flickerbulb

But I’m thinking that no matter what, we’re talking ages significantly longer than say, 6000 years. In fact, unless Antarctica was moving at a pace faster than you can jog, we’re talking millions if not hundreds of millions of years here.

Of course, creationists have an answer for this, including “catastrophic plate tectonics”, which apparently can have all the continents scurrying across the face of the Earth like cockroaches avoiding light. Go ahead and read that link; it’s pretty entertaining. According to them, the continents all got pushed around by Noah’s flood, then suddenly stopped, except not really stopped; now they move slowly, and at just the right speed to be in concordance with the hundreds of other pieces of evidence that show that the Earth is billions of years old.

You can’t make this stuff up.

Creationists fail again: taken for granite

Popularity: 16% [?]

First of all this suggests that Humans were the expected outcome of God’s creation and while it is easy to understand this flawed logic, after all, we are the outcome of God’s creation, this should not be confused with a forward looking goal. In fact, it is easy to argue that God’s Creation was set in motion to eventually result in a form of life which could gain spirituality and a soul and thus become aware of His existence. Furthermore, even if God had set in motion a Darwinian process, He could still have intervened, as I have explained above, without violating natural law. In other words, the process would still appear purely Darwinian and at the same time would be guided.

So contrary to the fallacious claims that ‘true Darwinists’ cannot be ‘true Christians’, it is self evident that such a position is not logically tenable.

What I find puzzling is why people are intent on rejecting the good science of Darwinism and evolutionary theory as somehow being incompatible with their faith. That shows both a disregard for science, which is a typical ID Creationist affliction, as well as a significant lack in faith.

Being a Theistic Evolutionist without contradiction

Popularity: 25% [?]

[Bush] is completely convinced he knows what things are, so he shuts down all avenues of inquiry about them and disregards the information that is offered to him.

“The Illustrated President”
by Scott Horton
(Harper’s Magazine)

Popularity: 18% [?]

there has been a lot said about the article i am going to quote later in this post, but none of it that i’ve seen calls out the glaringly obvious point that i’m seeing in this:

Consider one more experimental example to prove the point: the ultimatum game. You are given $100 to split between yourself and your game partner. Whatever division of the money you propose, if your partner accepts it, you each get to keep your share. If, however, your partner rejects it, neither of you gets any money.

How much should you offer? Why not suggest a $90-$10 split? If your game partner is a rational, self-interested money-maximizer — the very embodiment of Homo economicus — he isn’t going to turn down a free 10 bucks, is he? He is. Research shows that proposals that offer much less than a $70-$30 split are usually rejected.

Why? Because they aren’t fair. Says who? Says the moral emotion of “reciprocal altruism,” which evolved over the Paleolithic eons to demand fairness on the part of our potential exchange partners. “I’ll scratch your back if you’ll scratch mine” only works if I know you will respond with something approaching parity. The moral sense of fairness is hard-wired into our brains and is an emotion shared by most people and primates tested for it, including people from non-Western cultures and those living close to how our Paleolithic ancestors lived.

the idea that most people react this way is something in our selves so deep that it is something we share with other primates.

when we share so much DNA with monkeys, apes, and lemurs, and yet so many people deny that we come from common ancestors, it just seems dishonest to me.

intellectually at best, and plain-old lyin’ at worst.

as i get further and further away, as the months tick by, from my old christian self, i have trouble even remembering how it is i ignored so much evidence for evolution and spent so much time researching “science” that “disproved” it.

how was i able to accept as fact then what is so clearly horse-pooey?

this article explains it, in some small sense.

Why people believe weird things about money - Los Angeles Times:

Popularity: 27% [?]

in response to The Daily Detour: Does freedom require religion?, i have a couple points to make:

We must be sure to separate the misapplication of a religious worldview from that worldview itself.

it seems to me that it is usually those who disagree with the truthiness of a specific worldview who say that actions by those who hold that worldview are the all-but-inevitable consequenses of that worldview.

conversely, those very same people tend to to be quick to apply the “misapplication” argument when confronted with misdeeds by those who hold a worldview similar to their own.

or more simply: you can’t say pol pot’s actions sprang from his beliefs and then turn around and someone like, say, cortez’ actions showed up in spite of his beliefs.

no: the evil that human beings do is because human beings do evil things, and no worldview can keep all of them from doing such things: even one that (mostly) preaches peace and compassion.

when it comes to the christian worldview, there is the “little” matter of the holy spirit and her influence on the human she inhabits.

to this, i can only answer that if god were real, and god actually sent a holy spririt to inhabit people’s hearts and help turn their minds, their actions would follow, always.

the bible says that god changes peoples hearts and minds and paul is explicit that it is a natural consequence of being saved that one acts in a godly way.

but clearly there are plenty examples of christians acting in a way that is antithetical to the way their faith says they will.

this is why there’s such an undercurrent in christian culture of the tension between freewill and god’s sovereignty.

gotta keep that freewill card around so the huge evidence of lack of obedience doesnt’ end up undermining the faith altogether.

my second point is that ideas either survive or do not survive.

ideas that are absurd do not survive.

very few people believe the earth is flat anymore because we accept the eidence presented to us: very very few of us get to see the thing from afar ourselves or understand the physics well enough to run tests on our own.

no one believes they can fly (at least no one who lives long enough to spread the idea).

but ideas that sound plausible can survive, and they can survive long enough to get refined and evolve to become more plausible.

this is, of course, the “religion as meme” idea, and it is fully capable of explaining why religion and specifically christianity describe the human condition quite well.

if they didn’t, they wouldn’t have survived.

ultimately, though, in the great sifting of ideas by humanit, the truthy ones will come to the top while the others are burned off.

this is why humans murder less than they used to, live longer, have healthier babies and are able to build rockets.

it is also why, eventually, we will shake off all notions of the supernatural to explain what is currently unexplainable.

thank god for it, too!

Popularity: 8% [?]

comic books reveal how we as humans tend to really feel about god:

The origin of the comic god goes like this: The arrogant Thor needs a lesson in humility, so his father Odin, the ruler of all gods, sends him to Earth in the form of a crippled mortal to teach him to be humble. When Thor finally learns his shits do stink, his mortal form dies off and he is allowed to become himself again.

This spiritual lesson serves to confirm two things: Being handicapped is God’s way of punishing you for religious transgressions, and to the son of God, Earth is essentially a giant time-out where instead of facing a corner for five minutes you live a short, challenging life rife with confusion and pain until you are eventually allowed to die.

from 5 Upcoming Comic Book Movies That Must Be Stopped

Popularity: 24% [?]

Here’s how to understand the Creation Museum:

Imagine, if you will, a load of horseshit. And we’re not talking just your average load of horseshit; no, we’re talking colossal load of horsehit. An epic load of horseshit. The kind of load of horseshit that has accreted over decades and has developed its own sort of ecosystem, from the flyblown chunks at the perimeter, down into the heated and decomposing center, generating explosive levels of methane as bacteria feast merrily on vintage, liquified crap. This is a Herculean load of horseshit, friends, the likes of which has not been seen since the days of Augeas.

And you look at it and you say, “Wow, what a load of horseshit.”

Your Creation Museum Report

Popularity: 21% [?]

i am about to commit adultery, according to jesus:

I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.

Popularity: 7% [?]

This is a bold charge against Rob Bell and other voices in the Emerging Church movement.People reading that should hear alarms sounding. MacArthur is purposely saying that Bell is a heretic—advocating a hazy, indistinct conception of truth that comes from an insidious desire to advocate worldly lifestyles, unholy minds, and ungodly behaviors.

rob bell is one of the best speakers i’ve ever heard, and i like both what he says and how he says it

Vanguard Church: Is Rob Bell a Godless Man, Condemned by God?

Popularity: 10% [?]

in john’s latest post, he ponders something that i struggled with before i left my christian faith behind.

i’ll quote him:

I am a practical atheist. Yes, I believe in God, but in practice, my life doesn’t always reflect that belief in God. As I asked the crowd this morning, what would be different about my life if I really took God at His Word? How would it affect my prayer life? My private life? My future? Do I really believe God is in control? That He is actively involved in the life of His creation? I say I do. The Bible says He is. But, I wonder why my daily life doesn’t always reflect what I profess to believe.

these were things i struggled with a lot in 2003 through 2005, leading up to my big decision.

i didn’t just think about it, though, i set about really finding out.

i set about really studying, and applying the bible to my life in a whole new way. i wrote, lots, about what i believed, hashing through ideas about evangelism, atonement, grace, emerging culture, hell, and lots of other subjects.

this led me to start reading the works of the church fathers, which led me to be interested in the early church, which led me to be interested in the culture behind the early church, and i ended up studying roman culture and the early church fit into it. i studied paul’s life, i studied basically everything i could get my hands on,

and, to be honest, i was uncomfortable with the things i was learning.

i ignored some what what i was learning, at first, but eventually couldn’t, and be honest with myself.

one of the hardest things to come to grips with was that the bible wasn’t perfect.

i had come to believe before that the bible was the inerrant word of god, reliable and trustworthy.

but i was learning that it was hobbled together by people with political agendas, stealing from older works (many of them not “christian” works, either).

and i was learning not to angrily stop reading the articles that pointed out drastic inconsistencies. inconsistencies that i had previously glossed over.

i was learning to recognize some of the awful awful things in there that i had candy-coated in order to believe this was a “good” book.

as i learned how the bible came to be as it is, i learned not to impose my own viewpoint on what it was, and eventually came to see it as a collection of writings from a wandering desert tribe barely out of the prehistoric age and a god-man myth built around those writings collected in order inspire a people to throw off an oppressive government.

and as i accepted this, i cam eto realize why i had always had such trouble reconciling my own lack of faith (in christian terms).

i came to realize that despite my giving myself over to god, why i was still not ever really “living for him”.

i came to realize why me and my christian peers were constantly struggling with things the holy spirit was supposed to be helping us overcome.

it was, simply, because there is no holy spirit that does any such thing.

Popularity: 10% [?]

Barna polls conducted between 2004 and this year, sampling 440 non-Christians (and a similar number of Christians) aged 16 to 29, found that 38% had a ‘bad impression’ of present-day Christianity. ‘It’s not a pretty picture’ the authors write. Barna’s clientele is made up primarily of evangelical groups.

Kinnaman says non-Christians’ biggest complaints about the faith are not immediately theological: Jesus and the Bible get relatively good marks. Rather, he sees resentment as focused on perceived Christian attitudes. Nine out of ten outsiders found Christians too ‘anti-homosexual,’ and nearly as many perceived it as ‘hypocritical’ and ‘judgmental.’ Seventy-five percent found it ‘too involved in politics.’

Popularity: 8% [?]

i’ve spent three years on a mission to decide about god.

i’m not done yet, but i’m a lot closer than i was when i started.

after thirty-two years on this rock, three of which i have been seriously, open-mindedly, truthfully searching for Truth (if there is such a thing) here’s what i have come up with as far as “what chris believes”:

god exists and created the universe(s)
of this i am fairly certain. i have studied enough physics to come to believe that someone made the rules, and makes sure that that which exists in the physical plane follows those rules.

this someone is “god”.

god is aware of my existence
i’m almost fully convinced of this. not 100%, but pushing eighty-eight maybe?

it seems unlikely to me that god is an non-person, a “thing”.

this does not mean i believe god is a super-human, or that god’s attributes are even approaching imaginability, but i do think it is very likely that what is possible to be known about god is made clear simply by watching the world around me and extrapolating.

having been doing this very carefully, i have come to believe that god does in fact know i exist.

god cares about me (and therefore, everyone else, too)
this one i’m less sure about. seventy-five percent or so.

it seems to me that god cares, because i care about god, and i care about people, and i think that reflects on (or reflects from) the person who created me.

this does not mean that god cares for me in the way i care for the people i love (but, admittedly, i don’t have kids, and i’m guessing that parent relationship comes closest to being analogous). rather, i think god cares for me and i have no idea what that really means.

in light of the above, i, then, also believe:

prayer works
since god exists, and cares about me (and others), prayers to god are heard and sometimes acted upon.

i have seen the evidence in my own life, and so have billions of people from all faiths that exist.

i ought to behave in a way that is god-pleasing
since i believe that i, and other humans, are god’s image-bearers, i believe it is important to behave in ways that seem like they would be pleasing to god.

there are thousands of years of religious thought put into deciding what exactly those sorts of behaviours are, but jesus seemed to hit the nail on the head: love god, love people.

when it comes to how one goes about loving god, and loving people, well, the jury is still very much out on that one, for me.

some people have gone to war over such minutiae, willing to kill to defend their (inherited, likely) ideas about these things.

as for me, i don’t claim to have a damn clue beyond this: i am pretty sure that it has nothing to do with how or what one eats, drinks, wears, or even believes.

rather, it seems, the idea is to be intentionally good to other people, as best as one can, and hope that god is pleased. this seems to fit in with what jesus taught, which pleases me, coming from a protestant background.

hey, speaking of jesus:

jesus’ teachings in the sermon on the mount are worthy of study in the attempt to work out what is god-pleasing
given my above statements, it is unlikely that i qualify as “a christian” anymore, at least to conservative evangelicals (who tend to claim, or at least believe, they’ve got the definition of “a christian” locked up), but i am still very much a fan (disciple?) of jesus and his teachings.

i spent eighteen months very seriously studying the sermon on the mount, and i still go back to it often for guidance on dealing with daily matters.

i suppose if a label must be applied to me, one could call me a “jesusist”.

what i do not believe
now, given the above, there are some things that are worth pointing out that i specifically do not, or no longer, believe in.

these would be things that i have abandoned in my quest for truth, as i find they are unworthy of believing in:

i do not believe hell exists
given my view of god, i believe the idea of eternally conscious torment for those to do not believe very specific things about the creator is, at the very least, extremely distasteful.

in fact, i believe the idea is evil. hell makes god into a monster, not a loving father. i think hell is a particularly nasty way to coerce people into falling into line, thought-wise, and it has had nasty consequences on religion and on how people behave.

if god hates, then i am one-hundred per-cent sure god hates that we humans invented the idea of hell.

i do not believe in the “authority of the bible”
i love the bible. i have memorized over half of the new testament. i am intimately familiar with lots of the old testament. i believe the bible (like all scripture) is useful for teaching, profitable for rebuking, and has lots of wisdom.

i do not believe the bible is “infallible”, “inerrant”, “authoritative”, nor “the word of god”.

as i’ve re-read the bible in the last three years (more than once) with an open mind, i have come to see it from an outsider’s perspective, and i now see it for what it is: a collection of myths, poetry, religious writings and “shared wisdom”.

i find it not at all internally self-consistent (which i had always been taught it was) nor particularly inspired, compared to some of the other religious texts i have bothered to study in the past few years.

it may well be “god-breathed” but, then, so is everyone who’s ever existed.

i do not believe the christian church is anywhere near what jesus had in mind
i think that many of the early “christians” got jesus message of love and peace all wrong, politicized it in order to throw off roman rule, and thus: jesus beautiful teachings ended up becoming romanized themselves.

i don’t think jesus had “an institution” in mind, and i think jesus would read the new testament the church has come up with and weep, saying, “no no no.. this is not at ALL what i meant.”

so, there we have it.

friends and family may wish to re-read the beginning, before freaking out.

go on, we have time…

done?, okay, so… now what?

how will i change in light of this?

guess what, you’ve already seen it.

the happier & healthier chris is a result of this thinking.

if you have seen a change in me, it is because of my beliefs about the above.

you will not see me go off the deep end and start murdering puppies, raping villages or pillaging women & children.

if my rejection of orthodox christianity was going to lead to such behavior, it would have done so already.

so, you’ll not see a change me, beyond the slow gradual one towards happiness that you’ve seen in the last six months.

don’t be scared: i’m not.

rejoice with me, cause i’m pretty sure i’m closer to “knowing” than i ever have been.

and, once again, i’ll say: friends and family may wish to re-read the beginning, before freaking out.

comments welcome, either below, or you can email chris at flickerbulb dawt com.

Popularity: 10% [?]