Baptist pastor Chuck Queen, in an excellent article exhorting theologically and scientific evangelicals to liberate their brothers and sisters from tyoung earth creationism indirectly confirms the influence YEC and evolution denialism have had on Christianity:
Harvard theologian Harvey Cox tells about the time the student leader of Harvard’s atheist group on campus took one of his theology classes. This otherwise bright student wrote a very weak paper in which he sought to discredit the God of the Christian and Jewish faiths by attacking and dismantling a literal interpretation of the Genesis flood story. He thought that by proving the story could not have happened the way the story says it happened, he would thus disprove the reality of God.
Dr. Cox said to the student, “Don’t you know a story when you read one?”
Educated evangelicals know that the creation stories were never intended to be history lessons or science reports, because the Bible is not a history or science book.
While I would disagree with any assertion that there is absolutely no history in the early chapters of Genesis, it is true that as the Bible was written to a pre-scientific community, we should not expect anything resembling modern science in it. Once again, Genesis is ancient cosmology, not modern science.
One of course cannot blame the atheist for attacking YEC - it is sound strategy to attack something at its weakest point first. What is amusing however is the naive arrogance which comes with thinking that attacking a version of Christianity such as YEC somehow equates to overturning 2000 years of Christianity. Once again, it shows that YECs and the atheists are far closer to each other than they realise.
One of course cannot blame the atheist for attacking YEC - it is sound strategy to attack something at its weakest point first. What is amusing however is the naive arrogance which comes with thinking that attacking a version of Christianity such as YEC somehow equates to overturning 2000 years of Christianity. Once again, it shows that YECs and the atheists are far closer to each other than they realise.
Full article here.
