A Tale of Two Pandas and One Creationist
Adapted from my forthcoming book on how I left science denial
I’m often asked whether there was a single defining moment when I realized young-earth creationism was a lie. The answer is yes: one breathtaking image of a distant barred spiral galaxy plowing deep into the heart of a galaxy cluster.
I always explain, however, that this dramatic conversion moment was only made possible by a long and often frustrating series of slow, incremental steps toward the truth. The image I saw would have failed to convince me just a few years earlier. It took a long time before I was comfortable enough with science to follow the evidence without bias or filters.
I believed, as creationists like Ken Ham taught relentlessly, that “historical science” was somehow different than the rest of the scientific method, and was inaccessible apart from a sweeping set of biases — either creationist and biblical, or evolutionary and atheistic — that defined conclusions in advance. Ham’s organization, Answers in Genesis, often cautioned followers like me that science alone could never prove creationism true.
This dramatic conversion moment was only made possible by a long and often frustrating series of slow, incremental…
