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>I often asked my YEC colleagues back then, "If we have the truth, why do we focus on LIES instead of actual evidence and facts?" --- Verysincere
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How did they respond to that question?
Two types of responses:
1) Anger.
2) Evade.
Honestly, when I first noticed the problem, my questions to colleagues were purely educational and well-intended. Indeed, I naively THOUGHT that they would appreciate that I had found mistakes in their research and my efforts would make for better arguments. But that was NEVER the response I got.
I also got responses like, "You just don't understand. Sure, public debate is not as rigorous as a scientific journal article---which is what you are wanting us to write. The average person wouldn't understand the exact details no matter how carefully we crafted them. So you are wasting your time and ours." [That last sentence wasn't a literal quotation but gradually I learned that was what they meant.]
They tended to regard their job as similar to a politician---and how often are politicians honest in their stump speeches? Obviously, they oversimplify and use trite slogans. (It is like Obama presently obsessing on "tax the rich" ---even though total confiscation of the entire WEALTH of the rich would hardly make a dent in the federal, state, county, and city debts in the U.S. The president is NOT going to address reality. He's going to do what most politicians of both parties are doing: pandering and playing with the facts and the non-facts.)
I started out trying to get my colleagues to agree with me on this: "Let's put together the BEST evidence and logic which explains why young earth creationism is the best explanation for origins. Let's not use what gets the most donations from churches or gets us applause---because that will ONLY convince our own choir. Instead, let's put ourselves in the position of the average person who sincerely wants to know the truth of what the evidence---both Biblical and scientific---indicates about the past history of the earth and the development of life on earth." Who could argue with that objective? Answer: Everybody in the YEC movement!
[Well....not everybody. A lot of us eventually left. I was involved decades before Glenn Morton but his story is a great summary for all of us. The first time I read his "Morton's Demon" and his account of questioning the YEC movement from inside is SO IDENTICAL to my own experience in a general sense. I wasn't an oil geologist. I was a young science professor who was changing fields to become a humanities professor and theology professor. But I experienced MANY personal parallels.]
And by the way, I am not some "liberal theologian." I remain a very conservative, Evangelical, Bible-affirming Christ-follower who emphasizes obedience to the teachings of Jesus---and that includes refraining from LYING! (For far too long we Christians have allowed the nuts among us to define us. It is time we stopped being so tolerant of unchristian, unbiblical behavior among those who pretend to claim the name of Christ and make fools of us all. They worship their TRADITIONS, not the God of the Bible nor do they care what the Biblical text actually states. That's why we see them claiming that passages poetically describing a lightning display in the sky represents a "prophesy" of cell phones and the Internet! It would be impossible for the most bitter non-Christian to mock any worse the teachings of Christ and the Bible which we value any more effectively than to promote in that way such flagrant nonsense. But the Bible actually DOES speak of those who will abuse the scriptures in that way.)