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I know your opinion.
My point was this; an all-powerful god would be responsible for the natural forces that do the selection, so that god would be the guiding force behind evolution. There is no value in someone like you (or me for that matter) reiterating for the 1000th time that we don't believe in god, and that we can't understand the logic behind anyone who does. Your only apparent purpose here is inflammatory. My purpose was to point out that the assumption many religious conservatives make that a) no liberals are religious and b) evolution and religion can't go together is insane and absurd.Most Christians are not literal interpretationists, so this point only applies to a few people (who, granted, tend to be loud and obnoxious).
We have the freedom of religion, and yet every day we receive countless reminders that the country as a whole does not consider our point of view valid. The name of a god that we don't believe in is printed on our money; for those of us who work in schools, it is in the Pledge of Allegiance (thanks, I presume to the Red Scare); it is everywhere. I for one don't feel hurt by this, but I know a lot of people who are either atheist, or just non-Christian do. I do not evangelize my beliefs, and I don't much care for those who do in general, but I get it.
Well when I'm balancing equations I like to add infinite zeroes to each side just for lulz. As for going together I like Laplace's response to Napoleon.I know your opinion.
So then why would most xtians even be xtian if they don't even take the sacrifice of their savior seriously? That takes pick and chose to a whole new level.
There is no picking and choosing required as I see it. Most of the bible is intended as allegory. Think of any novel you have enjoyed that has value to your life. The story isn't literally true, and yet that doesn't prevent it from having a positive impact on your life, from in effect being more true than a news article. I would imagine all Christians believe in Christ and the sacrifice and whatnot, but most of the bible does not take the form of a person relating an event in the way that the gospels do.
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I won't necessarily argue, although I think you're "flat out wrong." I'm sure that the idea of scripture as allegory may well be recent in some ways, but I grew up thinking I was the only one who didn't believe in god, and NO ONE I knew expressed the idea that the bible was strict truth until I started meeting fundamentalists, who are a minority of Christians.The idea of scripture as allegory is VERY recent -- 18th century English Deists, 19th century German philologists. And the idea that most people think of scripture as allegory is just flat out wrong -- most believers think they have a hotline to God, and God isn't talking in riddles.
(Of course, they believe everybody else's scripture is allegory...
Religion serves a vital social function, and the domination of mainstream culture by religious narratives is no more annoying than the domination of mainstream culture by Lady Gaga. Those who aren't satisfied by it go looking for something more.
If your god says they did it a certain way and evolution is contrary to that, then they are mutually exclusive. LaPlace's quote is related because people constantly try to shove their favorite deity into the gaps. Even when it violates the narrative their deity put down.
You realize I have to ask how you know what is literal and what is allegory right? And I have to ask if you've read the bible if you think it's not written as a rather straight forward "this is what happened" format.
Well, first of all, I don't have a god. What I am talking about is the way I was raised, and the beliefs that were taught in my family's church. As for how it is written as a straightforward story, that's silly. The World According to Garp is written as though it were fact, but I can recognize it as fiction even if no one tells me so. It does, however, have a lot of truth in it. And until someone shows me some sort of evidence that most Christians are literal interpretationists, I won't believe it. I put more stock in what the people I have known all my life and grew up with tell me they believe than what you tell me they believe.
Yeah, so did everybody I went to college with. But it's a "people who go to college" attitude -- rolls right off the secular humanist conveyer belt.
Yeah, I didn't really grow up among a college crowd, but I get the point; your anecdotal experience is very very different from mine. I will say, since about the age of seventeen, I have spent precious little time around any practicing Christians.
Part of it is regional, too. The South is a lot of things that are a pleasant surprise, but the stinger in the tail is the Thumpers are everywhere, armed, and vocal. I accidentally work right in the great confluence of northern PhDs and southern ex-mils, and every day is a reminder that the two cultures have pretty much nothing in common besides a flag.
A couple years out of date but basically 31% of those polled said it was to be taken literally and then another 47% who are willing to say it's "inspired".
George Carlin said:
It's all my fault. You just can't trust clever atheists, I guess. Gotta lean on imaginary beings instead that apparently hate abortions and gays.Well this thread has gone interesting places
