(October 13, 2013 at 6:20 pm)Crossless1 Wrote: Just out of curiosity, are there any forum members who now identify as atheists but used to believe YEC claims about scientific evidence and Biblical interpretation?
I was a YEC, since JWs believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible. Well, "literal" still allows room for interpretation. JWs do not believe that the world is 6,000 years old. They believe it is approximately 42,000 years old, because they claim that each "day" in Genesis is 6,000 years long. Because if you're going to interpret some ancient book of fairy tales, why not double down?
In any case, YEC is based on a rejection of a lot of settled or established science and scientific knowledge. Grace is being pretty obvious here in regards to that; she betrays a near-total ignorance of evolution and she openly rejects any science that she cannot use to promote her beliefs. Scientific research and understanding has progressed too far, IMO, for YEC to be a subtle approach.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
