Oghier
3399
Matt, there are scientists who are also Christians. Quite a lot of them. Yes, there are some deep contradictions in that, but people reconcile them, presumably by viewing much of the Bible as allegory.
My point is that this is not possible for Biblical Literalists.
Nesrie
3400
Which means they are on the creationist spectrum, after all to be Christian you have to have some belief in God, and Christ, and what he created, and they are intelligent, and they are educcated.
I mean just say those words out-loud… are there intelligent and educated Christians, of course there are. Rinse and repeat for most the other religions too. But Creationism doesn’t come in one flavor, and while the one-end tends to produce not that many of the above, it can happen.
I come down more on the Dawkins side of compatibility between science and religion, if you really chase things down with rigorous consistency, but I don’t push too hard on that matter because, y’know, live and let live. And yes, if you want to, you can construct an internally consistent system that includes both an omnipotent deity and an old earth and evolution. You can go any number of gradations. Clockmaker deity who made the universe knowing its physical laws would result in life, then sat back to admire His work for a few billion years. Deity who builds the clock and then decides to intervene at targeted moments in violation of those laws, such as parting the Red Sea or putting a divine messenger in a rather obscure Roman province. Quasi-clockmaker deity who decides to intervene every time an organism reproduces by ‘nudging’ the genes in a way that is indistinguishable from randomness. Deity who makes sure an asteroid will wipe out an enormous chunk of biodiversity in the late Cretaceous so that mammals can have a free hand to evolve, then sits on His hands for 65 million years and then starts talking to Abraham.
I mean, it’s an omnipotent deity. He/she/it could in theory do whatever the hell he/she/it wanted, up to and including creating the universe .000005 nanoseconds ago with all of our memories implanted in our heads.
But yeah, I’m not gonna argue too hard with liberal theists who allow science to run its course. After all, it was Christians who pretty much invented modern science to begin with. Also, the Jesuit school I attended gave me a good grounding in evolutionary biology.
My point is that this is not possible for Biblical Literalists.
Certainly not if they want to be legitimate biologists. I suppose you could be a particle physicist and also a Biblical literalist, though I’d have some questions about such a person’s general scientific judgment. At any rate they’d have to be quite good at compartmentalizing.
Yeah, I should amend my thoughts to state that when I say “creationist”, I mean those who believe the Genesis story - seven days, one man and woman created out of dirt, talking snake, etc.
Standard term for that is Young Earth Creationist, or YEC.
Hey, but if we’re Super DUPER DUPER Old Earth Creationists, is that okay? As in, God Created the Earth 4.5 Billion years ago, and there are Dinosaurs, and except for Birds, they did not interact with Man, sort of way?
Checking for a friend.
Nesrie
3406
Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, believes in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny or the Tooth Fairy… As long as people treat each other fairly, doesn’t try to force their beliefs on others, but it’s okay to share, and they have the ability to critically think and respond to the world around them… who cares?
If someone came up to me right now and said “Hey, I hear you have a Game Night every month. Can I join, By the way, I believe in Santa Claus.”
And that’s the worst, like the worst thing someone can say about another human being, is he or she believes in Santa Claus… I’d say sure. Try to bring a snack we can all share, and if you tell me what you like to drink, I’ll do my best to make it available. I might be thinking Christmas month might be odd this year but… hey, keeps life interesting.
I was raised as a strict Creationist. I remember being shown videos in church youth group meetings that purported to show how evolution had it all wrong, why scientific methods like carbon dating didn’t actually work, “evidence” for humans and dinosaurs living together at the same time, and so on. I have zero sympathy for those people, who are actively trying to misinform.
I’m both a Christian and educated, and I’ve been accused of intelligence, so as @Tin_Wisdom said, the Creationist viewpoint wasn’t going to hold. It didn’t take me very long, once I got unfiltered information in high school and college science classes and other places like library books, to discount all that stuff I’d been force-fed as a kid.
And this is just one aspect of how I’ve come to view my Christianity, which boils down to this: my faith applies to the intangible, non-provable aspects of existence. Stuff like the afterlife, which there is no evidence for. And philosophy of life, how to interact with others at the most basic level: “Love your neighbor” and all that. Faith does not mean blindly and literally following every word in the Word.
So back to the thread topic (inasmuch as that’s possible on this tangent): I have no sympathy for anyone who tries to force the Creationist viewpoint on people, particularly in education. That’s not presenting opposing viewpoints, which I would support, but rather trying to ram junk into kids heads. When Cruz or Pence or any other Republican (and they’re damn near all Republicans) rails against evolution, they’re limiting the educational opportunities for the next generation.
Ah yes, the Paluxy footprints. Definitely one of the greatest hits.
MikeJ
3409
I’m not sure this makes sense. I mean, let’s imagine a world where all the available data points to a world that was 6200-6300 years old and with a composition that is wildly incompatible with any natural process we’ve been able to come up with, despite thousands of people trying for hundreds of years. Imagine that detailed study of the brain indicates that all perception and control circuits lead to the pineal gland where mysterious, ordered signals emerge spontaneously.
In short, you could have a world were science is “stuck” at certain points if it can’t resort to a supernatural explanation, but where all available scientific evidence strongly suggest a Christian supernatural explanation.
I mean, that’s not the world we appear to live in, but it’s not because science ruled it out from the beginning.
Early scientists (Kepler, Newton, etc.) were interested in describing God’s creation through empirical means, so yeah, there certainly wasn’t an a priori exclusion of the supernatural or the theistic. edit: And in those days a lot of stuff we would now consider non-scientific was bundled into their reasoning, e.g. Kepler’s quasi-Platonic obsession with ideal mathematical forms.
Although, honestly, I find the word “supernatural” a bit peculiar, as anything that exists seems to me to be natural. If ghosts existed, for instance, they would be a part of nature – just a wider nature than we had heretofore been able to describe. Even a God capable of temporarily suspending the laws of physics would him/her/itself also be a part of ‘nature’ or ‘the universe’ in their most complete definitions, as far as I can tell. Of course, any word defined so broadly as to mean ‘everything’ isn’t a particularly useful word.
But anywho!
I think the reason that I come down harder on religion than a lot of the very reasonable people in this thread is that virtually all religious folks I know do try to pass their faith down to their children, who are young and impressionable and given to weigh what their parents tell them very heavily. It’s not as immediately dangerous as a dedicate theist trying to force the state to spread their fairytales to the populace at large, no, but if 90% of the nation is trying to pass down religion to their kids (as per Gallup numbers on religion; but let’s double the number of atheists to 20% and just say 80% to be safe) at home, that’s still not great.
I mean luckily it’s slowly dying off despite that, but it still leaves me feeling really leery to know that so many kids are exposed to that at a point in their life when they don’t know enough to question it. SOme of us do grow out of it, to be certain, but I think we all understand how hard it is to change deeply encoded beliefs/viewpoints like that, whether they be political or religious or favorite sports team or whatever.
AKA, Armando isn’t sure if “quietly keeps it to themselves that they think the earth is 4000 years old and Adam and Eve rode dinosaurs for fun” is really as reasonable and safe as it might at first seem.
Nesrie
3412
What percentage of Christians do you think actually believes this?
More than 0 is alarming enough :)
Nesrie
3414
Heh, well you love Nazis right? Do you think someone who believes in God and that he is the start of creation is more or less dangerous than a Nazis scientist who experimented on live specimens without regard to pain but believes the Earth is millions of years old?
You don’t have to believe what others believe due to their faith, but you can live side by side with them. These religions do not give anyone a pass on a being cruel or hateful or killers. That’s not religion you’re hearing, that’s politics.
90^% of this country does not consist of assholes who hate their neighbors and would do harm to them so long as it doesn’t get them into hell. That’s just not the majority of the Christian faith, or most faiths. That’s just people twisting faith to fit their goals.
Oh don’t worry, I leave lots of room in my heart to be horrified by the beliefs and actions of lots of groups of people, Nazi scientists included!
I’m not quite to the point of thinking that teaching magical thinking to children amounts to outright child abuse, but I certainly wouldn’t chalk it up as good parenting, whether it’s of the “God hates the gays” variety or just the “God doesn’t really love what the gays are doing but still loves them anyway teehee!” brand.
And that’s really where my addition to the thread comes in. A lot of folks are content to say, “Well, [insert faith group here] who don’t use politics as a cudgel to force their faith on others are okay,” but I think it misses the point that tens of millions of kids grow up being fed propaganda by their families all over America (and billions worldwide), and while it’s less “in your face,” I still consider it an insidious influence.
Alas, but the Penbladian Thought Police haven’t yet received their funding allowance for the year, so there’s not much I can especially do about what people teach their kids in the privacy of their own homes :)
When you’re God Emperor, you may want to revise your feelings about religion, Armando.
Or perhaps not.
Masses: “All hail God-Emperor Armando! We worship you!”
Armando: “No! You’ve all got to work it out for yourselves!”
Masses: “Yes! We’ve all got to work it out for ourselves!”
Ah, you’ve misunderstood it all along. God Emperor merely means that I am the emperor of all gods, which is actually a fairly empty title being that there are none. However, the Penbladian Autocracy Constitution also notes that I am Premier for Life, but that title is superseded by “God Emperor,” which should be used on all formal communications like legal writs authorizing the against-walling of anyone registered Republican since 1960, proclamations of war against corporations, and forum posts.
Nesrie
3418
I would just encourage you not to heavily dismiss anyone just because they have a religion; and I don’t think you really do. I suspect the religion itself is not the problem, and if you boiled it down, you’re probably equating things like lack of climate concerns, anti-vaccine, gun control, that kind of thing as a religious problem when certain practices of a religion might be behind some of it, but not all of it… Also Democrats cannot win elections if they blanket demonize religions and those who have them.
The problem with the GOP, and their morality, is largely not due to faith. People like Roy Moore and his supporters spouting off their religious superiority… it’s just not about faith.
