Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
One of my college professors was a very devoted Christian. Much of his life he actually had spent doing religious missions, after he served in Vietnam. Would you have guessed he believes in evolution? But he said that he doesn't think evolution diminished or invalidates creation, rather it makes it more beautiful. He describes evolution as just being a part of creation.
He's not alone. I'd actually argue that most people are with him on that. You are actually in a minority by denying evolution in it's entirety.
There is disagreement within the study of evolution. But it's not about evolution itself. It's agreed that evolution is the process that causes diversity in species. Some of the nitty gritty stuff, like when certain species came to be and what came from what are still being studied. And yes, there is disagreement in this area. But it's not about if evolution is valid. That argument has passed.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jeffbase40
Explain to me how he could claim to be a Christian yet believe that God did not create man. First starters, you have to toss out the Bible, the same Bible that Jesus Christ himself quoted and believed in.
Where did The Dusty say that his Christian friend did not believe God created man? Millions of Christians believe that God created man and everything else--by the process of evolution. Why must it have been a Merlin-the-Magician, snap-the-fingers-and-it-appears type of creation? Isn't that HUMAN thinking? Isn't an incomprehensible unfolding of creation over eons far more amazing and divine?
Explain to me how he could claim to be a Christian yet believe that God did not create man. First starters, you have to toss out the Bible, the same Bible that Jesus Christ himself quoted and believed in.
Try explaining why Francis Collins isn't a Christian .
That you conclude that atheists have a superiority complex based on a single encounter indicates that this guy did colour your views on atheists.
What I find very strange is that you have had only one encounter with an atheist.
I have meet other atheist online at least. I frequent religious forum often, it is a place for other like minded Christian individuals to share their devotion to God. Recently though, there seems to be an epidemic of atheist or religion haters trolling these forums with anti-Christian sentiment. It is very annoying because these trolls ruin a lot of good discussions with their sense of moral superiority and condescending towards Christians. Now I will repeat I don't think all atheist are like this, I consider atheist my brothers/sisters and Christians are also guilty of this behavior too.
It seems to be the new fad among progressive intellectuals to be an atheist( not saying they aren't genuine atheist), for some reason they automatically think they are smarter/better then us Christians for not believing in God, as if belief in God is only for the stupid. That's the negative attitude I am talking about. Anyways despite all that I have had some great conversations with atheist as well as nonbelievers.
Last edited by NancyFancy; 02-24-2016 at 08:20 PM..
Explain to me how he could claim to be a Christian yet believe that God did not create man. First starters, you have to toss out the Bible, the same Bible that Jesus Christ himself quoted and believed in.
Yah, well. You probably mean the Torah, as opposed to the Bible. That would be the Old Testament. One of the main problems there is that the Jewish faiths in general don't recognize Jesus of Nazareth as the Christ, the Messiah, etc. Maybe as a minor prophet, but I'm not certain that they tend to go even that far. This failure to recognize Jesus is the main reason that the apostles turned to gentiles for recruitment of believers.
What we call the Bible is the OT plus the New Testament, which was hammered out in a series of convocations & synods, I think they were called, over 200 years or so, after the death of Christ. The contents of the NT vary by denomination - for instance the Apocrypha vary, sometimes included, sometimes not. It's interesting history & theology, you might want to look into it.
I have meet other atheist online at least. I frequent religious forum often, it is a place for other like minded Christian individuals to share their devotion to God. Recently though, there seems to be an epidemic of atheist or religion haters trolling these forums with anti-Christian sentiment. It is very annoying because these trolls ruin a lot of good discussions with their sense of moral superiority and condescending towards Christians. Now I will repeat I don't think all atheist are like this, I consider atheist my brothers/sisters and Christians are also guilty of this behavior too.
It seems to be the new fad among progressive intellectuals to be an atheist( not saying they aren't genuine atheist), for some reason they automatically think they are smarter/better then us Christians for not believing in God, as if belief in God is only for the stupid. That's the negative attitude I am talking about. Anyways despite all that I have had some great conversations with atheist as well as nonbelievers.
Fair enough, I have the same opinion of three or four religious folks here and at least one non believer.
Very true, Christians did exactly that. Of course, recent atheists like Stalin, Pol Pot and Chairman Mao killed millions in their attempts to create an atheist "paradises".
No they didn't. They killed millions because of a political ideal.
Quote:
Originally Posted by RonkonkomaNative
Jesus quoted the bible? The bible did not exist in Jesus' lifetime. Jesus was Hebrew, not Christian.
Explain to me how he could claim to be a Christian yet believe that God did not create man. First starters, you have to toss out the Bible, the same Bible that Jesus Christ himself quoted and believed in.
It appears from this post that you are saying that it is necessary for a person the accept an inerrant, literal interpretation of the Bible in order for you to consider that person a Christian.
Is that correct?
The vast majority of Christians, as well as the doctrine of most major denominations, treat many of the Biblical stories as allegorical. These millions and millions of people do not believe that a literal talking snake, talking donkey, a boat with 2 of every animal, or a 6 day creation (and many other examples) are necessary to validate the moral lessons that are offered by those stories.
Like the guy referred to in The Dusty's post, belief that God created mankind does not require that it happened in 6 days. That man found beauty in God's direction of the process of evolution, and your response is to use that as a basis to deny his belief.
Maybe you could make a list of all the denominations that you believe aren't "really" Christians since they don't blindly accept every word in the KJV as literal truth. (Don't bother to post your list here. We don't need that battle.) I think you'd find that there are (comparatively) very few "real" Christians.
It seems to be the new fad among progressive intellectuals to be an atheist( not saying they aren't genuine atheist), for some reason they automatically think they are smarter/better then us Christians for not believing in God, as if belief in God is only for the stupid. That's the negative attitude I am talking about. Anyways despite all that I have had some great conversations with atheist as well as nonbelievers.
Nancy, I doubt that most of my fellow unbelievers would disagree with me ... I do not think believers intellectually defective or "less than" but I do see them as deliberately blinkered and logically inconsistent and sometimes we say provocative things to drive this point home and try to wake them up. And sometimes we cross lines when we do that, arguably. But it's far more nuanced them just "believers are stupid". Human intelligence is highly compartmentalized and varies independently from wisdom. That is how you can have a PhD in some field of science (apart from, say, paleontology obviously) and still insist that god spoke the earth into existence in a week, six thousand years ago.*
The trend you are probably noticing is essentially driven by so-called "new atheism" which says in a nutshell that it is past time for atheists to quit walking on eggshells so as not to offend theists, most especially inerrantist / fundamentalist theists. The unearned respect and deference for their ideas must come to an end, because their beliefs are at the root of concrete societal harms.
When I left the faith I initially found this distasteful but over the years I have come around to it more and more because while it's unfortunate that people must be shocked and have their feelings hurt and assumptions challenged and forced to come up with at least quasi-rational justifications for their thinking, it is necessary for multiple reasons. It is a simple leveling of the playing field, which is the marketplace of ideas. No more "free passes" should be allowed.
As to the infiltration into the Christianity forum, personally that is the last place I go and usually only when things are pretty dead here or in Religion & Spirituality. Even then, I mostly modify my approach and am gentler. Still, the Christianity forum is not intended as a forum FOR Christians but ABOUT ChristianITY. So while I don't push nearly so hard for rational discourse in that environment, I feel that I have as much right as anyone to opinions and views on the topics discussed there, particularly in that I have a long and devout history within that faith.
The reality is that Christians should welcome open discourse about their ideas rather than be threatened or annoyed about it. If they can't stand to be questioned, doubted or disagreed with (often equating such things with "persecution") then one must wonder what the source of this fragility is. I submit that the threat they perceive is that people will start thinking / questioning and then doubting, and if this is the existential threat you must ask yourself why that is and whether a belief system that is dependent on dogma is a valid and good idea or not.
* We're also well aware that this is a minority position within Christianity. But it does exist, and these are the people who argue their ideology the most stridently (and are by far the most fascistic and oppressive about imposing their ideas on all people; most of them dream of a sort of theocratic government and work hard toward that end).
I meet an atheist fellow once and he was the nastiness person I have meet. He seem to have this hostility towards anyone who wasn't an atheist.
Then he was simply a bad person. People who look down on others for not being like themselves are bad people. This has nothing to do with religion. There are people like that everywhere. Theists. Atheists. Democrats. Republicans. Vegetarians. Men. Women. Gay. Straight. Parents. Childless people. They ALL are categories that have people who will look down on others for not being the same.
Quote:
Originally Posted by NancyFancy
I think the problem with atheist is that a lot of have a bit of a superiority complex
Funny how you describe meeting ONE atheist "fellow" and you are suddenly able to comment on the "complexs" atheist in general have. Do you often generalize false realities from single examples? Because if you do, it is not atheists that are suffering from a superiority complex. It is you.
Quote:
Originally Posted by NancyFancy
look down on people who devote themselves to God because they view them as less intelligent.
There are similarly many theists who look down on atheists as being less intelligent. In fact there are members of, for example, the Catholic church..... even in the top heirachies of that institution..... who have declared that atheists are not even fully HUMAN.
So once again you are cherry picking atheists for attributes that actually exist in just about all categories of people you might name.
Quote:
Originally Posted by NancyFancy
The guy I meet hasn;t colored my view of atheist
Yet you espouse a completely false generalization about atheists as a whole off the back of that one guy. So it seems not only is what you say here about your view being colored not true... it is exactly and entirely 100% false.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
The Devil's in the details
