Two years ago, my "About" page contained this sentence:
(It also had much worse design and color schemes, and the picture of me made me look like a pixie, but that's not the point.)
Now? It omits that line.
What changed?
My beliefs did. I'm not a Young Earth Creationist anymore. I'm not even a Creationist anymore.
I'm still a Christian, of course, and my faith is stronger now than it was then. But what happened?
I became a YEC by reading, and learning. I read some books by some pretty smart people, and those convinced me. I didn't shy away from testing my beliefs, either. I could argue and defend my point fairly well. I visited the Creation Museum and Ark Encounter. I was On Fire For A Young Earth.
But then... I starting hitting objections. New problems with my ideas, which I hadn't encountered before. Stuff backing up radiometric dating, establishing a coherent evolutionary lineage from extinct theropods to modern ones, and showing the thermodynamic implausibility of a worldwide flood producing the fossil record.
I tried to find answers to these problems, but none were forthcoming. I messaged Answers In Genesis requesting counterarguments as a last resort, knowing that's not really their job. No answers could be found, though, and I was forced to come to grips with the brutal truth: my version of truth was deeply, profoundly flawed. Completely wrong.
Turns out, there's no evidence that a global flood covered the entire world 4,000 years ago. Turns out, my receding moon arguments were based on miscalculations corrected decades ago. Turns out, the scientific community isn't beginning to dump Darwinism. Turns out, there is a unified theory of human evolution.
But what do mature people do when one of their most strongly-held beliefs is shattered?
They move on. They keep searching for truth.
If you are interested in learning more about the modern scientific community's understanding of earth history and evolution, the talk.orgins archive is an amazing resource.
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