The Evolutionistic Faith

Trying to make an honest living

Easier said than done. If all the stories I've heard from people are true, then it seems pretty conclusively proven to me that bona fide miracles have happened. However, how are you going to prove such a thing. A person said that a couple helped him with his car on the road, diagnosed his small daughter with appendicitis, and then directed him to a hospital. The couple turned out to be the founders of the hospital, long since dead.However, the guy could have been lying. He could have been hallucinating. He could have been wrong in recognizing the couple as the ones who founded the hospital.A doctor had a heart attack and wrecked his car. A truck driver found him on the deserted side road, saying he'd gotten a CB call from the doctor. However, the doctor had no CB and had sent no call. Did it really happen? We have only the doctor's word.I prayed for my nephew's eyes in response to a letter from my sister. He had an infection that had taken all the sight from one eye and 50% from the other (so said her letter). When I prayed, I told the folks with me that I felt like something happened, but I couldn't get everything out when I prayed. It felt like something was undone. The next letter was only a week later. My nephew had only a small infection left, and all his eyesight had returned. The infection had been increasing for six months, and my sister's letter had seemed hopeless. Did my prayers have anything to do with the recovery? Obviously, I'm going to think so, but how can anyone prove it.Bona fide miracles, even when they do happen (assuming they really did) are unlikely to lend themselves easily to proof, because they are not repeatable.

I don't think it's fair to say "to some degree." One poster, at least, said that since there's really no evidence for God, in that poster's opinion, he doesn't choose to believe in something with no evidence. That's a pretty direct answer.Also, your original post begins with at least a slight misconception. Maybe most of the evolutionists on this site are unbelievers, but it's certainly not all. I, for example, am a believer in God and in his Son, Yeshua. Statistics say that about half of all scientists believe in God. Among non-scientists, more than half of evolutionists believe in God. (90% of Americans believe in God, and 47% believe in evolution, that means that even if all atheists believe in evolution, which is likely, then 37% of those 47% of evolution-believing Americans believe in God. That's almost 80%.)Based on what I've seen in other threads, that's the most common answer you'll get from the atheistic/agnostic evolutionists. They see no evidence for the God of the Christians or any other God, so why believe? They see no evidence for the great pink unicorn who rules Pluto, and they don't believe in him, either. Those two beliefs seem the same to them. No evidence for or against, so you can choose to believe, but why would you?

OK, Russ, here is my attempt to answer your question.I guess I am an atheist. But I do not claim that there is no God. I simply claim that I have no belief in the subject. My choice was not between having faith in this or having faith in that. It was simply a decision not to have faith.OK, no doubt some will quibble about the definition of faith, and assert that one must have faith in something. Well, you could say that I have faith that tomorrow I will still be me, and the sky will still be blue (or grey). But that is extrapolation from years of experience, and I don't regard it as faith when it is based on accumulated evidence.That better?Mike.

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I can see now why this can create confusion but try to think of it as if I had asked atheistic plumbers.

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In fact, this clarifies it quite well. You're asking the plumbers why they're atheists. This differs quite dramatically from accusing the methodology of plumbing itself of being atheistic or making people atheists.Quite literally, the methodology of plumbing, and evolution, and anything else aspiring to be scientific is essentially atheistic. Would you want your plumber to tell you that your garbage disposal is possessed by demons? Or that mere hydraulics is insufficient to explain the complexity of household plumbing systems, etc.? There's obviously no reason to include a deity in plumbing. Why is it okay for certain methodolgies to be atheistic and not others?

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The dark nursery of evolution is very dark indeed.
Brad McFall

What you meant still isn't clear.When you describe evolution as a "worldview" what do you mean ?Evolution as it is usually used in these discussions refers to a scientific theory dealing with the changes, and especially the diversification, in the fauna and flora of the Earth over time. It is not so all-encompassing as to be reasonably described as a worldview.So youii need to carify if you were referring to evolution in that sense or some other sense in which the "worldview" label would be accurate - and to describe what that sense is.

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Please examine my question again:

I am curious to know why you, as an evolutionist, have made the choice to exercise your faith in this way.

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Well, in my case, it wasn't a choice. I used to be a fundmentalist Christian. I was a creationist. But then I realized that the available evidence supported the theory of evolution. I tried to fight against believing it, but I couldn't ignore the facts. Since my fundamentalist beliefs were the "all-or-nothing" inerrant, literalist approach to the Bible, once the Genesis was shown to be wrong, I lost my Christian faith. I didn't do it willingly. I fought against it. I tried to convince myself that the Bible was true by reading apologetics. I constantly prayed to God to given me the strength to retain my faith. But in the end I had to accept that I didn't believe in creationism or the Bible or in God anymore.If there is a god, I can only say that she is the one to lead me to atheism - presumable she knows what's best for me (wink).

An illustration "proves" nothing. But let me play with your analogy a bit.You sit me down in front of an apple and an orange. I'm not hungry. I have never been hungry (I'm an android). I don't "get" the idea of eating. I don't have a choice to make. It isn't important. It doesn't matter.In one form of you analogy the apple and an orange are both gods of different sorts. I look, when you insist, and can't see any difference between them. There is nothing to make a choice on. Maybe, if you insist, I flip a coin (as you did by being born where you did). I don't consider flipping a coin to be making much of a choice.In the other form of you analogy (the one I think you meant), the apple is God and the orange is evolution. I don't see any apple. I can't touch any apple. There still isn't any choice.

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Common sense isn't

I have been offline for a few days now, pardon the absence. I will try to respond to some of the replies very soon. That is, if there is still interest in continuing on this thread.Russ

Thread copied to the The Evolutionistic Faith thread in the Faith and Belief forum, this copy of the thread has been closed.