I spent this past weekend in Naperville, Illinois, speaking at the Illinois Christian Home Educators convention. It is a joy to do that convention, because not only are the attendees wonderful, the convention treats its speakers incredibly well. I gave a total of eight talks over three days, which is more than I do at most conferences. However, it was well worth it! As is always the case, I took a lot of questions from the audiences of those talks, but in this post, I want to focus on a question I got from someone while I was at my publisher‘s booth.
A homeschooling father told me that he was taking my advice and reading the works of people with whom he disagreed. I commended him for doing that and said that I wish more people would. He then asked about a statement he read in a Biologos article. He didn’t quote the statement, but for the sake of my readers, I will:
Young-earth creationism is relatively new and as recently as a century ago even fundamentalist Christians saw little reason to reject evolution.
I told him that I had read a statement like that at least once before, but I knew that it was utterly false, so I really didn’t pay much attention to it. In addition, I assumed that since the statement is so easily refuted, it must not be very common. However, he said that he had read it in more than one place. Sure enough, when I later did some surfing, I found essentially the same statement at an old-earth creationist website as well.
Since there are at least two sources that make this claim, I thought I would write an article that shows how utterly false it is.
Continue reading “No, Young-Earth Creationism Isn’t a “New” Idea”