The things I do to try and comprehend the mental workings of creationists…I wasted 16 minutes on a video of Andrew Snelling explaining why he is a creationist. To make a too-long story short and cut right to the main point, he doesn’t. Not at all. I sat there waiting for him to get to the point and explain how he got to that point, but he doesn’t. Or maybe he does right at the beginning — he was brought up in a very religious family, was thoroughly indoctrinated into Christianity, and then discovered how neat-o rocks are on a family vacation, so he tried to force-fit geology into his young-earth, biblical “literalist” point of view. When he commits to studying geology, starting a geology club in high school, he seems to approach it from a stamp-collecting point of view, completely dismissing the idea of mechanisms behind geology.
When he discovers Whitcomb & Morris’s The Genesis Flood, he thinks all the questions have been resolved and is done. I remember stumbling across that book in high school, reading the first chapter, and shoving it back on the library shelf with contempt. It’s a garbage book. The very first sentence is In harmony with our conviction that the Bible is the infallible Word of God, verbally inspired in the original autographs, we begin our investigation of the geographical extent of the Flood with seven Biblical arguments in favor of its universality.
Basically, they’re claiming that they’re going to demonstrate the validity of their premises by reciting a statement of their premises. Even a teenager should be able to see the problem with that approach, and they only fail if they’re blinded by their own priors.
Snelling isn’t capable of thinking that way. He’s just soaking in dogma.
If watching the video is a waste of time, definitely don’t dive into the comments. There is even a thread debating young or old earth creationism. Ugh.
I am amused by all the creationists whining that the Scofield Bible is heretical, though. Right. One of the founding pillars of 20th century fundamentalism, the source of all that gullible nonsense about dispensationalism that they believe…now an abomination and work of the devil, for all the wrong reasons, of course.
d3zd3z @1,
It could be amusing to play accomodationist for both sides. Say, “I believe the earth is 4.3 billion years old, but God didn’t create any life until 6000 years ago.” Then sit back and watch the sputtering commence.
“The Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it.” Except that the Bible doesn’t say it — it comes from the Ken Hams and the Ray Comforts, who make their millions grifting biblical lies to their poorly informed, low-IQ followers. And when they can’t positively deny the existence of billion-year-old fossils, they claim that God or Satan planted freshly-made ones to test their faith or lead them astray.
Is it any wonder that America is the laughing stock of the world? But more tragically, a laughing stock with nuclear weapons controlled by the likes of Trump and Pence.
Short version: dog bites man. You didn’t expect anything else, I may hope.
Will the Real Dr Snelling Please Stand Up? (before he worked at AiG)
One of them believes that the Universe is around 6000 years old and that Noah’s Flood was a real worldwide event that deposited a lot of sediment that formed a lot of rock strata. The other one believes that the Earth is much older than that, with sediments deposited over its long history.
@Sean Boyd
My “accomodationist” argument is that God and Heaven are in another dimension (according to them). They kind of have to agree if they believe someone’s “soul” goes to another place after they die, because it’s obviously not here in this plane of existence. Earth is the “material plane” that humans were banished to; therefore the whole creationist controversy is really barking up the wrong tree. …Besides, didn’t Christians say they’re “not of this earth” anyways? :-D
Nothing says “rigorous scientific study” like “infallible Word of God”….
I worked with a guy who did his PhD at the same time in the same institution as Snelling. Apparently his views were so noxious that other students called him Andrew Smelling. This guy by the way is also a committed Christian heavily invloved in his church. We both worked in a government department nad he had an opportunity to travel to Antarctica and later on the JOIDES Resolution for research in the Indian Ocean. He hjad to get permission from the Minister in charge of our department. This guy was a lay preacher and sought his endorsement of proposals to teach creationism in school science classes. He didn’t get it. The minister was later move to a plum agent-general’s posting in London as part of a governing party’s factional attempt to bring in one of their preferred candidates. The minister responsible for that was sacked for corruption and the lay preacher later lost his cushy taxpayer funded sinecure because he employed his boyfriend as a driver to chauffer him around the sights of Europe on the taxpayers dime. Ahh the corruption of the religious right.
Isn’t this post a bit like going to a vegetarian restaurant and then complaining there is no meat on the menu?
wanderingelf, is it?
I’m not about to watch it, but were I to do so, I would expect an actual explanation.
More like going to a vegetarian restaurant and then discovering they don’t have vegetarian dishes, taking the OP at its word (I’m not about to invest time watching the source video).
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The perplexing thing is that it’s very easy to accept science and Creationism (not rational, but easy) by believing Godddit but very very sneakily.
cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_BioLogos_Foundation for an example.
Ah, the Genesis flood. That brings back memories. I found it in high school only I finished it with a growing sense of horror. It is what cemented my atheism.