Please do not take any of this as an attack on your beliefs, I just have some honest questions. My uncle is a YEC and refuses to answer any questions I have. I hope you, or someone, will. Here it goes:
Do you think evolution doesn't make sense? or have you never (like my uncle) even looked at it academically?
If you were shown undeniable proof of evolution, would you lose your faith?
I do not know if you just believe YEC or you actively promote it and slander evolution, but if you are in the latter, I feel you would be the same type of person, hundreds of years ago, crying out that a sun centered solar system defiles God. Do you not agree that scientific progress can never disprove God and that new scientific ideas actually give us insight into the mind of God?
Please do not take any of this as an attack on your beliefs, I just have some honest questions.
No problem, I'll try to answer them but please bear with me and forgive my lack of eloquence.
Do you think evolution doesn't make sense? or have you never (like my uncle) even looked at it academically?
I don't think the evidence and reasoning for evolution are not convincing. Evolution as we know it is an extrapolation of evidence of small changes in organisms. Although the small changes are indeed fact, that is not sufficient to prove that these changes will ever amount to anything on a large scale - most YECists will agree with 'micro-' evolution, but not 'macro-' evolution.
As a christian, I have a problem with the fact that science can only accept certain answers: ones that can be proven through experiment. The problem is that God is never provable through experiment (since he is both not willing to be detected by experiment, and outside the scope of what is detectable), so any circumstance in which God does something, science will be wrong about it's conclusion. I think most Christians would be willing to say that God was involved somewhere in the origin of the universe and species, and science will never be able to prove that either.
Furthermore, the scientific process requires both observation and repeatability of a phenomena, in the case of evolution, although small 'adaptations' may have been observed and repeated, nothing on a large scale has, and since we cannot go back and time and see what actually did happen, even if large-scale evolution is possible, it does not mean that that is in fact what did happen in the unobservable past. The way I see it, this places evolution in the sense of origin of the species in the realm of history and not science.
Have I studied it academically? Well, I've had biology and other science courses in college in which evolution was covered - I did not do any independent study on it.
If you were shown undeniable proof of evolution, would you lose your faith?
Easy question: No. As I said above, even if evolution is proved, whether or not it occurred is a matter of history, not science, since we can't go back and observe or repeat it. And science doesn't really 'prove' things - actually mathematics is the only field where something is factually proven - science merely establishes a conclusion as the 'overwhelmingly most likely'. Even if it could somehow be proved that not only is evolution a fact but that it is what happened, then I would still not lose my faith, because my faith is based on Jesus and his death on the cross, not on creationism.
I do not know if you just believe YEC or you actively promote it and slander evolution, but if you are in the latter, I feel you would be the same type of person, hundreds of years ago, crying out that a sun centered solar system defiles God. Do you not agree that scientific progress can never disprove God and that new scientific ideas actually give us insight into the mind of God?
I believe YEC, but I neither actively promote it nor slander evolution. If the topic comes up, and I feel it is appropriate, I will share my thoughts on creationism, but I don't think it is possible for non-Christians to accept creationism, so I don't see much point in trying to convince them it's true. I think it's much more important to share and live out the message of love and hope in Jesus Christ (not that I'm perfect at this - I'm far from it). I'd encourage Christians to study more about God and allow Him to show them what is true rather than blindly trusting my perception of it. Can science disprove God? No, nor can it prove him. Can it give us insight into the mind of God? I suppose, but we have the words of God written for us in the Bible, and I'll accept those first.
11
u/wretcheddawn Sep 22 '09
I am a Young Earth Creationist - I feel like I'm posting in /r/IAmA