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The following is a set of posts on the Evolution Reflector at Calvin College that began on April 21, 1998. The first is a response by Ed Brayton to another post. I reproduce it here by permission of the author. This and a couple of follow up notes illustrates the problem young-earth creationists present to those who become familiar with science and scientific data. I thank Ed Brayton for his permission to post this here. Ed does want it clearly understood that young-earth creationism was not the only reason for his rejection of Christianity. Christians need to understand that the effects of young-earth creationism are not beneficial.
Ed Brayton wrote:
"Ron, I think you missed the point of Glenn's post completely. Your "counter story" had nothing to do with the point he was making by telling the Jim Lippard story. His point was that by pushing young earth creationism, some Christians are pushing scientifically literate people away from Christianity. Now I'm not a Christian and I don't have much of a stake in this one way or the other, but I don't think there is any doubt that Glenn is right about this. When a YEC claims that the earth was created 6000 years ago and there was a global flood 4500 years ago that killed off everyone, most people with a hint of a science education begin to snicker. When those claims are then backed up by absurd arguments like the lunar dust story and "hydrodynamic sorting", the snicker becomes a full-blown guffaw. From that point on, the chances of that person taking Christianity seriously decrease dramatically. Glenn managed to get a good education in geology and maintain his faith as a Christian, but most do not. I can tell you from my own experience that he is right about this. As a Christian teenager, I swallowed the YEC line completely. Then I began asking questions and not getting good answers. A youth pastor encouraged me to research the answers for myself. I was shocked to find out that most of what was written in all of those ICR pamphlets I had been reading was nonsense. My faith never recovered. Unlike Glenn, I could not reconcile the clear meaning of the biblical text with what I knew of science. I don't accept his attempts at reconciling the two things at this point, but I respect him for trying, and for being intellectually honest enough to not just bury his head in the sand and say, "Evidence be damned, the bible says it and that's all that matters", or "Science is just a lie of the devil, so I don't need to understand it to know it is wrong". His faith, even if I do not share it, is at least considered and not blind. "
In response to the above I asked: " Let me ask something about your story. Why couldn't you accept the generally accepted liberal Christian view that early Genesis is 'true' but non-historical?"
Ed Brayton replied:
"I can't accept that simply because I don't know what "true" could possibly mean other than "historically true", and because, once divorced from its historical validity, the story has no more claim to being "true" than the Dogon creation myth or the Hindu creation myth or any other. I don't want anyone to think that I went from being a Christian to being a deist only because I rejected the historical validity of Genesis in regards to creation and the flood. This was only one small part of my intellectual "evolution". I should also say that I think that there is a reasonable and rational case to be made for Christianity, though I do not find it compelling. I am not one of those who thinks that all Christians are stupid, ignorant or dishonest; in fact, I frequently find myself doing battle with those who hold such an opinion. Like most young people leaving Christianity, I went through a phase where I was rather rabidly anti-Christian and considered myself an atheist, but I grew out of it after a while. "