Dear Christianity:

I am writing this letter in an attempt to explain to you why I gave up Young-Earth Creationism (YEC) when I did.  I gave up on that belief system in college on May 3, 2012, mostly because of the distant starlight problem.  I am willing to listen to any response you may want to give me after you have read this letter thoroughly.  If your response is an attempt to get me to reconsider my decision you might as well not respond. 

One of the main reasons I gave up on YEC is because if I hadn’t given up on it when I did I would’ve become an atheist.  I believe with all my soul that if I hadn’t stumbled across Reasons to Believe (RTB) when I did, I would’ve become an atheist.  RTB saved my faith in Christianity so please don’t insult them.  I am planning on buying some of their apologetics material if I ever get the money to do so.  If and when I do buy some of their material I hope you are willing to read some of it after I have.  I will anticipate a few of your possible responses to this. 

The distant starlight problem, it created in-transit doesn’t work.  How does light that is supposed to be billions of light-years away get to us if Earth is only 6,000–10,000 years old?  The “created in-transit” idea doesn’t work, because there’s evidence that the light actually traveled the entire distance.  The first of this evidence starts with dust in the starlight.  Starlight gathers dust as it is traveling through space, stardust.  Secondly, supernovas are exploding stars.  Stars that have died explode when they die.  Over half of these explosions occurred more than 10,000 years ago.  Not a single non-Christian has ever came to the conclusion that the Earth and the universe within it resides is young.  This is a logical reason to not believe in YEC. 

I will admit that one of the reasons that I gave up YEC was because of something I stumbled across on the internet, RTB.  The guy you supported in YEC, Dr. Kent Hovind, was recently thrown in jail for tax fraud.  January 2007 is when this happened.  He a ten-year sentence and you can look it up for yourself, if you don’t want to take my word for it.  Sadly, his ideals are still being spread by his son, Eric.  Creation Today is the organization that uses to be owned by Kent.  It is now owned by Eric.  Supporting these fanatics is asking for trouble.  I would not call you a fanatic, because I do think you are open minded enough to listen to others.  The recent Ham vs. Nye debate was a disgrace upon Christianity as a whole.  I am saddened that it happened in the first place, it took place on February 2, 2014.  I am glad you didn’t have us watch it in our church.  That was smart of you.  I commend you for that.  Ken Ham uses outdated arguments so often it is deplorable.  I honestly think these people are doing more harm than good for our faith.  Let me give you a scenario, what would you have done: go on believing in a faith that says murder is okay or change my beliefs.  Believing in YEC is the equivalent of doing just that.  I say this because of the actions these fanatics have taken.  I side with Bill Nye, regrettably in that debate because it is the only logical & reasonable side to take.  I hate it when I have side with the non-Christian or atheist, but sometimes to retain any sense of honor you have to.  I have learned that if you want others to listen to you, then you got to listen to them.  This is why I am open-minded.  RTB is doing a good job in their goal.  They want to be respected in the scientific community, so they have regulations on what kind of debates they will do.  I commend them for this kind of behavior and we need more people like them in our faith.  I honestly do believe that the YECs are making a mockery of Christianity and I urge you to reconsider your support of them.  They will make our faith go down and down in the view of society if allowed to continue. 

It would be wise of you to change your support and position to support people like Dr. Hugh Ross and Richard Deem.  Dr. Hugh Ross heads RTB and Richard Deem heads God and Science.  Another good group to support is Faith Facts.  All of these people have websites if you want you can Google them.  I would suggest you do that.  If you have trouble finding these sites yourself I will provide them right here: reasons.org, faithfacts.org, and godandscience.org.  I do support Wikipedia; we need more of this out there.  I don’t get why more people don’t support this.  I have glanced at RationalWiki a few times, but it is not one of my favorites.  It is headed by atheists & anti-religious people and makes me wonder what is wrong with our society.  Please respond to this I would love to hear your advice.  Answers in Genesis (AiG), which you’ve probably heard of, is headed by Ken Ham and is dead wrong, because it says one thing while RTB says another, so who am I suppose to believe.  AiG says that the ancients do believe in a young Earth and universe.  When I say ancients I mean ancient Hebrews and first century A.D. Christians.  RTB says the ancients do not believe in a young Earth.  So how am I supposed to know who is right?  RTB or AiG, who is it.  If you can give me a logical reason as to why AiG is right I will listen.  I probably won’t change my mind, but I will listen.  My gut tells me that RTB is right.  I will go with RTB until they are proven wrong, good luck with that.  I know you will try to tell me that AiG is right, but I want to hear an explanation as to why.  RTB has already given their explanation as to why they’re right and I won’t reiterate it here for you, go look it up.  I dare you to do that.  Google it, yes I trust Google.  Why shouldn’t I trust Google?  Google is the reason I stumbled across RTB, and RTB saved my faith in God.  So that is why I trust Google, but I do not trust it with every aspect, because Google has given me some wrong answers.  That is to be expected, though, because it’s run by humans.  Only God can be right on everything!!  I will always trust God, with all my soul!!  I will love to hear your explanation as to why RTB is wrong.  I have yet to hear response to RTB from AiG that isn’t slanderous, so good luck.  Funny thing is RTB has never said anything slanderous against AiG.  So who’s the bad guy here?  RTB is way too nice to use slanderous language from what I’ve seen.  If you want to say RTB has been slanderous towards AiG please point it to me and I’ll see if I agree with you, good luck with that.  I highly doubt RTB is wrong, but there’s a slim possibility to that.  I also highly doubt that AiG is right, but there’s also a slim possibility to that, as well.  So good luck with trying to prove AiG right and RTB wrong!!  In my mind RTB is right & AiG is wrong, but I am sure that in yours it’s the other way around, so good luck trying to change my mind.  You probably won’t change my mind, but good luck.  Dr. Hugh Ross is too nice to say anything slanderous, but apparently Ken Ham isn’t.  I’ve seen the debates between Ross and Ham; never once in any of those debates did Ross ever say anything slanderous towards Ham.  Was that the same for Ham, no!  Ham was slanderous towards Ross every chance he got, which is deplorable.  Ham even went so far as to say that Ross and him believe in different gods, which is despicable.  Everything I have seen tells me that Ross and Ham believe in the same god, our God.  You can look these debates up for yourself, just Google them.  I won’t reiterate the entire debates right here for you, you’ll have to look them up for yourself.  This is because I don’t want to misquote anyone.  I’d expect you’d do the same, if you were in my shoes.  Why do you support despicable people like Ham and AiG?  These people have been deplorable in their actions.  When compared to the actions of RTB they look scientifically illiterate.  From the way I look at it RTB takes the Bible more literally than AiG could ever dream of doing.  I say this because RTB takes the Bible both literally and consistently.  Consistency is something the YECs are lacking in.  I know you have heard of AiG, because I distinctly remember seeing their name pasted all over the Sunday school materials for the little ones.  So I know you know who I am referring to. 

Rebellion against my father is not one of the reasons I gave up belief in YEC.  My dad, Rodney, still believes in YEC, and I didn’t give it up to rebel against him.  You can believe that I did all you want, but that doesn’t make it true.  One way to test this is, if I ever come back to faith in YEC than you’re right, but if not then you’re wrong.  I wouldn’t keep your hopes up on that, I do not plan on ever going back to believing in YEC.  Contrary to popular belief, believing in an old-Earth does not negate Genesis 1-3; it just means we read those chapters differently than you.  I do believe in a literal Adam and Eve.  Nor does this belief negate the Noah Flood; it just means we don’t believe in a global flood.  I agree that belief in Christianity does require belief in the literal and historical Adam and Eve, but it doesn’t require belief in a global flood or a 6,000 to 10,000 year old Earth.  Progressive creationists, like me, accept the ancient age for the Earth and universe, as well as believe in a literal Adam and Eve and the Noah Flood.  Regarding the Noah Flood, we do believe it was “worldwide,” but not global.  Back then there was a difference between something being worldwide and something being global, now there isn’t because the population of humans covers the entire globe.  Back then the population of humans was not spread to every corner of the Earth.  Even though it was possible for Adam and Eve to populate the entire planet, this doesn’t mean they did.  The rampant sin back then prevented the entire globe from being populated by humans.  So the human population back then was locked to the Mesopotamia, Arabia, and North eastern Africa areas.  Progressive creationists, like me, believe that humans have only existed for the last 200,000 years, before that God was playing around with the other animals.  That is because before that we were still in Genesis 1-3.  Have you ever heard of Mitochondrial Eve and Y-chromosomal Adam?  If you haven’t I suggest you do the research on them, because I believe those refer to the biblical Adam and Eve.  The earliest migrations of humans occurred about 80,000 years ago.  So any kind of flood that would have affected all of humanity, like the Noah Flood, would have had to happen between 100,000 to 90,000 years ago.  Again I suggest you do your own research this, and don’t take my word for it.  I also suggest you look at more than just what AiG has to say on the subjects.  Please, I urge you to look at some other points of view, like I have.  If you do ever do the research on this, I suggest you look into what RTB and God and Science have to say on the subjects.  I hope you will see the light and come to realize, like I have, that YEC is the problem and not the solution.  Though that hope is probably in vain, I will continue to pray for you and the rest of my YEC brethren.  I know you are most likely praying the exact opposite.  I urge you to stop praying, because I will probably never start believing in a young-Earth ever again.  So it is a futile effort. 

You will be happy to learn that I do not believe in macro-evolution or abiogenesis.  Abiogenesis is the belief that life came from non-life.  Macro-evolution is the belief that one kind of animal can evolve into another kind of animal, for example dinosaurs evolving into birds or great apes evolving into humans.  I just thought you would like to know that.  Christians that do believe in that kind of heresy call themselves theistic evolutionists or evolutionary creationists.  The later term is the biggest oxymoron I have heard in a long time.  As I understand the only difference between the two is that theistic evolutionists don’t believe in a literal and historical Adam and Eve, whereas evolutionary creationists do.  Also I am pretty sure neither of these heretical groups beliefs in the Noah Flood.  The ministry that these heretics support is called BioLogos.  As you can see, unlike RTB, I don’t restrain myself from calling these people heretics.  I am also praying for these people to see the light and give up their heretical beliefs.  While we are on the topic of heresy I would like to point out that RTB does consider Jehovah Witnesses and Mormonism to be heresies, although they refuse to use the word “heresy” themselves for politically correct reasons.  I do not get why they even care about political correctness, I don’t.  Catholics are my exception to the rule, I don’t call them heretics only because I have a lot of Catholics in my family and I don’t want to offend them.  I actually do accept some Catholic beliefs myself, like the belief in purgatory.  I do believe in purgatory, but that is because of my late grandmother.  If you don’t know what purgatory is then I suggest you look it up.  Basically it is a waiting room between heaven and Earth, which believers enter after they die.  Contrary to popular belief that I have heard, it is not a back door into heaven.  Non-believers cannot enter purgatory upon death.  I had to clarify that just so that you would understand that I don’t believe in any way that a non-believer can get into heaven without having accepted Jesus Christ.  I completely agree that you do have to accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior in order to have any hopes of entering heaven upon your death.  I just wanted to make that clear. 

If you do the research on the Noah Flood will be surprised to hear what God and Science have to say on the subject.  If you read the ending of that true story delicately you’ll see that if that flood had been global then the entire planet would be one big desert today.  This is what comes from taking the Bible in that kind of literal sense.  The only reason the Noah Flood is remembered as a “worldwide” flood is because it affected all of humanity, not because it covered the entire globe.  It did not cover the entire globe, even though YECs like to believe otherwise.  You can continue to believe that all you want, but it will never make it true.  This is especially true considering all the evidence out there says there was never a global flood.  However, there is evidence in our own DNA that does support the Noah Flood.  For instance, there is a bottle neck on the Y-chromosome.  This bottle neck dates back to about 90,000 to 60,000 years ago, which is fine considering the earliest migrations were 80,000 years ago.  Noah’s boat did not have to carry every animal on the planet!!  It only had to carry the ones in the area of the flood.  The area of the flood was Mesopotamia, Arabia, and North eastern Africa.  The reason the boat was as big as it was, was to store food for the animals.  I agree that the only people to survive were the eight people on boat: Noah, his wife, Noah’s kids, and their wives.  Noah had three sons: Shem, Ham, and Japheth.  Humanity didn’t spread across the globe until after the Tower of Babel.  That true story is normally ignored by most YECs.  This tends to annoy me.  I am glad that you did not ignore that particular part of the Bible.  This is a good thing, because it shows me that you have read of the Bible than Ken Ham, which is a good thing.  I wish that Ken Ham would just give up already and take AiG with him if he ever does, but I doubt this will ever happen. 

Note that I do believe in the recent creation of humanity.  I don’t believe that humans and dinosaurs ever existed at the same time.  That belief is the most ridiculous belief I have ever heard, and I regret that I ever did believe that kind of hogwash.  I was young and naïve back then so I need to forgive myself on that naïveté.  I would love to see our church do a thorough study of Job, Isaiah, and Psalms.  The leviathan was clearly a crocodile.  The behemoth was clearly a hippopotamus.  The unicorns are clearly referring to what we today call, rhinoceroses.  I know you would probably only agree with the last one.  I can site these verses if you want me to.  The leviathan is mention in Job 3:8, Job 41:1, Job 41:12, Psalm 74:14, Psalm 104:26, and Isaiah 27:1.  The behemoth is only mentioned in Job 40:15.  The unicorns are mentioned on nine different occasions in: Numbers 23:22, Numbers 24:8, Deuteronomy 33:17, Job 39:9, Job 39:10, Psalm 22:21, Psalm 29:6, Psalm 92:10, and Isaiah 34:7.  The Noah Flood is in Genesis 6–9.  The Tower of Babel is in Genesis 11:1–9.  There we go, now I have all my verses sited. 

Belief in YEC turns God into a liar and deceiver.  What would he be lying about?  That’s a good question; let’s start with age of the Earth and universe, and you might as well tack the existence of dinosaurs on there as well and other assorted prehistoric animals.  Let’s start with the universe, since it’s easier to explain, first.  He would be lying about the existence of distant stars and the occurrence of distant supernovae.  Any source of light that is more than 6,000 to 10,000 light-years would be considered lying, in this case.  Now we can more on to the harder one, the age of the Earth.  Have you ever noticed how the skeletons are organized in the strata?  This is because of history, it’s like a storybook.  The Noah Flood explanation doesn’t work cuz it does not explain away this extremely neat and unnecessary organization.  The funny thing is that it’s been proven that a flood would not cause this type of fossilization and strata organization.  We could also say that He is lying about the existence of any kind of life that is older than 6,000 to 10,000 years old.  It being difficult to find trees that are older than 4,000 years old doesn’t prove that a flood happened.  By the way, we have found trees that are older and still living than 4,000 years old, which is why I said, “it being difficult,” instead of, “it being impossible.”  Besides, even if it was impossible to find trees older than 4,000 years old this would not prove the occurrence of a global flood that many years ago, it would just prove that trees don’t live longer than 4,000 years.  I would like to take this opportunity to reiterate that I do believe in a Noah Flood, just not a global flood.  Since we’re on the subject, have ever notice that every time the word “worldwide” is used in the Bible it is quickly followed by a clarification that this is not referring to the entire globe.  You can actually check this for yourself, there’s an article on this on the God and Science website.  The title of the article titled The Genesis Flood: Why the Bible Says It Must be Local.  My personal opinion on the article is: good article, bad title.  I under why Mr. Deem titled it like, but I still think it was a bad title.  Awhile back I even posted this article on my Facebook.  It isn’t pointed out in this article, but the clarification thing can also be noted when the Noah Flood is mention in the New Testament: Matthew 24:38–39; Luke 17:27; 1 Peter 3:20; 2 Peter 2:4–5, 2:9–10, 3:5–6; Jude 1:6, 1:11; and Revelation 4:3.  The existence of dinosaurs and other assorted prehistoric animals is a lie if you believe in YEC.  You might as well just say that the skeletons were placed there by Lucifer as a joke.  It would save a lot of time and effect, instead of going into this convoluted explanation about how man and prehistoric animals existed at the same time.  This explanation has been proven false on multiple occasions.  Let me take this opportunity to define prehistoric, because some YECs don’t understand this word.  Prehistoric simply means any history that occurred before written history.  Cave paintings do not count as written history.  If man and prehistoric animals had existed at the same time, humans wouldn’t have survived to this day, and I would not be writing this letter.  That is because I would not exist, because I’m a human; nor would be reading this letter, because you’re a human; in fact all of written history would not have occurred.  We say this because it is quite obvious that most of the prehistoric animals were carnivores.  Yes I do believe carnivores existed before the first sin, because animals aren’t subject to God’s law.  The idea that all animals were herbivores before the Noah Flood is disproven by just looking at their teeth.  There is no way that animals with those kinds of teeth would’ve been herbivores, it just doesn’t work.  I suggest you read Psalms before criticizing me for believing that carnivores existed before the Noah Flood & before sin.  This is because there several Psalms that praise God for giving carnivores their prey.  These Psalms wouldn’t make sense if being carnivorous was bad.  The whole it’s bad to be carnivorous thing is just an appeal to human emotion.  RTB believe has several articles on this.  I suggest you read them.  One of my favorite articles is Thank God for Carnivores.  Yes I also believe in death before sin.  RTB believe also has articles on this as well, and I suggest you read them too.  Death is a good thing, because death is what prevented overpopulation.  If death didn’t exist before sin then sin wouldn’t have came into existence in the first place, because overpopulation would’ve prevented it.  Without death before Adam & Eve would’ve been unable to sin, because of overpopulation.  I shouldn’t have to tell you what would be overpopulated.  Now I know what you are thinking, isn’t lying and deceiving Lucifer’s job not Jehovah’s.  You are right, it is.  This is one of the reasons I gave up YEC.  I didn’t realize this until started to question my beliefs.  This is not too unusual, because sometimes you don’t realize you’re in the dark until someone shines a light.  Example, bats don’t realize it’s daytime unless they exist the cave during daytime.  A similar phenomenon occurs with humans when they start to question long-held beliefs.  In questioning my beliefs I realized this, progressive creationism actually makes God seem more powerful and more glorious, not less.  He also becomes more caring and loving.  I can show how too.  Example, weddings are planned for days on end and in the end they only last hours also we spend thousands of dollars on them.  This shows that the family cares and loves about the people that are getting married.  This can be compared to the Creation in that the amount of time God took to create shows how much He cares and loves about it.  OEC stands for old-Earth creationism.  You can use this in response to me, if you so wish. 

YEC is what makes Christians afraid of science.  OEC encourages critical thinking and makes us Christians understand that science is not the enemy.  Science doesn’t conflict with the Bible, but we are allowing creationist ministries like AiG & Creation Today to spoon feed us skewed facts and discourage critical thinking.  This needs to stop, now.  It needs to be replaced with ministries that encourage critical thinking and us the truth, like RTB and God and Science.  Society will go on thinking that we Christians are scientifically illiterate nincompoops if we continue on this track.  This track will lead destruction of the church.  I’m telling you if I hadn’t stumbled across RTB when I did I would be an atheist now.  I would have left the faith behind, if I hadn’t found out that these kinds of ministries exist.  If I had never learned of existence of OEC I would no longer be a Christian.  I would be a non-believer.  Why is this?  This is because of the stain that YEC has left on the church.  This stain needs to be erased and it needs to be erased now.  Science is the product of our world view.  We have allowed atheists to steal it from us and we need to take it back, now.  It is ridiculous that we have allowed this to happen.  This is what I think needs to happen to that Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky; it needs to be destroyed.  It isn’t at all helping Christianity, just hurting it.  It is promoting the downfall of Christianity in the eyes of our society, especially among non-believers.  What would do Christianity some good is if we just turned that building into a shelter for the homeless of the state of Kentucky.  There are 5,230 homeless people in that state, I’m sure they could use the shelter.  We need more ministries that want to promote critical thinking.  I also want to see more ministries that are there for helping the homeless people of America.  If that was to happen society’s view on Christianity would be a lot more positive than it is now.  Dr. Hugh Ross said it best when he said that the church should never be less than a school.  I think our churches have become less than schools.  They are just turning into areas of gathering where we just spread scientific illiteracy.  We need to stop raising our Christian youths to be afraid of science, but to incorporate it into our beliefs.  AiG is teaching our youths to fear science by skewing the facts and feeding us misinformation.  This would be obvious to you if you would just do your own research on what they are telling us to believe when it comes to science.  Helping the homeless people is something Christians should be doing anyways, so I would like to see more of it in our churches and less of this hogwash. 

I do believe in the doctrine of Creation.  I do believe in a literal and historical Adam and Eve.  I don’t believe in a 6,000–10,000 year old Earth.  Do you think God honestly cares how old we humans think the Earth is?  The answer to this question is obviously, no.  YEC is hurting our faith, because it is getting more and more people to leave the faith each year.  I would’ve left the faith had my circumstances been different.  These small issues are sidetracking us from the more important issues at hand.  We need to be more concerned with winning people over for Christ and less concerned with this hogwash.  I do believe in a literal and historical Noah Flood.  I don’t believe it was global, but it was worldwide.  Worldwide means the event described effect most, if not all of humanity; however global means the event affects the entire planet.  Therein lays the big difference between these two words.  These two words have only become synonymous in recent years.  Retroactively applying these meanings to these words will only hurt Christianity in the long run.  This will never benefit the goal to spread the gospel.  Us Christians need to learn how to prioritize!  Once we have won the majority of the world over for Christ then we can worry about the little things.  YEC shows a god that is sloppy and rushed to get everything done, whereas OEC shows a god of love and care that worked hard on what he created.  Which one better describes Yahweh?  I like to believe it is OEC. 

Sincerely,

J.S.