I was visiting my fiancee Sarah at Northern Michigan University in Marquette. While there I met a man named Jason who was dating Sarah's roommate, Rachel. Jason was currently captivated by a Creationist by the name of Kent Hovind. While the ladies were out doing other things, he and I spent time together watching Kent's videos. I was intrigued and continued watching them after I returned to Rochester.
I watched video after video. I believed every word that came out of Kent's mouth until he mentioned an early Christian bishop by the name of Irenaeus. Kent claimed that Irenaeus' doctrine of theosis was identical to the one taught by the Latter Day Saints - something most Christians would consider heresy. Irenaeus believed that Christians continue to grow to be more and more like Jesus even after death. This is a doctrine that may surprise Evangelicals, but it is not heretical and very different from the LDS teaching that humans will themselves become Gods. I understood Irenaeus' doctrine because I'd actually read his works. It was quite clear to me that Mr. Hovind hadn't. And that's where everything fell apart.
I started looking at the sources Mr. Hovind shared. Upon inspection, they appeared suspect. They were often websites that read like something out of the National Inquirer. Perplexed, I decided to visit my science teachers. I first went to an earth scientist who taught at Rochester. I shared with him the earth science that Mr. Hovind taught concerning dinosaur fossils next to human footprints - a common evidence used by creationists. "I've visited that site," he said. "Those are not human footprints." I was also told that my teacher had started out as a young earth creationist, but that geology had overwhelmed him. "This happens a lot," He told me. "It even happens at creationist schools." He gave me some fraction of how many people left a particular creationist geology school believing in an old earth. I was shocked then. I'm not now.
I then went to my biology teacher to ask her about evolution. She immediately pulled out an article about present day examples of evolution among bacteria. She explained to me that evolution not only happened, but continues to happen today and that we have plenty of evidence of this. Both of these people were and continue to be firm believers in Jesus. My former biology teacher prays for me from time to time to this day. There's a good chance that she's actually reading this. Hi!
I did, around this time, also subscribe to Kenneth Ham's Answers in Genesis newsletter. It didn't really grab my attention. Ham's primary answer is that we should have faith. He uses other "evidences," but it's clear that his faith is the guiding factor. Blind faith seeking justification was always a non-starter for me. His newsletters sat mostly unread.
It wasn't much later that I sat in a Genesis class where I was taught that Genesis 1 was a polemic against polytheism, rather than against Darwin. Who would have expected that a document written thousands of years ago was concerned with something other than modern science - obviously I'd not considered it. It's the questions we fail to ask the leave us with the wrong answers.
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For those who are interested, the creation story in Genesis 1 is better read with this understanding.
Here are the days enumerated side by side:
(1) Light and Darkness (4) Sun, Moon and Stars
(2) Sky and Sea (5) Birds and Fish
(3) Land (6) Land animals, creeping things, plants, humanity
You can take time to see this for yourself. Notice also that the text several times mentions "all kinds" and "every." I used a literal translation in the link so that readers will see the words "Greater Light" and "Lesser Lights" rather than "Sun, moon and stars." The reason for this is that the words "Sun and Moon" are named for deities in the Phoenician language, of which Hebrew is a dialect. So instead of saying those names, the author omits them. You'll only see this in a literal translation, but it's something contemporary readers would have noticed. They would have understood it as the attack on polytheism that it was.
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After a while, I came to trust the scientists and distrust the creationists. I came to understand evolution. This didn't create an immediate problem for my faith. Indeed, much of Christianity believes in evolution. I came to find it odd that so many of the Christians who think that "Believing in evolution is heresy," absolutely love C.S. Lewis. It's still true today, and it's still weird. Most of them only read Mere Christianity, the Screw Tape Letters and his children's novels, so they don't understand that he wasn't an Evangelical. I'm digressing.
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