{"id":28385,"date":"2016-02-17T22:44:42","date_gmt":"2016-02-18T02:44:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/?p=28385"},"modified":"2016-02-17T22:44:42","modified_gmt":"2016-02-18T02:44:42","slug":"how-answers-in-genesis-shattered-my-faith-in-creationism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2016\/02\/how-answers-in-genesis-shattered-my-faith-in-creationism.html","title":{"rendered":"How Answers in Genesis Shattered My Faith in Creationism"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Earlier today, Answers in Genesis posted an article titled There Is Hope for Atheists!<\/a>\u00a0In this article, Ken Ham writes about witnessing to atheists. He explains\u00a0that when he reads\u00a0the \u201cblasphemous and vitriolic\u201d comments of atheists\u00a0he understands that most of them\u00a0have never heard sound apologetics arguments.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

At Answers in Genesis, through our resources, conferences, and other outreaches, we do our best to defend the Christian faith using apologetics against the secular attacks of our day. But in doing so, we need to also point people to the truth of God\u2019s Word and challenge them concerning the saving gospel. We use apologetics to answer questions and direct people to God\u2019s Word and its message of salvation.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no greater thrill in this ministry than to hear how God has used what has been taught by AiG to touch someone\u2019s life\u2014for eternity. Last week, I was introduced to one of our new volunteers, Donna, who is helping sew some of the costumes for the figures that will be placed inside our\u00a0full-size Ark<\/a>. She had responded to my Facebook post asking for seamstresses.<\/p>\n

I discovered that she became a Christian in 1993 after attending one of my seminars (called \u201cBack to Genesis\u201d with the Institute for Creation Research ministry) at\u00a0Cedarville University<\/a>\u00a0in Ohio. The Bible-upholding seminar was such an eye-opener to her about the reliability of the Bible that she became a Christian.<\/p>\n

We asked if she would share her testimony.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Donna begins her testimony as follows:<\/p>\n

\n

The Lord opened up this atheistic evolutionist\u2019s eyes decades ago, through exposure to Ken\u2019s ministry.<\/p>\n

I was a die-hard evolutionist, completely convinced that the fossil finds in Olduvai Gorge supported the \u201cevidence\u201d that we evolved from less-complicated, early hominid creatures, like the so-called \u201cLucy\u201d.<\/p>\n

To keep a long story short: I attended a Creation Seminar at Cedarville College [now Cedarville University], sat in rapt attention as Ken Ham told me \u201cthe rest of the story,\u201d and I realized that all of the fossil finds I believed supported\u00a0evolution\u00a0<\/span>were, in all cases, misinterpreted. I was blown away! So, learning the truth about\u00a0evolution\u00a0<\/span>preceded my realizing that God was real (after all!) and that the Bible was His Word. I became a creationist before I became a believer in Christ.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Ken Ham goes on to write that atheists are \u201cwalking dead people\u201d and that he likes to remember, when witnessing to atheists, that Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, and that even so God\u2019s Word can convert atheists. He finishes with this:<\/p>\n

\n

If the Lord has used AiG, including our Creation Museum, in your life to bring you to salvation, would you please\u00a0let me know<\/a>? Thank you.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

So, here\u2019s the problem. I actually credit an Answers in Genesis conference with letting the air out of the last of my young earth creationism. Yes, that\u2019s right, in a sense you could argue that an Answers in Genesis conference\u00a0led me to give up my creationism.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

I was in college. It was there that I first truly\u00a0came into contact with individuals who accepted evolution. The only time before this that I\u2019d engaged a defender of evolution in debate was the time I was stuck in a car with my aunt for ten straight hours, and I\u2019m pretty sure she was humoring me. I grew up in a large evangelical homeschool family. I read creationist literature from my church library starting when I was very young. I attended Answers in Genesis conferences as a teen and bought Answers in Genesis literature at homeschool conventions with my own money. I knew my stuff.<\/p>\n

The problem was that when I was in college I came in contact with individuals who deconstructed my arguments without any trouble. It was uncanny. I returned time and again to my creationist literature\u2014the Answers in Genesis website received a lot of traffic from me during those months\u2014and came back with new arguments and information to throw at my opponents, only to have those arguments soundly deconstructed as well.<\/p>\n

There was one young man in particular\u2014Sean. I later married him, as my regular readers will know.\u00a0Sean and I spent hours debating\u00a0the fine points of creationism and evolution. Sean had been a creationist himself some years before, but high school\u2014and\u00a0arguing on the internet\u2014had changed his mind. But even as he pointed out\u00a0flaws in\u00a0every argument I could come up with, I had hope. I had an incredible amount of respect for Ken Ham and Answers in Genesis, and I was sure that if I could just get Sean to an Answers in Genesis conference\u00a0that would do the trick. You may imagine my excitement when I learned that an Answers in Genesis conference was coming to a church in our area! Sean agreed to come, and I was sure our arguments were coming to an end.<\/p>\n

That conference was an utter failure for me on more fronts than I\u2019d realized going in. For one thing, Sean was unconvinced\u2014and it wasn\u2019t because he wasn\u2019t listening, he was. But the real problem was that I<\/em> was unconvinced. I hadn\u2019t realized that hours of listening to Sean deconstruct creationist arguments would change the way those same arguments sounded to me when I heard going forward, but it did. I sat there in that church sanctuary with an instant rebuttal springing to mind for each point the speaker made, and I knew some of what he said was simply factually false.<\/p>\n

I spent some time perusing the creationist literature they had for sale at the conference and kept running into the same problem\u2014I knew rebuttals to everything I saw printed there. I realized with growing\u00a0horror that\u00a0much of the material there was either flat-out lying or skillfully misleading people. As we drove away from the church, I was quiet\u2014shaken. I had seen this conference as a way of finally convincing Sean that I\u2019d been right while at the same time\u00a0reinvigorating my own beliefs, and it had failed on both accounts. Not only did this conference\u00a0not give me new arguments and rebuttals, it\u00a0shattered my trust in Answers in Genesis in particular and creationist literature more widely.<\/p>\n

I spent a few weeks reading and researching, looking beyond Answers in Genesis\u2019 materials to wider scientific resources. Answers in Genesis may have shattered my faith in creationism, but I still had a few questions about evolution that needed answering. After several weeks of study, I was satisfied. I left aside young earth creationism for good and became a theistic evolutionist. It was difficult, at first, because I was afraid my entire faith would fall apart after accepting evolution. After all, I\u2019d heard Ken Ham repeat time and again that Genesis was the foundation of the Bible, and that without Genesis, the gospel story would collapse.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m no longer a Christian today, but evolution isn\u2019t to blame there, strictly speaking. I spent some years as a progressive Christian, and even converted to Catholicism. I loved Catholicism\u2019s embrace of the natural world and science, and its willingness to accept historical scholarship on the Bible. It was ultimately the fallout from a near-cult experience that led my faith to collapse. but in a sense, it was the collapse of my faith in young earth creationism that made me willing to see the beliefs I\u2019d been taught as fallible, and open to asking questions.<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t speak for Donna, whose testimony is quite above\u2014her journey is her own. Still,\u00a0I find Ken Ham\u2019s request to hear from his readers\u00a0about the way \u201cthe Lord has used AiG . . . in your life to bring you salvation\u201d highly ironic given my own experience.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I can’t speak for Donna, whose testimony is quite above—her journey is her own. Still, I find Ken Ham’s request to hear from his readers about the way “the Lord has used AiG . . . in your life to bring you salvation” highly ironic given my own experience. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":845,"featured_media":28387,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[157],"class_list":["post-28385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-evangelicalism-fundamentalism","tag-creationism"],"yoast_head":"\nHow Answers in Genesis Shattered My Faith in Creationism<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I can't speak for Donna, whose testimony is quite above---her journey is her own. 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