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I do think it's interesting some here are taking "why did you abandon Creationism?" to mean "Why did you abandon Christianity?" To me the two really should be different questions.
I'm Catholic. Going back to the 1950s, at least, my Church didn't believe in Young-Earth-Creationism or condemn all theories of evolution. If I was ever Creationist it was just the cultural milieu or because Catholic folk-culture is sometimes Creationist. And I think many Protestant churches don't require Creationism and neither does Orthodoxy.
It's part of the Creationist playbook. You can't accept evolution because you'll go to hell, it leads to atheism, blah blah blah...
It's all nonsense. The vast majority of practicing Christians have no trouble at all reconciling science with their beliefs.
Literalists, on the other hand...well what can you do.
Thread is reopened with a reminder from the TOS "...... bashing of ANY sort will NOT be tolerated."
And this one. "Stay on topic. Attempts to hi-jack threads by switching topics or going off topic will be deleted and infractions issued. This is not a chat room"
The op asked what changed your mind about creationism
Last edited by Miss Blue; 12-01-2011 at 09:14 AM..
I can't remember how old I was, but having a parent who was a medical scientist (and a deacon of the church) it wasn't very long before we had the "well, Adam and Eve is what we call a 'parable'" conversation...
I am sincerely interested in what it takes to convince these people to make an earnest attempt to understand science. It's amazing to me that they can so vociferously deny evidence for so long without their heads exploding.
I do think it's interesting some here are taking "why did you abandon Creationism?" to mean "Why did you abandon Christianity?" To me the two really should be different questions.
I don't think they are necessarily two different questions. When I began to question the "Jewish Zombie" aspect of religion it was just a small step to question the "origins" theory that these same people had proposed prior.
However, I don't completely rule out "intelligent design" in that it is possible that their is a first cause, however, I refuse to put any parameters on first cause.
Just curious, because most Creationists I have encountered simply cannot be convinced to live in reality no matter what evidence or argument is presented to them.
I would like to know what it was that finally broke the programming.
For me it was a slow progression into agnosticism from Christian fundamentalism, which is where I remain for right now. I had always questioned certain things that didn't add up but I never verbalized it until about 5 years ago when I started posting on C-D. I learned a lot from this board and from the folks here.
As far as being able to convince a diehard fundamentalist Christian to believe anything other than what they believe......not gonna happen. Most of them are too close-minded and hard core to hear what you're saying. A little open-mindedness goes a looooong way.
ETA: I haven't completely discounted Creationism, but I need proof to believe in a god.
When I was younger, I was a staunch, and I mean STAUNCH Creationist. I argued on message boards against the Big Bang and evolution and I was sure no one could convince me otherwise. And in fact, no one ever did convince me. The only reason it happened was because I eventually decided that I should at least try to get a better understanding of the opposition's argument. I thought I understood it well enough to argue against it, but in actuality I had simply been repeating what I had heard from other Creationists, instead of actually listening to the people arguing for the Big Bang and the TOE. When I began learning about it on my own (they sure as heck didn't teach us in school), I began to see exactly why most scientists support these theories. I still remember the "Aha!" moment when the theory of evolution suddenly made sense to me. So no one convinced me to change my views, I was simply convinced when I finally understood them.
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