In the Bible there are two opposite categories of people who are rebuked and condemned for their approach to knowledge. There are those described as stiff-necked or stubborn or having hearts of flint, who won't learn or change no matter what, and those described as unstable as water who constantly shift and change and have no stability, always learning but never understanding.

Zech 7:11-12
11 "But they refused to pay attention; stubbornly they turned their backs and stopped up their ears. 12 They made their hearts as hard as flint and would not listen to the law or to the words that the LORD Almighty had sent by his Spirit through the earlier prophets. So the LORD Almighty was very angry." (from New International Version)
(see also Isaiah 48:1-6, 2 Kings 17:14, Jeremiah 7:26, 17:23, 19:15)

Eph 4:14
14 Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming.
(from New International Version)
(see also James 1:6-7, Jude 13, 2 Peter 2:14, 3:16, Isaiah 57:20)

Jesus used the words of the prophets to criticize his own generation for failing to listen and learn and understand what could be known (Matthew 13:14-15). Somewhere between flint and water is where our hearts and minds need to be. It is important to seek the truth and make it our own ("Buy the truth and do not sell it; get wisdom, discipline and understanding." Prov 23:23 NIV) There is such a thing as false knowledge, knowing things that are not helpful or not even true, that can be quite attractive and is to be guarded against (see 1 Timothy 6:20-21). However, in our pragmatic and relativistic times, it is easy enough simply to brand any conviction as stubborness and all knowledge as subjective or uncertain, and hence untrustworthy in the final analysis. Life becomes a matter of what each person (or culture or group) "feels" or "wants" or chooses for themselves (except that not everyone is really free to choose, and not all choices are equal).

I suspect that one of Jesus' greatest challenges as a man was to be sure of his own sanity, to be sure that he really was who he thought and claimed he was. When Jesus said, "I know where I came from" he put his confidence in the evidence, not in blind faith or a stubborn determination, but the evidence of the prophets, of his parents, and the testimony of what he himself was able to do (see John 8:14, John 5:36-40). His followers put their confidence in him because of what he said and what he did (see John 6:68-69, 19:35, 20:30-31, 21:24) along with the prophecies they already knew. Nevertheless, because of the firmness of Jesus' own convictions and his choices to follow them, both his family and his adversaries suggested he was out of his mind (or demon possessed, see Mark 3:21-22). Years later, because Paul stood firm on the historical reality of the Old Testament scriptures and the resurrection of Jesus, Festus the governor concluded Paul was out of his mind (Acts 26:22-24). Paul had not naively accepted the message of Christ, he had ardently resisted it, but finally had to admit it was true, that Jesus had lived and died and rose from the dead, as described by the Christians Paul formerly harassed. Once convinced, he dedicated his life to promoting what he had resisted, not stubbornly or closed-mindedly, but based on the evidence he had seen and heard, coupled with the consistency of the testimony of the scriptures he constantly quoted and alluded to in his preaching and writing.

Being open minded does not require being unstable, and having conviction is not equal to being stubborn or closed-minded. It is, though we live in a skeptical age, possible to learn what is true and right, and it is possible to be right. None of us will be right about everything, there will always be a need to rethink, question, consider, change and grow. But it is possible and necessary to be right, to know truth, and to be firmly convicted of what is true.

Evidence is a crucial element in knowing the truth. Very often, consensus is substituted for evidence. If there is a monolithic consensus that evolution describes the origin and development of life, for example, then it must be true. The consensus in Jerusalem on morning 1970 years ago was that Jesus was a menace and ought to be executed. The consensus in Germany 70 years ago was that the Jews were the root of the problems and ought to be eliminated from society. Consensus isn't a very good indicator of what is true or what is right. Evidence is key to knowing what is true, not consensus, not feelings, not the times or circumstances of our lives. Because I believe that evidence is crucial, in the majority of the recent posts in exchanges with essay, I have tried to cite evidence that can be checked and examined, not simply stated my opinions of offered assertions. Time and space make it impossible in a forum like this to supply the volumes of evidence that might be relevant or helpful, and volumes have been written on most of the topics that were thrown up, but evidence in the form of scriptural statements, historical references, and sometimes scientific bits with accessible sources has been offered. The questions have in several instances been of utmost importance, and should be resolved, not on the basis of anyone's claims, sensational or otherwise, but on the basis of the evidence for what is true.

Babb asked a question about whether, if he could prove the earth is a million years old, I would accept it. The answer is simply, yes. If it could be proven the earth is a million years old, I would accept it. It hasn't been proven, I'm highly confident it won't be proven because I'm very confident it isn't true. But there is a sidelight here, and somethng to think about in the context of the constant bashing of "creatonists" that essay has brought to the forum, although I suspect she has never read a single serious published creationist book. If it could be proven the earth is a million years old, almost no one of any philosophical background would accept it. That would be completely contrary to the beliefs of the materialistic evolutionists, as well as the creationists.

Here's a bit of reality. I've wished a number of times I could just buy the idea that Genesis 1-11 is fables and myths, as essay's favorite sources would have them (and far more besides). Or let the garden of Eden be an allegory, or the creation account be nonliteral. If I could believe those things, a lot of things would be simpler, in terms of just getting along and avoiding conflict, and I don't like conflict. The problem is, the reason I don't believe those things isn't that I'm unwilling to, it is that those ideas are wrong, and cannot be held consistently. The methodology is flawed, subjective, and ultimately dishonest, both the methodology of mythologizing the Bible, and the methodology of mythologizing science in talking about origins and vast ages of gradual change. It doesn't help to shovel millions of years into Genesis 1, nor does poking tens or hundreds of thousands of years into the genealogies of Genesis 5 and 11 help at all in coming to terms with a world view that insists the earth is at least 4.5 billion years old, that the universe originated through impersonal processes 15-20 billion years ago, and that everything has happened through uniformity of natural causes in a closed system, time plus chance plus nothing. Materialistic evolutionists, who write most of the text books and teach in most of the universities, do not think that theistic evolutionists have resolved anything at all. They consider the day-age creationists just as ludicrous as they do the young-earth creationists. And once you've taken Genesis 1-11 as myth, fiction, and allegory,there is nothing left in the Bible, that's all there is, because everyone from Moses to John on Patmos treat those chapters as historical realities, consistent with their own experiences and knowledge. Whether David or Isaiah or Jesus or Paul, the consistent message is that Genesis 1-11 describe what God did in real space and time with real people. If Matthew is true, then Genesis has to be true too. If Genesis is not true, really what happened, then Matthew cannot be true either, and neither can Romans or Hebrews or 2 Peter. It is all bound together by the writers and speakers who treat what has gone before as real. If we can be sure that any one of the Bible writers told the truth, then we are bound to the conclusion they all did. If we decide to accomodate the spirit of the age, and take the creation account as an allegory or description of vast ages, contrary to the account itself or the testimony of Moses, Jesus, and Paul, then we move away from Biblical faith, but not into any sort of respectable position in the eyes of the very people we've chosen to emulate. Leading evolutionists of the last 25 years like Richard Dawkins and Stephen Gould (see The Blind Watchmaker for example) have understood that theistic evolution brings nothing to the table, evolution is all about impersonal processes, or it is about nothing at all.

Those processes, the processes posited by Charles Darwin and variously adjusted and redefined since then, are inimical to the whole idea of God as pictured in the scriptures. The compelling force of evolution is death. Struggle and death, "the survival of the fittest." Paul tells us that by Man came death, because of sin, but the methodology of evolution puts death in the driver's seat. Theistic evolution would have God designing or utilizing violence and death in establishing of the order of life, to move it forward. An awkward question then is, why did Jesus weep at the tomb of Lazarus? If death is an essential factor in the created order, rather than an aberation resulting from disobedience, why did Jesus weep? Why do we all? The theism of any theistic evolution will, if consistently held, be much closer to either deism (God in some sense started thesystem, but is not involved in it) or pantheism (God is in everything, everything is a part of God) than the Biblical Creator. Many religious people have adopted such a compromise in their approach to scripture, picking and choosing which parts they'll believe, and which parts they'll allegorize. All of us are vulnerable to similar choices, and all of us err in our interpretations, but the possibility of knowing what is true, and holding on to it, is not eliminated by the fact that in some areas we err. It is possible, and really necessary, to buy the truth and keep it, but we must consider evidence, and consider it carefully, with consistency.

• Firm and Flexible