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.

Younger pastors are more likely young earthers

EVOLUTION: Pastors unconvinced, LifeWay survey shows, but they're split on earth's age

Sorting through LifeWay's survey of Protestant pastors about evolution and creation, I was intrigued by the differential between younger (18-44) and not-so-younger (45+) pastors on their belief in the age of the earth.

Here's BP's paragraph:

The only statistically significant difference was that younger pastors are the least likely age bracket to strongly disagree that the earth is 6,000 years old. While 24 percent age 18-44 strongly disagree, 33 percent age 45-54, 38 percent age 55-64 and 38 percent 65 and older feel the same.

Also significant is the wide variance between pastors with graduate degrees and those without. Among the former, 42% strongly disagree that the earth is 6,000 years old but only 18% of the latter group.

Younger, less educated Protestant pastors are more likely to accept that the earth is 6,000 years old.

What might be made of this? I'll offer some possibilities:

1. There were very few Christian schools around when pastors over 45 were in grade and high school; consequently, this group had little or no indoctrination into young earth dogma.

2. The same could be said for any church-based teaching that insisted on a young earth. The traveling young earther road shows just weren't around.

3. Pastors with greater education should naturally have more difficulty accepting the concept of an extremely young earth, having been exposed to multiple lines of scientific research and study all of which point to an old earth and universe.

4. Younger pastors are more susceptible to the argument that a belief in a young earth is essential to be a good inerrantist.

I'm mostly ambivalent if my pastor colleagues believe in an earth that is 6,000 years old. I don't. What I fear is trending here is that such a belief is becoming more of a test of orthodoxy.

Sad to see it.

Young earth, old earth...who's the new sheriff in town?

Why, the young earth crowd rules in the SBC these days. Actually, the article below is from last fall.

HOW OLD? Age of Earth debated among SBC scholars

Dembski: “The young earth-solution to reconciling the order of creation with natural history makes good exegetical and theological sense,” wrote Dembski, who holds Ph.D. degrees in both philosophy and mathematics and is a leading proponent of the Intelligent Design movement. “Indeed, the overwhelming consensus of theologians up through the Reformation held to this view. I myself would adopt it in a heartbeat except that nature seems to present such strong evidence against it.”

Nettles: In response to The End of Christianity, Tom Nettles, professor of historical theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., wrote a review in which he critiqued Dembski for allegedly letting scientific commitments to trump the most natural reading of the Bible. The review appeared in The Southern Baptist Journal of Theology (Vol. 13.4, 2009), Southern Seminary’s official theological journal.

Patterson: Southwestern Seminary president Paige Patterson told the Witness that while he disagrees with Dembski’s assessment of the earth’s age, he is confident of his character, Christian commitment and adherence to the Baptist Faith & Message.

Mohler: Even though the disagreement between old- and young-earth creationists is a less important issue, it still has crucial implications, according to Mohler.
“Theologically, the historical Adam as the common ancestor of the human race is the most important issue. But the question is, how in the world do you end up with an historical Adam if you have an old earth?” he said. “It’s becoming increasingly clear that an old earth implies something other than an historical Adam.” Mohler worries that most Christians who hold to an old earth are not thinking through all the logical implications of their position.

Wise: Kurt Wise, professor of biology at Truett-McConnell College in Cleveland, Ga., agrees. He obtained a Ph.D. at Harvard under the famed evolutionist Stephen J. Gould and has long advocated a young earth as the only position compatible with Scripture. He replaced Dembski on Southern’s faculty in 2006. “Believing in a young creation is in no way a requirement for salvation,” Wise told the Witness in an email. “I do believe, however, that it is impossible to consistently believe in both an old earth and inerrant Scripture.”

What is missing from the article, basically just a string of quotes from the various SBC worthies, is a serious treatment of the physical evidence for an old earth. It is difficult, perhaps impossible, to reconcile many streams of old earth evidence with what seems to be the requisite extremely young earth.

The occasions I have heard folks actually tackle the physical evidence, it has been less than believable. This is understandable, since the difference is between billions of years and thousands of years – not an easy slam dunk, unless merely being dismissive is allowed. Even Wise, who is most qualified of this crowd to assess the age of the earth as estimated by the various contemporary scientific disciplines, is quoted (not in this article) to the effect that the evidence is not present for a young earth, as we understand physical evidence, but that one day he is confident that it will be. That is faith.

Debating any of this with our leading theologians, paleontologists, and scientists is much beyond my limited skills, but I think it to be extremely difficult to build a credible case for an earth no older than ten thousand years.

I am pleased, however, that it appears we aren’t in a mode to run the old-earth creationists out of town.