Creationist - Evolution Belief spectrum

[RedDenver]

1 hour ago, TGHusker said:

Yes, I understand that - I just didn't want to get into a long discussion on it at this time.  Many other threads exist wt that discussion.  I was probably a bit abrupt - so forgive me for that part. 

You don't have to apologize. I was picking at the way you framed your argument, but we can discuss that elsewhere as you said.

 

53 minutes ago, TGHusker said:

Non of us have correct doctrine - we may have parts but not in whole.  We all see through the glass dimly and I think what we will see on the other side is grace and love shining brightly.

I really like this idea and analogy.

[Big Red 40]

12 hours ago, Kiyoat Husker said:

Wow!  I didn't know if this thread would take off, but it sure has been some interesting (and civil) discourse.

 

When I started the poll, I initially thought "Am I giving too many choices?" but as it turns out, people are landing all over the map in this "belief spectrum".  As it should be.  It makes me wonder where people would land in other topics that have been "polarized" by politics in America.

 

Abortion?  Gay marriage/rights/equality?  Gun ownership?  Environment/pollution?  Military spending/deployment? Media bias/Fake news/Propaganda?

 

I think that the tribalism of polarized politics has done harm to the naturally diverse "spectrum" of people's personal beliefs.  I blame the 2-party dominated system we have in this country.

I think part of the problem is that civil exchanges, of well thought out opinions , don’t happen nearly enough in real life . I deal with people I would classify as “average joe “ daily, and it rarely see it . Most people I know have opinions based on prejudice, and indoctrination they’ve been taught their whole lives and have no desire to change . Life in their bubble is easier than trying to see another persons point of view, and attempts at debate are met with hostility, insults and anger . 

If “average joe” put in as much effort into reading/ learning as some of the posters on here,  I think you’d see a very different mentality in this country, and I think there’s Zero chance we’d have Donald Trump as President . 

Edited January 24, 2018 by Big Red 40

[Landlord]

7 hours ago, TGHusker said:

Is the Bible's discussion of hell an attempt of the people at that time to reconcile God's holiness and man's sinfulness and lack of faith? Perhaps.  The same Jesus who spoke of grace, love and forgiveness also spoke of hell.  

 

The hell that Jesus spoke of was gehenna, the valley outside Jerusalem that was full of garbage and a place where cults would sacrifice children to their gods. A place he used as a metaphor for self-destruction. What he was really getting at in every reference to gehenna, was a warning to Israel that her moral bankruptcy and their desire for a militaristic messiah would result in the nation of Gods people being destroyed by Rome. He was referencing Jeremiah's warnings to Israel against Babylon, sometimes even quoting them directly. 

 

“But I will warn you whom to fear: fear him who, after he has killed, has authority to cast into Gehenna. Yes, I tell you, fear him!” (Luke 12.5)

 

The him here is a militaristic messiah rather than Jesus, the nonviolent, enemy-embracing Messiah. If the religious leaders of Jesus’ day endeavored to follow the course of the Maccabean revolt, the militaristic messiah would not lead them to victoriously defeat Rome, but rather would hurl them into a Jeremiah “like” Gehenna.

 

Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, make offerings to Baal, and go after other gods that you have not known, and then come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, ‘We are safe!’—only to go on doing all these abominations? Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your sight? You know, I too am watching, says the LORD.” (Jeremiah 7.1–11)

 

“And he said, ‘It is written, “My house shall be a house of prayer”; but you have made it a den of robbers.’” (Luke 19.46)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

19 hours ago, knapplc said:

You can take this how you will, @Landlord, but you remind me very much of me about a year before I stopped believing. 

 

My path may not be the right path, and/or it may not be right for you. But I've seen those footsteps before.  Maybe you can help me see some clarity with a fresh take on things.

 

 

You told me almost the exact same thing when you bought me a beer before I moved to Atlanta nearly 4 years ago I think most of the common ground is that we both got to a point where there were a lot of questions we would pose that we were finally being honest about and could no longer ignore. I think I'm going down a pretty different direction from that starting point, but who the hell knows? I don't have any fear of the journey anymore. I don't think I'll ever self-identify as an agnostic or an atheist, and that's partly because of what I think are genuine supernatural and divine experiences, but tbh it's also partly for my own comfort of living in a label and tradition that's helpful for me. My ideas of God are always changing, and while I think there is such a thing I also think I create God for myself.

[knapplc]

4 hours ago, Landlord said:

You told me almost the exact same thing when you bought me a beer before I moved to Atlanta nearly 4 years ago I think most of the common ground is that we both got to a point where there were a lot of questions we would pose that we were finally being honest about and could no longer ignore. I think I'm going down a pretty different direction from that starting point, but who the hell knows? I don't have any fear of the journey anymore. I don't think I'll ever self-identify as an agnostic or an atheist, and that's partly because of what I think are genuine supernatural and divine experiences, but tbh it's also partly for my own comfort of living in a label and tradition that's helpful for me. My ideas of God are always changing, and while I think there is such a thing I also think I create God for myself.

 

Well, I'll tell ya, if you'd have told me ten years ago that I'd be god-nothing or whatever I am, in the midst of me being in Church office and leading Bible studies and whatnot, I'd have told you that you were crazy.  I was reasonably dickish to @Husker_x about that very thing many times before I had my change of heart, and the graciousness with which he accepted my apology is something I'll never forget.

 

Maybe my path is wrong, and maybe yours is right, or at least right for you.  I think the only thing we can do is speak our truth, be reasonable with others, and try to keep learning.  Because I don't think anyone on this board of any belief will say they KNOW they have the right answer(s).  Which is to the credit of us all, I believe.

[Big Red 40]

1 hour ago, knapplc said:

Maybe my path is wrong, and maybe yours is right, or at least right for you.  I think the only thing we can do is speak our truth, be reasonable with others, and try to keep learning.  Because I don't think anyone on this board of any belief will say they KNOW they have the right answer(s).  Which is to the credit of us all, I believe.

I really like exchanges of beliefs/opinions like this, but in the end I think the above assessment is spot on  . Agreed 

Edited January 25, 2018 by Big Red 40

[TGHusker]

10 hours ago, knapplc said:

 

Well, I'll tell ya, if you'd have told me ten years ago that I'd be god-nothing or whatever I am, in the midst of me being in Church office and leading Bible studies and whatnot, I'd have told you that you were crazy.  I was reasonably dickish to @Husker_x about that very thing many times before I had my change of heart, and the graciousness with which he accepted my apology is something I'll never forget.

 

Maybe my path is wrong, and maybe yours is right, or at least right for you.  I think the only thing we can do is speak our truth, be reasonable with others, and try to keep learning.  Because I don't think anyone on this board of any belief will say they KNOW they have the right answer(s).  Which is to the credit of us all, I believe.

Agree wt the bold - spot on.  I think we should hold our doctrine somewhat loosely - be firm in conviction but open to ideas.  As I mentioned above, none of us have the corner on knowing all of the truth of this world. I can learn from everyone on this board - at least I hope to.  Doesn't mean I have to agree but at least I learn something about that person, where they are coming from and that opens me up to receiving from them some new insight that I may agree with.  When can be on different ends of the political or religious spectrum and still be able to appreciate the other person's perspective and gain value from it.    We are all on a journey thus we are co-travelers.  "A mind once stretched by a new idea, never returns to its former shape"

As a believer, I do have a prayer for everyone including myself. 

 

Apostle Paul's prayer from Ephesians 1:18-19

I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, ¹⁹ and his incomparably great power for us who believe.

[TGHusker]

15 hours ago, Landlord said:

 

The hell that Jesus spoke of was gehenna, the valley outside Jerusalem that was full of garbage and a place where cults would sacrifice children to their gods. A place he used as a metaphor for self-destruction. What he was really getting at in every reference to gehenna, was a warning to Israel that her moral bankruptcy and their desire for a militaristic messiah would result in the nation of Gods people being destroyed by Rome. He was referencing Jeremiah's warnings to Israel against Babylon, sometimes even quoting them directly. 

 

“But I will warn you whom to fear: fear him who, after he has killed, has authority to cast into Gehenna. Yes, I tell you, fear him!” (Luke 12.5)

 

The him here is a militaristic messiah rather than Jesus, the nonviolent, enemy-embracing Messiah. If the religious leaders of Jesus’ day endeavored to follow the course of the Maccabean revolt, the militaristic messiah would not lead them to victoriously defeat Rome, but rather would hurl them into a Jeremiah “like” Gehenna.

 

Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, make offerings to Baal, and go after other gods that you have not known, and then come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, ‘We are safe!’—only to go on doing all these abominations? Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your sight? You know, I too am watching, says the LORD.” (Jeremiah 7.1–11)

 

“And he said, ‘It is written, “My house shall be a house of prayer”; but you have made it a den of robbers.’” (Luke 19.46)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You told me almost the exact same thing when you bought me a beer before I moved to Atlanta nearly 4 years ago I think most of the common ground is that we both got to a point where there were a lot of questions we would pose that we were finally being honest about and could no longer ignore. I think I'm going down a pretty different direction from that starting point, but who the hell knows? I don't have any fear of the journey anymore. I don't think I'll ever self-identify as an agnostic or an atheist, and that's partly because of what I think are genuine supernatural and divine experiences, but tbh it's also partly for my own comfort of living in a label and tradition that's helpful for me. My ideas of God are always changing, and while I think there is such a thing I also think I create God for myself.

Good points LL on the 'hell' discussion.  I didn't take that into consideration.   I'm going to go back and study those references. 

[RedDenver]

12 hours ago, TGHusker said:

I think we should hold our doctrine somewhat loosely - be firm in conviction but open to ideas.

Brilliantly said. Such true words, and such an enormously difficult task.

[Big Red 40]

14 hours ago, TGHusker said:

Good points LL on the 'hell' discussion.  I didn't take that into consideration.   I'm going to go back and study those references. 

Not to butt into your conversation but you may want to look into these too.

https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Bible-Verses-About-Hell/

especially the Revelations verse to me  spells it out about as plain as you can get.

[Landlord]

2 hours ago, Big Red 40 said:

Not to butt into your conversation but you may want to look into these too.

https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Bible-Verses-About-Hell/

especially the Revelations verse to me  spells it out about as plain as you can get.

 

 

 

The only hell references I see in the Revelations verses are about a 'lake of fire'. Can you explain to me what the lake of fire is, what it's purpose is, why people go there, and if they stay there for all eternity? Also, can you tell me which parts of Revelation I am supposed to read literally and which parts not?

[TGHusker]

9 hours ago, Big Red 40 said:

Not to butt into your conversation but you may want to look into these too.

https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Bible-Verses-About-Hell/

especially the Revelations verse to me  spells it out about as plain as you can get.

No problem - the more the merrier on this depressing topic - hell.  

[TGHusker]

On 1/24/2018 at 10:05 PM, knapplc said:

 

Well, I'll tell ya, if you'd have told me ten years ago that I'd be god-nothing or whatever I am, in the midst of me being in Church office and leading Bible studies and whatnot, I'd have told you that you were crazy.  I was reasonably dickish to @Husker_x about that very thing many times before I had my change of heart, and the graciousness with which he accepted my apology is something I'll never forget.

 

Maybe my path is wrong, and maybe yours is right, or at least right for you.  I think the only thing we can do is speak our truth, be reasonable with others, and try to keep learning.  Because I don't think anyone on this board of any belief will say they KNOW they have the right answer(s).  Which is to the credit of us all, I believe.

Knapp, honest question here and of course you don't have to answer and I'll respect what you have to say for I know this is a very personal decision.

One main question with 2 clarifying questions:   

Can I ask what was the 'tipping point' - that one 'moment in time' if there was one that started your 180 turnaround? 

Was there a single event in your life that was the spark that began your search?

Or was there a general feeling of doubt as you heard other arguments?

[knapplc]

36 minutes ago, TGHusker said:

Knapp, honest question here and of course you don't have to answer and I'll respect what you have to say for I know this is a very personal decision.

One main question with 2 clarifying questions:   

Can I ask what was the 'tipping point' - that one 'moment in time' if there was one that started your 180 turnaround? 

Was there a single event in your life that was the spark that began your search?

Or was there a general feeling of doubt as you heard other arguments?

 

 

The glaring absence of god in the entirety of my life was an ever-gnawing thing in the back of my mind.  If God was this loving, amazing father, why wasn't he there personally in my life?  Physically, touchable, interactive.  That's what makes a real father.  My dad was that person, modeled that behavior for me, and according to the church he's this fallible sinner while God was this perfect infallible being - but my dad was a WAY better father than God. 

 

So that was always a problem, but like most Christians I just ignored those problems.  When those doubts/questions came up I would come up with any number of excuses. 

 

I was a church leader, I was active in Bible study and in general the prototypical Evangelical guy people talk about so much today. 

 

There were a few things that happened about the time that I stopped claiming to be Christian.  Probably the most important one was an exhaustive, two-year cover-to-cover Bible study I did with some friends.  Every book, every chapter.  I learned so much about the Bible that I didn't know before, that most Christians don't because they never actually read it.  Putting that all into fresh memory, understanding it all, gave me the whole picture that I'd never really had before.

 

Combine that with my fascination for ancient history, and the necessary knowledge of the gods/religions of ancient people, and it became really clear that the Judeo-Christian god myth was no different than any other contemporary god myth from any other people of the time.  Religion today would be no different if any other cult had fallen through time and survived. Christianity's prevalence today is an accident. We could just as easily be worshiping any other near-East god(s) with their own ancient texts, their own creation myth, their own salvation myth, etc. 

 

So Christianity is nothing special compared to any other religion, in the same way that our wives are not special compared to anyone else's wife.  Of course we love our wives dearly and they are tremendously special to us because they are ours, but everyone who has a wife feels that way, and wives are, in a broad sense, no different than any other. 

 

There's also the factor of science explaining non-God reasons for the existence of everything allegedly created by God,

 

All of these things had been bouncing around in my head for decades, but for the most part I ignored them. They were inconvenient truths to the religion I professed.  I ignored them because I didn't want them to be true.  But the more I settled into my adulthood, and the personality trait that appreciates fact-based truths, the less I could ignore those inconvenient truths.

 

So all of that is background to the couple-year stretch that made me confront those things honestly.  In that time my church went through a major upheaval with many people leaving because of lies and manipulations by two different pastors and the synod.  On top of all that, my mother - a devout Christian and a very good and well-respected woman - came down with terminal cancer. 

 

I worked long and hard to do my part to keep the church together.  I spent many weekends at mom's house trying to help out, keep stuff clean, just be with her.  Cook, talk, whatever they needed.  I washed windows and cleaned out their car.  All the while, she's just wasting away.  And that's a tremendous injustice, that a woman who had given so much of her life, foregone so many things she wanted to do so that she could take care of others, and here after all that she's dealt this ridiculous s#!tty hand that means she'll never get to enjoy the fruit of her labors.  It was just asinine. 

 

So in that time of church upheaval and mom's passing, one day I'm standing on my deck watching the sun set.  It was Spring, 2011 I think.  And I'm looking at my back yard and thinking that my shed is just a pit, and I need to clean it up.  Mice were in there, old lawn products that needed to be discarded, just a mess.  And there's this joke my dad used to tell my wife when we were playing cards and she'd set him, that he was going to make her sleep in his shed that night, and it clicked to me that I didn't even want to set foot in my shed because it was so crappy, and there was an analogy there with heaven & earth. 

 

The shed is like earth/human existence.  My house is heaven.  As a father, there's ZERO chance I would ever send my child to that shed.  NONE.  Aside from being dirty, it had wasps and mice.  Gross place. 

 

But if we're to believe the Judeo-Christian god myth, that's exactly what God did.  He created mankind and put them in the shed.  They were ignorant of anything, and right away they mucked it up - because God wasn't there walking beside them.  But no loving father would ever leave their kid in that shed.  *I* would never do that.  It's asinine.  Put your kid in the shed, lock the door, leave a vague easy-to-misinterpret set of stories behind telling the kid how to grow up, and if - IF! - the kid did everything right, they could come back to the house and live with me. 

 

That's such utter balderdash. 

 

My kid lives with me, in my house, and I do everything I can to keep it nice for her.  Already, right there, I'm a better father than "god."  And that can't be - but it's an incontrovertible truth. 

 

And when I stopped ignoring all the doubts, added up all the facts, and for the first time allowed myself to realistically entertain the idea that it just wasn't true.... the whole thing fell apart. 

 

That was, perhaps, the biggest thing.  Before that day, I hadn't given myself permission to truly test whether or not it was all real.  I was loyal to my god, I was afraid of the alternative, I was happy and safe in the belief that someone was out there watching over me.  There were a lot of reasons I didn't give the alternative a real chance before. 

 

So, oddly, that's the short version of it, the version I've shared here before.  Of course there's a lifetime of other factors involved, but this is the Cliff's Notes version. 

[TGHusker]

Thanks Knapp for the 'detailed' Cliff's note version.  It helps me to understand your journey.  I appreciate your honesty and transparency. 

 

 

[Danny Bateman]

Thanks for sharing, Knapp. I'm sorry for what you & your mom had to go through. Cancer sucks, period. Also, the changes in your church sound very familiar to what happened to mine as a kid - we had a very affable young pastor a lot of people identified with, but he was also more virulently homophobic than our typical congregation member & didn't like the leadership/beliefs of our Presbytery. He left & took a lot of my good friends with him. My original church was basically halved, & I went to the new one they formed off & on, but I always hated the fact that his homophobia was a guiding force for the dissolution of the way things were.

 

I'd lightly take issue with the shed analogy. I think it's a mostly good one, but a Christian would say God put a damn good shed out back in his image, and we IMMEDIATELY screwed it up. Although the immediacy of the temptation by the serpent means one could be forgiven for thinking it was almost intended that way.

 

I'm reading through the Bible as you did & trying to gain as much perspective as I can. I'm only about 300 pages in, though. It will be interesting to see what I come out of it with. So far, I know the Israelites screwed up A LOT.