What drives YEC

[lucaspa]

So I've been wondering this lately. What drives most people to hold the Young Earth view?

I could only think of two possibilities. Either ignorance or relativism.

For some of the rank and file YECers, it could be ignorance. They are simply unaware of Christian thought and theology.

However, for most YECers it's a combination of 2 things:
1. Worship of their interpretation of scripture (false idol worship)
2. A tragic logical mistake: http://theologytoday.ptsem.edu/oct1982/v39-3-article1.htm

 

[gluadys]

For some of the rank and file YECers, it could be ignorance. They are simply unaware of Christian thought and theology.

However, for most YECers it's a combination of 2 things:
1. Worship of their interpretation of scripture (false idol worship)
2. A tragic logical mistake: http://theologytoday.ptsem.edu/oct1982/v39-3-article1.htm

Very interesting article.

 

[lucaspa]

Very interesting article.

The best explanation I have yet found for the resistance of YECers.

It also fits with the history of YEC. In the first quote in my signature you can see the reaction of Christians to falsification of a world-wide flood. The initial reaction to evolution was mixed. For Bishop Wilberforce you can counter Rev. Charles Kingsley. But by and large evolution was accepted by Christians pretty rapidly, mostly because it saved God from problems caused by Special Creation.
"When my Father [Frederick Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury] announced and defended his acceptance of evolution in his Brough Lectures in 1884 it provoked no serious amount of criticism ... The particular battle over evolution was already won by 1884." F.A. Iremonger, William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury, His Life and Letters, Oxford Univ. Press, 1948, pg. 491.

So what happened? Higher Criticism. Higher Criticism began challenging traditional views of the authorship of the Bible. Some people viewed this as undermining trust in the truth of the Bible. Rev Hodges in the US and others therefore wrote the series of pamphlets entitled The Fundamentals http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Parthenon/6528/fundcont.htm

2/3 of the essays are against Higher Criticism. But 1/3 are directed against evolution. Why? Undermining the "truth" of the Bible.

Why would they consider this important when Christians earlier had said that science simply changes our interpretation of the Bible? Berry provides part of the answer. And I think the answer is rooted in Hodges and others never having perssonal experience of God. All they have is the Bible. Take the Bible "away" and they have nothing to hang their faith upon. So they make the Bible their god.

 

[Nietzscheiswrong]

Lack of faith. And folly.