Two discussions on how Christians figure things out.
I was discussing Christian Education with a friend, PERSON 1, and why so many become deceived by YEC (Young Earth Creationism).
At some point I mentioned to him the reliance on an expert to decide a belief without themselves thinking through it : “This is what was wrong with the catholic church in the middle ages. The only experts were the priests. The bible was only in Latin. Malpractice was everywhere. The solution was mass education. Why not Christian Education then? But Baptist churches want to focus only on holiness, not promoting sound minds in the pews via education. This is why they are so sesceptible to YEC propaganda.
PERSON 1 replies to me:
Personally, I think this problem extends beyond just the Baptist denominations. Again, there’s nothing wrong with teaching people to live holy lives. That is important. But it shouldn’t become a means to salvation. That’s where I would be concerned. My experience in Baptist/non-denominational churches has been that they tend to focus more on evangelism than holy living or Christian education. Most of the sermons are focused on trying to get new converts in the door rather than shepherding the existing flock. Sadly, most seminary pastors are only taught how to teach the gospel. Their education seems to be largely focused on making essential things very easy to grasp and preach but not much else. As the great theologian, Mr. Miagi once said: “No such thing as bad student, only bad teacher. Teacher say. Student do.” It’s not that our pastors are bad. It’s that their education is condensed and watered down. Most of them do not hold master’s or doctorate degrees. They do not know Greek and Hebrew. Some have a little bit of experience with Church history, but not much. It’s simply the limit of their 4-year seminary degree. They have the basics. But they usually don’t move beyond that before they begin preaching. Some don’t even have this much! When an undereducated pastor instructs his flock, the flock likewise becomes undereducated. The student only knows as much as their teacher, typically. So, we end up in our current predicament where most churchgoers are noticeably undereducated about their own faith. They have the basics down–the spiritual milk, as it were. But they are not ready for heavier spiritual food and oftentimes never are. But I think that is starting to change now with so many good sources available online. More and more laypeople are starting to educate themselves. Particularly the millennials and Gen Z. Which is refreshing. But there is still a lot of ground to cover before the American/Evangelical church is on par with their historic counterparts.
Another conversation with PERSON 2, where I said, “My concern is about the tools everyone uses to decide what is believable versus unbelievable.”
PERSON 2 replied, “Excerpt:
Origen of Alexandria, wrote in his commentary on Genesis in the third century:
“What reasonable person would read that the first three days of creation had a morning and evening, when the sun and moon were not created until the fourth day, and believe it to be literal? I do not suppose that anyone doubts that these things figuratively indicate certain mysteries… not literally.”
What reasonable person would take this literally?
Origen wrote this before we knew how old the earth was. He wrote it before Darwin. He wrote it before we knew anything about cosmology. Origen did not write this because scientists made fun of him and he made up an interpretation so he could stop crying.
Origen was highly educated and he could actually read the languages that the Bible was originally written in. Other influential church fathers like Augustine, Tertullian, etc. tend to agree with Origen on reading Genesis non-literally.
When people read Genesis in ways that are non-literal, we aren’t making up something new. We are returning to an old way that Christians used to read it before people like Ken Ham ruined everything.
– Zach Christensen”
PERSON 2 said, “Augustine’s attitude to science.
Often, a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other parts of the world, about the motions and orbits of the stars and even their sizes and distances, … and this knowledge he holds with certainty from reason and experience. It is thus offensive and disgraceful for an unbeliever to hear a Christian talk nonsense about such things, claiming that what he is saying is based in Scripture. We should do all we can to avoid such an embarrassing situation, which people see as ignorance in the Christian and laugh to scorn.
The shame is not so much that an ignorant person is laughed at, but rather that people outside the faith believe that we hold such opinions, and thus our teachings are rejected as ignorant and unlearned. If they find a Christian mistaken in a subject that they know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions as based on our teachings, how are they going to believe these teachings in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think these teachings are filled with fallacies about facts which they have learnt from experience and reason.”
ME: ” Fascinating! I knew about Augustine but I didn’t know about Origen. I am undereducated about the Christian faith in general.
By contrast my point to Sarah lies in a different field. It is based not on the bible but on modern science. Its science that leads me to reject atheism.
Im not a mathematician. I cannot wax poetic about Hermitian spaces (can you? Can your critics?) But I ran into this guy named Ludvig Boltzmann. He figured out how energy, measured in terms of P,V,n,T tells us how many elements in an ensemble are in a certain state. If at a given moment of time you take any given state and count the number of elements in that state the number *is* the probability of that state having that number. The number and the probability are the same thing. This is a fundamental law of physics, like the pythagorean theorem.
BTW, to me this is an article of faith. Do we believe in it? Well, do we believe in Riemann sums? If we don’t, well guess what? We cannot do calculus. 
But I digress. We can use Boltzmann’s Law to tell us about what we should believe about the physical universe. That is what scientists *do*.
I have just defined for you what I mean when I say the word probability. And I realize Sarah means something different. There is a communications gap. I struggle to find ways to breach that gap. It does affect what humans are willing to believe, and whether their beliefs are warranted (to parrot WLC).
Physics people like to think their beliefs are warranted. To convince them their beliefs are not warranted you have to show them using math and physics.”
“Having said that, nobody has shown me why biologos is wrong. I think I have the rational option to believe in biologos. Your critics and those who call you names can show no such proof as far as I can tell. Their arguments are vacuous.”
PERSON 2 said to me: “I think you know more about the history of mathematics than I do. The BBC produced a series on it hosted by Jim Al-Khalili that I liked very much, but that’s about as far as I have gone. I have spent much more effort on the history of science and the philosophy of science.
I think the notion that knowledge consists of “warranted true belief” goes back to Theatetus, a dialog by Plato. The Gettier problem is a modern challenge to it, but I am not convinced that it really is a problem.”
ME, “I have listened to 8 lectures so far out of the audible book of Cary’s Great Course on Augustine, Philosopher and Saint. The photos are from the pdf notes from the course. I got this course for $10 just as a backgrounder on Augustine. I now seem to know more about Augustine than any of the baptists at church. I have toyed with the idea of asking a sunday school class if they realize they have bought off on greek philosophy because they are all neo-platonists. And they got that from Augustine.
Its true! They just dont know it. So I expect looks of horror.
It seems like God is raining Plato on me lately.”
PERSON 2:said, about Augustine: “I also own that Course as well, and have listened to it multiple times. The lecturer is excellent.
Augustine did a lot of good, but he also took some positions that I can’t endorse.”
ME, ” I understand. He and Luther probably didn’t see eye to eye either. The problem I have is I cannot understand church history without understanding the church fathers. But my baptist upbringing left me with zero knowledge. It does not matter one tiny bit how righteous and holy my life was if I die from being a dumbass and have a faith based on a fantasy world held up by quicksand. Why? Because our floundering about in the dark produces random effect on the world rather than purposeful effect. One may as well say that a highly moral atheist acting properly had good effect on the world. How could anyone tell the difference? The difference is the belief and the message. But if one doesnt care what the correct message might be what does one even have?
Our core beliefs are first order knowing but we also have second order knowledge comprised of *gasp* philosophy. So, I turn to philosophy.”
PERSON 2 then says to me, “//But my baptist upbringing left me with zero knowledge.//
Same here. I only learned about them when I attended Wheaton College.”