Recently I’ve watched lots of historical programmes on TV - some where they say “this is spear from 2000 years ago”, and others where they say “these are some rocks from 2 billion years ago”. Both have made me wonder how a Young Earth believer would consider historical information.
Did you discard anything older than 6,000 years (or 10,000), but pretty much any other info you got from history you believed? Or did you have doubts about things like Egyptian civilisation - getting about as old as a YE earth, maybe our info’s no so accurate, and really that was only 1000 years ago.
And geological stuff, like continental drift - did you believe that the US and Europe are indeed getting an inch or so further apart every year, but that this had only been going on for 6,000 years and therefore Pangea/Gondwanaland never existed? Or perhaps that they’re moving at an inch a year now, but in the past it was much faster, to fit into the 6,000 year timescale?
(Disclaimer: I was never a believer, but I attended a Christian school which taught Creationism, so I know a bit about it.)
My school taught that the earth was “created with the appearance of age.” (Citing the mature fruit trees in the Garden of Eden.) The age of the earth that they accepted was 6,000 years. Anything which showed age greater than that was covered under that explanation.
They taught that the “tremendous forces” involved in Noah’s flood was what created the Grand Canyons and other erosive scars.
They claimed that rock did not take thousands of years to form because human artifacts have been found encased in rocks, like a gold chain discovered miles underground encased in coal. (Never was a photo of these items offered–only a drawing.)
They taught that dinosaurs and man co-existed. My “science” text showed a drawing of farmers plowing a field while brontosauri brazed off the treetops in the background. (I always imagined a tyrannosaurus tearing through the field and devouring them one by one.) Noah included these creatures on the ark. (There was another drawing of what seemed to be a stegosaurus in a stall next to a holstein cow.) The mind boggles at the architectual nightmare that building a ship to accomodate the necessary numbers of dinosaurs would be, but that interesting line of thought was completely ignored.
I haven’t followed it, but I imagine they had a field day with the recent discover of soft tissue in a fossil. They’ll probably say that it’s further proof that dino fossils can’t be as old as scientists claim, 'cause there’s still meat on them bones.
(Total personal POV) I was raised in a pretty literalist home too, and I don’t think the two have to go together. I’m actually so irritated with many churches about their opposition to evolution that I can’t regularly attend them, but that’s not the same thing as Christianity as a whole. If you can separate criminals and the jerk down the street from the idea of being American, I think that’s something simlar.
For anything that fit within the ~10,000 year time scale I would just assume it was correct, if something stretch to before that I just assumed (and looked for evidence) that the time scales were wrong or the find itself was completely faulty in some other way.
The continental drift certainly existed, but either it had only been going on for ~10,000 years and subsequently Pangea/Gondwanaland never existed, or Pangea/Gondwanaland did exist but the Flood changed the landforms enough that it was closer to what we have today.
Lissa, I never was taught the ‘created with the appearance of age’ argument, but the rest of your post is very familiar.
I do agree that they need not be connected, but for me literalism was such a key tenet of my belief that to get rid of it I essentially had to disassemble everything I believed in. Once I found that I could still follow the general philosophy of what I had been taught (you know, minus the anti-homosexual stuff) without needing to connect it to a belief I realized that I simply had no need for the religion at all.
I haven’t gone in quite some time but I have not ruled it out categorically either. One of the things I do miss is the close knit community and sense of family that comes from a church. If I do return in the future it will have to be to a different kind of church of course, I would have to find a denomination that was very open minded to interpretations and questioning.
I still like them all, they are kind, honest, caring men and women who would not condemn me out of hand for my decision, though I am sure that they are praying for me. I suppose this just goes in hand with not being bitter about it.
It’s been a while since I’ve posted on the boards, but I’ve had this Army thing taking up a lot of time.
I happen to be Alistair’s elder brother. (I don’t actually call him Alistair McCello, though. I tend to refer to him as Weasel, but that’s between him and me. And any of you who feel the need.)
I am eternally greatful to our parents for raising us the way they did. They gave us support in any interest; be it acedemic, athletic, or career; that we may have wanted to pursue while still trying to remain the voice of reason.
I don’t think that I lost any critical thinking skills by initially starting with a literalist creationism scientific worldview. I never really discounted out of hand any well thought out scientific arguement from either side of the debate. While it is true that I don’t subscribe to a “New-Earth” Theory by any means, I don’t imediately write off those who do as religious extremist quacks. There are quite a few ery smart people peforming research in countless fields who do hold this worldview. I don’t neccessarily think that they will prove their hypothoses (though I will listen if they present them in a scientific mannor for peer review), but they are looking at astronomy, geology, biology, etc from a different perspective than most anyone else, and having a different perspective can often lead to breakthroughs.
The beauty of science is that even though we don’t have all the answers, and even have a lot of false answers, we know that there is a process we can use to eventually find the right answers.
That’s a very nice sentiment, but my problem as someone on the vague edges of thes science community (HS science teacher) is that the people doing the research on the creationist side are almost always not qualified to do it.
Even those that have proper degrees, like Michael Behe, have an agenda that they’re trying to prove before they gather evidence, because this conclusion would make them feel better.
Here’s one of the proofs that really convinces me: Scientists have been able to convince hundreds of thousands of scientific Christians that evolution is true from evidence gathered, but literally no non-Christian scientists have been convinced by the evidence for any kind of creationism.
Plus, the evidence is inherently neutral. You can’t prove or disprove the “hand of God” in the process anyway. Where would the fossil evidence be? “Look, that fossil is glowing!”
You’ll recognize this as the somewhat overused phrase that it is, but it’s not supposed to be a religion. I truly think that’s a misapplication of the whole thing.
In further support of your hypothesis, Behe is not really a creationist. He believes in intelligent design, but not in special creation, and he actually accepts evolution for the most part (though he keeps somewhat quiet about it to avoid offending his fans.) He does not seem to be a literalist at all, but since he’s a Catholic, he wouldn’t have that upbringing.
Was your choice of a college driven by your old beliefs or your new ones?
Did you go to a Bible college where they taught literalism, or to a real one? Did this influence your journey?
There are actually a number of us here who grew up in fundamentalist churches. I’ve noticed that there are quite a few former members of the church of Christ here. (Or maybe I just notice them more because that’s my own background.)
My question: Which denomination was your church, if you don’t mind mentioning it?
In grad school, I was taking embryology and someone asked a question in class that made it pretty clear that she was a creationist. The professor looked sort of dumbfounded and I wondered how someone would go to school that long and absolutely not believe a word they were being taught. How do you do that?
My anatomy professor told me he had students that actually believed a man had one less rib than a woman and were surprised when they found it wasn’t true.
Alistair and Drake, thanks for offering your experiences here so openly. Certainly you still know many people, perhaps within your own family, who still hold creationist views, and have doubtless discussed the matter with them. Why do you think they hold those beliefs? Is it simply that, like you, they were raised to believe them, but have not yet gone through the questioning process that you did? Or are there some who came to that position in adult life - but by what process?
If creationism is in fact more than a simple religious tenet, I’d like to understand how it comes to be embraced. If there’s a genuine “breakthrough” in understanding the world that it makes possible, I’ll be most interested to find out what it is.
My college choice was driven more by my desired degree than anything else, but by the time I was applying to colleges I would have been dead set against any Christian institutions.
We went to a nondenominational protestant church, but I think that it could best be compared to a Baptist church.
This is one of those things that is very difficult to describe to someone who has not experienced it first hand. I suppose that the best way to put it is that your brain simply filters out everything that you hear that does not conform to your view. Though I do not know how someone could get through certain majors (or why they would even go into certain majors for that matter) holding literalist veiws.
My sister is currently trying to set me up with an anthropology major who belongs or at least belonged to a church that I am fairly certain is literalist. I can’t imagine that she still holds to the literalism, but if she does I must admit that I am interested in talking to her to ask how she could get through her major with her beliefs in tact, and why should would chose a major where nearly every class she takes will go against those beliefs.
I know that my father didn’t come to his belief until he was in college where he got involved with a bible study group. He has never been all that interested in science so when creationsim and literalism came with the other, more standard, elements of Christianity (love thy neighbor, Jesus is the son of God, etc) I suppose he felt no need to question it. My mother, on the other hand, was raised in the faith and has held it all her life.
What’s funny is that my own parents are not Creationists. They are, in fact, both passionately against Creationism. My grandparents, however, are conservative Christians and they took me to the local Chinese Southern Baptist-affiliated church. For my grandparents, Creationism was not really a big deal, because it didn’t factor much into their lives at all. In order to understand their mindset, it’s important to understand their background: 1st generation Chinese immigrants who lived through WWII and the Communist takeover. They took the Bible literally, and were thus “Creationists”, because there was absolutely nothing else for them to believe. The theory of evolution was not something that they ever seriously encountered, so it wasn’t an issue.
My friends who are currently still Creationists are a little different- they usually know enough to outright reject evolution, but not enough about either Creation science or evolution to really understand their opinions. If I ever tried to argue with them, they’ll bring up all the old arguments: Darwin recanted on his deathbed (false, I know, and irrelevant anyway), the 2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts evolution somehow, it’s “just a theory” and thus not “proven”, etc. It doesn’t matter how much I argue, they’ll usually just dodge the point or bring out more strawmen.
I think my friends who still believe in Creationism do so because of a few reasons: evolution was not introduced adequately at an early age in school, and thus it is much easier to reject it. Also, there is the fear that accepting evolution leads to the loss of faith entirely. Some churches place a huge emphasis on the creation stories, original sin, etc., and this makes it very difficult to drop a literal reading of Genesis, because it is so important to the doctrine of many conservative/fundamentalist churches.
I’ve met people like that too, so I agree that it’s not all happy endings. Even some of my non-Christian or non-religious friends sometimes think that men have one fewer rib than women. I have one acquaintance here at UCSC who is a Buddhist and an MCD Biology major, and she was surprised that courses on evolution at UCSC don’t usually involve heated debates about the veracity of evolution. Apparently she was under the impression, like so many people, that whether evolution happened or not is still controversial in the scientific community.
To be honest, I didn’t think it was controversal either.
I’ve never heard any heated discussions in any biology classes I ever took.
I always thought it was a given that people involved in science believed in science.
When she asked the question, and I wish I could remember what it was, everyone looked at her like she had a third eyeball.
I was raised in the Church of Christ, but I always read very widely (I don 't remember not being able to read – my Mom said that I taught myself!), and I dearly loved dinosaur/prehistoric life books from a very early age. When I was about ten or eleven years of age, I read a lot of anthropology and comparative religion books, and basically came to the conclusion that the Bible was not meant to be taken literally. I was baptized around this age anyway, and I continue to go to Church on Sundays (Crieve Hall Church of Christ in Nashville, Tennessee), even though I do not agree with a lot of what is taught there – I like to sing, and the people are pretty nice!