What's tricky about this position is that even the interpretation of scripture, is contested amongst honest Christians like ourselves. And in my opinion, rightfully so. Even right now in another topic here we have a YEC acknowledging that he reads Genesis figuratively with respect to windows of the firmament (see my example below). In my opinion, the true scriptural literalists are in the more progressive theistic evolution crowd, such as those of the biologos foundation (which has a nice podcast btw called the language of God). Which is strange because you would normally think that conservatives would be more in line with scriptural historicity, but oddly enough they appear to have lost their way sometime in the past 2,000 years.
And for Christian scientists and science educators, honestly, I could care less if some atheists think that science precludes God or the supernatural. I don't believe it does. Why should it even matter that some rogue atheists believe in atheistic things? If anything, it would be wise for Christians to double down and claim the scientific advances in the name of God, lest we end up in the dark ages again.
When it comes to understanding existence and creation, the cards are scientifically stacked on the side of geologists and biologists. When it comes to historical studies made through archaeology, again, the cards are heavily stacked in favor in old earth geology's favor. Historical accounts of ancient Hebrew beliefs, and beliefs of cultures around the world of that period of time, again, heavily stacked in favor of a literal interpretation of Genesis in which the earth was flat (and therefore the associated flood was limited in space and time to a region). We have a collection of Old Testament scholars acknowledging the literal historical position in which earth was flat and quite easily identifying scripture which supports this position, again, adding to the weight that YECs are simply wrong.
There's nothing circular about this because these are all independent fields of study coming to an agreed upon answer. Theologians, scientists and historians all coming to an agreed upon conclusion.
The YEC position of course is heavily at odds with geology and biology. And most of us are well familiar with this so I won't bother going into detail on this post.
Further we know that the YEC position is heavily at odds with archeology and records produced by historians as well.
Example:
"At Damaidi in Ningxia, 3,172 cliff carvings dating to 6000–5000 BC have been discovered, "featuring 8,453 individual characters such as the sun, moon, stars, gods and scenes of hunting or grazing".These pictographs are reputed to be similar to the earliest characters confirmed to be written Chinese.[17] Chinese proto-writing existed in Jiahu around 7000 BC,[18] Dadiwan from 5800 BC to 5400 BC, Damaidi around 6000 BC[19] and Banpo dating from the 5th millennium BC. Some scholars have suggested that Jiahu symbols (7th millennium BC) were the earliest Chinese writing system.[18] Excavation of a Peiligang culture site in Xinzheng county, Henan, found a community that flourished in 5,500 to 4,900 BC, with evidence of agriculture, constructed buildings, pottery, and burial of the dead.[20] "
There are modern historical artifacts from various countries that date back greater than 6,000 years and going up to 10,000 years. And when we transition into archeology we have artifacts going back hundreds of thousands of years.
And again, theologically we have a problems with YECism as well, we have YECs figuratively interpreting the original meaning of the OT.
Example:
The Waters Above the Firmament
Here we have a YEC that thinks that the windows of the firmament may have been black holes or that the pillars holding up the earth may have referred to the arms of the Milky Way galaxy viewed in the sky at night. How absurd it is to think that the original authors of Genesis were actually referring to black holes when speaking of windows of the firmament. The YEC position is truly an abomination when we lift the veil off of it's alleged piety.
None of this is circular. The YEC position is simply unreasonable. Whereas the theistic evolution position quite easily makes sense of all of the above. The archaeological and historical records are accurate and the earth is millions of years old in accordance with theistic evolution. The scriptural interpretations suggesting that Genesis was written literally is accurate, Hebrew authors of the oldest books of the OT believed earth was flat (which is a rational position for anyone who doesn't have satellite technology and Google earth), again nothing at odds with theistic evolution, YECs have issue with literal interpretations of various verses in Genesis. And with the findings of superposition of the faunal succession, scientifically, theistic evolution of course thrives with respect to sciences.
Again, nothing circular, nor does theistic evolution preclude God (but rather it hinges on God as creator), contrary to what atheists might say.
Christians agree that modern atheism and ontological naturalism or materialism is an issue. But denying science and backing into the dark world of young earth creationism, is a terrible solution.
