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Christian Churches Celebrate Darwin's Birthday
kthejoker writes "Today is the 197th anniversary of the great biologist Charles Darwin's birth. In response, some 450 Christian churches are celebrating Darwin's birth, saying, 'Darwin`s theory of biological evolution is compatible with faith and that Christians have no need to choose between religion and science.' There's also an interesting perspective on Darwinism and Christianity in the San Jose Mercury News."
Christian theistic evolutionists have got some very hairy questions to answer....
http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v18/i3/q
http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2004/0112reje
http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v17/i4/t
http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v20/i1/t
I'm not a christian, but I'm glad there's some active stance among religious people against the fundamentalists who seem to have taken over any kind of discussion of religion in this country.
I'm not religious, and I find, on the whole, that fundamentalists hijacking a religion can be a good thing in the long run. Probably nothing else could turn as many people away from the whole idea of religion so much as a generation of frothing-at-the-mouth zealots fighting each other and anyone disagreeing with their inflexible, warped view of the world.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
As a Christian, and someone who's interested in science, how things work, biology and the like, I've never really had a problem with evolution and religion conflicting with each other. Equally, almost all other Christians I've met - and a lot of them are scientists or engineers, people that deal with fact - have likeminded views. In a lot of cases, many of us are baffled as to how this viewpoint that evolution is just 'wrong' came about.
It's nice to see people giving the issue some thought and prving that we're not all religious crackpots. I certainly don't believe the Bible to be 100% literal in its explanation of things to us. While my faith tells me that my God is a powerful force, I'm pretty sure that using the notion of 7 days of creation was a mechanism to get the idea across to people of that time. Do you really think people thousands of years ago would be able to grasp the notion of evolution? The book of Genesis would certainly be a few chapters longer...
The important point here though is that evolution is not creation. Both can co-exist quite happily.
This whole "it's only a few thousand rioting" business doesn't hold much water. Hamas, ie. a bunch of terrorists, have just been voted in democratically in Palestine. Ahmadinejad was voted in democratically in Iran. Extremist Islamic view represent popular opinion across the Middle East and are not solely the beliefs of a minority.
"The White House is not an intelligence-gathering agency," -- Scott McClellan, Whitehouse spokesman.
Can a man live inside of a fish for three days? Was Eve fashioned out of Adam's rib?
If you say something to yourself similar to, "Obviously that part was allegory," then you have no leg to stand on. Either every single thing in it is literal (and the earth has four corners) or everything must be interpreted. Once everything must be interpreted, you cannot claim any sort of non-relativism.
Now, ask yourself these questions: Which bible do you read, and why? Do you think the Romans (who cannonized the Bible with their selected bishops in 313) were answering the call of God or politics? Why do you go to church on Sunday instead of the Sabbath, or Saturday? Why do most of the Christian holidays coincide exactly with pagan holidays that are centuries older?
If you're a Trinitarian, are non-trinitarians going to hell? What if you aren't baptised? Why do you think there are so many sects of Christianity if the bible is so crystal clear?
Christian (and Islamic and Judaeic) dogma inevitably and logically results in fundamentalism and rejection of all secular (ie, rational) thought and belief. To think otherwise is to ignore the very scripture one claims to believe in.
How funny, the papal Encyclica "Fides et Ratio" says otherwise.
I think your friend Harris is misunderstanding at least one point of christianity.
The opposite of this view is religion. All religions place some questions beyond the pale. Christians are not allowed to question the divinity of Jesus. Jews are not allowed to question their special relationship with God. Muslims are not allowed to question the unity of God. None of them are allowed to question the existence of God in the form of any serious doubt.
This attitude is a religion in itself - and your generalizations are basically based on observations of religion based purely on the media or by listening to others like yourself. Instead of going to the real sources, you're using the very tools that religious fanatics blame for being the downfall of our society. Ironic.
Many, MANY forms of christianity encourage the questioning of the divinity of Jesus - the hope is obviously that you'll ultimately agree, but many believe you don't have true faith unless you can truly question it, and still believe. I won't even get into Judaism of Islam.
What I find the most disappointing about this whole debate is the rash generalizations people use to describe the "other side" - like saying "Christians are against evolution" and so forth.
It's like saying that all geeks are hackers, or that all hackers are criminals, or even that all geeks prefer C++. None of these statements are valid. And it is not because there is some small exception to some general rule. I'm guessing that most programmers do not in fact prefer C++ and instead have a great variation in language preference.