Posted on WWGHA?: Young Earth

I was schooled in Young Earth Creationism, and was a true believer until I got out of Kansas (literally) and moved to Hawaii. Sitting on the latest outcropping of extremely eroded rock in a 1000 mile chain stretching half way to Japan day after day, it began to erode my certianty that this earth could be 6,000 years old. In my journey out of faith a young earth theory was one of the first things to go.

It was the same Genesis account that was insturmental in clearing out the last of my God idea.

Creationists in the 21st century look at Genesis 1-3 and see it through the grid of modern science. We know -- We cannot deny (though some still do http://www.fixedearth.com/), that the earth is a spherical planet, and do you doubt it is in fact orbiting the sun? So we read Genesis 1 and the mental image is of this Creator forming a spherical planet orbiting a yellow star. But an important tool in reading the bible is asking who it was written to, and what did they understand it to mean? Try this thought experiment. Take all the references to a flat earth, four corners, a hard shelled sky/heavens, the nearness of the top of that "Trumanesque" dome that the ancients thought the top near enough that it was reasonable to build a tower that could reach it, and pillars that it all rests on like a table, and for a moment see them as the cosmology of the original reader (rather than poetic imagery), then read the Genesis account afresh through the eyes of th e 2500 BC reader. Does it make sense? If God is responsible for this writing, does he have any clue about the universe as we know it? If God inspired the account, and it is so far off the mark, for what purpose? Can he be trusted? Can he even exist?

For me the answers were no, no, and no. And guess what. My morality didn't evaporate. It improved. For the first time I had to take personal responsibility.

The evangelical and fundamentalist house is built on the only hope for any goodness being God in us, and that comes through following his rules (even if that rule is boiled down to believing in Jesus). Everything else must stand to support this - creation, inneracy, Jesus is God, resurrection, second coming, etc. Take out one piece and the whole house falls (in their minds). They are partially right. Everything is so tightly interconnected and dependent, that everything is at risk if one is taken away. But the ability of man to live a good life and build a good society remains. For reasons they cannot comprehend.