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I don't know if this is an appropriate comment, but I am interested from which flavor of Christianity you've "deconverted."

oz 18y ago
Mainstream evangelical Christianity. Traditional doctrines such as Jesus Christ as the Son of God, the Incarnation, the death burial and bodily resurrection of Jesus, the substitutionary atonement, Biblical inerrancy, infallibility, the five solas of the Reformation, the Trinity, the fall, the rapture etc. For us to argue the existence of god, we need to define 2 things: What does it mean to exist, and what does it mean to be god? As previous commentators have noted, 'god of the gaps' explanations have historically been disappointing for theists. If we were arguing 500 years ago, you'd say: "But we don't what causes lightning! It must be god!" (or the gods, depending on who you asked) Now we know it's electrostatics. "But we don't know why people get sick! It must be demons!" And then Redi and Pasteur kicked God out of that hole. "But we don't know the origin of the universe!" Well, not yet. But I know this: The same evidence that shows that the universe had a beginning ALSO shows that the universe is billions of years old, not ~6000 as the Bible teaches. So you can't have it both ways. And CS Lewis' argument from morality (Universal Lawgiver) is suspect as well: Before the fall, Adam and Eve had no conscience (knowledge of good and evil). Yet, they were "very good."
- DanielBMarkham 18y ago
  Interesting that you threw the whole thing out. Why not just throw out sola scriptura? There are lots of really smart Christian scientists who don't believe all the stuff other Christians do. I guess what interests me is the entire fuzziness of the debate. "Christian" means to follow Christ. That's it. There are Christians that believe all sorts of things, from Zen Christianity to Agnostic Christianity to Charismatic Christianity. Heck, for all I know you can be an atheist and a Christian. After all, many of the first Christians were put to death for being atheists. Yet we lump all those hundreds of millions of variations all into some cartoon conglomerate and then poke sticks at it. Talk about straw man arguments. Why the oversimplification?

oz 18y ago

Mainstream evangelical Christianity. Traditional doctrines such as Jesus Christ as the Son of God, the Incarnation, the death burial and bodily resurrection of Jesus, the substitutionary atonement, Biblical inerrancy, infallibility, the five solas of the Reformation, the Trinity, the fall, the rapture etc. For us to argue the existence of god, we need to define 2 things: What does it mean to exist, and what does it mean to be god? As previous commentators have noted, 'god of the gaps' explanations have historically been disappointing for theists. If we were arguing 500 years ago, you'd say: "But we don't what causes lightning! It must be god!" (or the gods, depending on who you asked) Now we know it's electrostatics. "But we don't know why people get sick! It must be demons!" And then Redi and Pasteur kicked God out of that hole. "But we don't know the origin of the universe!" Well, not yet. But I know this: The same evidence that shows that the universe had a beginning ALSO shows that the universe is billions of years old, not ~6000 as the Bible teaches. So you can't have it both ways. And CS Lewis' argument from morality (Universal Lawgiver) is suspect as well: Before the fall, Adam and Eve had no conscience (knowledge of good and evil). Yet, they were "very good."

DanielBMarkham 18y ago
Interesting that you threw the whole thing out. Why not just throw out sola scriptura? There are lots of really smart Christian scientists who don't believe all the stuff other Christians do. I guess what interests me is the entire fuzziness of the debate. "Christian" means to follow Christ. That's it. There are Christians that believe all sorts of things, from Zen Christianity to Agnostic Christianity to Charismatic Christianity. Heck, for all I know you can be an atheist and a Christian. After all, many of the first Christians were put to death for being atheists. Yet we lump all those hundreds of millions of variations all into some cartoon conglomerate and then poke sticks at it. Talk about straw man arguments. Why the oversimplification?