Religions?

[Moonskin she/her]

 

And why is my belief offensive to some atheists (maybe not to you but to some)? I don't like basketball, but I'm not offended that people want to spend their time and money on it.

 

Personally, I never met a basketball fan that tried to convert me to his favourite sport ... but I sure met DOZENS of people trying to force their religious beliefs on me! I am interested neither in basketball nor religion but I am perfectly ok that some people do, as long as they leave me out of it.

 

 

 

With the exception of a few fringe religions, Christianity is good for society too. So, why the hostility from some atheists?

 

Because nothing that is forced on you is good, especially something as personal as spirituality. And again, in a non-believer’s life, you constantly meet people that have the ambition of converting you and that quickly becomes very, very annoying. I feel very lucky that I grew up in a country with a secular school as I could never have endured a compulsory religion!

 

And as for the commentaries about how non-believers are "misguided", I find that kind of thing highly condescending and offensive (the downvote is mine, by the way: it is the first time that I feel like downvoting something on this board and I am not happy about it). I understand that people who claim to convert others really believe they are doing the right thing, but all I hear from that kind of speech is “I am smarter/luckier/ more evolved than you and my beliefs are superior to you and yours, I know THE Truth and you know nothing, Jon Snow”. Which, I admit, really, really bugs me

 

I am strongly in favour of the freedom of thoughts and I am sincerely happy for those who found their way with religion. I never attacked or tried to dissuade anybody in their faith because it is none of my business and I dare expect the same courtesy from others 

 

 

[kaellok he/him]

I was raised Mormon, until I was 12--maybe 13.  Lots of things happened that year, and few of them good.  Family crises, learning about other faiths, and realizing that the leaders of the church I went to for guidance were blinded bigots who could only focus on the differences of people and religions, rather than their similarities.  I struggled to make sense of it all, cast adrift, and nothing helped.  Church, which was designed for the very problems I was facing, was only able to give me suggestions of who to hate, and so I ended up leaving.  (This has not been other people's experiences, and that's great--for them.  My experience is not emblematic of the faith as a whole.)

 

(Someone earlier mentioned their favorite hymns, and I felt I'd share mine as well!  I still love them to this day, even though it's been two decades since I was at church.  "Love One Another", "Choose the Right", and "Teach Me to Walk in the Light".  I also really liked "Love is Spoken Here", but had forgotten about it until I was searching for links while writing this and let the music keep playing because the Mormon Tabernacle Choir is amazing.  I always had a hard time singing it, though, because I had a hard time lying back then.)

 

I eventually shopped around various other churches and faiths, and found that while the actual teachings of so many of them are filled with great things, the practitioners invariably fell short and seemed content and with their shortcomings, making cheerful excuses for them.

 

More on my thoughts and answers to everything spoilered below!  Because I don't write walls of text, I write skyscrapers.  Of text.

 

The Meaning and Purpose of Life Revealed!

Because I am also a very logical, rational person (except for when I'm a completely illogical, irrational person, which happens around 20% of the time) I've spent a very long time and countless hours trying to decide what it is that I believe, and what answers make sense for me.  I consider myself religious, of a pseudo-Christian flavor.  Mostly because I think that Christ was a pretty awesome guy, and his philosophy of love is one that we should all follow--not because I think we can only achieve salvation through him.

 

So many people ask the question, "What's the purpose of life?"  Or "What's the meaning of life?"  I never understood why.  I figured that out a long, long time ago.  The purpose is to live.  The meaning is life.  The only constant in the universe is death.  To face it unflinching and laugh is the goal.  Or to fight it off with every ounce and fiber of our being, that life itself perseveres for another day.  We were given our emotions for a reason, and we should experience them all.  They're all important to life.  When one emotion dominates, then it's a sign that there is more that can be experienced in life.  (Doesn't mean that there's something wrong or sinful with someone, just that there's more.)

 

God as a Good, All-Knowing, All-Powerful being (I can't endorse this)

I also can't get behind the concept of a Good, All-Knowing, All-Powerful God.  Any two of the three, yes, absolutely, in a heartbeat.  I personally vote for Good, knows-a-lot-but-not-all, and really-powerful-in-comparison-to-us-but-not-all-powerful.

 

1.  Good: Someone who acts with morals, or in a morally correct way.  Example: I know the Heimlich maneuver.  If someone standing in front of me chokes while eating a grape, and I used the technique to save their life, this would be an inherently good act.  If I were to actively choke them to death, that would be inherently evil.  (Based on the presumption that preserving life is good, and ending life is evil.)  But what if I were to do nothing?  What happens if I could save someone's life, but choose not to do so?  Everyone I've spoken with has agreed that would be evil, although not as much as actively killing them myself.  The moral?  To be good requires action.

 

2.  Omniscience, aka, All-Knowing: This means literally knowing everything.  The result of every action, of every inaction.  The very tapestry of the space-time continuum can be read like a book.  A being that is outside of time, or one that is capable of traveling freely in and through it, could be all-knowing or omniscient.  The moral?  To know literally everything ever, and thus to create plans that achieve your goals.

 

3.  Omnipotence, aka, All-Powerful:  Someone who can do anything.  Moving planets, setting galaxies at a spin, giving birth to trillions of species.  They can do it all!  They don't necessarily know what the result of their actions will be, but they can do anything--with the possible exception of undoing something.  The moral?  Action-oriented, with predictable but unknowable results.

 

For the world we live in to exist as it does, and for the atrocities to be committed in God's name, God cannot be the three above.  For God would know what the result would be, and have done it anyway, and to not act to prevent evil is not good.  So either humans have a different, higher standard for what constitutes "good" than God does, or God cannot be all three.

 

An insanely powerful (by comparison to human) being who has incredible knowledge and grasp of what is going on in the universe, and a great idea and capability to affect it, though?  I can believe in that.  (Incidentally quite similar to the Shards, which might be one reason why I like the Cosmere so damnation much.)

 

Also, I can believe in God as Einstein may (or may not) have (depending on which contradictory source you're looking at).  Who, in general, seemed to recognize the divine, but rejected the idea that God truly cared about the workaday human life; that in the work of art that is the universe, humanity is the utter smallest detail of which a bare fraction of thought was paid.  (Hence, still, God would not be good as we define it.)

 

 

On evolution, creationism, etc!

The Young-Earth "theory" is absolutely ridiculous.  The idea of God's process of creating the heavens, the earth, the universe itself being science?  Well, yeah.  Duh.

 

There are large parts of the Bible that are readily recognized as parables or fables; stories that teach an inexplicable truth through fiction.  A story that can be understood, that contains the essential truth, when the exact truth is somethat that cannot, at that point in time, be understood.  You tell your 3-year old that the dog went to live on a farm, where it can run and play freely without any worries anymore; they can understand "the dog is gone."  They can't understand "the dog is dead."  There is zero convincing reason that I've seen to assume that Genesis is literal truth, and so when and as it conflicts with science, we should assume that it is the essential nature of what happened rather than the literal.

 

Many creationists point to specific aspects of evolution that they find problematic.  Fine!  At a few different points, God mucked about in the whole process, until the very tiny and infinitesimal detail that we constitute in the grand scheme of things was as desired.  And for the rest of it, well, the process God set in motion was planned nearly perfectly at the start.  (Or, evolution was just plain ol' accounted for at kick-off of the universe.)

 

 

I do love discussing religion with others.  But, it's a dangerous topic to do so casually--especially for me, since I want to know why someone believes the way they do, even more than what it is they believe.  And I've been told that I can come across as incredibly flippant, even thought that is entirely unintentional.  For anyone who has actually read this holy cow nearly 1500 word post, my intention was only to explain my own beliefs, as well as a bit of the reasoning behind them.  Not to attack, not to mock, and definitely not to offend (unless you're a very strong proponent of the Young Earth "Theory"; nothing you can say or do short of God speaking directly to me in person will make me think that that position is anything other than silly). 

 

But for all the very many faults and evils that religion can succumb to (and they have, and they do, and they will), religion is capable of being such a great force of good in the world that I can't help but be impressed by all those that have used it that way.  Especially since there is great secular good that can be done quite independently of whether or not God exists, there is an afterlife, etc.  At their best, religions provide hope in the face of fear and the unknown (namely, death.)  And Hope alone is a truly incalculably valuable blessing.

[Voidus]

For me the only thing that ever actively annoys me about religion is the constant promotion, I might defend atheism and atheists but I've never gone up to someone I know to be religious and tried to convince them they were wrong, I don't put the label of 'atheist' on everthing I do and say things like 'I'm just trying to be a good atheist'.
The constant need to have a baptist charity, a catholic fundraiser or a lutheran orphanage just completely baffles me. If an atheist came doorknocking and said they'd like to start an atheist orphanage where they taught children from birth all about evolution and the big bang and how religion is wrong I'd probably smack that person in the face before slamming my door on them. If the charity I was donating to told me they'd be going on a mission to spread Darwins on the origin of species to children in africa I'd probably withdraw all support for the charity, I'd just prefer a charity that just send food, clothing and shelter. Don't get me wrong I think that things like the missions that LDS go on are great things and I know one of my friends had a great experience in it, I just wish it was less attached to religious beliefs. I don't understand the need to define your whole life by your religious beliefs though (Excuse the phrase) god knows I've been in that position before.

[Kipper he/him]

I'll just say this one more time and then drop it: Preaching basketball, preaching atheism, preaching anything has completely different intended motives behind it than preaching Christianity:

Basketball: Basketball is AWESOME!

Atheism: Open your eyes and see rationality.

How does this compare to Christianity, where we preach because we are almost absolutely convinced that you will die forever? It doesn't. At all. As much as it may seem otherwise, we preach because we love. Please understand that. Please. No evil is meant. A little towards understanding someone else's worldview and motives goes a long way.

@kaellok

About YEC: I get what you mean. The sad thing is that the theory of Young Earth Creationism is self-confirming. I don't see any real science being done. Instead of looking at data and thinking, Okay, what's the best explanation for this, scientists look at data and think, Okay, what's the best way I can fit this into the theory of Young Earth Creationism? That's the perfect example of junk science. When two groups of scientists can COMPLETELY disagree on interpretation of facts. When two groups of scientists attempt to invalidate the others' research tools, education, or really anything else because they know for a fact that their worldview is right. I don't believe that any real science is being done by them.

Okay, now take everything in the above paragraph and replace all instance of "Young Earth Creationism" and "YEC" with "evolution." In my mind, the paragraph works both times. It's hard to describe exactly how I feel about scientists from both camps, but it isn't a generally good feeling. Sorry to say this about evolutionary scientists, but I think it's true. Ah, see, even having to call people evolutionary scientists, or creation scientists (as I so often see in the news), misses the point of science. Science is supposed to look at data and then come to a conclusion, not the other way around. Do they? Not in the case of evolution, YEC, abiogenesis, the origins of the universe, etc. Of course, on certain issues, each group is respectively worse (For example, evolution is particularly weak on the origins, while creationism is terrible at ages of rocks and such), but as a whole, they do junk science. To be honest, in our society, more idiocy comes out of the evolution/creation debate than any other issue (imho). Now, I'm undecided. I've been defending creationism in this thread, but I could do the same for evolution. I try to do my own research, but I'm seriously, truly, undecided. That's a horrible feeling to have, but I honestly cannot decide between the two camps right now, at least until I do more research.

One more thing before I step off my stump. One thing that annoys me a lot about the evolution/creation debate is how resistant both sides are to changing their views. While creationists are rather blatantly upfront about this, evolutionists tend to always be like, "Well, it's just a theory. Any single fact could change my opinion." Well, maybe so, but it's not like you actually believe that the possibility exists for such a fact to appear. (Note: I am not specifically speaking to any member of this forum; just making a generalization) No magazine, no publication, no newspaper, no scientist treats evolution as a theory. They treat it as incontrovertible fact, and attempt to shoehorn every observation into it. (And, of course, the same goes for creationism, but at least they're honest about it.) That is all.

P.S. Seriously. I'm not decided. Just your friendly neighborhood dispenser of psychological and confirmation-biasal comments.

[Orlion Blight he/him]

I'll just say this one more time and then drop it: Preaching basketball, preaching atheism, preaching anything has completely different intended motives behind it than preaching Christianity:

Basketball: Basketball is AWESOME!

Atheism: Open your eyes and see rationality.

How does this compare to Christianity, where we preach because we are almost absolutely convinced that you will die forever? It doesn't. At all. As much as it may seem otherwise, we preach because we love. Please understand that. Please. No evil is meant. A little towards understanding someone else's worldview and motives goes a long way.

 

I'm afraid I disagree. I allow that some share Christianity because they think they are doing good, but a whole lot do it because it is a commandment. And still, there's that other motivator: the preacher is right and you better recognize, son!

 

Atheists will also proselytize because they see damage being done and want to save people they care about from the damage they've experienced from their experience with religion. Of course, there's that other motivator:  the rational, logical atheist is right and you better recognize, son!

 

You are probably starting to notice a pattern here.

[+Slowswift he/him]

I'm afraid I disagree. I allow that some share Christianity because they think they are doing good, but a whole lot do it because it is a commandment. 

 

Yes... a commandment to, we believe, to do and spread good. Granted, some may do it grudgingly, but as I understand it either way we do it out of a desire to spread what we believe to anyone who wants to hear.

[Voidus]

I'm afraid I disagree. I allow that some share Christianity because they think they are doing good, but a whole lot do it because it is a commandment. And still, there's that other motivator: the preacher is right and you better recognize, son!

 

Atheists will also proselytize because they see damage being done and want to save people they care about from the damage they've experienced from their experience with religion. Of course, there's that other motivator:  the rational, logical atheist is right and you better recognize, son!

 

You are probably starting to notice a pattern here.

I wouldn't even say that the commandment part comes into it a lot of the time, I understand the theoretical motivation but as someone who gets preached to a lot and someone who's discussing religion online a lot too the theoretical motivation is sometimes belied by the actual practice. Very rarely does someone start with a few gentle points about why they believe what they believe and what it is that convinced them.

Almost universally it's "Look at this website/article/magazine/video! See! You're all idiotic idiots for stupidly believing in science and god is going to burn you forever!"

Now I recognize that this is while a majority of the people who actively preach, a minority among christians as a whole but the point is still that the motivations are almost always less pure than they are said to be.

This is not even going into how condescending the whole process is, regardless of what you think you're saving us from you have to acknowledge that a) Almost everyone on the planet knows the christian doctrine of hell and that that's where you think we'll be going. b)we've actually considered your religion based on its merits ourselves and even that fear of torment was not convincing

c) You're assuming that we want what you have to offer.

The third point is perhaps the most important and Chaos touched on it a while ago. If you offered me eternal life, I would refuse you. I don't care if it's heaven, hell, purgatory, valhalla or wondering Hades as a shade I don't want an eternal afterlife. And assuming that you know what's good for me more than I do is incredibly condescending and insulting and far less likely to make me want to listen to what you have to say.

I'm going to leave the above points on evolution vs creation 'science' alone, but I will quickly correct something that I've been suspecting would appear at some point.

There's a gross misconception among society in general as to what exactly a 'theory' is when scientists use the term. Calling something a theory is not a way of saying it's a guess, or it lacks enough evidence to be something more than a theory. A theory will never be anything other than a theory, they don't collect enough evidence and then get promoted to a law, a law is something completely different. A theory is a fully functioning model to describe some observed pheomenon. Gravity is a theory, so are germs and so is relativity. So saying that evolution is a theory is not by any means saying that it's not backed up by evidence, it has supporting experiments in virtually every field of biology and is widely regarded as one of the best supported theories in the biological sciences, that's why there are very, very few scientists who are also old earth creationists, if you look at only the biological sciences this number drops even further, now to say that just because almost all biologists believe something that makes it true would be an appeal to authority but it is still worth mentioning to show that among the scientific community there really isn't an 'evolution vs. creationism' debate, the reason evolutionary scientists aren't exploring alternate means of creation is that it's such a widely supported theory that there's not really anything to research as an alternative.

[Kipper he/him]

Like I said, I'll just drop the whole preaching issue. I think we know each other's views on that well enough by now.

@Voidus

I realize what a theory is. The problem is that evolution cannot explain certain things. I suppose we can go into detail in our PM later, but the fact is that there are issues that evolutionary scientists gloss over, because they can't explain. They hide behind saying, "Well, it explains everything else, so there MUST be a way it fits here."

Likewise, creation scientists gloss over issues by saying stuff like, "Well, maybe God created these rocks to look old." I do want to be clear here that I'm not just criticizing evolutionary scientists. I dislike the methods that both use. Looking at what scientists sometimes say and do, it would seem that worldview often influences opinions more than facts. And that's probably all that I'll say, unless someone brings up a new issue, as I've been downvoted for expressing my opinion several times already, even when couched in the politest terms.

[Voidus]

Evolution explains everything that it's supposed to, it's a theory for the origin of lifes diversity, it's not supposed to deal with where matter came from or how life first arose. That evolution doesn't explain those is no more relevant than that gravitational theory doesn't explain them either.
Now from a secular point of view those theories as a whole make up the generally accepted secular explanation for the origin of the universe, life and us so they are often grouped together as though they were supposed to be one theory but the scientists who study evolution are not the same scientists who study the big bang, there's no atheistic collaboration institute trying to tie them all together.

[Blaze1616 he/him]

Evolution explains everything that it's supposed to, it's a theory for the origin of lifes diversity, it's not supposed to deal with where matter came from or how life first arose. That evolution doesn't explain those is no more relevant than that gravitational theory doesn't explain them either.

Now from a secular point of view those theories as a whole make up the generally accepted secular explanation for the origin of the universe, life and us so they are often grouped together as though they were supposed to be one theory but the scientists who study evolution are not the same scientists who study the big bang, there's no atheistic collaboration institute trying to tie them all together.

 

I think the issue in the argument is a disconnect. In religion, the two events are connected, when in science, they aren't. That difference will always cause creationists who don't accept evolution theory to have an issue with the theory. They don't understand that in science, the two events are not connected.

[Argent he/him]

Basketball: Basketball is AWESOME!

Atheism: Open your eyes and see rationality.

 

I'll pick a bone here and mention that atheism is not necessarily the same as rationalism. Many atheists arrive to where they are because of rational argument, but the reverse is not logically valid. You can, and do, have theists who are (almost, as I see it) perfectly rational. 

[Colours]

I'm some kind of secular thing. That's... about it. Some years ago, I would have been more precise and detailed about it, but I've come to appreciate simplicity and the value of vagueness in preserving accuracy.

 

As for my current beliefs, well...

 

One time, when I was very little, one of my classmates said something about souls. Now, I had naturally never heard the word before (as English isn't my mother tongue, and "soul" is unlikely to show up on vocab lists for small children), so I asked, "what's a soul?" And then, still confused (likely due to my secular upbringing), I asked, "what does it do?", "what happens if you don't have one?", and all sorts of things that my poor also-very-little classmate couldn't really answer. And at the end of it, I still had absolutely no idea why anyone would need a soul for anything - it didn't seem to be very useful at all. I was, in fact, pretty sure that nothing would be any different if someone didn't have one.

 

...Something like that.   It's grown more complicated than that, of course, since I'm no longer a very young child (or am I?  ), but the heart of it is very simple.

 

(As a side note, I wonder whether there are people out there trying to destroy the afterlife.

You'd expect there to be some kindhearted - and/or self-righteous - individuals out there who want to rescue the several billion people being tortured in Hell by putting them out of their misery, or something; it seems pretty unlikely that every follower of this sort of belief system would just stand by and allow a literal hellhole to exist. We have a big population, after all.

...I wonder how they would go about trying.)

Edited July 9, 2015 by Colours

[Haelbarde he/him]

Seeing it as been brought up a bit, addressing the religious among us, I'm curious about Old-Earth vs New-Earth Creation. The way I've viewed things is that Genesis 1 quite easily allows for an Old-Earth creation, along with things like the existence of angels almost seeming to necessitate an old-earth creation. AFAIK, my religion largely holds to Old-earth, as opposed to young-earth, but I was curious as to if other religions have hard opinions on that.

[navybrandt he/him]

The problem with old-earth creationism is that it makes the Bible untrue. If you believe in evolution, that's fine. If you believe in creation, that's fine. But it can't be any kind of blending of the two. It has to be one or the other. There are several reasons why they can't coexist.

 

Reason 1:

In Genesis 1, God made plants (day 3) before he made the sun or stars (day 4). That's not possible with evolution as plants can't grow without photosynthesis. He also didn't make sea life (day 5) until after plant life, which is the opposite order that evolution says it happened. The earth (day 2) was created before the sun (day 4) again in direct conflict with evolution. The earth was also covered with water when it was first made conflicting with evolution's version of events.

 

Reason 2:

Romans 5:12 says, "Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:" So, there was no death until man sinned. In order for evolution to be true, there would have had to be millions of years of death, mutations, suffering before man even came on the scene. Yet that creates a paradox as there was no death or suffering until after man sinned. Romans 8 also tells us there was no corruption or decay before sin, so this isn't talking about some spiritual death. Physical death and even aging didn't occur until sin entered the world.

 

Reason 3:

This is a weaker argument but still valid considering my first two point. Genesis 1:31 says, "And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good..." This is unlikely if Adam was standing on the graves of millions of years of dead things - that doesn't sound "very good." This verse also implies that God's creation work is finished at this point, yet evolution, if it is true, is still occurring. This is another paradox as creation can't be both finished and still occurring at the same time.

 

Reason 4:

Genesis 1-5 describes early mankind as an advanced people with culture, language, writing, instruments, and industry. Evolution describes the first men as primitive savages.

 

Reason 5:

Jesus quoted Genesis (6 times I think, but don't quote me on that number), so if Genesis is false, then Jesus is a liar and the whole foundation of the Christian faith comes tumbling down.

 

Again, if you don't believe the Bible or creation, that's fine. Evolution is your thing. If you do believe the Bible though, then an evolution-based version of creation is full of paradoxes and inconsistencies. It has to be one or the other.

 

Edit: Or some third unknown option... For sake of argument, I was limiting it to just evolution and creation.

Edited July 9, 2015 by navybrandt

[kaellok he/him]

It only has to be one or the other if you believe the words of Genesis to be literal and exact truth. Since there are significant portions of the Bible, and the teachings of Christ, that are not, i absolutely believe the two are not incompatible.

Reason 1

It makes for a better story this way. And also emphasizes the importance of humans and the Earth. As the book was written by humans, not God, it is subject to the foibles of humans... like pride. And emphasizing a good story that will have the important bits remembered accurately and well, while the less important (for the meaning and message the story intends to send) are changed to reflect this.

Reason 2

Romans is well past the creation story, and into the explanation of it. Again, though, it's a good story that emphasizes the importance of humans. Humans, given free will by God, were able to interfere with God's plan and cause death (an unattended affect by both humans and God.)

As one of the primary societal reasons for religion is to explain death, the approach that is taken here lays a frame work that people can accept. Sin is the cause of death and ruin and decay, so to end these things everyone on earth must live righteous lives. This has the benefit of encouraging a second societal reason for religion, which is to provide a basic layer or groundwork of what that society considers "moral" or "good." The message is what can be freely focused on, as that is what was important, rather than the specific words.

Reason 3

Creation can absolutely be finished and still evolving at the same time. When we are born, we are alive, but continue changing every day until we die.

If you build a house, it can be finished. If you remodel the kitchen five years later, does that undo the previously finished nature of the house?

Reason 5

More of before, really. Jesus uses the underlying message to tell a story that people can relate to and understand. He didn't use language that was intended to be parsed carefully in order to eke out every possible shade of meaning from it.

He was a philosopher, teacher, or story teller. .. not a lawyer. We Know he used parables, stories that were not literal truth but showed a deeper, relatable truth. My contention is that much of the Bible did as well.

[Kipper he/him]

I think the issue in the argument is a disconnect. In religion, the two events are connected, when in science, they aren't. That difference will always cause creationists who don't accept evolution theory to have an issue with the theory. They don't understand that in science, the two events are not connected.

I do understand that, and I thought I addressed that in an earlier post. I said something like, "When I refer to evolution, I refer to secular explanations for the origins of life and the universe as a catchall term, so I don't have to write it out every time." Or words to that effect. Sorry for the confusion.

I'll pick a bone here and mention that atheism is not necessarily the same as rationalism. Many atheists arrive to where they are because of rational argument, but the reverse is not logically valid. You can, and do, have theists who are (almost, as I see it) perfectly rational.

True enough. The point of that point was to point out that preaching Christianity differs from preaching anything else (except a similar religion) in that we firmly believe that it is within our abilities to save someone from hell. Atheism and basketball have no such endgame involving the eternal pain of everlasting separation from God. I don't think so, at least. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Seeing it as been brought up a bit, addressing the religious among us, I'm curious about Old-Earth vs New-Earth Creation. The way I've viewed things is that Genesis 1 quite easily allows for an Old-Earth creation, along with things like the existence of angels almost seeming to necessitate an old-earth creation. AFAIK, my religion largely holds to Old-earth, as opposed to young-earth, but I was curious as to if other religions have hard opinions on that.

That's exactly why I'm debating one or the other. I honestly don't think it matters one way or t' other, and I'm not completely opposed to evolution. I don't even think it matters to science at all, really. Surprisingly enough, if I'm with people at church, I take the evolutionist's side, to try and refine my own views. Edited July 10, 2015 by Kipper

[Voidus]

I do understand that, and I thought I addressed that in an earlier post. I said something like, "When I refer to evolution, I refer to secular explanations for the origins of life and the universe as a catchall term, so I don't have to write it out every time." Or words to that effect. Sorry for the confusion.

Ah, well on that point there's an even easier point to make, namely that there is no doctrine regarding those issues. If abiogenesis was proven completely impossible tomorrow it would not influence my atheism one bit, it would have no bearing on evolution whatsoever and no bearing on the big bang. There's no atheist gospel that commands us to believe in those three things and so other than the fact that they deal with tangentially related issues they really have no connection for me. If however someone were to reveal that one of the books of the bible was a complete fraud beyond a shadow of a doubt it would have massive ripple effects throughout all of Christianity, calling into question the divinely inspired nature of the bible, every passage that references that book, every theological argument that used a passage from that book.

The key point to keep in mind is that atheism is a very catch all term, we have no gospel or leaders, no structure, no regular meetings, we have a wide array of different beliefs. Some atheists don't believe in the supernatural at all some just don't believe in gods, some atheists believe in the afterlife some don't, some feel they should troll online religious groups, others don't see the point.

[Mistrunner]

I was raised Mormon, until I was 12--maybe 13. Lots of things happened that year, and few of them good. Family crises, learning about other faiths, and realizing that the leaders of the church I went to for guidance were blinded bigots who could only focus on the differences of people and religions, rather than their similarities. I struggled to make sense of it all, cast adrift, and nothing helped. Church, which was designed for the very problems I was facing, was only able to give me suggestions of who to hate, and so I ended up leaving. (This has not been other people's experiences, and that's great--for them. My experience is not emblematic of the faith as a whole.)

You are entitled to your beliefs, and most of your post was civil and respectful. But don't call Church leaders- or anyone- hateful bigots. Throwing around names will not contribute to thoughtful discussion, nor is it a good prelude to what you write next. It makes you look unkind and unprofessional. It's offensive, to be blunt.

I don't mean to offend you or start an argument. Please don't take this the wrong way. But you just called me the same things by association. And I don't appreciate that.

Edit: Sorry for the misunderstanding. I didn't mean to be mean or anything. It was late at night, it was prompted in large part because of my extreme dislike of the word 'bigot' (been called it before and it hurts), and now I feel absolutely awful for posting it at all. Sorry again, a million times over, and have a root beer on me.

Edited July 11, 2015 by Mistrunner

[ThirdGen]

don't call Church leaders- or anyone- hateful bigots. ... But you just called me the same things by association. And I don't appreciate that.

 

Pardon,  but I don't see how the second part follows from the first part.

[Haelbarde he/him]

The problem with old-earth creationism is that it makes the Bible untrue. If you believe in evolution, that's fine. If you believe in creation, that's fine. But it can't be any kind of blending of the two. It has to be one or the other. There are several reasons why they can't coexist.

 

It only has to be one or the other if you believe the words of Genesis to be literal and exact truth. Since there are significant portions of the Bible, and the teachings of Christ, that are not, i absolutely believe the two are not incompatible.

 

Is presuming these were both in response to me.

Old earth creation is not synonymous with theistic evolution. To be clear on what I mean by old-earth creation - that the earth (as in the rock floating in space) had already been there a very long time prior to the 6 days of creation, but at the point at which the 6 days began, it was basically a rock with a whole bunch of water and cloud cover with nothing at all living on it. So I believe in that there were 6 consecutive days (so a week) of creation, that transformed the earth and the solar system into a habitable planet and creating all life  as fully formed things. The only difference is if you say the earth was created moments before God started the 6 days of creation, or if the planet had been there for some extended period of time. 

Why I said Gen 1 easily allows this comes from the first two verses. Take Gen 1:1 as the creation of the universe. At the start of verse 2, the earth exists in some matter. There is no time frame set for how long there is between the verse 1, and the second half of verse 2 (moving on the face of the waters).

 

I would agree that you can't blend evolution into the creation story, but that's not what Old Earth Creation is, or at least not what I mean with it. 

 

Might throw some thoughts on old-earth creation, creation of man, the angels, and fossils into a spoiler box:

A reason why old-earth creation makes sense to me stems from the existence of the angels, and how God created man. God created mankind with freewill so that they could, out of that freewill, choose to love/serve him willingly. He wants willing servants, not robots who have been designed to serve. I would then ask the question, 'then how about the angels?' If we were created with freewill so we could choose to serve God, then why should it have been any different for the angels? Another angle you can consider is the concept of the knowledge of good and evil. I understand that in this way: using biblical definitions, good is obeying God, and evil is disobeying God. So gaining the knowledge of good and evil was gaining an understanding of the difference between obeying God, and disobeying him. The act of disobedience in eating of a tree he had commanded them not to gave them the experience of sin. The serpent, while a liar, tells us that the angels knew good and evil, and Eve doesn't deny that statement.

 

To me, these two things support the idea that before the creation we see around us, there were prior creations, and it was the righteous from these previous creations that became what we know as angels.

 

One last thought. If we say there were previous creations, then where were they? The universe is massive, so anywhere could do, but is there any reason why there couldn't have previously been creations on our planet? If we suggest that there were, then shouldn't we expect to see evidence of previous creations? Well, maybe we do. We have the fossil record. 

 

Veering off for the moment. If the angels were the righteous of prior creations, and they then were involved in the six days of creation and then everything since, what do you think happens when this creation is finished (I believe in a 1000 year kingdom of God on the earth that will be ruled over by Jesus Christ, after which Christ returns the thrown to God, and there is no longer any mortality on the earth). Once everything is done with this world, would to be too out there to think that there could be another creation somewhere? Lets just assume that there will be, for a moment, and that you are involved. Your job is to help design an animal. My question would be this. In designing this animal, how likely is it that you will design it to be reminiscent of something you've seen before, but with a few changes. 

 

So, it's built on a whole bunch of supposition, but at least in my understanding, it fits with how I understand creation, God, and his plan with mankind. It also affords me an explanation that is personally satisifying for the evidence used as 'proof' of evolution.

[Mistrunner]

Pardon,  but I don't see how the second part follows from the first part.

Sorry... Should've made that more clear.

I follow church leaders, and he(?) said that they could only tell him "who to hate." So, if I follow their teachings, by this logic I'm hateful as well. Doesn't make me feel nice. Besides, I sustain our leaders, and if they are terrible bigots that means I support that.

Does that make sense?

[Left he/him]

Sorry... Should've made that more clear.

I follow church leaders, and he(?) said that they could only tell him "who to hate." So, if I follow their teachings, by this logic I'm hateful as well. Doesn't make me feel nice. Besides, I sustain our leaders, and if they are terrible bigots that means I support that.

Does that make sense?

I think that he was talking about his local leaders, Bishop level ish I assume, not the Apostles or First Presidency. If not, than I guess I misread, but that was the impression I got, and imperfect Bishops definitely happen.

[Orlion Blight he/him]

Particularly in light of the last bolded sentence in that paragraph.

I was raised Mormon, until I was 12--maybe 13.  Lots of things happened that year, and few of them good.  Family crises, learning about other faiths, and realizing that the leaders of the church I went to for guidance were blinded bigots who could only focus on the differences of people and religions, rather than their similarities.  I struggled to make sense of it all, cast adrift, and nothing helped.  Church, which was designed for the very problems I was facing, was only able to give me suggestions of who to hate, and so I ended up leaving.  (This has not been other people's experiences, and that's great--for them.  My experience is not emblematic of the faith as a whole.)

 

[Blaze1616 he/him]

I do understand that, and I thought I addressed that in an earlier post. I said something like, "When I refer to evolution, I refer to secular explanations for the origins of life and the universe as a catchall term, so I don't have to write it out every time." Or words to that effect. Sorry for the confusion.

 

I apologize, I meant my post to be more generalized. Not focused at you. The confusion is not your fault 

 

I would ask you, however, to not use "evolution" as your term to refer to all those events. Knowing the difference yet continuing to lump them all together only perpetuates the problem.

[Argent he/him]

...

To be clear on what I mean by old-earth creation - that the earth (as in the rock floating in space) had already been there a very long time prior to the 6 days of creation, but at the point at which the 6 days began, it was basically a rock with a whole bunch of water and cloud cover with nothing at all living on it. So I believe in that there were 6 consecutive days (so a week) of creation, that transformed the earth and the solar system into a habitable planet and creating all life  as fully formed things. The only difference is if you say the earth was created moments before God started the 6 days of creation, or if the planet had been there for some extended period of time. 

...

 

I don't know this for a fact, but I believe the original phrase (in old Hebrew?) is "six ages," not "six days." Then translation happened. 

 

Also, while you are all being wonderfully polite and kind about each other's beliefs, it does bear mentioning that any form of creationism I've heard of us incompatible with science. I won't go more into this because there is a lot of room for offense and flaming, but if you feel the need to justify your belief to me, or to tell me how wrong I am, or accuse me of intolerance, my forum inbox is open to you.