What About "Young Earth Creationism"
This is a response I made in comment to a YouTube video that excoriated Young Earth Creationists for their beliefs.
I am a believing Christian, so I understand the need for the YEC in these people. It's to satisfy the alleged contradiction between Genesis and modern science. It partly stems from the six "days" of creation, and partly caused by Archbishop Ussher's calculated date of creation as around 6 pm on 22 October 4004 BC. Ussher calculated this by adding up the ages at death of the early biblical patriarchs, along with the rest of human history as known at that time. Cut the man some slack, he lived in the mid 1600s when science was in a very primitive stage, and most learned men of the Christian world believed the Bible was literally true in all aspects. And God being God, you'd think he'd be able to just whip up the planet and everything on and around it by a flick of his finger. So why not?
The problem with assuming the creation to be literally in accordance to the Bible is that the Bible itself doesn't seem to believe it. In Genesis 1 we get the seven day creation, with Adam and Eve being whipped up on Day 6, and God resting on Day 7. Is that why Adam and Eve got up to mischief, because God wasn't paying attention on Day 7? I know that sounds flippant and possibly borderline irreligious, but it serves to introduce the an important contradiction in the YEC myth. In the very next chapter of Genesis, in Genesis 2:4 the Bible says all that took place in ONE day:
"These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, *in the day* that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens,"
It should be clear from this, among other things, that the Creation story in Genesis is not meant to be literal, but to be either figurative or allegorical. And considering further the calculations of Archbishop Ussher, we must ask if the ages of the patriarchs he used in his calculations were actually _meant_ to be literal? And consider further, that if God could create the heavens and earth in six days, why couldn't he do it in ONE? Does God's omnipotence have limitations? Well, I could argue that his omnipotence does have a limitation, because not even God can count to infinity (because infinity cannot be reached)!
But my point is, if the story in Genesis has any meaning it all, it means that even God has to do things one step at a time. And when you consider the order of things to be created in Genesis 1, it largely follows the progression of life as science knows it to be now. Starting with the triggering of the sun's fusion fire ("Let there be light"), and then, at long last, the creation of Man.
Finally, whether the earth and the solar system is 6,000 years old or 4.5 billion years old, God created it. He revealed at least some of his process of creation in the Bible, and it doesn't really contradict anything science has discovered so far. I say to my fellow Christians: stop trying to put ten gallons into a five gallon jug. A 4.5 billion year old earth is not the work of the Devil. All your Young Earth Creationism does, for no good reason, is to convince logical and intelligent people that your faith is foolish, thus helping to drive them away from Christ.
Yes, yes, Evolution and all that, but however God created humans, by a snap of his finger or through evolution, he's the one who did it, and in the end it still means that God created us. You have better battles to fight, such as the salvation of the human race, so stop insisting upon anti-scientific man-made copes, like Ussher's. As Ben Shapiro likes to say: "Facts before feelings."
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