Part I: The History, Process, and Education
I joined CF on May 17, 2004. It was then that I began my quest for knowledge and the truth that this knowledge would lead me to. Before that date arrived I was ready to burst with long-unanswered questions about science and religion. Doubts and deep fears penetrated my mind (and yes, soul as well) and demanded answers. I was curious--dying to get answers; nothing could stop me. CF was the place I could go to connect with others who might have the answers. I knew that no one I had access to in real life could or would be willing to help me. I was surrounded by YECists and biblical literalists who were satisfied by the simple answers they received in church about science and religion--including my folks.
But I wasn't satisfied. And that was the problem.
I started out as a bold, militant, in-your-face Biblical literalist and YECist and fundamentalist when I came here, though I was filled with doubts and fears that I could be totally wrong about everything (I'd been fearing that since I was 13, but kept the status quo due to lack of access to material from the "other" side). Those doubts were fully confronted here, in these forums. I asked every question, explored every weak point in my beliefs, and genuinely sought to understand the thinking and theories that opposed my beliefs...
And that's where the trouble began.
I started to realize that people and the world were not as I had been told they were. And then more trouble began. I began to wonder, if they weren't as I had been told they were, then what were the true nature and state of things? And as I kept probing and searching, I found that my beliefs about people, about my country, and about science and God and the Bible--indeed everything--could not stand up to reality, and so began to crumble.
(Damn, I am hearing all this narrated through the voice of Paul Harvey...)
When I made my way to the C&E forum, I thought I'd be able to show all the evolutionists wrong. I imagined I'd become a mighty voice for the YECist side of things, and I had fully expected to see the YECists crushing the evolutionists.
Oh, but how disappointed I was, when I saw the true state of things.
What I saw were weak arguments (at the time, while I was a YECist, I believed the arguments were weak) going up against counter-arguments that I had only caught slight glimpses of before; many I had simply never seen before. The only view I had of evolution was that presented to me from a YECist perspective in YECist writings and books. When I began to seriously and open-mindedly consider (which happened right away, but I didn't want anyone to know that) the arguments made by evolutionists, they made a lot of sense to me. In fact, they made more sense to me than anything I had been told before by YECists.
For example, throughout the years, as I was reading YECist literature, I would be slightly frustrated when I would read bold claims that would have no evidence to back them up. Just the claim. I had a decision to make: accept the claim, or doubt it and linger on the fence. I often accepted it because I was a YECist, but the acceptance caused intellectual discomfort, and emotional discomfort as well, because my curiosity was not adequately satisfied--and it angered me. This happened frequently, not just in the YECist literature that I read, but also in church during the service. Claims were constantly made--bold claims. I was frustratingly left the decision to accept them or reject them, and I often grudgingly accepted. Whenever I took the route of searching for evidence to back a claim, either in church or in YECist literature, I would be presented a tract, pamphlet, article, or website with YECist or fundamentalist appolagetic literature. I would feel a little better after reading the literature, but would still be left with questions and doubts that never went away.
And when I came here to CF, and read the arguments by evolutionists, I encountered online material and book suggestions that simply overwhelmed me. I had never before confronted so much material. Just one highly-focused topic alone would require much reading and deep thought, and I would find links that led to more links that led to more links and so forth. The material was all over the place, and I often encountered material that was written on or above the college-level. All summer was spent (working a job and) digging frantically into the material. It was overwhelming.
It wasn't long before it became apparent that I had absolutely no clue what evolution was.
After this somewhat embarrassing realization, I decided to find out immediately what it was. Thus the old thread: "Atheists and Agnostics, Now it's Your Turn." Still remember the title. And upon learning what it was, I thought that it seemed entirely possible for it to have happened or to happen now. I asked for proof from evolutionists, and they gave it to me, especially lucaspa. Upon finding out he was actually a Christian and an evolutionist, I marvelled. He cited a lot of cases--not just arguments that it could happen (as YECists often wrote in their literature "this or that could have happened, and therefore we know it did") but cases in which it was
observed to have
happened.
And that blew me away. Microevolution did happen. At least some forms of variation and modification did occur, and have been observed (recently!) to have happened. Most conservative Christians at least are open to microevolution, but I had not been. To my thinking, it should not have happened.
I was stunned by this new reality. Microevolution occurs. I immediately thought, "Well, if micro can happen, why not macro?" I then printed out some articles/papers on the natural limits of micro-evolution (the argument that macro cannot happen in nature because there are natural limits that prevent this). I also read material that argued that it could happen. All the evidence from paleontolgy was above my head and I had no framework with which to understand or investigate it, so I largely ignored it.
After educating myself on the topic of evolution, examining the arguments from both sides, and giving myself a period of time to mentally digest and process the new data, I decided that microevolution does in fact occur, and that it was entirely possible for macroevolution to occur, though not all evolutionist scientists today agree on
exactly how macroevolution works. And this is what I think to this day.
In any conclusion there is a process of reason in which one must choose to accept or deny arguments, facts, or both. Sometimes the arguments or facts may be so persuasive that there is hardly a decision at all; the choice is obvious. And in other cases, the facts and arguments may seem to be nearly balanced, making one's decision in which one to believe more difficult. In my conclusions about evolution, I chose to reject the arguments used by YECists because there were problems with them. And here is a list of such problems I encountered, in order of frequency and magnitude:
- YECists misrepresented evolutionists' statements/quotes/arguments
- YECists ignored key facts, arguments, and logic
- YECists used incorrect data to support their positions
- YECists outright lied
While in the intellectual process of decision-making on evolution, I was shocked at discovering these problems, and I became offended, enraged, etc. At that time I was dealing with emotional stress, having discovered that all that time I had been deceived into believing in YECism. It became evident to me, increasingly, that the YECist literature I had been reading all those years was set up more as propoganda than educational material.
For a time I severely doubted God, and underwent some emotional/psychological/spiritual trauma, but such a state was shortlived and lasted less than a week (though the doubting God part lasted longer).
Please do not respond until I have completed parts II and III.