11 a.m., February 20, 2022<\/strong><\/p>\n Here is Ron Garret’s description of his talk this Sunday:<\/p>\n “Over the past several years I have made a point of engaging in dialog with people who hold beliefs that I consider self-evidently false in the hope of coming to an understanding of how people can sustain these beliefs in the face of what seems to me to be overwhelming evidence to the contrary. I have focused specifically on one set of beliefs, young-earth creationism, which holds that the account of creation given in the Bible is literally true, and thus that the universe is approximately 6000 years old.<\/p>\n “The secular community often approaches people who hold such beliefs on the assumption that the only possible way that someone could believe these things is out of ignorance of scientific facts, or perhaps that they are simply knuckle-dragging morons worthy of being treated with disdain.<\/p>\n “I will argue that this approach is both wrong and counter-productive. Notwithstanding that young-earth creationism is false, it is nonetheless worthwhile to listen to and understand their arguments because refuting them is not quite as straightforward as most secular people think.”<\/p>\n Ron Garret is a mostly retired software engineer, entrepreneur, writer, and filmmaker. His career has included stints at NASA, where he worked on the research program that led to the first Mars Rover mission, and Google, where he was the lead engineer on the first release of AdWords 22 years ago. He currently runs a weekly online Bible study that welcomes both believers and non-believers.<\/p>\n