young earth phds
February 12th, 2007 by Lawrence David
a fascinating read this morning on students who receive phds in the natural sciences from secular institutions – and continue to insist earth’s origins were biblical in nature.
i find it remarkable that anyone can sufficiently digest geoscience literature to write a decent doctoral thesis – and still remain unconvinced enough to buy into a “young earth.”
then again, i guess you can step into any religious studies department and find dozens of academics who can recite and intelligently ruminate on any number of religious texts from belief systems they don’t adhere to.  for instance, a good friend here in cambridge is jewish – and wants to devote her phd thesis to the study of catholic saints in north america. clearly she doesn’t derive spiritual benefit from this work; she does, however, recognize hagiography as one useful method for understanding how religion, culture, and society intertwine.
so maybe i’d argue that it’s entirely reasonable for a young-earth youngster to study “conventional” geology. if anything, this only validates said geology – even creationists see some value to its study.
what i’d love to see is some evangelicals make a similar case for the value of biblical geoscience. all they’d need is some non-fundamentalist christians getting their phds in young-earth studies.  funny how rare those birds seem to be.
Sounds like these young-earth folks are intellectual companions of an Alice in Wonderland character: “Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as 6 impossible things before breakfast” [The White Queen, "Through the Looking Glass"], although in this case, “impossible” should be pronounced “stupid”.
to me, creationism and evolution is not mutually exclusive. each one on its own is not good enough to fully describe/explain life: nature works far too perfectly to be a purely result of survival of the fittest. just look at the replication and translation mechanisms, a designer is certain at work. at the same time, organisms continue to mutate and evolve according to the “conventional” evolutionary processes.
in short, to me creationism explains the _origin_ of life, but evolution tells us about what happened _after_ that. what do you think?
[edit: i'm an bio grad student]
I believe this world was designed by a Creator. Of course, that Creator works far too perfectly to be purely a result of survival of the fittest, so she was in turn designed by another Creator. That Creator was slightly less perfect, though, and was most likely the result of evolution.