You may find these comments food for thought:
Kurt Wise: "Given what we currently think we understand about the world, the majority of the scientific evidence favors an old earth and universe, not a young one. I would therefore say that anyone who claims that the earth is young for scientific evidence alone is scientifically ignorant. "
Towers Online - The News Service of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary http://www.towersonline.net/story.php?grp=news&id=344
April 13, 2006 By Jeff Robinson
Excerpts:
"Trustees at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary on April 11 unanimously approved the creation of two new theological study centersthe Center for Theology and the Arts, and the Center for Theology and Law, during the board's annual spring meeting.
Seminary President R. Albert Mohler Jr. said the new study centers aim at equipping pastors and church leaders to think biblically about pivotal issues which dominate contemporary culture.
"One of the ways we want to lead Southern Baptists is through helping evangelicals and Southern Baptists in particular to engage some of the most critical issues of our day," Mohler said.-
"This is not a time for Christians to be out-thought by the world, but in general that is what happens. We find the church behind the times in thinking about some of the most crucial issues of our day."
Mohler also announced the appointment of two new faculty members to lead the centers. [snip] ...
...Mohler also named Kurt Wise as the new director for Southern's Center for Theology and Science, and professor of theology and science. Wise currently serves on the faculty of Bryan College in Dayton, Tenn., where he is also director of the Center for Origins Research.
Wise earned both a doctor of philosophy and master of arts in paleontology from Harvard University. He and his wife Marie have two daughters.
Wise replaces William Dembski, who is leaving Southern Seminary to join the faculty at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary so he can be closer to his family.
"With the addition of Kurt Wise, we are recognizing that creation is a ground zero theological crisis point right now in American culture and even in our churches," Moore said. [snip] ..
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A couple of interesting items on the web regarding Kurt Wise:
[1] 7/3/2003 http://www.christianforums.com/t43741&page=12 "Ok, I just got a email from Dr. Wise. This is what he said:
"I am a young-age creationist because the Bible indicates the universe is young. Given what we currently think we understand about the world, the majority of the scientific evidence favors an old earth and universe, not a young one. I would therefore say that anyone who claims that the earth is young for scientific evidence alone is scientifically ignorant. Thus I would suggest that the challenge you are trying to meet is unmeetable." ~ Kurt Wise
[2] December 19th 2004 http://www.theologyweb.com/campus/showthread.php?t=44017 Theologyweb.com
Post # 7:
"...there is new breed of YEC out there, of which Kurt Wise is an example, who recognize that there are scientific problems with their Weltanschauung. I knew Kurt was exceptional, but there are more of his stripe. Affectionately, I'd like to refer to them as neo-YECs, as opposed to the Wieland-Ham-Morris-Safarti-Jorge YECs for which I would propose the oxymoronic moniker paleo-YECs."
I was in a group of about half a dozen skeptics, including Paluxy "Man-Track" critics Ronnie Hastings and Glen Kuban, science writer Bob Schadewald, biologist Karl Fezer (a founding member of the National Center for Science Education) and a creationism critic from Kentucky name Frank Lovell.
It was pretty interesting. I'd just been to an AAAS convention that same year. There the presentations were all 90 minutes: 45 minutes for the presentation of the paper and 45 minutes for questions. It was my first science convention also and I was impressed with how aggressive and searching the Q&A was. Often impatience in the audience would lead to the Q&A period breaking out even before the first 45 minutes was over.
By contrast at the Creationism convention, I don't recall EXACTLY, but it was something like 45 minutes for the presentation and only 15 minutes for Q&A. Might have even been more like 45 and 10 with time for a break between sessions.
Even more striking was the difference in the tone and substance of the questioning. Sometimes a couple of us skeptics would speak up, but if we didn't there weren't ANY challenging questions, UNLESS Wise was in the audience and decided to ask some. He was the ONLY creationist that I ever heard to ask really challenging questions. ALL other questions were softballs. Sometimes there would be no questions at all.
Even when Wise, a creationist and the host of the whole convention, was asking tough questions (and us heathens were keeping our collective mouths shut) you could still feel, and even see in movement and expressions, a palpable discomfort in the audience. There was an OBVIOUS feeling that asking challenging questions was inappropriate, or at least embarassing and uncomfortable, even if they came from another creationist. (Maybe especially if they did. We skeptics were treated pretty well and maybe even indulged to some extent.)
There was also very obvious discomfort when Glen Kuban very aggressively questioned Don Patton (an associate of Carl Baugh) on Paluxy Mantracks. This was even though many creationists in the audience were dubious about both the mantrack claims in general, and Baugh and Patton in particular. It didn't matter. They still didn't seem to like the searching criticism taking place out loud and in the open. Again, the fact that Kuban was himself an evangelical Christian just might have made things worse rather than better.
Granted that this was a fairly small convention, and may have had a higher than usual ratio of lay creationists to "professional" creation scientists, but I still found this very striking contrast in the attitude toward criticism most illuminating.
To me, this subject is like religions, in that it's all just a matter of what one believes.