One final note, which I'll develop when I return:
If you really CARE whether or not evangelical Christendom accepts the
correctness of anything other than YEC, the burden of proof and the
responsibility for making it comprehensible to the masses is on YOU (the
Christian scientific "establishment". YOU must convince the rest of us!
What would be your opinion of a missionary who after presenting the gospel,
simply directed illiterate natives to the bible, with the stern admonition:
"Don't dare question what I say until you learn to read. Then let the bible
answer your silly questions."
Or a theologian who will not defend his theories at the popular level,
referring questioners to the Church Fathers. That's why the Catholics
holding mass in Latin for all those years was such a joke.
If you're going to claim the intellectual high ground, and keep it, you're
going to have to do a better job of defending it than referring challengers
to your own sacred literature. If you can't convince the Chuck Warmans and
Steve Jones and Jim Bells of the world, or more importantly, the Joe
Sixpacks of the world, AT THEIR LEVEL, then no matter how right you may
be, you'll never attract much of a following. Unless you resort to
ACLU-type coercion, that is.
Chuck