no, but I would have a lot more respect than I currently do for fundies. Christianity makes no sense. “God made you and loves you very much, but He gets really mad and wants to kill you if you make a mistake. If you’re rally sorry, you can ask Him to forgive you. However, He can’t just forgive you, he has to kill something first. It used to be animals, then God sent His Son to Earth to kill him so He could forgive everybody’s sins. If you believe this, then you will go to heaven. If you don’t, then God will lock you in an oven and burn you forever and ever, but He loves you very much.” :rolleyes:
Okay… sorry, I’ll stick to the question of the thread.
no.
Creationism doesn’t turn me off to Christianity, just creationists.
No, creationism in and of itself didn’t turn me from Christianity. By the time I’d heard of “Creationism” I had long left.
What did turn me away:
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The stance of the various churches on homosexuality. Except for sporadic pockets, all of them condemn homosexuality.
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Monotheism. Most Christians seems to give lip service, at best, to the idea of many Gods. The impression I get from them (after explaining my own faith) is “Well, you’re just worshipping the same god with a different name.” The Buddha is not the same as Jesus nor is he like Freyr or Lugh or any of the many Gods I could name. Different Gods, different rules. At its worse, monotheism leads to such atrocities as is being done in Afghanistan right now.
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Original sin. The idea of some innate part of our nature that leads us to automatically do wrong and therefore need “forgiveness” or to be held responsible and suffer the consequences of some event done by some incredibly remote ancestor; this is pure silliness. Or if it’s true, sadism. Sure, humans make mistakes and do stupid things. Afterwards, you pick yourself up, dust yourself off and learn from your mistake; if possible you try to put the situation to right. None of this paying a debt for some mythical “slight” or breaking of rules.
::: contemplates giving Freyr a wedgie :::
No. The United Church of Christ (FKA Congregationalists) does not, quite explicitly. The Episcopal Church, by and large, does not. Jodi’s posted a strong upsurge in United Methodism against the condemnation of homosexual acts that’s still officially in place – and they’re quite clear in their official language about the difference between persons and their acts. The United Presbyterians seem to be following suit – there’s a presbytery in Georgia, of all places, declining to approve language against homosexuals. Almost every major denomination has a group of “welcoming churches” who accept gay people as active and involved members with absolutely no bias.
In short, while some of the largest denominations still have a hardon against gays (pun intentional), many long-established denominations are changing their views – and radically so. And there are a lot of us pushing hard for such change.
Polycarp wrote:
Whew – for a minute there, I thought you said some of the largest denominations still have a hadron against gays. “If any gays that come near our church, we’ll blast them with pi mesons!”
HAR!
I’m gonna come off like a broken record here, but it’s not Creation that turns me off to Christianity, it’s the Fundamentalist tactics of lying, hypocrasy, half truths, and outright bullying of those who don’t believe their exact dogma.
I don’t have a praticular belief in any organized religion: All of them are created by humans, and therefore fallible.
The difference is, I never had a Wiccan or Buhdist or Orthodox Jew get in my face and tell me that I’d be tortured for eternity if I didn’t believe a certain story, despite all empirical evidence to the contrary.
This board has introduced me to a lot of genuine Christians; those who teach by example. My respect for Christians has therefore increased (I’ve always tried to live my life by the teachings of Christ, even if I don’t believe in all the stories of the Bible. Whether Christ is God or not, the lessons are true to me).
andros bares his soul . . .
I believe that the universe was set into motion, created, by God.
I believe that Genesis is true. Rather, that there is truth in Genesis.
I do not believe the events in Genesis are literally true.
IANAC, so I can’t say with absolute certainty. But the parable of creation in Genesis would not turn me away from Christianity–unless it were a salvation issue. If the Book required one to accept the literal truth of Genesis (or any other part of the Bible), or face eternal damnation, I’d avoid Christianity like the plague.
As it is, I avoid Christianity for other reasons.
It’d kinda smack of irony if Creation were the cause of many evolutionist’s aversion to Christianity–I don’t really see the CvE debate being the ‘root’ of adherence to one paradigm or the other. Contributing, possibly, but it would be kind of shallow if Creationism were a foundation of non-belief in God.
The following people were Creationists:
Francis Bacon
Johannes Kepler
Robert Boyle
Sir Isaac Newton
Blaise Pascal
Michael Faraday
James Clerk Maxwell
Humphrey Davey
Samuel Morse
James Joule
William Thompson (Lord Kelvin)
(Whether or not they would have ‘converted’ to the side of evolution had the ‘more modern’ information been presented is moot–they made the discoveries they did, and are regarded highly in their fields for the work they accomplished: their faith does not directly enter the equation.)
Point being, if the science espouses evolution as a direct result of the abhorrence to Christianity, it stands to reason these guys mightn’t have been such proponents of the faith as they were.
True, they may have been simply naive.
Would that I were so prolific in my naivety.
For the record, there’s a common misperception that polytheistic religions are a bit more tolerant than the mono variety.
'Taint so.
The Hopis, many years ago, massacred a large number of their tribal members who had converted to some flavor of Christianity, I don’t remember which. And the Hindus were guilty of some pretty horrible acts against Moslems in the long history of their close contact with members of that religion.
Religion is religion is religion, and fanaticism is fanaticism is fanaticism. The number of gods is irrelevant.
When I grew old enough to examine things intellectually rather than accept dogma blindly, I looked at creationism and found it little more than superstition based on a single questionably valid source.
I belived if there is a God and if He/She created man, He/She created man with a logical mind with the ability to see through superstitious mumbo jumbo and the simplistic fairy tale of Genesis.
As I have grown older, I have come to the opinion, by watching such people as creationists, that maybe man does not have a logical mind afterall.
I should have been more specific. By “creationism” I mean modern-day, Gish and Hovind creation pseudoscience.
-Ben
**Poylcarp wrote:
::: contemplates giving Freyr a wedgie :::**
Poly, you can give me a wedgie anytime, but I expect dinner and a movie first! 
In short, while some of the largest denominations still have a hardon against gays (pun intentional), many long-established denominations are changing their views – and radically so. And there are a lot of us pushing hard for such change.
Which is why I used the phrase sporadic pockets. As far as I can tell, most denomination still have the phrase “homosexuality is incompatible with Scripture” (or something similar to it) on their websites. Until that changes, I stick with my position.
**pantom wrote:
For the record, there’s a common misperception that polytheistic religions are a bit more tolerant than the mono variety.**
While I’ll agree with you on that, what you quoted from me was more to the point that many Christians think I’m still worshipping their God, just by a different name. That’s not true; I follow different Gods, not the one of the Judeo-Christian Bible.
Arg! This is one of the things that bugged me about Belief-L. There was a big consensus among the founding members that all religions could be described as “One Mountain, Many Paths.” It’s interesting- these people included a Deist, a Muslim, a Wiccan, a Christian, etc. and yet they were all extremely dogmatic (IMO) about their “One Mountain, Many Paths” meta-religion. I remember the Wiccan very pedantically telling a Christian fundamentalist “No, you DO worship the same God that I do, you just don’t know it yet.” Belief in OMMP let them feel like they were very tolerant towards other religions (since they could speak vapidly about how all religions are really all worshipping the same God) while at the same time being very intolerant (since if you don’t agree with the OMMP dogma, you’re an idiot and a bigot.) After a while they started pressuring me to leave, saying that as an atheist I had nothing to add to a discussion of religion. After all, if the only legitimate goal of religion is mystical union with the godhead (which is how it was defined under OMMP,) then clearly atheistic belief systems aren’t included in their warm-and-fuzzy tolerance of all “real” religions.
That, as you might gather, is why I left Belief-L for the SDMB.
-Ben
When I was like 13 what really turned me off was not the creationism angle but when the minister in question told the group he used to burn holes in leaves by focusing the power of God through a magnifying glass.
Does that mean photovoltaic arrays convert the power of God to electricity? If so we can store the power of God in battery packs to power laser rifles that direct the power of God to fry our enemies. :rolleyes:
I refused to go to church after that, my dad respected my desire and my reasoning. I think he kinda expected me to go back eventually but I never did.
Ben wrote:
What ever happened to Beliefs A through K?
drachillix wrote:
Wow! I didn’t think there were many “sun worshippers” around these days.
Sealemon said:
Didn’t you know that it’s okay to do all of these things, as long as you’re doing them in the service of God?
**Ben wrote:
Belief in OMMP let them feel like they were very tolerant towards other religions (since they could speak vapidly about how all religions are really all worshipping the same God) while at the same time being very intolerant (since if you don’t agree with the OMMP dogma, you’re an idiot and a bigot.)**
Oh, there are Fundies in all religions, I think. If you want to see them in Wicca, bring up the old argument about Crowley ghost-writing Gardner’s “Ye Olde Bok”. Or the Burning Times argument or the ancient fam-trad from before the “Burning Times” argument! Just sit back and watch the sparks fly! :rolleyes:
I do think there’s a grain of truth in OMMP in that we’re all searching for enlightenment. Now whether that enlightenment is sitting with God in heaven or by being a Bodhi-satva or becoming one with the Tao is a matter of which path you take. If there was just one God, wouldn’t He/She/It be giving the same instructions to everyone?