Former Christians

Captain Jackson · Dec 20, 2003

Former Christians, did evolution have anything to do with you losing your faith?

seebs · Dec 20, 2003

I know a few people who came close to deconverting when they realized that YEC models weren't sustainable.

That said, evolution is obviously not sufficient to kill faith; the problem is the belief that evolution and Christianity are incompatible.

desi · Dec 20, 2003

I'm a fairly logical fellow who happens to still have faith...

If God loved the world, then he would allow many into his paradise. Few will enter his paradise, however (Matthew 7:14). Therefore the Christian God does not love the world.

Your argument presupposes God's love precludes accountabiliy. If father loved the child, then he would never punish. Father punishes naughty child. Therefore father does not love child.

or if you prefer...

If society is free, then its citizens have freedom. Some citizens are incarcerated for breaking society's rules. Therefore society is not free.

There is no society in the world I know of where all members are treated equally by the law no matter how many rules they break. There are few parents I know who refuse to discipline their children, the ones who don't discipline them end up supporting those children when they grow up to be selfish bums as adults. We pay the price for what we do, or don't do. The choice is ours. Does a parent who manipulates and naggs their children into doing what they think is right showing more love than a parent who shows their children right from wrong and lets them make the choice on their own? If God made you behave would it be more loving than letting you choose for yourself, sort of like the government making everyone wear seat belts. Love is not controlling it is letting you be you and living with the bed you make for yourself.

greatcogitator · Dec 20, 2003

desi said:
I'm a fairly logical fellow who happens to still have faith...

If God loved the world, then he would allow many into his paradise. Few will enter his paradise, however (Matthew 7:14). Therefore the Christian God does not love the world.

Your argument presupposes God's love precludes accountabiliy. If father loved the child, then he would never punish. Father punishes naughty child. Therefore father does not love child.
There are few parents I know who refuse to discipline their children, the ones who don't discipline them end up supporting those children when they grow up to be selfish bums as adults.

There are also fewer parents who kill their children, as you say we discipline, but also as you say our discipline serves a purpose, to stop bad behavior. God sends us to hell, no chance of redemption, and thus my analogy of the parent that kills their child.

desi said:
We pay the price for what we do, or don't do. The choice is ours. Does a parent who manipulates and naggs their children into doing what they think is right showing more love than a parent who shows their children right from wrong and lets them make the choice on their own? If God made you behave would it be more loving than letting you choose for yourself, sort of like the government making everyone wear seat belts. Love is not controlling it is letting you be you and living with the bed you make for yourself.

Can we prove that love neccesitates freedom without taking preconceived notions of love? As well I bring up the parent example... A parent does stop the kid. Love is not only cutting the loved one free, but also preventing them from making huge mistakes. Love is also about saving the one you love from peril, you can't claim to love a child and watch as they burn themselves on the stove while you do nothing... that certainly isn't love. Yet God does it worse, he watches us pick up the gun and play with it a bit before we kill ourselves.

Mike Flynn · Dec 20, 2003

greatcogitator said:
Love is not only cutting the loved one free, but also preventing them from making huge mistakes. Love is also about saving the one you love from peril, you can't claim to love a child and watch as they burn themselves on the stove while you do nothing... that certainly isn't love.

So love is when you remove free will from your child? I understand your point, but your analogy is flawed.

The choice that we all have is this: we can choose to love or we can choose not to love. Your child can choose to love you or not. You can choose to love your neighbor or not. You can choose to be selfish or not.

Without freedom not to love, love is meaningless. However, if we choose not to love, or to love only ourselves...then the lonliness that resultes is self-inflicted. God cannot make you love because it would not be love if he did.

greatcogitator said:
Yet God does it worse, he watches us pick up the gun and play with it a bit before we kill ourselves.

What a dim theology. Like I said, your analogy is nothing but a misrepresentation of Christian theology.

If your child is always selfish, can you make him not be selfish? No. But you can do everything you can to encourage him to do otherwise. You know that if he grows up totally selfish, then he will suffer for it. Because you love the child, you devote all of your resources into trying to help him become the best person he can be. This is the work that God does for us. But, in the end, the child must choose for himself whether to be selfish (and have an empty life) or be selfless (and have a rich one).

ObbiQuiet · Dec 20, 2003

To the OP: no.

Captain Jackson · Dec 20, 2003

Desi, that's my signature, not the topic of this thread. Please move your comments to a new thread in GA. If everyone else would do the same I would greatly appriciate it.

Captain Jackson · Dec 21, 2003

I guess I'll have to change my signature to keep it from derailing more threads. It was such a great point though.

PhantomLlama · Dec 21, 2003

My religious upbringing was rather literalist, but I also had an avid interest in science, and when push came to shove I chose science over religion.

I would not have been forced to make this choice if my religious indoctrination was not literalist. So while you could blame evolution (actually cosmology in my case) for my loss of faith, the true fault lies with the people who made me a creationist to begin with.

EDIT: And don't change your signature. It's a good signature. Just ignore derailers.

bevets · Dec 21, 2003

Thus disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate, but was at last complete. The rate was so slow that I felt no distress. ~ Charles Darwin

I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my Father, Brother and almost all of my friends, will be everlasting punished. And this is a damnable doctrine. ~ Charles Darwin

In high school I read Haeckel's Weltratsel naively and avidly, not as a guide to evolutionary studies but to have ammunition in arguments about the Bible and religion! ~ Ernst Mayr

Evolution is promoted by its practitioners as more than mere science. Evolution is promulgated as an ideology, a secular religion a full-fledged alternative to Christianity, with meaning and morality. I am an ardent evolutionist and an ex-Christian, but I must admit that in this one complaint and Mr. Gish is but one of many to make it the literalists are absolutely right. Evolution is a religion. This was true of evolution in the beginning, and it is true of evolution still today. ~ Michael Ruse

The still faithful might say I never knew grace, never had it; but they would be wrong. The truth is that I found it and abandoned it. In the years following I drifted away form the church, and, my attendance became desultory. My heart continued to believe in the light and the way, but increasingly in the abstract, and I looked for grace in some other setting. By the time I entered college at the age of seventeen, I was absorbed in natural history almost to the exclusion of everything else. ~ E. O. Wilson

As the creationists claim, belief in modern evolution makes atheists of people. One can have a religious view that is compatible with evolution only if the religious view is indistinguishable from atheism. ~ William Provine

Evolution is the greatest engine of atheism ever invented. ~ William Provine

Routerider · Dec 21, 2003

Captain Jackson said:
Former Christians, did evolution have anything to do with you losing your faith?

Not at all. The bible actually convinced me that I was following an empty religion.

pureone · Dec 21, 2003

I became agnostic long before I became a serious student in the sciences.
Usually had more to do with literalists than athiests. Guess which one pushed me towards agnosticism? (BTW, I didn't know or meet any athiests at the time)

Captain Jackson · Dec 21, 2003

PhantomLlama said:
EDIT: And don't change your signature. It's a good signature. Just ignore derailers.

Thank you. I've decided not to change it for a while. I guess threads can survive even with derailers.

Captain Jackson · Dec 21, 2003

desi said:
If society is free, then its citizens have freedom. Some citizens are incarcerated for breaking society's rules. Therefore society is not free.

Citizens do not have freedom to do whatever they want, that is why some are incarcerated.

You seem to be pulling a red herring, and your counter-argument makes no sense, and arrives at a dead end. If you wish to challenge my proof that God does not love the world, then I suggest that you challenge it, and not waste our time playing with words.

David Gould · Dec 21, 2003

Evolution had nothing to do with my deconversion. I accepted evolution while a Christian (indeed, I did not know there were such things as 'creationists').

Captain Jackson · Dec 22, 2003

Since Biblical literalists like to use the Creationism/Evolution debate as an apologetics tool, I thought this would be a very interesting topic. I don't think they're going to convert many to Christiany by challenging evolution.

Meatros · Dec 22, 2003

Captain Jackson said:
Former Christians, did evolution have anything to do with you losing your faith?

No.

I lost my faith when I did some research into Christianity and philosophy.

the_malevolent_milk_man · Dec 22, 2003

Lost my faith before I got into science. The bible is one of the best deconversion tools around. I didn't even know I was an atheist, or what an atheist really was, until years after my deconversion.

Karl - Liberal Backslider · Dec 22, 2003

Bevets - you really should learn the dangers of quote mining. Your Ruse one is interesting.

Follow me here - http://www.evolutionpages.com/Abstracts/michael_ruse.htm

And read the conclusion that Ruse reached:

So, what does our history tell us? Three things. First, if the claim is that all contemporary evolutionism is merely an excuse to promote moral and societal norms, this is simply false. Today's professional evolutionism is no more a secular religion than is industrial chemistry. Second, there is indeed a thriving area of more popular evolutionism, where evolution is used to underpin claims about the nature of the universe, the meaning of it all for us humans, and the way we should behave. I am not saying that this area is all bad or that it should be stamped out. I am all in favor of saving the rainforests. I am saying that this popular evolutionism--often an alternative to religion--exists. Third, we who cherish science should be careful to distinguish when we are doing science and when we are extrapolating from it, particularly when we are teaching our students. If it is science that is to be taught, then teach science and nothing more. Leave the other discussions for a more appropriate time.

Ruse does not conclude that evolution is a religion. He concludes it can be misappropriated as the basis of a religion. Your selective quoting of him makes him say the opposite of what he actually thinks. Someone is being dishonest - specifically, whoever pulled that quotation out of context
The creationist dishonesty machine makes me want to puke.

ReUsAbLePhEoNiX · Dec 22, 2003

Captain Jackson said:
Former Christians, did evolution have anything to do with you losing your faith?

Questioning the
Doctrine of Hell, is what started my deconvertion, Evo was the final straw, but mostly a overall christian attitude that doesnt value science.. just once I wish I could of heard a sermon on the value of the Scientific Method .

Evolution was great in the way that I was able to see how I dismiss evidence when it contradicts my world view. It was a real eye opener into my own phycology of belief. It had a positive impact on my life.

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