Increasing acceptance of biological evolution in the US

[abaddon]

How is God an explanation? ...

As for your "ignored" questions, these would get us away from the science discussion, which I have tried to stick to. But the Bible is true. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is true and was observed by numerous eyewitnesses, who were willing to die for what they had witnessed. The Bible could not have been written by men alone. Jesus fulfilled every one of numerous prophecies about Him in the Old Testament. It's been calculated that the odds of His fulfilling just 8 of them are like dropping a blindfolded man off in an area the size of Texas, covered 2 feet deep in silver dollars, and have him find just the one silver dollar that is marked. But He fulfilled more than just 8, and there are other obvious similitudes in the Bible such as the example of Abraham that I mentioned, which point to Jesus Christ and to the Bible's divine authorship.

That's circular, using the Bible to support the Bible. It's no better than a fan of a fictional work saying "the later bits are the fulfillment of the earlier bits (so it's all true)".

The alleged eyewitnesses to the resurrection are characters in the book witnessing an event in the book. The fulfillment of prophecies is the author(s) referencing earlier bits of the book! The odds of the writer being able to fulfill the book's earlier 'foreshadowings' are pretty good.

You're the victim of some severe illogic. I suspect you prefer the science discussion because that way you can report what you've read on creationist websites and thereby let others do the thinking for you.

---

You responded to my post but didn't really comment on what I was getting at. Which is, I don't know how saying God made the universe, or directs anything in the universe, really explains anything in the universe. It doesn't replace my lack of knowledge about how the universe does what it does with knowledge.

And that's true for you and all theists too. You're throwing up your hands and saying "I don't know therefore God... so ta-da! now I know what I didn't know!"

 

[lpetrich]

If in a few years the scientists develop a better understanding that mitigates or eliminates the current uncertainties would you be willing to reassess your conclusion that “recent creation” is the answer?

Frankly, the onus is on the secularists to come up with those evidences.

Shifting the burden of proof. Aesthete, the burden of proof is on you to prove that the Universe is only around 6000 years old. What evidence do you have that it is around 6000 years old and not around 4000 years old or 8000 years old or 12,000 years old?

The alternative is that God created the heavens and the earth. ...

Which God, Aesthete, which God? People have worshipped oodles of deities.

The God of the Bible.

Why the Bible? Why not the Koran? Or the Theogony? Or the Vedas?

The Bible wasn’t written by a single man or all at once. To give just one example, the story of Abraham preparing to sacrifice his “only son” Isaac foreshadows Jesus Christ, because Abraham believed God’s promise that God would multiply his seed. So Abraham counted God able to raise him from the dead. It’s a picture of the faith of Abraham. There is a ton of this kind of stuff, plus directly fulfilled prophecies, and it couldn’t have happened by chance.

(1) Overimaginative interpretation (2) Self-fulfilling prophecy

Stars are braked by their magnetic fields extending out into their stellar winds.

A “theory” that doesn’t seem to have much support. Only that the nebular model is falsified if it’s not true.

I found numerous hits for "stars magnetic braking" over at Google Scholar - Aesthete, you have to get out of your creationist bubble.

Earth: According to the nebular model, the earth is too close to the sun for water to have condensed. For this reason, secular scientists theorize that the earth acquired it water via comet strikes. Besides the lack of evidence of this hypothesis, ...

What would you consider acceptable evidence for it?

Acceptable evidence for earth’s water coming from extraterrestrial bombardment? I don’t believe it exists. It’s a really wild idea, quite frankly, but is necessary to support the secular model.

Why do you call it a "wild idea"?

Aesthete: "Gas giants: Jupiter and Saturn cannot have formed in their respective locations according to the secular models."

Check out the  Nice model and the  Grand tack hypothesis for the early Solar System. Both of them posit outer planets having moved from their original orbits. That is also posited for many exoplanets:  Hot Jupiter -  Planetary migration.

My point exactly. They cannot have formed in their present locations. So wild ideas are needed to explain how they got there.

Why are those "wild ideas"?

We weren't around to watch any of this happening, so we have to work backward from what we see in the present day.

Only if you ignore God as the explanation.

Goddidit! Goddidit! Goddidit! Is that what we are supposed to say?

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

You're the victim of some severe illogic. I suspect you prefer the science discussion because that way you can report what you've read on creationist websites and thereby let others do the thinking for you.

---

You responded to my post but didn't really comment on what I was getting at. Which is, I don't know how saying God made the universe, or directs anything in the universe, really explains anything in the universe. It doesn't replace my lack of knowledge about how the universe does what it does with knowledge.

And that's true for you and all theists too. You're throwing up your hands and saying "I don't know therefore God... so ta-da! now I know what I didn't know!"

I think the classic example of answering a question without providing any knowledge or understanding is the one about the moon and its phases.

The question is asked: "Why does the moon go through phases?" The knowledge-free response: "Because its in the nature of the moon to go through phases."

Religious folk just substitute their woo for nature and claim to have answered the question. It must be a very satisfying way to fool oneself into feigning understanding but unlike scientific inquiry it doesn't add any knowledge that seeks to answer the question.

On the other hand, however, religious contemplation is likely great exercise for the brain, and neural gymnastics are always a good thing. Religious answers are best seen as pseudo-intellectual exercises which may eventually lead to scientific awareness, given time and proper circumstance. At least that seems to be the path human society has thus far taken.

 

[lpetrich]

IANAP, but - the so-called horizon problem seems to be slightly misstated in the wiki link: ""CMB regions that are separated by more than 2° lie outside one another’s particle horizons and are causally disconnected." opens the door for creationist bullshit ...

The horizon problem, along with the flatness problem, are both solved by cosmic inflation. Quantum fluctuations get frozen into place as they get stretched by the exponential expansion to more than the size of the horizon. After the end of inflation, stuff stops going out of each point's horizon and starts going back into it. This produces a spectrum of primordial fluctuations, a spectrum close in shape to what we observe.

 

[lpetrich]

Billions and Billions of Demons | by Richard C. Lewontin | The New York Review of Books (paywalled, but I once got a copy of it)

I found it nauseating.

RL recalled when he and Carl Sagan debated some creationists in Little Rock, AR in 1964. He had a take on it that I consider rather odd. He seemed to think that creationism was some sort of revolt of Southern-state proletarians against a Northeastern-state bourgeoisie. There may well be an element of that, but it says nothing about the truth of creationism. He also noted that both sides have their professional experts, as if that makes both sides equally valid.

He said that some woman in Texas was unwilling to accept that we could receive broadcasts from the Moon because she can't receive broadcasts from Dallas, a position he considered "sensible". I think that this Texas woman was being naive, because NASA could easily do over-the-horizon reception with its communications satellites, and she didn't have access to any.

He also complained about the absurdity of believing that the smell of Limburger cheese was due to "odorless packets of energy", when smell doesn't work that way. Molecules don't *directly* have smells. Instead, they stick to olfactory receptor neurons and make them emit electrical signals. It reminded me of this:
CHURCH FATHERS: Divine Institutes, Book III (Lactantius)

How is it with those who imagine that there are antipodes opposite to our footsteps? Do they say anything to the purpose? Or is there any one so senseless as to believe that there are men whose footsteps are higher than their heads? Or that the things which with us are in a recumbent position, with them hang in an inverted direction? That the crops and trees grow downwards? That the rains, and snow, and hail fall upwards to the earth? And does any one wonder that hanging gardens are mentioned among the seven wonders of the world, when philosophers make hanging fields, and seas, and cities, and mountains?

I note that Richard Lewontin was a geneticist. In this connection, I also note that many people in the past have believed in Lamarckian inheritance. So why doesn't he defend Lamarckism as "common sense"?

He also claimed that scientists have promised too much. That may well be the case, but the development of theoretical science has made possible a *lot* of things that would otherwise by *very* difficult. Like computers.

He also claims that it was improved sanitation, not antibiotics and vaccines and the like, which stopped a lot of infectious disease. That may well be the case, but it's hard to justify improving sanitation without the germ theory of disease. Understanding that theory has also justified making medical procedures much more sanitary. There are also plenty of diseases that have been at least partially conquered with vaccinations, including diseases that have recently been allowed to spread by anti-vaxxers.

He also moans and groans about dismissing outright the hypothesis of meddling by the Xian God. What does he expect?

He kvetches about the Human Genome Project, claiming that it was fundamentally pointless or some such. He almost seemed to have some ideological objection to it. He also claimed that it was oversold as offering clues to diseases. Maybe, but it's a valuable first step.

 

[lpetrich]

Science & 'The Demon-Haunted World': An Exchange | by Wayne C. Booth | The New York Review of Books

In “Billions and Billions of Demons,” Richard Lewontin has directed some misleading assertions and unwarranted criticism at genetics research in particular and science in general. In continuing his crusade against genetics as it is studied and applied in the context of what he has previously termed “bourgeois science” and now refers to as “elite culture,” Lewontin implies that genetics has made no significant contributions to medicine. With regard to cancer treatment, he writes: “The realization of the role played by DNA has had absolutely no consequence for either therapy or prevention….” And on “diseases” in general: “We do not yet have a single case of a prevention or cure arising from a knowledge of DNA sequences….”

Letter-writer Harold Dorn pointed out counterexamples, like Tay-Sachs disease.

Lewontin’s targets are not limited to genetics; he also takes aim at the entire scientific enterprise which he now sees, dialectically, in terms of a “confrontation between elite culture and popular culture.” Creationist opposition to teaching evolutionary biology is blamed on “the elite culture [that] was now extending its domination by attacking the control that families had maintained over the ideological formation of their children.” He even finds fault with the open, self-critical tradition of science, comparing it unfavorably with Hasidic scholasticism: “If [one] really wants to hear serious disputation about the nature of the universe, [one] should leave the academic precincts…and spend a few minutes in an Orthodox study house in Brooklyn.”

I'm baffled by that assertion. What could RL have possibly had in mind???

Lewontin’s antipathy to the culture of scientific research is misconceived and misguided. In attempting to discredit what he and many scholars and scientists in the elite culture see as an imperfect society he is directing his fire at its most commendable institution, an institution which in fact functions in accordance with essentially the same norms across various social systems. It is unfortunate that a scientist of Lewontin’s caliber continues, in the name of world betterment, to minimize the achievements of science and fellow scientists.

 Richard Lewontin died on July 4 of this year, so I've had to adjust some of the verb tenses.

 

[funinspace]

Aesthete: "Yet, consider the case of an American warplane that crashed in Greenland in 1942. In 1990, it was found 80m deep. In 48 years, there were many hundreds of ice rings that had formed."

Sources on that?

[YOUTUBE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_pj4IM5Zkk[/YOUTUBE]

That vid is quite short on specifics of argument, as it basically boils down to, see the plane was 80m down, and assuming the same depth for time as some vague reference to annual ice layer thickness, it should have been thousands of years back for that depth.

Now I'm not well versed in geomorphology, but I think I would take the guys with the right kind of PHD's over this preacher's vague handwaving. And its not like Christians have a good track record of explaining reality with their holy book. Have such geologists been asked as to why the planes were so deep in the ice? Was the area compared to ice core samples from near by? I can think of a few questions that should be asked.

Taking your version of analysis, how about we just throw out the Bible as a fraud, since Christians tacked on a new ending to Mark. After all, if some person(s) created a new longer ending for Mark, then how can any of it be trusted? Or maybe we should question the whole Bible, as the Protestants threw out 7 books from the Bible some 1200 years after previous Christians had codified what the canon was. This is not my argument, but if one starts throwing out the baby with the bathwater, its kind of what happens...argument wise...Your God seems to have employed some pretty flaky editors.

 

[lpetrich]

If an Orthodox Jewish study house beats mainstream scientific research in "serious disputation about the nature of the universe", then students of mythology are the champions.

Were the current rulers of the Universe always the rulers? Or did they overthrow a previous generation of rulers?

What methods did the creator(s) use? Did their creations come from them reproducing in the usual fashion? Or from body fluids like sweat and spit? Did they build their creations from pre-existing material? Did they command their creations into existence?

Were there two creators side by side?

Did the Universe emerge from some formless void? Or was there some pre-existent deity?

Is the Earth disk-shaped or square-shaped or rectangle-shaped?

What realms are above it and below it? None? One? More than one? Layers of them?

What kind of monsters make eclipses by eating the Sun and the Moon?

I'm surprised that Richard Lewontin did not pine away for the monster theory of eclipses.

 

[lpetrich]

As to what might be causing this increasing trend of acceptance of descent with modification, I think that the growth of the religiously unaffiliated or "Nones" is a part of it.

Losing Our Religion: The Growth Of The 'Nones' : The Two-Way : NPR
How America Lost Its Religion - The Atlantic
In U.S., Decline of Christianity Continues at Rapid Pace | Pew Research Center

NPR (Gallup): 1950 - 1966: constant at 2%, 1966 - 1982: linear increase, 1982 - 1996: constant at 8%, 1996 - 2010: linear increase to 16%.

The Atlantic (General Social Survey): After being nearly constant at 7% or 8% over the 1970's and 1980's, it started increasing in the early 1990's, and by 2018, it reached 23%.

Pew: 2007: 16% to 2019: 26%. Atheists: 4%, agnostics: 5%, nothing in particular: 17%.


Less affiliation means less Bible worship and thus less belief in creationism.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Less affiliation means less Bible worship and thus less belief in creationism.

Well, i think far more importantly, less affiliation, less uncritically accepting dogma. And i'm not sure which is the chicken, which is the egg.

For example, each generation in this country grows up more likely to know someone gay, and can directly compare the sermon content to examples. Once they figure out that it's just fear-mongering, the sermonizers lose credibility.

I think there are several points of articulation where the break might occur, these days. Vaccinations, autism, muslims... the authorities go on and on and we each have our "Wait, seriously?" moment. Some move to a different church, some go to Nones.

And with the internet, it happens a lot faster.

 

[funinspace]

Less affiliation means less Bible worship and thus less belief in creationism.

Well, i think far more importantly, less affiliation, less uncritically accepting dogma. And i'm not sure which is the chicken, which is the egg.

For example, each generation in this country grows up more likely to know someone gay, and can directly compare the sermon content to examples. Once they figure out that it's just fear-mongering, the sermonizers lose credibility.

I think there are several points of articulation where the break might occur, these days. Vaccinations, autism, muslims... the authorities go on and on and we each have our "Wait, seriously?" moment. Some move to a different church, some go to Nones.

And with the internet, it happens a lot faster.

I think the whole binary version of sexuality mindset is probably the biggest turnoff against Christianity in the last 20+ years. This issue is simply driving tons of people under 40 away from the churches. Sure there are mainstream churches that have changed or are changing. But even some of the mainstream Protestant churches like the UMC that are still at a huge divide over the issue.

The statistical change probably has a large component driven also by the reality that people born in the 1930's and 1940's are simply dying of old age. By the time people were born in the 1960's, it wasn't weird that many people weren't into church, whether or not they called themselves Christian. I had 2 groupings of friends in the late 60's and 70's, and about half were from my church, and about half were at best Chreasters. Now these people like me have millennial kids, and tons have never had anything to do with churches, or walked away as they reached adulthood.

 

[Rhea]

I think what stands out the most for me is the fact that if you look at every one of the objects in the solar system, there are major reasons each one cannot be old.

Would those be smiliar to how the bible has major reasons it cannot be - like, people living to be 900 years old and childbearing over the age of 100?

these are some pretty persuasive reason for an age of the earth that conforms to a biblical timeframe.

Is this the “biblical timeframe” that is established on the basis of counting generations of people living to be 900 years old and childbearing over the age of 100?

 

[Rhea]

Frankly, the onus is on the secularists to come up with those evidences.

This is a curiously revealing answer.
Isn’t the onus on BOTH of us to support our theories?

Scientists are supporting theirs with evidence, math and physics.
Creationists: do not support their hypotheses with anything other than, God exists because I say so.

But the mythology you summarized does not even, in my opinion, constitute theism. These “gods” are "creatures" of time, whereas God is eternal and outside time. These “gods” can be overthrown, whereas no one can oppose God.

Onus on you to exert the same standard of required evidence for your god as you do for old earth. Who says no one can overthrow your god? More evidence is required than saying theology falls apart if there is no god.

What would you consider acceptable evidence of such a collision?

Something other than the fact that the evolutionary model is falsified if such collision didn't happen might be a start.

Whatever evidence you expect him to provide for collisions, you need to provide for flood.

Earth: According to the nebular model, the earth is too close to the sun for water to have condensed. For this reason, secular scientists theorize that the earth acquired it water via comet strikes. Besides the lack of evidence of this hypothesis, ...

What would you consider acceptable evidence for it?

Acceptable evidence for earth’s water coming from extraterrestrial bombardment? I don’t believe it exists. It’s a really wild idea, quite frankly, but is necessary to support the secular model.

Same standard.
God is a wild idea. YOu need to do better - by your own standard.

Check out the  Nice model and the  Grand tack hypothesis for the early Solar System. Both of them posit outer planets having moved from their original orbits.

My point exactly. They cannot have formed in their present locations. So wild ideas are needed to explain how they got there.

So you present the wild idea of a god. Without a jot or tittle of math to back it up.

We weren't around to watch any of this happening, so we have to work backward from what we see in the present day.

Only if you ignore God as the explanation.

Ignoring the wild idea that has no supporting evidence?

The numbers don't work - the amount of heat on Io cannot be explained by this.

The numbers for your god don’t work. You must abandon the idea.

Did you even read the link? It correctly explains that the faster than light expansion is an optical illusion and not an actual expansion of the stellar eruption debris.

My bad.

“My bad”?
Why are you not okay with scientists saying this?

That's not all I have to say about the speed of light, though.

Indeed. Science is 1000x better at delivering on this than you are, though.
I don’t say this to be snarky, either. I say this to point out that BY YOUR STANDARDS, creationism is not plausible.



Aesthete, you say over and over again that science needs to fill its gaps (science agrees… and continues to do so), and then you gleefully assert, “but I don’t have to!” and conclude that you have reached a rational understanding of truth.


Your own posts confirm that you believe what you believe in the absence of rationality.
So a couple of paths become apparent.

• You admit that your position is not rational, and you don’t care,
• You continue to assert your position is rational even though your own words disprove it
• I guess we could add, you decide that you do prefer rational to fanciful and you abandon YEC, but that is not required.

But in any case, it is obvious that your claims that science is irrational are inaccurate.


But here’s the thing that I think about when I see the irrational positions of theists who want to “disprove science” as you are doing. It’s that there is nothing useful to be gained from religion. Everything useful that we have that contributes to the health and welfare of humans is based on science and the methods that you claim are not needed.

No one builds a bridge without reliable, repeatable, predictable scientific fundamentals used in reliable methodologies.
No one gets in an airplane. No one uses a phone. No gets a heart transplant. No one uses dialysis. No one solves a crime. No one puts up garden vegetables in a Ball Jar. No one builds an engine. No one predicts the weather.

Your world relies on the whims of a super-being that doesn’t care about reliability, and has, by your own testimony, violated reliability over and over again just to fool you. You don’t even know if gravity will continue working tomorrow, or if the sun will suddenly stand still in the sky, or if zombies will rise from their graves.

Your world is utterly unreliable.
Which maybe goes well with the admonition to sell everything you own and wander the streets begging and praising god. (Do you do that? How do you get computer access?)

The beauty of science is that it creates a way for humans to predict what will happen and plan for it. And see observations that verify the reliability of their predictions.


And you say so yourself multiple times in this thread.
When you are asked what evidence you would accept, you say, ‘something more than what you showed.’ You want more evidence in order to believe something is true.

…even while what they showed is orders of magnitude more than what you showed about what you already believe is true.

So be honest with us.
Be honest with yourself and your god.
Show us your evidence. Your papers on how god DOES work. Or abandon your claim that science can’t be true because we haven’t shown you enough. Use the same standard. Your god is NOT TRUE until you prove it. So you can’t use that as your explanation until you can prove it to a greater degree than science has proved its hypotheses.

 

[steve_bank]

I don't remember if I posted this before.

Way back when I first started debating theists on evolution I looked at the some of the major Christian denominations.

Back in the 90s the pope issued a statement that evolution may be part of god'ss plan. As always the RCC molds science to theology.

I found similar sentiments from mainstream protestant groups. Of course the hardcore Evangelicals and others are creationist.

The Discovery Institute is in Seattle. They publish slick sconce looking books on ID. There were several curt cases in the 90s when Christians tried to get ID taught in schools along with evolution. ID was soundly declared to be backdoor relgion.

In the 90s a Washington state legislator proposed a bill that would require all science texts in public schools to have a disclaimer that said evolution was not the only theory. I exchanged emails with him and was prepared to debate the guy.

I talked to the committee chair and she told me it would never get out of committee.

Point being keep in mind how contentious evolution is, it strikes at the heart of many Christians. and evokes strong feelings

 

[Keith&Co.]

The notion of God using evolution is really silly.

I've been wondering why evolutionary theory is singled out this way.

I mean, i have a marble run system. Pretty neat. It's got gates and dividers, tunnels, spirals, a trampoline, a vortex... Nickel coated steel balls fall and roll and zip along, and it can ALL be described by the laws of motion. Except one part. Someone has to pick up the balls and put them back on the top to run again.
This isn't like nature.
We can describe the entire water cycle without having to insert 'this is where God opens the windows in the sky." or 'And the clouds would break under the weight of the water if God wasn't holding them together.'
We can describe any creature's life cycle from fertilized egg to worm food without any godly action required to explain the event.
Electricity. Trons flow, holes appear to flow, resistance can be measured, as can voltage, current, and the luminosity of a spark between curious fingers and a terminal. Nowhere do we need to say that supernatural beings are required to move the needle on the ammeter, or light the light, or make the power supply give off heat.
Bill O'Reilly was a bit confused, but we can map out the entire tide cycle based on the movements of Earth, Sun, Moon, and Water without pointing to God's action being necessary.

Why, with all these things set up to operate without His direct action being obviously required, would you look at the Theory of Evolution and conclude it was different? That the mechanisms of imperfect replication and natural selection COULD NOT have been put in place exactly to achieve the results He desired without his further tinkering? Or if he did tinker, without depending on His actions at one or more crucial steps?

How is is Silly?

 

[funinspace]

The notion of God using evolution is really silly.

I've been wondering why evolutionary theory is singled out this way.

I mean, i have a marble run system. Pretty neat. It's got gates and dividers, tunnels, spirals, a trampoline, a vortex... Nickel coated steel balls fall and roll and zip along, and it can ALL be described by the laws of motion. Except one part. Someone has to pick up the balls and put them back on the top to run again.
This isn't like nature.
We can describe the entire water cycle without having to insert 'this is where God opens the windows in the sky." or 'And the clouds would break under the weight of the water if God wasn't holding them together.'
We can describe any creature's life cycle from fertilized egg to worm food without any godly action required to explain the event.
Electricity. Trons flow, holes appear to flow, resistance can be measured, as can voltage, current, and the luminosity of a spark between curious fingers and a terminal. Nowhere do we need to say that supernatural beings are required to move the needle on the ammeter, or light the light, or make the power supply give off heat.
Bill O'Reilly was a bit confused, but we can map out the entire tide cycle based on the movements of Earth, Sun, Moon, and Water without pointing to God's action being necessary.

Why, with all these things set up to operate without His direct action being obviously required, would you look at the Theory of Evolution and conclude it was different? That the mechanisms of imperfect replication and natural selection COULD NOT have been put in place exactly to achieve the results He desired without his further tinkering? Or if he did tinker, without depending on His actions at one or more crucial steps?

How is is Silly?

I think that for people who want/need their Bible version to be God-breathed/inerrant, evolution is kind of a nasty slippery slope thing for them. If evolution is true, then where does one stop breaking down so many of the OT fairy tales that lack any real evidential basis outside of their holy book?

Aesthete, you call evolution silly, like it is just some sort of child's game that has no basis. I am curious if you have ever read something from a serious Christian with a solid science background that fully thinks evolution is a valid theory. If not, I really would recommend the book by Dr. Francis Collins, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief. It isn't a big book, and it isn't super technical, so anyone can read it (yes I have read it). It provides a good window into how a guy with a PHD in chemistry, and then later got his MD views science and his Christian faith. He also was the director for the Human Genome Project.

 

[funinspace]

The statistical change probably has a large component driven also by the reality that people born in the 1930's and 1940's are simply dying of old age. By the time people were born in the 1960's, it wasn't weird that many people weren't into church, whether or not they called themselves Christian. I had 2 groupings of friends in the late 60's and 70's, and about half were from my church, and about half were at best Chreasters. Now these people like me have millennial kids, and tons have never had anything to do with churches, or walked away as they reached adulthood.

One other point I should have brought up related to the above is that by the 1950's and 60's, our society became much more mobile and many no longer stayed near where they grew up. My parents left the east coast for the rocky mountain states around 1960. My wife and I, after I graduated from college, yet again, did the mobile thing and moved to another state. A minor observation of our life, is that in the first 20 years of going to churches we never developed any friendships that lasted pretty much past that church. And that really frustrated us over the years, as we didn't have family near by. Yet, we have several friendships to this day from where I worked after graduating college that are now going on 30-35 years. And those friends aren't Christians. IMPOV, this generational process is also taking its toll on the value seen in organized religion.

 

[Keith&Co.]

I think that for people who want/need their Bible version to be God-breathed/inerrant, evolution is kind of a nasty slippery slope thing for them. If evolution is true, then where does one stop breaking down so many of the OT fairy tales that lack any real evidential basis outside of their holy book?

And, again, why is ToE different?
They go thru huge amounts of scripture, highlighting lines as allegory, or metaphor, or local color, and still claim it's God-breathed/inerrant.
If Adam and Woman just represent Man's capacity for sin, not diary entries, there's no quibble with age of Earth, evolution, cosmology, anthropology...

 

[funinspace]

I think that for people who want/need their Bible version to be God-breathed/inerrant, evolution is kind of a nasty slippery slope thing for them. If evolution is true, then where does one stop breaking down so many of the OT fairy tales that lack any real evidential basis outside of their holy book?

And, again, why is ToE different?
They go thru huge amounts of scripture, highlighting lines as allegory, or metaphor, or local color, and still claim it's God-breathed/inerrant.
If Adam and Woman just represent Man's capacity for sin, not diary entries, there's no quibble with age of Earth, evolution, cosmology, anthropology...

Maybe you got my point, or not...but as I tried to say, I think that many of them think that if they give up on "poof God makes the humans" on some day (whether it's is YEC, or old earth/young humans doesn't matter), then they will feel under pressure to give up the Noah Floody fairy tale; and then Joshua's un-noticed The Day the Earth Stood Still; and then the amazing Exodus that was never noticed. Then someone will suggest that the Matthew/Luke birthing narratives really aren't harmonious and someone was making up some silly s#*t. Pretty soon they will just ben another mushy lukewarm libral so called Christian.

 

[Keith&Co.]

I think that for people who want/need their Bible version to be God-breathed/inerrant, evolution is kind of a nasty slippery slope thing for them. If evolution is true, then where does one stop breaking down so many of the OT fairy tales that lack any real evidential basis outside of their holy book?

And, again, why is ToE different?
They go thru huge amounts of scripture, highlighting lines as allegory, or metaphor, or local color, and still claim it's God-breathed/inerrant.
If Adam and Woman just represent Man's capacity for sin, not diary entries, there's no quibble with age of Earth, evolution, cosmology, anthropology...

Maybe you got my point, or not...but as I tried to say, I think that many of them think that if they give up on "poof God makes the humans" on some day (whether it's is YEC, or old earth/young humans doesn't matter), then they will feel under pressure to give up the Noah Floody fairy tale; and then Joshua's un-noticed The Day the Earth Stood Still; and then the amazing Exodus that was never noticed. Then someone will suggest that the Matthew/Luke birthing narratives really aren't harmonious and someone was making up some silly s#*t. Pretty soon they will just ben another mushy lukewarm libral so called Christian.

No, i follow that. I just observe that when cornered, they always add a 'not taken literally' footnote, and carry on, unhindered.
Kind of a reverse 'god of the gaps.'