In light of Ken’s Ham-fisted performance on “Unbelievable,” here are a few tips for young-earth creationists:
- Your literal interpretation of Genesis 1 is — wait for it — an interpretation.
- Your literal interpretation is one of many interpretations in church history.
- The Gospel does not depend — AT ALL — on your literal interpretation of Gen 1.
- Christians who disagree with you aren’t thereby capitulating to “naturalism”.
- Science currently provides an overwhelming body of evidence that the universe is (much!) older than 6000 years.
- When you present your views as the only legitimate Christian view of Genesis 1, you discredit Christianity and foment unnecessary crises of faith in Christians.
- Your attacks on evolution echo misguided 17th-century geocentrist attacks on heliocentrism (and we know who won that debate).
- When it comes to animal suffering and natural evil, your interpretation of Genesis 1 offers no advantage over old earth creationist and theistic evolutionary views.
- The fact that Genesis 1 refers to “day” and “night” does not entail that the reader should interpret those as literal 24 hour periods.
- A Christian can consistently believe that Genesis 1 is non-literal and that Jesus literally rose from the dead.
