I once tried to have a discussion with a Young Earth Creationist, and it was like getting blood from a stone. Or it was like hitting a brick wall and getting blood from my own forehead.
It happened back in the eighties. I read in Sweden's most prestigious daily newspaper that a hardcore creationist worked as a science teacher in northern Sweden. Among the things that he taught his middle school pupils was that the Earth is 6,000 years old and that people and dinosaurs existed at the same time. Back then I had just finished reading the Bible carefully, and I was just raring to take on a fight with someone who insisted that everything in the Bible was absolutely true. So I wrote a circa 60-page letter to this guy, asking him how he could tell his pupils that everything in the Bible was true. I also made a list of what I regarded as glaring errors in the Bible, beginning with the fact that Genesis starts off with two completely different and mutually exclusive accounts of the creation, namely Genesis 1:1-2:3 versus Genesis 2:4-25.
Well. After a while this guy wrote a three-page letter back to me. He told me that I had misunderstood the Bible, that everything in it is absolutely true, and that the two accounts of the creation are actually one and the same story, written from two different points of view. Now I was even more infuriated, so I wrote a 119-page letter back to him.
I got another short letter back from him. He ignored absolutely all my arguments, but he complimented me on my fine grasp of language. And because of that he offered me the chance to help him write the book which he was currently working on, where he argued that the Earth was created 6,000 years ago and where people and dinosaurs existed at the same time.
I wrote a half-page letter back to him. I told him that his second letter to me was the most insolent one I had ever received. What would he say if I refuted every argument he could ever have against evolution by saying that everything in On the Origin of the Species was absolutely true, but just told from different points of view? And what would he say if I offered him the chance to spend months helping me write a book where I made the kind of argument that he would absolutely hate, such as claiming that everything in the Bible was utter mumbo jumbo?
I never heard from him again. And I have never again made such an ambitious attempt to have a serious discussion with a Young Earth Creationist.
Ann
