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> I don't think it's possible to be a young-earth creationist and still believe in education and progress. The cognitive dissonance is just too great. I have
by mercer 12y ago
> I don't think it's possible to be a young-earth creationist and still believe in education and progress. The cognitive dissonance is just too great.
I have spent more than half my life being an evangelical christian where this was the dominant beliefs. Our youth leader was successful in the fashion industry, our 'worship' leader was a top-level manager at a big bank, and our members included quite a few realtors, the owner of one of the largest jewelry stores, and one of the elders (the non-paid pastors) was a high-level mathematician. I think he even won a prize once for solving some problem.
I'm not saying that there is no correlation between education level or intelligence and 'crazy fundamental religious beliefs', but your statement is just wrong.
If there's one thing I learned from my religious background, it's that humans have an amazing capacity to believe crazy things and be highly skilled, educated and intelligent. I often try to remind myself of this whenever I'm too certain of something, because if I could've been so utterly wrong once, how big are the chances that I could be incredibly wrong again?
And perhaps my mistakes are more subtle and harder to figure out now precisely because I find myself in the majority these days.
- lisper 12y ago> your statement is just wrong That is certainly possible. I don't know any YECs personally (thought I know a few ex-YECs) so all my opinions about them are based on what I've read. But I've read a lot, including a lot of YEC literature, because I do think it's important to understand the opposing point of view. (In fact, if you know any YECs who are open to discussion their beliefs I would be very grateful for an introduction.) I will also say this: individual success has a very high variance, so in a large enough population you will always be able to find outliers. Notwithstanding, I don't find your counterexamples very convincing. Being successful in the fashion industry or the jewelry industry, or even in banking, doesn't actually require a lot of problem-solving skills. Quite the opposite: the requisite skills in those industries are empathy and a willingness to conform to societal norms. A YEC mathematician would certainly be an interesting data point, but such a person would definitely be an outlier. If such people actually exist, I would truly welcome an opportunity to have a chat with one.
- mercer 12y agoI was merely giving a counter-point to your statement that it's not possible to be a young-earth creationist and still believe in education and progress. Clearly, it's possible, and common enough that I have known personally a large number of very highly educated individuals that are YEC, or have similar beliefs (demons, exorcisms, etc.). I do believe there's an inverse correlation between education level and intelligence on the one hand, and fundamentalist beliefs on the other. Whether they're outliers or not is another question, but I think you might be surprised how many of them there are.