Subscribe"Atheism has been on the rise for years now, and the Bible of the atheists is 'The Origin of Species,' Cameron tells PEOPLE. 'We have a situation in our country where young people are entering college with a belief in God and exiting with that faith being stripped and shredded. What we want to do is have student make an informed, educated decision before they chuck their faith.'" *Kirk Cameron Monkeys with Darwin.
He’s used to getting love letters and high-fives as a former teen heartthrob, but onetime “Growing Pains” actor Kirk Cameron isn’t letting the mockery and criticism dissuade him from promoting his controversial project to dispute evolutionary theory.Have high-fives and love letters now ironic and forms of mockery? Has snark become so ever-present that people can now retcon their old fanmail to born-again Christians into some form of ridicule? "Yeah, I wrote to that Cameron guy when I was a kid. But I totally said 'NOT!' at the end! I burned him!"
Sitting on his chair all backwards and shit makes him totally relatable.Come to think of it, I can't even remember the last time I sat on a chair backwards, or why I would even want to. Does this make me old?
I'm talking heart knowledge, not head knowledge. There's a differenceI don't think that's really the case, St. Alia. The only thing that kept me clinging -- clinging desperately -- to Jesus for so many years was the profound, heartfelt understanding that I had to ignore my own lyin' eyes. I propped that desperation up with healthy dollops of head knowledge, eating my way through the whole buffet of apologetics and theology (words that neither Josh McDowell or Kirk Cameron should even be allowed to use, lest actual apologeticists and theologians be sullied).
As to my definition of real belief-well, you can't really call it real belief UNTIL it has been tested, now can you?To clarify, I was born again. I spoke in tongues. I prayed. I experienced the presence of almighty God. I preached. I shared the gospel. I wrote. I wept for the lost. I wept for friends who died as believers, and those who died renouncing God. I comforted those who experienced the same.
I just happen to be a little more to the Calvinist side of the line-and I also see salvation as a supernatural act, not simply a choice.Indeed. Just remember -- I knew, as surely as you do, that I was one of the elect. Not because I thought I was good, but because I had experienced His saving grace, and a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
Instead, they're engaged in some kind of kabuki for the benefit of their subculture.This, again. It's exactly what I've tried to explain to friends who are baffled by this sort of thing. It's a weird parody of evangelism intended not to convince those being preached to, but to reassure those doing the preaching.
In situations where the subject's status is previously determined by specific behaviors, the fallacy does not apply. For example, it is perfectly justified to say, "No true vegetarian eats meat," because not eating meat is the single thing that precisely defines a person as a vegetarian.If part of your definition of "Christian" is someone whose faith is strong enough it cannot waver, is it still a fallacy? Obviously you can't logically hold this view and still worry about Origin of the Species, but Alia claims to not be threatened by the material. I think the distinction is flawed, I'm just not sure it's a fallacy as such, owing to the wildly differing opinions of what a Christian is that exist before you even get into this argument. I imagine a lot of self-identified Christians believe their faith is unassailable.
"The idea that God is an oversized white male with a flowing beard, who sits in the sky and tallies the fall of every sparrow is ludicrous. But if by 'God' one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying ... it does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity." *
"Some people think God is an outsized, light-skinned male with a long white beard, sitting on a throne somewhere up there in the sky, busily tallying the fall of every sparrow. Others—for example Baruch Spinoza and Albert Einstein—considered God to be essentially the sum total of the physical laws which describe the universe. I do not know of any compelling evidence for anthropomorphic patriarchs controlling human destiny from some hidden celestial vantage point, but it would be madness to deny the existence of physical laws." *
If part of your definition of "Christian" is someone whose faith is strong enough it cannot waver, is it still a fallacy? Obviously you can't logically hold this view and still worry about Origin of the Species, but Alia claims to not be threatened by the material.Ultimately, these are two separate questions. "My faith is not threatened by X," "Peoples' faith should not be threatened by X," and "People who lose faith never had faith at all" are three completely separate propositions. The first is a straightforward subjective statement. The second is ultimately about the intersection of theology and science, and the third is very specifically about certain church doctrines about apostasy.
I think the distinction is flawed, I'm just not sure it's a fallacy as such, owing to the wildly differing opinions of what a Christian is that exist before you even get into this argument. I imagine a lot of self-identified Christians believe their faith is unassailable.A fair point. Alia herself has said she tends towards a more Calvinist reading of 'What is a Christian' -- the strict reformed/calvinist definition of the term is essentially a tautology. The double-edged sword, of course, is that no Christians know they are saved until they die. Under this framework, Alia has no idea whether she is a Christian or not -- she may have a subjective belief that she is, but so did I. The tautological tar-baby is sticky indeed.
*Thanks to good advice from Atheists on my blog (and from others), the 50-page Introduction will address Darwin's "racism"--and reveal how he was truly a gentle-man who was adamantly against slavery.
*It will also qualify his apparent degeneration of women, and the fact that his moral character is irrelevant to the Theory of Evolution, just as the Theory of Relativity should stand on its own merits, and not on the morality of Albert Einstein.
*I will also make it clear that Hitler's attraction to the theory is also irrelevant to whether or not it's true. I want this Introduction to be fair-minded, free from prejudice against Darwin, with no straw men or quote-mining.
I am not a believer any longer, haven't been for a long time, but I think this is an unfair statement. There are plenty of scientists who find church involvement personally beneficial.Agreed. Certainly, there are strains of biblical literalism that are incompatible with a reasonable understanding of science. And those strains of biblical literalism are certainly some of the highly vocal, highly visible ones in our nation's public discourse.
They're not on MeFi. Shaming and insulting people for their faith choices here actually has a totally different flavor than in the world at large. I'm fine, personally, with spirited debate but the "woo woo invisible sky monster" talk is pretty much not a great way to have a conversation here.This, again.
You might note that face to face, it's the religionists who are killing doctors and otherwise terrorizing the world. What goes on in MeFi and other progressive venues is harmless by comparison.That doesn't make straw-man mockery of them here any more conducive to interesting and engaging discussion, though. If what we're looking for is quality conversation and interesting content, it is harmful.
If I understand you correctly, Durn, you are defending the passive agnostic position with an appeal to objectivity; "we don't know" is the only position supported by evidence and all others are unscientific assumptions.Yes.
... drag out Darwin or mock or shake chicken feathers at me, and I will still remain a believer in Jesus. Because by now I KNOW what I KNOW, I don't just surmise it.I think one of the difficulties in discussions of faith is that Christians in particular tend to use the word "know" when they mean "really, really believe." you "know" that in the same sense that a football player "knows" he will win a game. In casual conversation this sort of fuzziness rarely causes problems - in discussions of religion and philosophy, it becomes a retreat to Relativism at best, solipsism at worst.
In my experience, all religious debates are boring and predictable. I can't remember the last time anyone brought anything new to the table either;One wonders how and why you bothered to slog through all of these comments, then.
...Atheists who fight against an anthropomorphic desert warrior God are doing precisely the same thing in reverse. There was a time, 3000 years ago, when some people thought of God that way and some of those concepts are found in the Bible. But that's not where Christianity is these days.Pater Aletheias, before responding I want to say that I really respect your contributions to these discussions and appreciate your presence on MeFi. It's quite possible that if I'd been hanging out with you ten years ago, I'd be a Christian today. I mean that as a compliment.
You atheists are doing plenty of your own close-minded self reinforcement: letting fundamentalism stand in for all of Christianity, railing against an archaic view of God that no one holds, and treating the most primitive parts of the Bible (marginalized in the developed Christian tradition) as representative of the whole collection.
But one can hardly blame those who are not part of the Church for assuming that the people who publicly speak for Christianity are the authorities on Christianity.True, but that's the difficulty. Who to believe? The guy you think sounds sane, and who says, "Hey, I'm a Christian, and I don't believe that stuff?" Or the ones on television, radio, in the megachurch pulpits, in the magazines, and having prayer breakfasts on Capitol Hill who say, "No, no, that dude isn't a real Christian at all."
But you can if, upon endeavoring to correct them on this point, they continue to press it regardless.
[The violence] [i]ncluded the sacking and burning of monasteries and churches and killing 283 nuns and more than 6,000 priests, including 13 bishops, 4184 diocesan priests, 2365 members of male religious orders. Among these were 259 Claretians, 226 Franciscans, 204 Piarists, 176 Brothers of Mary, 165 Christian Brothers, 155 Augustinians, 132 Dominicans, and 114 Jesuits. There are accounts of the Catholic faithful being forced to swallow rosary beads, thrown down mine shafts, and priests being forced to dig their own graves before being buried alive. (from this page)
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