@SuperLutheran The fact the arguments were made before doesn't mean they were settled. Obviously they weren't, here we are having them.

I don't think your approach settles anything and you don't agree with mine either. That's where the prior debate was left - entirely unresolved, some persuaded, some not, some rejecting the whole dispute as nonsense.

None of the mythological salients like YEC are central to anyone's beliefs and values with the exception of spergy extreme outliers. Those beliefs are adornments.

I think most everything in terms of events and the general spirt of what was said in the Gospels is reliable.

The vast majority of things that have riven the Church haven't been about whether Christ really owned the rabbis at a tender age, tore up the Temple, faced death without fear or rose from the dead.

They've been over things like Trinitarian filoques and other allegedly metaphysical vehicles for factional disputes in church politics. And those disputes cost lives, not just friendships.

Only because modern men don't take religion seriously has that element softened (and unlike fedoras, I don't consider that progress).

I want religion to be serious but have some metaphysical humility and honesty as to what we know (you have an eternal soul and are part of a greater pattern you can only barely grasp at this stage) and what we're strongly inferring vs. simply guessing or asserting.