Is teaching Young Earth Creationism in Orthodox harmful and wrong? Is it a big deal?

Contrary to Betteridge's law of headlines: yes and yes. It is simply wrong (science: try it sometime), and because it is wrong it is harmful, and it is a big deal because it is genuinely harmful.

ED. NOTE: this is kind of a draft that I dashed off in an evening - there is some rounding out to do of some of the thought, but it's roughly what I think.

I will not go into how it is simply wrong. There are many other sites on science out there. Just read a textbook: things are pretty one-sided. I am not going to quibble with other "old earth" sorts like the Discovery Institute in this post - I have my disagreements (discussed elsewhere), but they at least take science seriously (somewhat) and don't disregard all the physical evidence surrounding old earth, common descent, etc. They are instead making their own account of it that agrees with the broad outline of undeniable facts.

It frequently comes up that people want peace, that people should be able to believe what they want, this is not necessary for salvation, and a number of other banal statements meant to discourage any discussion of the issues. There is some good to this: we shouldn't engage in open warfare and, in a sense, they do have a point: people can disagree and they're not going to hell because they think one or the other and actively fighting may not be helpful. Even accepting that sentiment, however, I must still disagree.

First, promoting these notions entails an endorsement of what might be called the "conflict thesis" between science and religion. It is all well and good to decry materialism, but doing so in the service of such a false idea as a 7500 year old earth is bad. More to the point, the conflict is not with science as such, but materialism. If we make this about a 7500 year old earth, it is now about science as well. But here is what I want to get at: there is no need for a wall between scientists and Christians, because many scientists are Christians and vice versa. We need ramps, not walls, to refer a concept from David Brooks. If we "keep the peace" internally by having all views, we promote internal division by promoting the "conflict thesis" even as we have faithful Christian scientists in our midst and promote external division by, well, denying obviously true facts that the rest of the world takes for granted.

Further, continuing to teach a false idea of a young earth tells a manifestly wrong story about the relation of the observable world to God. Namely, we can no longer trust the reasonable order of the world and what we observe. This is different from believing that miracles occur or occurred. Would we expect physical evidence left behind until the present when the Red Sea parted, or the water turned into wine at Cana (if both are believed as literal events)? Probably not. The biblical literalism here leaves no evidence where we might expect it, and this cannot be explained away by claiming that The Fall and a lack of "uniformitarianism" change what we would observe and explain... the lack of explanation. Instead, all signs point to the story scientists tell and that the universe behaves nicely and, hopefully, God isn't deceiving us with our sensory data.

In short, it teaches a false hermeneutic for physical data. You might be able to guess where I am going next: it imposes a further false and overly simplistic hermeneutic for reading the Bible. Rather than having to confront and cope with the problem of reading the text in light of the vastly divergent reality of creation and exploring the meaning of the text in our tradition besides the literal, we suddenly have no "difficulties": the story in the Bible is actually more or less how it went and, contrary to anything else we could find out about, essentially, anything else ever, it turns out that human life really is only a few thousand years old. Ta da! And all those think-y types who might try to present otherwise are just woefully misled.

It gets even worse than that: the purveyors of this viewpoint unfortunately often espouse a similar simplistic and misleading type of patristic fundamentalism. I think this is the most harmful part of it all specifically for Orthodox Christians because it is so very tempting: "The Holy Fathers" all teach creationism, so it must be what Orthodoxy teaches! Case closed. Period. I'm also pretty sure that all of them that talk about child discipline talk about hitting children with sticks, most of them probably as the only method of discipline that they mention. However, this glosses over some rather difficult hermeneutic issues that I do not think will hold up - so I am tipping my hand here that I simply do not find the sort of neo-patristic synthesis that Fr Seraphim Rose is so fond of to be very convincing in general. Some issues to consider are:

• What does it mean to say that the Holy Fathers 'teach' something?
  
• What does it mean to say the Church 'teaches' something?
  
• What evidence do you have to amass before stating either of the above?
  
• When you state either of the above, how certain is this statement, and can you express your uncertainty?
  
• There are many things which individual Fathers or even large groups of Fathers, perhaps throughout time, have taught but which we do not say either of the above about - how can we distinguish those matters from matters that the Church or the Holy Fathers 'teach' with certainty?
  
• How do we reconcile conflicts among the Fathers?
  

Those are some softball questions off the top of my head. The patristic fundamentalists, of course, have answers: they're fundamentalists, it's what they do. Discern the phronema with your nous! They just aren't the right answers, and some of the evidence of this is that they got the wrong answer on the age of the earth. The harm here is that, instead of looking the truth in the eye, asking the hard questions, and struggling to find the right, Orthodox answers, we have this ready-made cookie cutter answer that frankly dodges reality. It prevents us from working on the real theological problem here: given that the earth is old, humans have existed for a long time, and given the theological truths we also know as Orthodox Christians, how do we synthesize them, what does it mean for us as we live, etc.

So the harms here are that our vision of God must be God Himself, and we cannot be satisfied with anything less. Knowingly embracing a falsehood because it simplifies things is not going to work. We have to work with, instead, the complexities God gives us and not be happy with anything less than God's truth, which is unfortunately not to be found in an overly simplistic reading of the Bible or a similarly credulous reading of the Fathers without reference to external reality. It creates an unnecessary wall of division which alienates true allies that are seeking the truth diligently by impugning their efforts as inherently contradictory to the faith (though they'll allow it). This young earth nonsense is, in short, harmful and wrong for Orthodox Christians to indulge in.

I do not understand why this is so hard

The point of the scriptural passages is broadly that discipline and punishment are necessary for, among other things, children - I do not think the precise means of discipline is what they are getting at. If it were, we should definitely beat our children with rods. And fools, too. The textual evidence, if we are to read it that way, is quite unanimous. Few are advocating for that. Then why be wedded to retaining the "inflicting physical pain" part of the passage? We should discipline children, hitting was an extremely common and primary method of discipline until very recently, so hitting (with a rod) is what was mentioned in the text. Hitting with a rod, in fact, seems to be the only method of discipline mentioned in the text - should it be the only method we use? Hitting - perhaps still with rods - was also the primary method of discipline in the patristic period, hence their continued mention of it when discussing discipline for children. I do not expect to go back in time and lecture St Augustine about this. But this seems to explain why hitting with rods is mentioned - not because it is the best and only way or that this specific method is mandatory, but that it was the most common way to discipline at that time (it is still widely practiced now - perhaps not as frequently with the rod, though) and - for whatever reason - they wanted to talk about discipline. But if we are going to read the injunction to discipline as requiring some use of corporal punishment, we have to go back to the plain meaning: hitting them with rods, staffs, etc, and doing so in a manner that, in modern times, may be viewed as abusive.

However, if the point is chastening and correcting the children or fools, perhaps we should instead use the most effective means of doing so. Research (here we go again) suggests that corporal punishment is not more effective than other methods and has worse side effects. "Abuse" is universally condemned. So what is wrong with this reading?

It seems some Orthodox Christians...

...really like the idea of hitting children. In case you are wondering, the recommendations of those who study that matter are pretty much universally against it. And by "it", I would note that they are specifically discussing corporal punishment, such as spanking, and specifically excluding "abuse". Here is a "popular" article on the subject: Spanking is bad for all kids I have previously shared a scholarly article, but it is dense. If you want to read that, it is titled "Spanking and Child Development: We Know Enough Now to Stop Hitting Our Children," by Elizabeth Gershoff. It is a literature review.

EDIT: the article I previously recommended was a 2010 review article, the one listed above is a 2013 review article. The 2010 was directed at policy makers in a law journal, the latter is a traditional lit review that appears to be in a peer-reviewed journal (correct me if wrong). Different audiences, also one is newer, so more cutting edge. Same conclusion: hitting kids doesn't work well, don't do it.

A new web-log you may find interesting

A friend of mine has started a new web-log, Departing Horeb, which will be about Orthodox theology as informed by Biblical scholarship and the history of the ancient Near East. The name comes from the incident when, after the revelation of the glory of God to all of Israel at Horeb (Sinai), they are commanded to go into the wilderness. This is representative of the spiritual life - we are shown God, and then we enter a long, hard journey with little to comfort us. It is hard to leave Horeb, but necessary. As the name suggests, he is willing to tackle the hard questions that you run into in the wilderness and will have little of that damnable "certainty" people often claim to have. The first bit of actual content is also about a subject which I have been interested in: the biblical commands to beat your children with a stick.

A certain segment of the population would be scandalized.

A certain Christian leader has a more complicated relationship with God than simple 100% certainty 100% of the time.

I find it refreshing that the leader of some large Christian group is willing to discuss openly the interplay of doubt and faith for a modern audience, since I am quite certain that it was not problematic to have this sort of posture in the distant past (it would be expressed somewhat differently), but in the modern era any sort of intellectual questioning in some circles became completely subversive and was repressed. In many corners of Christendom, this leads to an official fideism with a large number of, say, teenagers running off to college to find that the pat religious instructions about faith which do not admit any sort of "doubt" cause them to abandon God because they can't stop the questions. And questions mean you are doubting, so you have no faith. This is an unfortunate conclusion. But uncertainty is scary and it takes quite a lot of courage to admit uncertainty and unknow what you know. It is terra incognita. But the sane people have learned to deal with it. But there are no easy answers.

Or maybe the world began 7522 years ago and we do have all the answers. The real problem of doubt is how do we crucify the mind so that we ignore everything that appears to be true about the world. Answer: faith!

What is the Orthodox stance on beating your children?

On the one hand, the Bible commands us to do so (with a stick!). Further, it is legal in these United States. Therefore, it is a very popular option for American Christian Conservatives and therefore for many Orthodox Christians as well. I suspect most "spare the rod", but I think many would be surprised at how often implements gets used. One proponent of the "beating your children" camp is popular internet commentator Fr John Whiteford. He ably makes the scriptural case (and includes patristic references) for hitting your children, perhaps with sticks, when they misbehave. It is not only a permissible option in this view, but a mandatory one.

On the other hand, all the research indicates that beating your children has bad outcomes in the long run and in the short run doesn't do better than other effective methods of discipline. It further teaches children that hitting people is an appropriate way of getting things in order. For more on the research, see this article (note: it's a review article in a law journal by a scientist, not a science article, but it seems to be a fair summary of the research). In short, it doesn't work as well as other forms of discipline as discipline and it has bad side effects.

I'm not saying you are a bad parent if you beat your children (perhaps with a stick). I'm suggesting that you should reconsider your methods in light of the damage you are causing, despite what some appear to think the Church teaches about the proper way to discipline your child (ie with a stick).