>While I see a tiny bit of humor in all this, Art makes a serious point.
>The (genuine) problems posed by YECs in the church might be far less
>serious than the problems posed by the secular culture in which the
>American church is presently immersed. Perhaps we should seek to preserve
>the YECs within the church -- with their genuinely high resistivity to
>Post-Christian philosophy. What do you think, Glenn?
I have no doubt about the salvation of YECs or their honoring of God. I will
spend eternity with many brothers who believe in a young earth. But what is
worse, they will have to spend time with me. :-) What I do have doubts
about is their resistence to Post Christian philosophy. Post-christian
philosophy holds that there are many different truths and many ways of
knowing. No religion has the truth. Evidence against one's views really
doesn't matter as long as one believes it. Thus the Hindu is ok in believing
whatever he wants to and by the same token one can believe in ESP, astral
projection, I ching, aliens, or whatever. Evidence isn't necessary for one
to believe a set of beliefs. Only feelings and belief.
So, while I will spend eternity with many of my fellow christians who
believe in a young-earth, I would suggest that they too, like the
non-christians, believe that evidence should have no impact on their belief
system. I will pick on Pete here because his note was right after yours in
my in basket. Pete wrote:
"You miss a very important point here Steve, There is a science or
discipline to interpreting scripture, as important or perhaps more
important than the disciplines that you practice. And when you apply the
consistant literal, gramatical, historical method of interpretation, you
will find the science of YEC'ers to be consistant with that hermenuetic.
You on the other hand place science above the scriptures and look for
methods of interpretation that will harmonize it with your science. As
science has proven itself to be a changing source of Truth I would prefer
to base my beliefs upon an umoveable absolute - the Scriptures. I would
like to make myself clear here that in stating this I do not in anyway mean
to question the scincerety of your Christian commitment. I am simply
stating that the whole difference arises from the priority given to science
by those who hold to an old earth and the priority given to the scriptures
by those who hold to a YEC position"
What is the difference between this and a person saying that one should not
believe what science says about ESP, hindu cosmology, astral projections or
even Nostradamus? The Nostradamite puts his faith, not in science, but in
Nostradamus and the ESP advocate places his faith not in science, but in the
power of his mind. The Hindu puts his faith not in observational data but in
his Scriptures. If all that is required for a set of scriptures to be true
is for someone to believe them, then all religions are correct.
glenn
Adam, Apes, and Anthropology: Finding the Soul of Fossil Man
and
Foundation, Fall and Flood
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/dmd.htm