Why are some Christians anti Evolution?

[2PhiloVoid]

What Deuteronomy states if a women doesn't cry out in a city where she can be heard, it cannot be rape but a consensual act in which case both parties are stoned to death for either adultery or fornication.
Did you consider a woman might be paralyzed with fear or prevented from crying out, or at the very least contemplate the verses are an extreme case of modern day victim blaming?
Like @Bradskii I cannot get my head around how anyone can blindly accept a clearly flawed law by modern standards because it is in the Bible and therefore infallible.

The Bible is not infallible as your post indicates where Jesus contradicts an Old Testament law.

This topic needs to be dropped for this thread, and I say this because I don't think anyone here is going to do the necessary work to treat it in a more expansive, balanced and scholarly way. If we start reading it and assume there are no hermeneutical contexts or other literary contingencies further than our eyeballs can immediately see, we might do ourselves a disservice and misinterpret what it is we think it's saying. And I'm sure none of us would want to be guilty of merely evoking personal eisegesis when handling something as ancient and foreign as an old Hebrew literary text....just to give a fundamentalist or two a black eye.

 

[Hans Blaster]

I think there are public school teachers out there who want to indoctrinate children into their own world view rather than teach reading, writing, mathematics etc while keeping sexual themes, politics, religion out of it.


I know you're a teacher.

You tell me, should we be? Do you enjoy sharing your private life with 5 year olds or are you mature enough to know that has no place in the classroom?

You either approve of this behavior or you don't.

Use to be children had no idea a teacher was even married unless their name 'Mrs x' gave it away. They knew nothing about the teachers private life or sexual preferences -as it should be. The teacher being gay or straight or whatever is not the point here, the point is what they talk about, and their gender preferences is not it.

This is why you're afraid of evolution?

Good grief, get a grip.

 

[TLK Valentine]

I know you're a teacher.

Good. So maybe you'll take my word for it when I tell you the old adage, "it takes one to know one."

You tell me, should we be?

Nope -- but you will anyway.

You either approve of this behavior or you don't.

I usually don't approve of anyone pretending to be a teacher, unless they're an actor playing one on TV. And I really don't approve of people who believe absolutely everything they see on TikTok.

I mean, seriously... where's that "Christian discernment" I keep hearing so much about?

Let the record show a vote of no confidence when it comes to matters of evolution...

 

[Bradskii]

I really don't see it quite this way, Bradskii. In my view, I couldn't care much less if my fellow Christians reject the Theory of Evolution.

As for the "mindset" of those you're signifying here, I think it's an unspoken conflation to say that a firmer, even fundamentalist viewpoint somehow extends solely from a singular, monolithic view of the Bible. It doesn't necessarily, and it's not really a natural extension of the original question. Even Christian Fundamentalists can have different emphases between themselves upon various portions of the Bible.

I'm talking about a fundamentalist view that reads the bible literally leading to accepting a position simply because 'it is written'. The same mindset that rejects evolution - because the bible says so, allows one to accept stoning a woman to death - precisely for the same reason.

Like you, I could care less if someone thinks the world is 6,000 years old or that Noah led the animals onto a floating zoo two by two (as long as they don't try to teach it as a fact in schools). But it's hard to stop there when we have at least two people in this very discussion who, if Jesus hadn't suggested that someone without sin hurl the first rock, would, because of that mindset, consider it acceptable.

The rejection of evolution is sometimes a small flag that perhaps we should scrape away the surface arguments and see what lies beneath.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

I'm talking about a fundamentalist view that reads the bible literally leading to accepting a position simply because 'it is written'. The same mindset that rejects evolution - because the bible says so, allows one to accept stoning a woman to death - precisely for the same reason.

Like you, I could care less if someone thinks the world is 6,000 years old or that Noah led the animals onto a floating zoo two by two (as long as they don't try to teach it as a fact in schools). But it's hard to stop there when we have at least two people in this very discussion who, if Jesus hadn't suggested that someone without sin hurl the first rock, would, because of that mindset, consider it acceptable.

Bradskii, I empathize with your concern, but surely you realize that even if a Christian is a hyper Fundamentalist, this doesn't automatically mean he or she is also a direct advocate for Theonomy (a.k.a. Dominion Theology). Thinking that it was "right" for adulterers to be stoned for sins in ancient Israel doesn't directly infer that it's to be a universally applied norm to be carried out by Christians today.

You understand this, right? I'm assuming that you can since, probably more than me, you're educated and can discern these nuanced differences without to much effort.

 

[Bradskii]

Bradskii, I empathize with your concern, but surely you realize that even if a Christian is a hyper Fundamentalist, this doesn't automatically mean he or she is also a direct advocate for Theonomy (a.k.a. Dominion Theology).

I agree. That mindset wasn't assumed to be held. In fact I automatically assume that reasonable people would reject theonomy. You would generally align that type of viewpoint with fundamentalist Muslim views perhaps. Let's face it, Christian suicide bombers are pretty thin on the ground.

But...in this case, it appears that my assumption was wrong in regard to at least two posters.

 

[TLK Valentine]

I agree. That mindset wasn't assumed to be held. In fact I automatically assume that reasonable people would reject theonomy. You would generally align that type of viewpoint with fundamentalist Muslim views perhaps.

"Reasonable people" by definition, don't embrace radical fundamentalism of any religion. They embrace it as an irrational response to a real or imagined threat.

Let's face it, Christian suicide bombers are pretty thin on the ground.

...especially after the bomb detonates!

But seriously, you're right -- the closest we get are the abortion clinic bombers, and they usually aim not to go up with their target.

Of course, Christian terrorists these days are more likely to just shoot the doctors, and their sympathizers will simply justify it (or give a half-hearted condemnation) after the fact.

 

[sjastro]

This topic needs to be dropped for this thread, and I say this because I don't think anyone here is going to do the necessary work to treat it in a more expansive, balanced and scholarly way. If we start reading it and assume there are no hermeneutical contexts or other literary contingencies further than our eyeballs can immediately see, we might do ourselves a disservice and misinterpret what it is we think it's saying. And I'm sure none of us would want to be guilty of merely evoking personal eisegesis when handling something as ancient and foreign as an old Hebrew literary text....just to give a fundamentalist or two a black eye.

Since this thread has turned into a literal vs metaphorical interpretation of the Bible it opens up a range of topics such as social evolution which is a subject in anthropology.
The Bible reflected the signs of the time where women as rape victims could be as guilty as the perpetrator (Deuteronomy) or as wives being the property of the husband (Exodus).
One doesn’t need to look deeply or through the lens of a raging feminist to conclude that women were mistreated.
Women in the Bible - Wikipedia

The apparent rejection of social evolution in this thread because the Bible states otherwise is quite disturbing along with the denial of science in general.

 

[AV1611VET]

Thinking that it was "right" for adulterers to be stoned for sins in ancient Israel doesn't directly infer that it's to be a universally applied norm to be carried out by Christians today.

I have a feeling I know why some people take that prescript so personally; but I'll keep it to myself.

 

[ottawak]

That's one way to look at it. The thing is, I haven't been known to always take everything in the bible seriously ... until I know and understand what "seriously" amounts to.

Seriously, as an object of intellectual and scholarly study. If it really is the Word of God then it deserves all of the linguistic, literary, historical and scientific scrutiny which can be brought to bear on it.

 

[AV1611VET]

Seriously, as an object of intellectual and scholarly study. If it really is the Word of God then it deserves all of the linguistic, literary, historical and scientific scrutiny which can be brought to bear on it.

God's word has been under the microscope ever since the Garden of Eden -- and It still stands today.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

I agree. That mindset wasn't assumed to be held. In fact I automatically assume that reasonable people would reject theonomy. You would generally align that type of viewpoint with fundamentalist Muslim views perhaps. Let's face it, Christian suicide bombers are pretty thin on the ground.

But...in this case, it appears that my assumption was wrong in regard to at least two posters.

I would hope very much that an oxymoron like a "radically violent Christian" would be a very rare bird. But I don't think we can define someone like, say, the late theologian Greg Bahnsen, as that kind of radical. ... he was Theonomist, though.

My point? The Theonomy I'm referring to doesn't equate to Waco-doodlians. Rather, it could simply be the thinking of a quite grandma sitting peacefully in a local Presbyterian church.

 

[AV1611VET]

I would hope very much that an oxymoron like a "radically violent Christian" would be a very rare bird. But I don't think we can define someone like, say, the late theologian Greg Bahnsen, as that kind of radical. ... he was Theonomist, though.

My point? The Theonomy I'm referring to doesn't equate to Waco-doodlians. Rather, it could simply be the thinking of a quite grandma sitting peacefully in a local Presbyterian church.

How's come you got into New Jerusalem ahead of us!?

 

[TLK Valentine]

God's word has been under the microscope ever since the Garden of Eden -- and It still stands today.

Indeed -- its the readings of it performed by people such as yourself that merit laughter -- as well they should.

Fortunately, the reputation of the Bible itself remains intact in spite of the damage you attempt to do to it on a daily basis.

 

[TLK Valentine]

I have a feeling I know why some people take that prescript so personally; but I'll keep it to myself.

As do I, but I won't keep it to myself.

The Bible can be and has been the most useful tool for social control in human history -- no tyrant who has ruled with a holy book in his hand and his boot on your neck has ever been unseated easily.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

How's come you got into New Jerusalem ahead of us!?

Shhhhhh! .... don't tell anyone. We don't want jealousy to break out among the ranks!

 

[2PhiloVoid]

Since this thread has turned into a literal vs metaphorical interpretation of the Bible it opens up a range of topics such as social evolution which is a subject in anthropology.
The Bible reflected the signs of the time where women as rape victims could be as guilty as the perpetrator (Deuteronomy) or as wives being the property of the husband (Exodus).
One doesn’t need to look deeply or through the lens of a raging feminist to conclude that women were mistreated.
Women in the Bible - Wikipedia

The apparent rejection of social evolution in this thread because the Bible states otherwise is quite disturbing along with the denial of science in general.

Brother sjastro, let's just say that I don't think you can settle for a simple, selectively slanted Wikipedia article to "explain" the social and literary implications of the so-called "rape" verses that you are serendipitously bringing up here. Surely, you know that to handle this (these kinds of) verses is going to take multiple interdisciplinary studies to treat in a more balanced, scholarly Hermeneutical way.

I think it's best we just focus on 'why' fundamentalist Christians have various reasons for rejecting the Theory of Evolution (millions of years of biological rather than 2,500 years of "social").

 

[2PhiloVoid]

Seriously, as an object of intellectual and scholarly study. If it really is the Word of God then it deserves all of the linguistic, literary, historical and scientific scrutiny which can be brought to bear on it.

Sure. I agree with you, but I've also heard the term used in a more colloquial way by other Christians less informed to you or I.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

As do I, but I won't keep it to myself.

The Bible can be and has been the most useful tool for social control in human history -- no tyrant who has ruled with a holy book in his hand and his boot on your neck has ever been unseated easily.

It has also been an extremely misunderstood collection of ancient ANE books as well ... used and abused. Bad interpretations don't excuse tyranny.

 

[TLK Valentine]

It has also been an extremely misunderstood collection of ancient ANE books as well ... used and abused. Bad interpretations don't excuse tyranny.

Agreed -- but the interpretations were bad on purpose... they weren't used to excuse tyranny, but to justify it.

Why do you think we have to many laughably bad attempts at literalism now? Nobody will be laughing if these people get into power.