Concetta

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=201071\story_1-7-2010_pg7_10

Nonsensical or not; it was infinitely more memorable than Blb…bllb…bblb

A non-YEC Christian may share the same faith as the YEC and accept each other as brothers and sisters in faith, but it does not necessarily mean they have to condone and support each other’s actions.

Within a faith, there is also a wide diversity of different schools of thought, motivations and thinking, sub-beliefs, etc. It is very unhelpful is to clump all of them together, put them in one box, see them as a monolithic whole and give them a single label.

On the YECs, are you prepared to stand up and reject the Creation Museum in Kentucky?

Well, on the other hand, for those atheists who wage militant campaign on believers, would you be prepared to do the same? I’m not saying you should and I’m not saying I should either. I believe the ones who go to such lengths to openly antagonise the other side (both on the atheist and theist sides) are the minority from each of their camp. And they are very loud minority. The majority (from either side), simply can’t be bothered to join in the fight. I for one, don’t think it is helpful to add fuel to the fire by ‘standing up’ for either side.

I was born into a religious family and was TOLD what to believe – as all religious families do to their children.

My sympathies.

But I think the fault is not religion/faith per se. I know of stories of people coming to faith in the midst of one of the most un-conducive environment for faith- institutional religious environment. How they do it, I don’t know. But it happened. One influential Christian writer wrote that some people come into faith DESPITE the church.

An atheist family tends to be more open and wants their children to inquire, to learn and to decide for themselves.

That’s perhaps true in Australia.

On the other hand, I find it hard to imagine militant atheist like Richard Dawkins allowing his children (if he has any) to embrace faith.

In China, the opposite is happening. Over there, I heard that atheism is the official government policy and every child is brought up to be atheist through the educational system (some argue it’s indoctrination). Then when they come to Australia as students, many accept faith as liberation.

I never said you should 50% disbelieve in God. Either you believe or you don’t. How you come to your secision is up to you. I came to my decision through the weight of evidence that I researched over many years. I was born into a religious family and was TOLD what to believe – as all religious families do to their children. An atheist family tends to be more open and wants their children to inquire, to learn and to decide for themselves. Big difference. I am not militant. To each their own. We have one live to live, we must choose for ouselves how we want to live it.

On the YECs, are you prepared to stand up and reject the Creation Museum in Kentucky? Will you call it an abomination that our children are having garbage shoved down their throats in the guise of a “museum”? http://paralleldivergence.com/2007/04/28/creation-museum-madness/ – will you complain to your government that these people are making a mockery of your religion?

What about Westboro Baptist Church? Do you openly reject their warped view of your religion? Do you stand up in your church and say “that is wrong”? If not, why not?

Sorry about the confusion of the comment thread, but I’ve been answering once and you’ve been ansering three times.

I tend to write succinctly, providing key points and allowing the reader to explore and extrapolate for themselves.

Note the word “extrapolate”. In Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s book, extrapolating is one of the most common and insidious logical pitfalls that humans fall easily into. Nassim is horrified that even his doctor fall into this logical error (because it has implication on his health).

If you are not careful about it, you can easily lead your readers into error.

Young Earth Creationists are a minority, but if given a choice, a mainstream Christian would side with the YECs than with an atheist.

Of course, this will happen if you put both groups into a box and label them with some quick and easy to understand adjectives.

Why? Because they refuse to admit that it is possible that there is no God.

If I decide to entertain the possibility that there is no God, how do suppose carry out that practical life? If I decide to think that there’s 50% chance that God does not exist, do I, as a doctor, abort 50% of babies and then keep the other 50%?

Talking about probability, I think it is nonsensical to attach the word ‘probability’ (in the statistical mean) on concepts that is unprovable by definition.

you can be skeptical about some things and ACCEPT OTHER THINGS because you’ve reached a decision based on your own research.

Which is what I mean. Eventually, there comes a point that you have to accept certain things because you can go no further in questioning.

There are religious people who do not go deep and accept their beliefs quickly. There are also non-religious people who do not go deep too. There are religious people who go deep and non-religious people who go deep too.

Different people have different depths that they can go into. The problem is, each group put the other group into a box and label them and reduce the other group into something that is too simple and easy to understand. This is something all of us are guilty of, regardless of whether we are religious or non-religious, in matters not limited to religion.

I see this everywhere, even in the fields of computers, operating systems, economic ideology, political ideology, etc.

Sure. Young Earth Creationists are a minority, but if given a choice, a mainstream Christian would side with the YECs than with an atheist. Why? Because they refuse to admit that it is possible that there is no God. So if you believe in an ancient universe, many billions of years old, and an Earth almost 5 billion years old, you have to start questioning WHY everything seems to have happened people-wise in just te past few thousand years…

Here’s another article worth reading: http://paralleldivergence.com/2006/11/11/how-hubble-killed-god/ that helps explain how I came to my conclusion.

Well, do you know that there are more Christians who do NOT believe that the world is 6000 years than Christians who do so? Did the former’s belief contradict the Bible? I know of a PhD astrophysicist who is a Christian who have no problem reconciling his beliefs and science.

If I’m not wrong, you seem to have taken a minority sample of some adherents’ beliefs and extrapolate it to the rest.

No, I’m not trying to convert you either. I’m just trying to point out that some of your understanding of the motivations, beliefs and thinking of believers/faith/religion are myths, inaccurate and over-simplistic. Many of your understanding regarding religious beliefs are what I see as over-simplified ‘one-sentence’ summaries.

Note that this kind of oversimplification is prevalent in everywhere in society, including regarding non-religious issues. Perhaps it is a product of the modern information-overloaded society.

A good book I recommend you to read is “The Black Swan” by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. It is mainly targeted at the financial/economics/statistics industry but I see that it is also relevant for this discussion. But you may have to re-read this book a couple of times because the author writes as he thinks, so the content tend to meander too much.

I do not continue to chase the answer to where we came from and how this all started. Here’s another article worth reading: http://paralleldivergence.com/2006/11/11/how-hubble-killed-god/ that helps explain how I came to my conclusion. If I’m wrong, will I really go to Hell for it? Pfft. Is God really that petty? Who am I a speck in six billion alive today – and he individually loves me? It’s too ridiculous to consider without ANY evidence apart from a book written almost 2000 years ago and corrupted over the ages. Why would I live my life according to that legacy?

I have a brain, I make my own decisions and I will wear the consequences, if any, of those decisions. As for you, you can do the same. I am not trying to convert you, I just want you to open your eyes. Re-read Buddha’s words from the image at the top. If you choose against that advice, you are not following any God’s directives, you are following Man’s directives.

Unfortunately, many of the adherents only skim through the surface of these extensive body of thought. This has created an unfortunate situation where the non-religious people make a blanket conclusion that faith is shallow and is ‘blind’ and so on. It is fair to say that many of those who make that blanket conclusion is as shallow as the adherents.

I think society as a whole is getting dumber and dumber, thanks to the Internet, television, Twitter, information overload, et.c…. you get the drift. People are getting more and more towards the point that they do not have the patience to go beyond a one-sentence summary of profound, complex and extensive things.