Flat Earth, Young Earth, and Christian Virtue Signalling

It looks to me like the "Flat Earth" believers are beating certain "Young Earth" believers at their own game of spiritual one-upmanship. Having said that, let me be very clear that I am not impugning the motives of all Young Earth Creationists over and above my own. I understand that as a fallen man my motives, even my best ones, are always to some degree mixed- just like theirs and those of the rest of sinful humanity. People are complicated and its usually a mistake to put even members of a given class into one box- unless the box is labeled "people who need more Jesus." Still, within categories there are finer categories which apply to that set. This is why the Classification System of Linnaeus works.

With that said, there is a class of Young Earth Creationists which share something in common with those who maintain the Earth is flat. For a while I actually thought that the flat-earthers might even be a spoof of Young Earth Creationists. Then my wife pointed out an acquaintance who was a flat-earther. He was obviously sincere and what he believed was a logical outcome of how he had been raised to think about scripture and truth. I began to understand that a large number of people who claimed to be flat-earthers were sincere, and their reasoning mirrored that of a prominent segment of Young Earth Creationists. In fact, those flat-earthers were one-upping the Young Earth Creationists at their own game of spiritual one-upmanship!

In this group I am writing of there is a common thread. They wear their beliefs not just as a badge of honor, but as a symbol of some sort of superiority of faith over those who do not hold them. It goes beyond the idea that they know a truth which you do not recognize, but in some sense that holding it makes them better than you, or more faithful than you. This is true of the group at issue whether the point of pride is the age of the earth or its flatness. I have watched with amusement as the latter group turned the arguments and accusations of the young-earthers who did not agree with a flat earth against them. The very words that the Young-Eathers used against people who believe the scriptures allow for, or even indicate, that the earth is ancient are used by the flat earth crowd against them! "You don't believe God's word is literally true"; "You either believe the Bible or you don't. Your soul is in danger due to your lack of faith!"

So I think some Young Earthers are sincere on every level about the age of the earth, others are not really interested in the age of the earth as much as they are interested in having some point of pride by which they can consider themselves "more spiritual" or "more faithful" than most of the rest of Christendom. In order to separate them out from those who are sincere on every level about the age of the earth, I will call this group the "P-Young-Earthers". The "P" stands for "pride" since this belief forms the basis of their view that only those who see the scriptures as they do on this subject are true believers of God and His word. Others lack the "faith to believe what God says" as if honest disagreements about scripture are not possible on this subject.

While many P-Young-Earthers will debate evidence from the natural universe on the question of the age of the earth, it has been my experience that as a rule they are less willing to debate the scriptural evidence which speaks to the question. I have killed a number of threads by writing on an alternative view of what a certain passage is saying.

If the meaning of God's Word was really the point you would think that they would jump all over a chance to make it about the scriptures. But for these people its not really about the scriptures. It's about "virtue-signalling" in exactly the same sense that the PC-left crowd does it. They are not trying to find the truth, or solve a problem. They are trying to demonstrate that they are one of the "good people" by calling out, often in the most uncharitable terms, the "bad people" who refuse to say the right things. Their interest is in showing they are the "good people".  As a group, they really don't have a lot of interest in the nitty-gritty of the text of the Bible. They will go to a lot of work to try and prove that the best view of scripture is one that requires little work- little work in delving into the actual text and context of the Word!

I think that most of the church in America is badly misreading early Genesis. Like Martin Luther posted his 95 theses which advanced propositions where he thought that the church had it wrong, I have posted twenty-five theses about Early Genesis (and other passages) where I think the church is getting it wrong. I go into great detail addressing these ideas and exploring in length the scriptures related to these issues in the book "Early Genesis, The Revealed Cosmology." If you have access to an Amazon Prime account, the E-book version can be downloaded for no charge. And yes, the book takes some effort to sort through. If we want to think of ourselves as more noble in a way that is approved in scripture, let's be like the "more noble" ones in Acts 17:11, who "examined the scriptures daily to see if these things were so."