When I first read Johnson’s book, Darwin on Trial, it was a revelation of a sort, my background being steeped in simple (“there’s oil because all the dead dinos sank to the bottom of the one-earth ocean”), succinct (“6,000 year old earth, ten thou at the max is all you’re going to be allowed if you’re a good Christian”), and not so sweet (YEC is rife with strident and harsh polemicists). Johnson launched me on an intellectual search that explored with great interest and curiosity Australopithecus-es and other past creatures. I proudly claim, by DNA mind you, about 4% Neanderthal. Those hairy, thick-brow Dred, muscular northern Europeans were plenty human enough.
I think I’ve lived long enough to see YEC diminish to a noisy tertiary teaching with its own theme park and energetic cottage industry which is where it belongs. Believe what thou wilt about the age of the earth, I’m long past arguments about the matter.
See Christianity Today’s nice piece on Johnson, here.
