Why would people who are very intelligent and supposedly objective be more likely to be non-literalist Christians?
In the original thread of 200+ posts I don’t think any literalist Christians answered. It was just non-Christians and liberal Christians and they said the answer was that literalist Christians are wrong.
But I want to hear what literalist Christians think - their answer wouldn’t be “because literalist Christianity is wrong”. They would defend literalist Christianity.
That is similar to my question… i.e. scientists also try to fight ignorance. I wonder where I could post this to get a reply from a literalist Christian? Or maybe I could invite people to sign up here and post here…
What do you mean by literalist? For example my theology is quite similar to that of Jonathan Edwards and I think people like Joel Osteen are annoying and saccharine but I also believe in the Framework hypothesis which allows for theistic evolution and an Old Earth: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Framework_theory
Thanks for that interesting link. It is quite convincing…
Anyway I am looking for Christians that aren’t going to say “scientists get turned off of Christianity due to people taking Genesis literally when it obviously isn’t literal”.
From what I’ve seen on sites such as Answers in Genesis, much of modern science is a deliberate turn away from God. Not necessarily at the individual level. But pretty much the whole edifice of, say, Cosmology, is built upon human pride assisted by the Devil’s tomfoolery.
They can’t reject all science of course; they’re spreading their nonsense via the internet after all. But to them there is real science (true scotsman science), and god-hating, agenda-driven science.
To such fundies, it’s not at all surprising therefore that science largely attracts atheists and/or converts believers to unbelievers.
Ok thanks… but I’d need to find a forum where atheists are allowed to post as well.
Thanks. BTW until I started university I was a young-earth creationist - but teachers and the librarian at the Christian school I went to weren’t interested in it when I tried to talk them into it.
I think that’s all true and I don’t at all endorse “Expelled” except as an example of how fundamentalists look at science, which I do agree is odious and dishonest, but no less sincere that how liberal Christians do things.
I don’t think I qualify as a literalist, but I find your deification of scientists strange. Scientists are not objective. They are people with a point of view and biases that affect what they think and believe just the same as anyone else. The best ones strive to eliminate these biases but none do so perfectly. The good thing about the way science works, when it does, is that if the biases are different then scientists seek to convince other people with evidence and that this process moves the understanding along. There is a consensus and someone comes up with a theory that challenges the consensus. That person is shouted down and marginalized but works until they come up with enough evidence to convince others and the consensus slowly changes. Then at some point the new theory becomes the consensus. It is sometimes said that science moves ahead one funeral at a time.
Intelligent people are prone to arrogance and to overestimate the importance of intelligence. It makes sense to me that such people would reject the idea of a God that they have to answer to.
Yes. So if we say in your first sentence “Scientists are not entirely objective”, then I agree.
You probably expected this response, but: that’s not how science is supposed to, or usually, works.
You are not supposed to try to find evidence to support a pre-existing conclusion.
You have empirical data that cannot be explained (completely) by existing models. You make a hypothesis and corresponding model. You test that model. That’s all there is to it.
It is also considered science to just do investigation without necessarily the aim of forming a model.
Conflicts can happen, usually at the hypothesis stage, but generally once a model has been exercised fully and makes accurate predictions, chances are it will only ever be added to or tweaked. The popular perception that science is frequently overturned is very different to the reality.