Well, yes, maybe I was exaggerating. My point is that Christians are suppose to be these paragons of virtue because they have the one true savior, don’t ya know, but it’s the hardest thing in the world for Christians to emulate him even with the power of the Holy Spirit to back them up. Don’t ya know. 
Even more simply, why not leave God out of it altogether? There’s no observable difference between the universe you describe and a purely naturalistic one, and it nicely avoids the problems of having to justify why God doesn’t intervene, what God was doing in the billions of years before humanity popped onto the scene, why there’s no indication of what the “growing process spirtually” is or how to develop it, and what exactly capitalized “Oneness with God” means. If you insist on positing a magical creation for the universe or humanity, you might as well say that a hyper-intelligent shade of blue created everything and then wandered off to play with another universe. It looks like you’re trying to find a question for your answer.
Wait… so you are at the same time professing that Christians (presumably you are putting this on all of them) believe in Calvinistic Penal Substitution AND Patristic Ransom theology of Atonement? You should really just pick one rather than attribute two very different atonement concepts as simultaneously being accepted.
(There is the other question of does anyone today believe in the Ransom Theology?)
In addition, there are a lot of other atonement theologies as well. Though it seems to me that you basically create a stereotype of all Christians and go from there.
I may not have expressed myself very eloquently. My point was that evolution is just fine. The first human to ever spring up had to start with two atoms coming together and then it mushroomed from there? The 60 million dollar question is who or what kept this assembling up to the creation of a full human body even with millions of mutations in the process? Neither theists nor scientists have an absolute answer to the origins of life. A higher power at the moment makes more sense to me that it happening random. It’s possible that a 20 YO could win the PowerBall every week for the rest of his life, but what would you calculate the odds being that that would actually happen? If you calculated 10 to the 1,000th power I’d say you still fell considerably short.
Okay, I may be throwing out a confusing stew here. Let me be clear.
I am a deist. I believe with all my heart there is a higher power somewhere out there who set all this up, but then dismissed Himself to let natural laws govern this mess. None of it makes any sense down here, children get raped, brutalized tortured and then murdered while God stands idly by. I can’t explain this except it’s how life would operate if there WERE no God. So with God or without God everything stays the same. The only thing that keeps me being a deist (and I’ve come pretty close to giving it up, believe me) is the persistent belief that something had to bring this universe into being. I can’t accept it happened spontaneously by itself.
I have nothing but contempt for the Bible as a holy book; for Christians who try to pass it off as the holy word of God to the exclusion of everything else; for the ridiculous idea that God cannot forgive sins even when He wants to because He’s bound by some moronic moral code that would stain His honor if He simply forgave people their sins instead of all this hokum of having to make a blood sacrifice out of Son in order to permit Him to forgive sins if people will accept His Son as Savior. The whole thing is just so contrived and so… well, stupid as hell to be honest that it confounds me that intelligent people buy this stuff like we’re still in the Dark Ages. But that’s the power and influence of Christian money buying air time and flooding the airwaves with this garbage. Free enterprise at its finest. :smack:
I don’t think you’ll find much on the “who”, but the “what” and “how” is out there if you were truly interested in what the collective body of knowledge of all science in all of the history of mankind points to. And since you are fine with evolution, you already have a leg up on the matter.
While I’m on a rant I’d also like to state that further proof Jesus was a myth or at best a fraud is not only did He shoot himself in the foot prophesying that He’d return in the life of his disciples while he was alive but when he was talking to Peter after he rose he stated, “If I will that John tarries till I come what is that to you?” Implying that Jesus said he would return while John was alive. Again a shot in the foot even in his divine form. There was nothing divine about Jesus, if he even existed. No Son of God could get it wrong so many times. Jesus shot himself full of so many holes he would have leaked live a sieve.
Errm, no, you kind of have the cart before the horse, there…
It basically amounts to “The only way to win the debate is not to play”, though. But notice, nobody ever actually tries to answer the question properly…
Like I said, read the book. Do you think life started with humans? Life probably started with a self-replicating molecule, like DNA but even simpler. If this molecule had errors when replicating, and some of the versions with errors grew faster than the “parent”, that’s all you need.
And humans were not the pre-determined result of evolution. We just happened, just like you get a highly improbable bridge hand with every deal.
I invented this analogy. Say you need to open a lock with 1,000 10 digit combinations, each of which has to be correct for the lock to open. Almost impossible without the combination, right?
But, say each stage made a tiny click when the right number was entered. In that case opening the lock is trivial, if tedious.
Each stage of evolution involves a creature who is successful at surviving and reproducing, which is kind of like that click.
My analogy has one flaw - you are aiming for a specific combination. Evolution is not like that. Every creature on earth is the result of an evolutionary chain as complex and as successful as ours.
But we forget that it goes much deeper than just the first humans. I mean isn’t it odd that 95% of the food that evolved just happens to contain all the nutrients the human and animal bodies need? That processes developed within the organs to create tens of thousands of catalytic conversions to process these foods; that the plant kingdom evolved in the same rough hierarchy as the animal kingdom; that both work synergistically with each other to supply the needs of the other? Doesn’t all this strike you as being so well-planned (minus a few defects) that it just couldn’t have all come together so beautifully all on its own. Just one element developing at the wrong time could have thrown the whole process into total disarray resulting in the whole thing dying out.
Whoa, that’s interesting - deists are really hard to come by these days!
Would you consider opening a “I’m a Deist - Ask me anything” thread?
Given that “the food” evolved first, no, it isn’t odd at all.
You are arguing from ignorance, the fact that you don’t understand how life began, or have even an interest in the question does not make a higher power more likely. It makes it more UNlikely. You are saying that this hard to believe thing can only be explained by adding this even harder to believe thing on top of it.
Evolution doesn’t happen in a vacuum, the food we eat was there before humans came along in the first place. If you want to get really weird there is some good evidence that cooking food actually is what allowed us to evolve big assed brains. Before cooking there simply wasn’t enough available energy in food for a huge energy hungry organ to evolve. There is no element that could have evolved at the wrong time and killing us all.
Aaaand yet another American that hasn’t got the first clue about evolution.
Don’t you guys have a national school curriculum? How come there is so much ignorance on the subject?
That’s the most accurate statemeent you’e made yet.
The abundance of your posts could be summarized that “Christianity is illogical,etc” which goes hand in hand with your status as a deist (rejection of revealed religion).
And thats fine - we all go thru that stage - I was a deist for a short time -it was a stepping stone on the way to atheism.
Once you reject revealed religion - its not a far cry to realize that ‘God’ is just an excuse - and if, as the deist believes, he “created things then walked away and doesnt care” - then there isn’t anything there to be concerned with either.
You’re biggest issue is this “stew” of stuff you keep rambling out - even as an atheist - I understand that the best way to argue against something is to actually understand what you’re arguing against, and so far, yuou have yet to demonstrate that you do.
You do havfe the “rejection” part down, however.
BWAHAHAHAHAHA!
Not so much, no.
No, you have to pick a definition before you go looking for a being that fits it.
Because it’s willful ignorance. First, Protestant Christianity – which was the founding religious culture of America – is based on Bible study as the foundation for all doctrine, and such study by its nature contains an impetus towards a literalist view of the Scriptures; if we toss out Genesis, where will it end? Second, viewed a certain fundamentalist/evangelical way, evolution undermines the very basis of the Christian narrative, which begins with the Fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden – that is the source of Original Sin. All humans since have been born damned, and deserving damnation. Jesus died as a substituted human sacrifice to redeem the sins of humanity; only through Him can a soul be saved. But if the Fall never happened, why is Christ’s sacrifice even necessary? What’s the point of it? Therefore, some kinds of Christians, and we seem to have more of that kind in America than anywhere else, view evolution as not merely a false theory but a Satanic plot to undermine Christian faith.
So, you can’t accept that the universe just spontaneously happened - but you have no problem with the idea that God just spontaneously happened? Likewise, you stumble over the idea of a cow stomach capable of breaking down plants into nutrients being the result of natural processes because it would take such an improbable sequence of events to arrive at an organ that can do that process that someone must have done something to start it off. But have no problem with God being able to create matter out of nothing? What processes were necessary for him to develop that ability, and who set those processes in motion?