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The belief that everything has a purpose is not very distinctive among Christians, so within a church, what separates young earth believers from the rest of the
by threatofrain 4y ago
The belief that everything has a purpose is not very distinctive among Christians, so within a church, what separates young earth believers from the rest of the church?
- lisper 4y agoTaking seriously the idea that the Bible -- and the book of Genesis in particular -- is the revealed Word of God.
- threatofrain 4y agoThat is not much of a differentiator. Genesis is the most well known book in the entire bible. Accepting that this book is spiritually and formally canonical is a very low bar.
- lisper 4y agoBut that is not what I said.
- threatofrain 4y agoBy spiritually canonical I mean that it's the word of God revealed to man. These are extremely popular beliefs among Christians and not at all differentiating. I personally have not found YEC believers to be morally, spiritually or philosophically distinctive from other Christians. They just have different beliefs and other Christians generally don't care and thus do not challenge them. Of course these are not the same kinds of people who show up to YT debate circuits because that's a very distinctive kind of person.
- lisper 4y agoYou've lost the plot. You asked me: > what separates young earth believers from the rest of the church? and I answered: > Taking seriously the idea that the Bible -- and the book of Genesis in particular -- is the revealed Word of God. The operative phrase there was "taking seriously". Many Christians profess to believe that the Bible is the revealed Word of God, but they don't really take it seriously. They play fast and loose with semantics and hermeneutics. YEC's don't. They believe that if the Bible says that the world was created in six days, then it means what it says: it happened in six 24-hour days. You crunch the numbers on the rest of the Bible's timeline and the result you get is a universe that is ~6000 years old, and so that must be the truth because God wouldn't lie. If the science says otherwise, the science must be wrong.
- ffssffss 4y agoYou typically find these people in Evangelical churches that adhere to a literalist interpretation of the Bible, which is the main distinction from other sects of Christianity. These groups also tend to have out-of-mainstream views on eschatology and their own role in bringing the "end times" in the near future (often they believe it will happen in their lifetime).