Young-Earth Creationism is Cruel
Nelle Smith stands up to share her personal testimony :
When I was 21 years old, someone finally knocked it through my thick head that the earth was old. I was halfway through Geology 100 when, on one otherwise dull afternoon, the professor said something — I don’t even remember what — and a puzzle piece snapped into place. I sat up straight. The earth was old. Not six thousand years old. Billions of years. What did that mean?
Back at home after my Geology epiphany, I could do nothing but stare blankly out the front door and feel the roll and pitch of the world as it fell from beneath my feet. It seemed, quite literally, as if there were nothing solid under me, only a great vacuum in which to flail. I grabbed the door handle and stood there, dazed, for a long time.
Creationists say you can either believe in this picture or believe that Jesus loves you. But not both. That’s cruel.
This vertiginous sense of something almost like panic is what everyone should feel the first time they glimpse the staggering reality of deep time. Or the first time they ponder astronomical distance. It’s all so old and so vast, and if that doesn’t make your head spin for a bit then you’re probably not quite getting that. (If someone asks “How far away is Pluto?” the correct answer is 7.5 billion kilometers, but the correct response is “Whoa... phew ... give me a second here...”)
But, as Smith says, there was much more to this for her because:
I’d grown up evangelical Christian. We weren’t as conservative as some — and, to the outside eye, we probably looked pretty normal — but like so many others, we were fully immersed in the evangelical worldview. While you wouldn’t find us picketing abortion clinics, all the core ideas were there under the surface: we were Biblical literalists and against same-sex marriage. We believed America was God’s country, voted Republican and pro-life, and expected the rapture at any minute. We were also six-day creationists, with science textbooks that warned us to beware of any statement that contradicted the Bible.
Young-earth creationism is a cruelly efficient machine for manufacturing spiritual crisis. It has created more atheists than all of Richard Dawkins’ books put together. It exchanges the truth of God for a lie — a lie that’s spectacularly indefensible because none of the people caught up in that lie lives on a young Earth. They live, instead, on this one — this ancient Earth that confronts its inhabitants with its vast and incomprehensible oldness at every turn.
The “evangelical worldview” Nelle Smith describes binds that unsustainable lie to everything else that evangelical Christians believe: the existence of a benevolent God, the belief that life has meaning, the love of Christ, the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. All of this is bound together with the lie in a constantly repeated and reinforced if/then construction. If the Earth is older than 10,000 years, then God does not love you. If the Earth is older than 10,000 years, then all meaning is illusion. If the Earth is older than 10,000 years, then Christ is not risen and your faith is also vain and you are of all people most to be pitied.
This if/then construct is cruel to those indoctrinated into it and slanderous to everyone else. It presents a false binary between young-Earth creationism and nihilism. That supposed binary shouldn’t withstand contact with the wider world. Most people, after all, are neither young-Earth creationists nor nihilists, so it ought to seem patently obvious that other possibilities exist. But because accepting those other possibilities threatens the “evangelical worldview” just as much as trilobites and the light from distant stars, the reality of all those other people — those billions who are neither nihilists nor creationists — has to be denied.
And thus young-Earth creationism also teaches its adherents that their neighbors — all of them — are dishonest, two-faced, secret nihilists who cannot be trusted. They may claim to be humanists or Quakers or Anglicans or Buddhists or nones, but whatever they say doesn’t matter. If they are not young-Earth creationists, then they must be nihilists. Because if you cease to be a young-Earth creationist, you must become a nihilist. These are the only possibilities you are permitted to imagine.
This was part of what forced Nelle Smith to stand there, white-knuckled, as her foundation cracked and the Earth opened up to its very depths. The “worldview” she’d been living in was a house built on sand.
Nelle Smith’s personal testimony is not unusual. It’s what happens to everyone who tries to live in a house built on sand. Everyone attempting to cling to the if/then package-deal “worldview” of young-Earth creationism will eventually encounter some equivalent to her Geology epiphany. The rain will fall and the wind will beat against the house and great will be its fall.
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by Fred Clark
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I don't think Fred is cynical enough. He doesn't say that it is an intentional ploy of evangelical "leaders" to force their flock to choose between truth and loyalty. That technique has been used by authoritarians since time immemorial.
One the
victimfollower has been led to hold fast to a lie... that follower no longer has any intrinsic moral compass. The "leader" can manipulate the follower at will.The Earth is very old, and life started on it at an early age. Evolution is a reality supported by overwhelming evidence. But what confuses me is why you are so obsessed about other people's beliefs.
Why do you label his interest in religion an obsession? Religion is a fascinating (and profoundly important) subject.
YEC is in itself rather fascinating (and problematic). Given about 10% of the USA are YECs it seems quite valuable to offer reasons why they should question what they have been taught.
Evidence is irrelevant if you're a conservative or a Cretinist.
I'm not.
I am somewhat obsessed with my own beliefs, because they are very incomplete. God is... not simple...
Dear Friend Bob Nelson: I write this not to upset anyone, or try to change their belief system.
Rather I present it to let people know there is more than one way to look at the claim that the Earth is 6,000 years old, although there is a great deal of science which directly contradicts this opinion.
This year in the Hebrew calendar is 5778. This does not mean the Jewish People believe that the earth and for that matter the rest of the universe in only 5,778 years old.
What it does mean is that the way in which time was tracked was based on its starting, stopping again re-starting again based on certain events of prominence to the people doing the time tracking.
The first sentence in the first paragraph, verse and page of the Tanach (correct name for Hebrew and Aramaic Scripture) is this.
"Bah Ray Sheet Barah Eloheem, Vee et ha Shamayim vee et ha Aretz".
"In the beginning G-d created the heavens and the earth."
Rashi, the great Scriptural commentator asks of this passage, "Dilmah cotev "Bah Ray Sheet, ayleh Bah Rishon"?
"Why is it written "In the Begging" and not "At First"?
The generally accepted answer, long before current science as we know it came on the scene is this.
At first would indicate there was only once creation (origin) narrative. But that is not the case.
The flood navigated by Noach caused a "reboot" for humanity.
Another first for tracking time was the Yitziyat Mitzrahyim.
The exodus from Egypt and the journey to liberation in Israel.
To the Mind of those in Scriptural times, we commence tracking time and its events starting, and if need by re-starting tracking when things change so dramatically that we are encountering a new beginning for those living by that tracking.
A more complete exposition of this historical and theological concept of chronology is to be found in the Sefer D' Reb Ulozo (Book of Rabbi Alonzo).
I present this, not to ask people who follow other traditions to stop with they are doing in their tracks.
They do as they wish, we as we do.
I feel it is on point to present this to give a glimpse into the way people of my tradition at this time when these numbers began thought about time.
Any tension between astronomical, archeological and other sciences dating time; and Scriptural ways of viewing time for wisdom, ethical and faith based narratives goes away when this is understood.
When IK do science, I do science.
When I do theology, I to do that.
Both are academic disciplines.
They do not follow the same rules; as they do different things.
When I play football, I do not try to hit home runs, or score baskets.
Football, baseball and basketball are all sports.
The rules, equipment and playing surfaces are not the same.
They ought not to be.
"When in Rome ---".
Peace and Abundant Blessings in the Time Zone of Your Choice.
Enoch.
Thank you, Enoch.
Calendars are not natural phenomena. They are invented by people.
The dates in the books I posted here on NT a while back are set around the year 3275. No one thought to ask me, "In what calendar?" and that's a good thing because I haven't the slightest idea. Neither do the characters in the books, apparently, because "well-known history" is only about a thousand years, and then the past gets more and more blurred. Nothing is really sure about anything over two thousand years old. I did this on purpose, to hammer home the idea that the story of the world is not to be enclosed by artificial numbers.
Lots of ancient peoples restarted their calendars at the accession of each new king.
All of that said, though... YEC itself is not really the topic of the seed. The seed is about the destructive impact of YEC, when the person can no longer tolerate the cognitive dissonance between YEC and science.
Trouble is it seems most YECs resolve the dissonance by denying science. Denier in chief Ken Ham does an amazing job feeding his minions disinformation designed to dissolve the cognitive dissonance. Trying to build an entire generation of people ill-equipped to deal with the world they will eventually lead.
From the article:
I think Smith is quite unusual given that most Cretinists simply come up with new rationalizations when confronted with scientific facts, or they simply ignore those facts. It's rare for any of them to have an open mind.