Those low life pond scum Old earth creationists

To listen to the Young Earth Creationist crowd, especially those who drive the movement, we Old Earth Creationists are low life pond scum - slimy, unevolved paramecium and other low lifes. OK, so my YEC brethren stop short of putting it like that but they don't stop short on much else. And feel free to sue me for making a broad generalization of the YEC crowd.

Twenty years ago I enjoyed some informative and enlightening online dialogue with YEC folks. It's only my anecdotal read on the thing, but I don't see much of that any more. The main reason, I will opine, is that YEC folks are steeped in polemics, in breathless, chicken little pronouncements about how accepting an old earth will lead to the death of conservative, evangelical Christianity. I see this all the time. Unfortunately, there are only a handful people and organizations who drive the YEC movement and I see their brusque treatment of OEC folks parroted incessantly, down to the same arguments, even vocabulary.

This is why I particularly appreciate Baptist Press for reporting like yesterday's piece, Length of creation days debated.

What? There is an actual debate to be had on the subject?

Non-24-hour-day people can actually have legitimate arguments?

OEC folks aren't a short step from apostasy and perdition?

There are intelligent, articulate Southern Baptists, including seminary professors who are OEC?

Seminary leaders allow differing views on the matter by their employees?

OEC/YEC belief is a secondary doctrinal issue?

Belief in old earth creationism falls within the Baptist Faith and Message?

All true.

Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary theology professor Ken Keathley, who has been on my radar for several years, says flatly that, "Many of the strongest proponents of the old-earth interpretation are Old Testament scholars." He believes that OEC is gaining more adherents among pastors and leaders. It's about time.

Maybe we can get back to having reasonable, respectful discussions of the matter.

But then, reasonable, respectful discussions don't stir the masses to give to the YEC organizations, nor do they generate those hearty "AMENs" from the pulpit.

Try it. Respectful dialogue might be less profitable for the YEC fundraisers but more profitable for the Kingdom. I think the latter is our goal, anyway.

Why All These Uncivil Christians?

Among the things I’d like to see before I die is a climate where Christians can have reasonable, informed, civil, and illuminating conversations about evolution and creation without all the unreasonable, uninformed, uncivil, and obfuscating clutter that seems to accompany such things.

Allow me to recount a sample, fictional conversation:

Evolutionist:

 I don’t have all the answers but I join most scientists in a belief in evolution as the explanation for much of what we see today.

Conservative Christian:

You are an idiot.

Darwin was an idiot.

Scientists are idiots.

You don’t know science.

Evolution is an atheist plot.
It's all a Satanic conspiracy.
You couldn't possibly be a Christian and believe evolution

 Of course, God loves you and I do too.

Evolutionist:

Goodbye.

Conservative Christian:

Wait, I need to tell you some things you don’t know and no one else will ever tell you about evolution.

Evolutionist:

No thanks.

__________________

There are serious, polite, highly educated Christians and many who are well educated in the scientific disciplines and who are creationists. These have the temperament and knowledge to approach a conversation on the subject without rancor, incivility, caricatures, or condescension.

I just do not run into many of them.

Most of the creationists I run across are rude, know-it-all, pseudo-intellectuals who have an excessive, perhaps obsessive, interest in the subject coupled with an appalling ignorance of virtually all of the matters of substance that touch on it. The main goal seems to be to present as poor an image of a follower of Christ as can possibly be put forward.

Maybe I’m around the wrong crowd.

My guesses as to why we have a poor public image are:

            1. Intellectual inferiority complex.

            2. The poor example of the creationist movement leaders most of
                 whom excel in polemics rather than reasoned dialogue. These
                creationists seem to have goals that include. (a) the utter
                humiliation of those who disagree, (b) the throwing of red meat 

                at those who agree so that they can raise funds, and (c) just
                pure meanness, all in the cause of Christ, of course.

            3. Creationists of this stripe are loath to admit that there is any 

                possibility of being wrong or that true Christians may stray from
                the dogma of young earth, six day, creationism.

            4. These creationists appear to have the subliminal belief that
                young earth creationism is an addendum to the Gospel itself.

I am well into my seventh decade and have been a serious lay student of such things for about thirty years. I am not expecting to see a change in the atmosphere on this matter. While there are some sensible voices in all this, it appears to me that the divide has grown and not diminished the last decade or so.

Too bad.

To sanitize this entire rant of mine, I offer one example of a reasonable, civil approach: I dare you to read Andrew Snelling’s Earth’s Catastrophic Past and Davis Young’s The Bible, Rocks and Time side by side.

I recommend that.

Aha, an old earth creationist at Southeastern

Refreshing. That would be Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary Academic Dean Kenneth Keathley who,

...calls himself an old-earth creationist who accepts that the universe is billions of years old, but also believes that God directly intervened at certain points in natural history.

Al Mohler, of course, is a 10,000 year or so Young Earth Creationist.

We have diversity, brethren and sistren. That's good.

One searches in vain for any word by the Baptist Faith and Message on the age of the earth. Keathely explains...

...the Southern Baptist statement of faith is silent on how God created the universe. But he goes on to say that Southern Baptists’ very literal interpretation of Scripture leads many in the denomination to hold the view that God created the world in six, 24-hour days less than 10,000 years ago.

Plodder surmises that there are also many SBCers who think that any who believe in anything but an extremely young earth are heretics and reprobates. Many such folks, self-assured True Believers and followers of the One True Interpretation of the Bible, have made the slippery slope arguments of Young Earthers into El Capitan, sheer cliff arguments - if you are an old earth creationist, you are probably not even saved. Silly.

The source of the quotes above is a Washington Post article:
Evangelical scientists debate online with Southern Baptist seminary professors

The online debate is found at the BioLogos Forum. Thinking Southern Baptists will find it informative and helpful.