Re: [asa] Best Way to Approach YECs?

I would add to the excellent suggestions that have already been made on
this thread one further suggestion. I would say that anyone taking the
OEC line in a YEC stronghold would be well advised to be prepared for
the counter arguments that the YEC's are likely to put forward. A
noteworthy example is the book by YEC Jonathan Sarfati titled "Refuting
Compromise" in which Sarfati tries to shoot down the OEC arguments of
Hugh Ross. One needs to be ready to refute Sarfati.
Don

>
> Paul wrote,
> I am a member of ASA and of a Baptist church which offers elective
> classes on Wednesday nights. One class early last year consisted of a
> six-week presentation of a DVD of Ken Ham's Creationism seminar as
> presented at the Thomas Road Baptist Church in 2002, followed by a
> brief Q&A each evening (at which I was the only dissenting voice out
> of around 25 attendees). It was a very slick presentation of YEC, at
> the end of which our senior pastor said: "We're going to offer this
> again. Tell everyone how good it was. I want more of our church
> family exposed to it." He was not at any of the Q&A sessions.
>
> Immediately thereafter I began working on a syllabus for a six-week
> course on alternatives to YEC. Until a week ago, it was basically an
> overview of the entire field. Then I had a thought: Since YECs
> believe that God's Word trumps God's works every time, the only
> approach that would have a chance of succeeding in getting YECs to
> consider the possibility of OEC would be to demonstrate that the Bible
> can be interpreted to support OEC, and that I should focus on this
> approach for the syllabus. For example, Genesis 1:1 interpreted as ".
> . . had created . . .", the possibility of an undetermined period of
> time between the days of creation, the use of "let" in Genesis 1:9 and
> 1:11 implying the use of natural processes, references to an old earth
> in Habakkuk 3:6b and in 2 Peter 3:5a, etc.
>
> I would use as sources C. John Collins's Genesis 1-4, Henri Blocher's
> In the Beginning, John Walton's NIV Application Commentary on Genesis,
> Hugh Ross's Creation and Time, Rodney Whitefield's Reading Genesis One
> (on order), David Snoke's A Biblical Case for an Old Earth (on order)
> and a whole bunch of PSCF and other papers on the Flood."
>
> --------
>

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Received on Sun Jul 23 17:41:47 2006