive flood.
I read quite a few documents on the web that purported to be YEC science and it was all very weak as science, in fact in almost every case I laughed out loud at some point in my reading. None of it was remotely convincing and it all sounded sadly desperate to me.
YEC people have concluded, for some reason, that if this interpretation of Genesis falls then all of Christianity falls as well. The reasoning for this is actually a little better than their scientific reasoning but I still don't find it totally convincing.
A well known YEC organization is Answers in Genesis. AiG is devoted to spreading the word to the masses that mainstream science is all wrong. They have daily radio spots on Christian radio stations and huge multi-million dollar "Creation Museum"
Another famous YEC outfit is the Institute for Creation Research. ICR is dedicated to promoting scientific research that is aimed at demonstrating YEC.
I found the positions of the YEC crowd to be absurd in the end, simply not plausible in any way to one who has even the most rudimentary knowledge of science, unless one is willing to make the assumption that Genesis 1 & 2 are actually intended to be science and then is also willing to do the extreme mental and logical gymnastic twisting required to wedge the real world into that view. I can't do it.
Does this mean that I don't believe the bible to be the inerrant word of God? Nope, I do believe that. I have gone back to my previous position that God used the normal laws of the universe that he created in the big bang to bring about his perfect will.
I can't explain how it all works, and I probably never will. But I can say that my faith in God is not dependent upon making the Genesis account into science. I am a sinner and Jesus Christ died in my place to give me eternal life, that doesn't depend on the outcome of this debate I'm having with myself :-) (IMHO)
I am now reading up on what seem to me to be more reasonable attempts to read Genesis in the light of scientific knowledge. All of the following sites start with the assumption that God created the cosmos, and that science is a reasonable way of investigating God's creation. Among the sites I'm looking at now are Answers in Creation, Reasons to Believe and The American Scientific Affiliation. I'm also now participating, well lurking, on the ASA email list that discusses these issues. All three of these Christian science organizations present more plausible views than any of the YEC folks I've found.
A final note. It is my opinion, based on my own experience over the last few months, that YEC is actually dangerous to the faith of educated Christians. The claim is made that if YEC is not true then Christianity as a whole is a lie. When reasonable, educated people see that the YEC position is totally unable to account for real world observations they are confronted with the possibility that their very faith might be in vain. I know that some people I've talked to have gone from YEC to atheism, not realizing there are other more plausible accounts out there. YEC is absurd but very loud. That is unfortunate.
All of that being said I'm sure glad I didn't sell all of my science books, as I nearly did a few months ago :-). I still need to finish Stephen J. Gould's "The Structure of Evolutionary Theory" along with dozens of others I have on the shelf at home. I was feeling like I should get rid of them since they contradicted YEC in so many ways. Now I have decided that I can keep them and read them without risking my eternal soul ;-)
Thanks be to God.
For the last few months I have been investigating the claims made by what are called "Young Earth Creationists." I am not going to try and rehash the details here but thought I would update you on where I am on the subject these days.
Young Earth Creationists are folks who read Genesis 1 & 2 as a sort of science text and attempt to make sense of the world in light of this. They claim that the earth is, at most, 10,000 years old and that it was created in 6 literal days as described in Genesis.
My own church, the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, seems to hold this very view of things, though, as far as I know, it is not something that will get one tossed out on his ear if he doesn't buy it. At least I hope that is so. I'll let you know if I discover otherwise.
The Young Earth Creationists (YEC) endeavor to explain the geologic record, all of those layers of rocks and fossils, as being nothing more than a result of the worldwide flood that Noah and his family survived. They try to explain all of these hundreds (or is it thousands?) of layers of sediment, with fossils that seem to show an evolutionary history of descent with gradual change as simply an artifact of a single massive flood.
I read quite a few documents on the web that purported to be YEC science and it was all very weak as science, in fact in almost every case I laughed out loud at some point in my reading. None of it was remotely convincing and it all sounded sadly desperate to me.
YEC people have concluded, for some reason, that if this interpretation of Genesis falls then all of Christianity falls as well. The reasoning for this is actually a little better than their scientific reasoning but I still don't find it totally convincing.
A well known YEC organization is Answers in Genesis. AiG is devoted to spreading the word to the masses that mainstream science is all wrong. They have daily radio spots on Christian radio stations and huge multi-million dollar "Creation Museum"
Another famous YEC outfit is the Institute for Creation Research. ICR is dedicated to promoting scientific research that is aimed at demonstrating YEC.
I found the positions of the YEC crowd to be absurd in the end, simply not plausible in any way to one who has even the most rudimentary knowledge of science, unless one is willing to make the assumption that Genesis 1 & 2 are actually intended to be science and then is also willing to do the extreme mental and logical gymnastic twisting required to wedge the real world into that view. I can't do it.
Does this mean that I don't believe the bible to be the inerrant word of God? Nope, I do believe that. I have gone back to my previous position that God used the normal laws of the universe that he created in the big bang to bring about his perfect will.
I can't explain how it all works, and I probably never will. But I can say that my faith in God is not dependent upon making the Genesis account into science. I am a sinner and Jesus Christ died in my place to give me eternal life, that doesn't depend on the outcome of this debate I'm having with myself :-) (IMHO)
I am now reading up on what seem to me to be more reasonable attempts to read Genesis in the light of scientific knowledge. All of the following sites start with the assumption that God created the cosmos, and that science is a reasonable way of investigating God's creation. Among the sites I'm looking at now are Answers in Creation, Reasons to Believe and The American Scientific Affiliation. I'm also now participating, well lurking, on the ASA email list that discusses these issues. All three of these Christian science organizations present more plausible views than any of the YEC folks I've found.
A final note. It is my opinion, based on my own experience over the last few months, that YEC is actually dangerous to the faith of educated Christians. The claim is made that if YEC is not true then Christianity as a whole is a lie. When reasonable, educated people see that the YEC position is totally unable to account for real world observations they are confronted with the possibility that their very faith might be in vain. I know that some people I've talked to have gone from YEC to atheism, not realizing there are other more plausible accounts out there. YEC is absurd but very loud. That is unfortunate.
All of that being said I'm sure glad I didn't sell all of my science books, as I nearly did a few months ago :-). I still need to finish Stephen J. Gould's "The Structure of Evolutionary Theory" along with dozens of others I have on the shelf at home. I was feeling like I should get rid of them since they contradicted YEC in so many ways. Now I have decided that I can keep them and read them without risking my eternal soul ;-)
Thanks be to God.
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