When did you discover YECism?

I am interested to know when it was that individuals on this forum discovered that there were people around who believed that the earth was less than 20,000 years old?

I only discovered that such a belief existed after becoming an atheist a couple of years ago and cruising the web trying to connect with others like me.

For the 12 years or so I was a Christian in Australia, I never once heard anyone say they believed the earth was young.

Have others had similar experiences or is YECism so common in the US that it is unmissable?

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'Avast, ye scurvy dogs! Rotate the rubber baby buggy bumpers!'

I used to go to church till I was 14 or so.. and I don't think I've met one YEC so far. I always knew of them though, although I can't remember how..

[EDIT] I think that YECism is mostly in the US.

In 5th grade I got into an argument with a kid who said that dinosaur fossils were nothing more than misshapen rocks and that the earth was only a few thousand years old. That was my first experience.

I didn't get interested in the social disease of young earth creationism ( ) until I discovered that two of my friends in my biology class were creationists (they would laugh or make snide/ignorant remarks whenever evolution or Darwin was mentioned [the Darwin denouncing evolution on his deathbed story was often repeated]). After that I decided to educate myself on the topic; I like to think I have done so.

So to directly answer your question I guess I've known for most my life that there were people who believed this.

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I live in the Bible Belt. Take a guess how long it took me to get a full lecture on how the Earth was created in six days about 5000 years ago.

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• Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum. (I think I think, therefore I think I am.)

I'm so profound it hurts.

I'm a Christian who was raised by science-oriented Christian parents, and there was never an issue in our family with accepting mainstream science. My mom read to me endlessly about paleontology. The mother of a kid in my neighborhood supposedly didn't believe in dinosaurs for religious reasons, but we all considered it a fringe thing.

I encountered YEC about the time I went to college, since we had just recently moved to a more conservative area. Being young, inquisitive, and iconoclastic, I seriously checked it out for a while. I came to the conclusion that it was neither scientific nor necessary to my faith.

-Neil

p.s. Thinking back, I also recall having a Catholic friend who didn't believe in evolution. But protestant / Catholic differences and tensions were not uncommon in that community at that time. And we were more interested in just being kids than in "grown-up" disputes.

When I came over to the USA in around 1980, I was living in Maryland and came across some people who told me that the Earth was young and that evolution didn't exist, because in order to believe in evolution people had to be able to read whereas in order to believe in creationism they just had to listen to what their pastor told them. And their pastor apparently told them that the universe was 6000 years old and that all the species had been created separately.

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"Sadly, biblical literalism brings not only the bible but Christianity itself into disrepute." - The Rt. Revd. Richard Harries, Anglican Bishop of Oxford.

I only really encountered it about two years ago when I started reading various Christian and Infidel forums. I do not believe I have met a young earth creationist in the flesh, although I have met several evolution deniers.

hw

Hmm. Must have been my 5th or 6th grade teacher who skipped over evolution in Science class becasuse she said it was "controversial." Funny seeing as I was at a public school. Bleh.

I grew up being taught YEC'ism. My father was an Assembly of God minister and I attended private Christian schools of the fundamentalist variety.

What I can't recall is when I first realized that it was all bunk. It seems that I always heard these arguments with a seed of disbelief since it all just didn't seem to make sense.

When I came to study the subject on my own (some time in high school), it was more like "yeah, that makes more sense . . ."

What is odd is that YEC's seem entirely flabergasted by the idea that YEC'ism is NOT the general consensus among Christians.

O_o I have only met a handful of people that actually believe in evolution. Such a different world.

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• Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum. (I think I think, therefore I think I am.)

I'm so profound it hurts.