Faith and other YEC: why even bother taking part in the discussion?

I was reading the thread YEC approaches to empirical investigation http://EvC Forum: YEC approaches to empirical investigation -->EvC Forum: YEC approaches to empirical investigation and got more and more convinced of the absurdity of the whole discussion...To give an example of Faith's (YEC) reasoning, let's take a quote about Genesis: As some (even Faith herself) already pointed out there, there doesn't seem to be anything left to debate on EvC if you start from that premise. But while I was reading some posts in the thread, it struck me that there does not even seem to be any reason for literalists like her to engage in these debates! Why do they even bother? Is this really a war they want to fight in?To understand this, you have to consider the consequences of the YEC cornerstones; If one opts for a stricly literal interpretation of the Bible and Genesis, there seems to be only one really consistent approach:Whatever IS written, should be taken absolutely literally, with no interpretation involved (for as much as this is possible anyway, but let's just assume). And whatever ISN'T written, should, "by argument of absense" (does that exist? lol), be considered totally irrelevant and of no significance. There is no alternative for the latter, since any discussion about unmentioned (by Genesis) facts, or suggestions for unmentioned mechanisms to link a bunch of divinely revealed facts, can not be anything else but pure speculation. And anyway, if it had any significance, surely God would have written it down unequivocally and explicitly?One would think that a true believer like Faith would recognise this, and wouldn't be bothered to participate in the kind of useless discussion about flood geology, radioactive dating... etc. Discussion that should be irrelevant to them and doesn't get anywhere anyway. Why, if Genesis is divinely inspired and absolute truth (and, I would therefore guess, _complete_), is any additional justification needed? Why lose your time with discussions about such ultimately fallible things as observations?Shouldn't it be easier and more obvious for Faith & Co to consider ToE merely as a help-tool, an artificial framework constructed by fallible humans because of our tendency to see structure in the world? When reading Faith in particular, it seems like she acknowledges that ToE represents a fairly self-consistent and scientifically "useful" framework. The only thing that really seems to bother her is the conflict itself with a literal reading of Genesis. The claim that science would be a 'truth' on the same level as Genesis, or its denial of Genesis. Not so much the fact that ToE framework is used as a tool for further scientific exploration? After all, it is thinkable that ToE could be useful without being 'true' as such. A working hypothesis that could finally be reduced to Literal Genesis given enough time and effort to see through deceiving initial impressions?Really, the more I think about it, the stranger I find it that Faith feels the need to be involved in these discussions at all... Surely, she doesn't have any hope to actually turn some people around, here? Could it, instead, be that her(their) faith is not quite as pure as she(they) would like it to be? And she(they) therefore somehow needs that little bit more, like some extra justification based on a self-reasoned YEC theory?

I don't see how "uniformatism" could deserve the label "presumption".Presupposing nothing at all automatically coincides with uniformatism, AFAIC. It's a natural starting point that shouldn't be changed unless there are compelling reasons. Until there are compelling reasons (the Bible certainly isn't one...), it is less speculative than the opposite, supposing variation through time.

I guess it would be more accurate to say that the most dangerous part is our inability to discern flawed human wisdom from the divinely inspired.It would be easier if the really divinely inspired wisdoms had a quality label or something ;-)

It's a bit like "Bible Code Light", isn't it? ;-)

[/qs]Faith,a question: did you ever find out that you initially misunderstood something you read in the Bible?

I was more precisely thinking about something you THOUGHT you understood (you saw no reason for confusion), but later you saw it in a different light and its meaning changed (maybe significantly)?