It’s very hard to convince a man of something if his job depends on him not believing it.

The prominent creationist William Dembski apparently recently recanted ideas about the ancient age of the earth when his employer, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, threatened his job. (Here's an article about it.) Dembski was already quite the quack (even if a brilliant quack), but his employer couldn't even handle him suggesting that we live in an old universe, even if he felt that such an idea could be coordinated with a magical/fundamentalist/literalist reading of Scripture.

As someone who's been employed as a purveyor of niche ideas, there's a certain level of excitement, notoriety and money that comes along with telling people things that they want to hear - particularly if there is also an opposition party and you can present yourself as a radical genius with a level of knowledge that is higher than your peers. And, there's a certain pressure to actually believe those ideas. Just another reason that it's hard to be an honest Christian, and particularly an honest professional Christian.

You have to wonder about the role that the economy of anti-evolutionism plays in the continuation of such crazy ideas.

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