Atheists, Why Do You Believe That Christians Cannot Accept Evolution?

[Occams Barber]

And you think that explanation would have satisfied the Romans, a week after the Resurrection?

If it was just a vision, why didn't the Romans just produce Jesus' body and stop the spread of Christianity before it started?

This has so many holes in it I could drive a bus through without scraping the sides.

1. Who said it was a vision? Perhaps it never happened. Perhaps it was invented or the product of someone who wanted to believe (see post #356)
2. Did the Romans know about an alleged resurrection?
3. If the Romans knew some Jewish rabble were claiming Jesus didn't die - would they care?
4. If they knew and cared would they still have Jesus body?
5. How would the Romans know about the future and Christianity?

You see the crucifixion as an earth shattering event. Remember - for the Romans, it was just another day on Golgotha.

OB

 

[AV1611VET]

You see the crucifixion as an earth shattering event. Remember - for the Romans, it was just another day on Golgotha.

Then why did they post guards at His tomb, under penalty of death if He came up missing?

 

[Occams Barber]

Then why did they post guards at His tomb, under penalty of death if He came up missing?

Did they - or is that just part of the myth?

OB

 

[Caliban]

And you'll keep thinking that until you have one.

I have had one. I was raised a Christian. I have spoken in tongues, worshiped with my whole heart and voice. I have cried over what I thought was the movement of the Holy Spirit. I have had every spiritual experience that you can have in Christianity. But I no longer attribute those experiences to a god. There are natural explanations for this.

 

[AV1611VET]

Did they -

Affirmative.

 

[Occams Barber]

Affirmative.

I'm no Biblical scholar AV but I know enough to know that there are legitimate alternative views on the crucifixion story.

This is just one:

Atheist and historian Richard Carrier writes:

The authors create a rhetorical means of putting the theft story into question by inventing guards on the tomb ... it is most suspicious that the other gospel accounts omit any mention of a guard, even when Mary visits the tomb (compare Matthew 28:1-15 with Mark 16:1-8, Luke 24:1-12, and John 20:1-9), and also do not mention the theft story—this claim is not even reported in Acts, where a lot of hostile Jewish attacks on the church are recorded, yet somehow this one fails to be mentioned. Neither Peter nor Paul mention either fact, either, even though their letters predate the gospels by decades. Worse, Matthew's account involves reporting privileged conversations between priests and Pilate, and then secret ones between priests and guards that no Christian could have known about (27.62-65, 28.11-15). This is always a very suspicious sign of fiction... (Matthew) had the motive to make it up, to answer the objections of later skeptics (just like the Thomas story in John), and the story looks like an invention, because it narrates events that could not be known by the author.[22]​

(from Stolen Body Hypothesis)​

OB

 

[Strathos]

I have had one. I was raised a Christian. I have spoken in tongues, worshiped with my whole heart and voice. I have cried over what I thought was the movement of the Holy Spirit. I have had every spiritual experience that you can have in Christianity. But I no longer attribute those experiences to a god. There are natural explanations for this.

Well then hopefully you'll return some day.

 

[Halbhh]

Mostly this.

But for the Christians that don't accept evolution, my experience is that they see the Bible as fact and without error. Evolution goes against the Genisis books in particular.

At least that is what I have been told by Christians that don't accept evolution.

Evolution is simply creationism also since God exists (physics and chemistry being His design of nature).

And it fits the text of Genesis too. (I've read fully through all of Genesis four times, in various translations, and chapters 1-3 several additional times, so I know the wording very well and completely; and understand it better from having read all the bible several times ).

 

[AV1611VET]

Evolution is simply creationism also since God exists (physics and chemistry being His design of nature).

And it fits the text of Genesis too. (I've read fully through all of Genesis four times, in various translations, and chapters 1-3 several additional times, so I know the wording very well and completely; and understand it better from having read all the bible several times ).

So what happens when you read that the earth came before the sun?

 

[Halbhh]

So what happens when you read that the earth came before the sun?

Reading the text carefully, we learn a key message, a repeated message -- that all of creation is made for us, and even the sun moon and stars, that this be a "very good" home for us!

Consider: God could have put us on a world with a constant gray sky that would lighten and darken in a cycle -- could have -- and we'd be without that great beauty. It would have still be sufficient for us to face the choices we face, whether to trust in God, whether to follow Christ.

But He did more -- He made us a home that is very good in so many different ways. The entire heavens stretched above us for our wonder and delight.

----
It's only a side question (not central in any way) about when sunlight first is affecting the days, but we can notice that the first day already has a day and an evening and night --

Genesis 1:5 God called the light "day," and the darkness He called "night." And there was evening, and there was morning--the first day.

So! Therefore we can expect that the earth is already rotating and being lit from a light shining on it from one direction. This produces mornings, bright day, evenings with fading light, and nights.

A morning and an evening.

But the sun, moon and stars are not visible in the vision or not highlighted until the 4th day. When they are, their real purpose for us is revealed -- they are "good", and help us mark the seasons, and feel the passing of time, the passing of the years.

They are "good" He tells us.

Indeed they are!

 

[Caliban]

Well then hopefully you'll return some day.

I understand your sentiment and it is kind of you to hope that I have a future you believe is full of life and eternity. I have come to a different conclusion however. I now see many harmful aspects of my previous religious beliefs and I consider returning to them to be impossible and undesirable. It is impossible to explain on an internet forum, but I cannot imagine losing the freedom of my intellect now that I have it. As well meaning as your words are, I hope it never happens to me. I love my life and cherish my moment in the sun.

 

[AV1611VET]

But the sun, moon and stars are not visible in the vision or not highlighted until the 4th day.

Then let's make it tougher, shall we?

How do you account for these seven points of contrast:

1. Earth before Sun
2. Light before Sun
3. Plants before marine organisms
4. Fruit bearing trees before fish
5. Birds before insects
6. Plants before Sun
7. Man before rain

 

[AV1611VET]

I love my life and cherish my moment in the sun.

You gave up all this ...

Hebrews 6:4 For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost,
5 And have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come,

... to cherish a moment in the sun?

You can't do both?

There's an old saying:

Aim for earth, get earth; aim for Heaven, get both.

 

[Caliban]

You gave up all this ...

Hebrews 6:4 For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost,
5 And have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come,

... to cherish a moment in the sun?

You can't do both?

There's an old saying:

Aim for earth, get earth; aim for Heaven, get both.

I am not giving up what does not exist. This world, this cosmos is what exists. To claim a supernatural plain exists is to simply believe with ones eyes closed. It sounds beautiful, but it is a beautiful fiction.

 

[VirOptimus]

Then let's make it tougher, shall we?

How do you account for these seven points of contrast:

1. Earth before Sun
2. Light before Sun
3. Plants before marine organisms
4. Fruit bearing trees before fish
5. Birds before insects
6. Plants before Sun
7. Man before rain

The rational thing to do when a text contradicts reality is to conclude that the text at least cant be literal truth. The irrational thing is to conclude ”magic”.

 

[Caliban]

The rational thing to do when a text contradicts reality is to conclude that the text at least cant be literal truth. The irrational thing is to conclude ”magic”.

 

[AV1611VET]

I am not giving up what does not exist. This world, this cosmos is what exists. To claim a supernatural plain exists is to simply believe with ones eyes closed. It sounds beautiful, but it is a beautiful fiction.

I'll certainly be praying for you.

 

[AV1611VET]

The rational thing to do when a text contradicts reality is to conclude that the text at least cant be literal truth.

But I'm asking someone who thinks the text doesn't contradict reality.

 

[Caliban]

I'll certainly be praying for you.

I'd rather you didn't.

 

[Shemjaza]

well ... basically I come to this ....

as time goes on ... and ... science discovers just how intricate and complex and fine tuned many many things in our world and in the universe really are .... believing everything randomly happened over millions/billions years with million/billions of random happenings taking place and would have had to in such a precise manner to produce all of these complexities by themselves becomes evolution impossible.

So, I leave it at that and move on, let everyone be convinced in their own mind ;o)

You've just repeated vague statements about possibility.

People are welcome to their own beliefs... but you wrote as if you had actual detailed reasons. It seems that your argument is that you have an emotional reaction to the complexity of the life and the cosmos and have just declared that it must be designed.

Given that we have so many mechanisms for change and complexity I've just never seen a justification for assuming design. The pattern of sand and flotsam left by the high tide can be intricate and even beautiful... but few assume it was deliberately designed because of it.