Trixie writes:
Why is it that most branches of science can be embraced by Christians without aspertions being cast on their faith, but evolutionary sciences can't?
I disagree. I think that a YEC rejects an enormous amount of information, not just in the evolutionary sciences.
Besides almost all of biology, geology, anthropology, etc. they decide that somehow, in some way, there is something wrong with the general consensus in:
* almost all of Astronomy, from cosmology to planetary geology
* almost all of physics, from the relativity and the speed of light to quantum physics and radioactive decay
* petrochemistry (where does oil come from? why are some strains of oil different from others?)
* mathematics (We can show that Supernova 1987A happened 170,000 years ago via nothing more complicated than trig)
In addition, anyone who believes in a global Noachian flood as described in the Bible has problems with the general consensus in the following topics, irregardless of whether they are OEC or YEC:
* geology (rock formations don't match flood formations, Grand Canyon, etc.)
* biology (how much food would be necessary? how much space would they take up? how much heat would they give off?)
* art history (Hebraic influence on the Cycladic culture?)
* history (the pyramids built 300 years before the flood, among many others)
* archeology (Jomon continuity?)
* mathematical biology (how large was the population after the flood?)
* linguistics (watch a professional linguist sputter when they are told that Babel explains all)
And that's ignoring controversial issues like the popularity of the Documentary Hypothesis in Jewish Studies departments.
In short, I think that YEC's most openly reject the evolutionary science, but must ignore an awful lot of the general scholarly consensus in order to find support for their intrepretation of the Bible. Note that none of these general consensuses have to conflict with the Bible, merely one interpretation of it, the fundamentalist one[1].
As both Trixie and I demonstrate, it is not that difficult to be both a Christian and a believer in evolution, a 13.7 billion year old universe, etc. So why do some people have such difficulty comprehending that? I think for some people it because they simply can't comprehend how anyone could worship in a different way than they themselves do.
A good friend is a Fundamentalist YEC and she can't understand how my (Episcopalian) faith works at all. To her the Bible as a whole has a binary truth value. Either every word of the Bible is the literal truth [2] or it's all a bunch of stories made up by some guys who didn't know anything. The idea that stories could be told *for their value as stories* rather than *for their value as truth* seems to elude her, no matter how often I try and explain it. She always comes back to a binary truth value, when I want to assign it a 0.8 or a 0.6 or whatever.
[1]: In a different thread, now closed, a discussion came up of what a Fundamentalist Christian was. Anyone who adheres to the Five Fundamentals, as defined by the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in 1910 would be the standard definition I would think.
[2]: Except where it isn't and it's a metaphor- no to a woman must cover her head in church, but yes to women not in a position of authority over men in the church in any way (including voting on issues of general concern to the church body!!), in other words, what is a metaphor and what is the literal truth seems, to me, to be rather arbitrary.
Note: This message has a high potential for thread drift. If anyone wants to dispute one of my claims about YEC or Flood believers rejecting the generally accepted consensus it would probably be wise to go to a different thread.
™ Version 4.2
