Creationism and Christianity

One frequent response I get when criticizing certain views of creation is that I believe the people who hold those views are wrong, not really Christian, and/or are incredibly stupid. Now there are occasional folks whose intelligence seems questionable, though I prefer to question the intelligence of their arguments, and not their actual IQ. I believe quite intelligent people can hold incorrect views. I’m certain I do. That certainty is fed by the fact that I’ve changed my views on some topics. For example, I was once a young earth creationist myself and I was a precinct worker for Ronald Regan in 1976, you know, the campaign against Gerald Ford, four years before he was actually elected. Now I’m registered independent and lean somewhat more to the left.

My position on Christianity and creationism is simply that the church’s position should be that God is the creator and allow the “how” to be an open question on which people can disagree. I do not want theistic evolution to be doctrine any more than I want young earth creationism to be doctrine. Individual denominations not only have the right to determine their own position, but certainly will, irrespective of what I think. While I think it is unfortunate when certain conservative denominations close the door on this particular issue, it’s a fact of life.

At the same time, I do not intend to be quiet on the issue myself. I believe the young earth creationists are massively wrong, and old earth and ID creationists are wrong to lesser extents and I will go on debating those issues and calling things wrong when I think they are. At the same time I will note that they certainly have no slowed down the propaganda for their own point of view.

In addition, I will note that I object when they call defending their particular view of creation “defending the faith.” This is not because I have a better reason to call my view of the “how” of creation “the faith.” I would be quite wrong to call a defense of theistic evolution “defending the faith.” Thus the Answers in Genesis creation museum is not designed to defend the Christian faith; it is designed to defend one particular view of how and when God created. I regard it as dishonest to portray it otherwise.