Reddit mentions of The Genesis Flood: The Biblical Record and Its Scientific Implications

Kinda. Giant history lesson follows.

YEC as in "philosophical speculation about the age of the earth" is indeed from the Middle Ages. The Venerable Bede and other writers did do a lot of writing about time and calendars, where they attempted to speculate about the age of the Earth. However, their primary motivations were finding a universal way to calculate the date of Easter without using the Jewish version, which was a point of contention between the Roman and Celtic branches of the Church.

Geology (not biology) provided evidence in the 18th (not 19th) century that the Earth was far older than people had previously assumed. Nobody really knew how old, but it was pretty obvious by the time we started digging canals that there had been a succession of creatures and that these couldn't be explained by a Great Flood. Estimates in the 19th century ranged from a few million years to a few billion years to eternally old. Kelvin did the most thorough calculations based on the temperature of the Earth, but didn't know about radioactivity so dramatically underestimated.

By the start of the 20th century, this was more or less uncontroversial among most Christians, apart from those in some areas of the United States. The problem for them is that they viewed evolution as part of a societal attack on Christianity, which also included historical-critical interpretation of the Biblical texts by university seminarians.

The situation was that in the past 150 years, particularly out on the American frontiers where education was hard to come by, a new doctrine had developed called perspicuity. This doctrine asserted that any literate believer could read the Scriptures and come away with correct Christian doctrine. This doctrine is not a historical Christian doctrine and both the Catholics and the Reformers would have found the idea silly. "Of course we need trained, educated preachers," they'd have said. That's what the Church had always taught.

The American civil war threw this doctrine into crisis, because literate, honest readers of the text came away with nation-dividing views on slavery. So suddenly in the late 19th century, educated people were once again asserted that of course you need to be educated to properly interpret the Bible. It didn't help that many of those people were preaching against traditional interpretations of Christianity, including minimizing the role of miracles in the faith, etc. This offended a lot of evangelicals who still held onto ideas about perspicuity. The reaction to all of that was fundamentalism, which included the idea that the Scriptures are "inerrant".

And that led to what we call "scientific creationism", which is the idea that you should be able to read the Scriptures and, separately, "read" the world, and come up with the same set of truths. This was originally a weird Seventh-Day Adventist thing, promoted by an amateur geologist named George McCready Price. SDA is where the idea of "flood geology" originates, the idea that one can explain the observations of modern geologists using a worldwide flood.

Until the modern synthesis in the 1930s, there was controversy among biologists about whether Darwinian evolution was tenable. (Note: Evolution itself was not controversial, just evolution by natural selection.) Adventist writers were able to seize on this actual uncertainty to promote their ideas, but it wasn't particularly widespread. Adventists have always been a fringe group within Christianity, with some not even accepting them as Christian at all.

American schools mostly avoided controversy by not teaching evolution at all. Stuff like the Scopes Trial did happen and got a lot of publicity, but people need to realize that these got publicity because 1) most people, even most Christians, outside of the frontier thought the situation was stupid and 2) politicians like Bryan could use the publicity as a campaign tool.

Then something happened that led to a massive federal push for updating American schools' science curriculums. The response to this - in 1961 - was The Genesis Flood, a book by engineer Henry Morris which made those weird Seventh-Day Adventist views palatable for evangelicals, who then in the 70s and 80s were turned into a unified political force (for a variety of reasons). And again, the idea was that we should use the Scriptures to interpret scientific findings and vice versa, with the goal of coming up with a unified view of reality. After all, God's truth should be equally apparent in both places.

By the end of the 1970s, young-earth "scientific" creationism in the Price/Morris form was an article of faith for evangelicals. The same is true of the apocalyptic "End Times" stuff, which took an equally circuitous route (involving hippies) to the mainstream. By the time those of us who grew up evangelical in the 90s were born, it was a given.

So yes, when people talk about young-earth creationism, they really are talking about a weird, modern American thing. The version of YEC that was accepted by people like Bede has almost nothing in common with the modern "scientific" version. Your grandparents were probably born before the modern version became prominent.

(Edit: various)

Slaps head Duh. The "some" who "have suggested" are, naturally,

John C. Whitcomb & Henry M. Morris - The Genesis Flood (1961).

See p. 399 of the '50th Anniversary' edition.

You are absolutely not the first to ask hard questions and there are intellectual Christians who have sought hard to answer them. There are also wacko weird stuff that isn't filtered out well. Ask away and I'll do the best I can.

https://www.gotquestions.org/global-flood.html
http://askjohnmackay.com/noahs-flood-where-did-the-olive-in-doves-mouth-come-from-if-the-whole-world-was-flooded/ https://www.amazon.com/dp/159638395X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_KUL.zbG3E5D5G

https://www.gotquestions.org/Cains-wife.html

If you're seriously considering the validity of your faith, make sure to read the best arguments in either direction. Ken ham is not that.

The Genesis Flood 50th Anniversary Edition https://www.amazon.com/dp/159638395X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_dmaazb4GFZEHJ

Buy it and educate yourself, or don't and remain ignorant. Your choice.