My Thoughts Against Christianity

[PonderingJak]

There’s two sides of Christianity: those saying that evolution happened and those that don’t.
So to the ones that think evolution exists: if humans and animals evolved from the same thing, then why would humans have souls? Unless God chose to start adding souls to humans, but evolution is a very gradual process, which means that the generation of humans (or species that would become humans) that God had started giving souls would be extremely similar to the generation before them. So essentially God would be keeping from Heaven the fathers and mothers of the generation given souls. I don’t believe that God would do this, since it would be cruel and God is loving. He would be separating families with next to no difference between them (with the absence of the added souls, of course)
And to the ones that don’t think evolution exists: when God put Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, we don’t know what race they were, but since then, many races have erupted. African-Americans, Asians, Caucasians, etc. This really makes no sense, since unless they were evolving, their offspring wouldn’t inherit their adaptations. If a person got cut badly, they would eventually have a scar. If they had children, their children wouldn’t have that scar. If someone was in the sun awhile over the course of their life, they would become tan. Their children would not become tan unless they also went in the sun over a long period of time. So unless changes were slowly happening to a person that they passed on to their offspring, who also continued to slowly change, I can’t think of any way that differing races can be accounted for. I’ve noticed that people of different races have different facial structures. Did their race evolve to adapt to something? What? I’m confused.

 

[Trident_H]

I like your style Jack. Really a well laid out question. So here’s an offer at an answer.

In an evolutionary way, God maybe gave people souls when they stopped acting like animals. I mean I think it’s possible they got their souls the minute they first accepted God existed.

Because I think a soul is a spiritual bond. It’s like a link between us and God. So we got those when we first made that link. Just like we got an Internet connection the minute we thought about the idea long enough to call up and subscribe.

Or something.

Peace Jack.

-Trident

 

[Falco]

Firstly - African-Americans are not a race, they are a nationality. Africans are a race. African-Americans are people from a race who were forcibly transported to another country, which nationality they adopted.

Evolution of skin colour - is by natural selection, it is thought. In hotter lands, those with darker skins survived better and longer than the paler ones, so lived to have more children. In colder climates, paler skin and narrow but bigger noses were more useful to humans - paler skin for absorbing sunlight to make Vitamin D, and bigger noses to process the colder air - noses are the body’s air conditioners, a nose contains many blood vessels, which take the chill off the air as you breathe it in, so as not to shock your lungs. Likewise with eyes - black and dark brown eyes have built in sun glasses, while paler blue eyes find bright light painful, and are more sensitive to light, for the softer light and dark winters of northern lands. Over tens of thousands of years, those with the best genetic traits lived longer and healthier lives, and were able to have more children.

You can see natural selection type evolution at work in England - the moths which were darker coloured, to blend in with the sooty pollution of walls and trees, survived to breed. Then Britain cleaned up the air, and with the banning of open fires in homes, there was less soot, the walls and trees became paler, the dark moths got eaten and the lighter ones lived to breed - thus, all the moths got lighter. Their generations are yearly, not 25 years to a generation as humans are, so the change has shown up quite quickly. Well within 10 generations of moths - which would be 250 years for humans.

With the travelling that mankind has been doing over the past thousand years or so, our colouring and facial features are more diverse, but it is still possible to identify areas of Britain where the blonde Vikings settled 1,000 years ago - there is a predominance of blondes there.

 

[Dorothy]

There’s two sides of Christianity: those saying that evolution happened and those that don’t.
So to the ones that think evolution exists: if humans and animals evolved from the same thing, then why would humans have souls? Unless God chose to start adding souls to humans, but evolution is a very gradual process, which means that the generation of humans (or species that would become humans) that God had started giving souls would be extremely similar to the generation before them. So essentially God would be keeping from Heaven the fathers and mothers of the generation given souls. I don’t believe that God would do this, since it would be cruel and God is loving. He would be separating families with next to no difference between them (with the absence of the added souls, of course)
And to the ones that don’t think evolution exists: when God put Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, we don’t know what race they were, but since then, many races have erupted. African-Americans, Asians, Caucasians, etc. This really makes no sense, since unless they were evolving, their offspring wouldn’t inherit their adaptations. If a person got cut badly, they would eventually have a scar. If they had children, their children wouldn’t have that scar. If someone was in the sun awhile over the course of their life, they would become tan. Their children would not become tan unless they also went in the sun over a long period of time. So unless changes were slowly happening to a person that they passed on to their offspring, who also continued to slowly change, I can’t think of any way that differing races can be accounted for. I’ve noticed that people of different races have different facial structures. Did their race evolve to adapt to something? What? I’m confused.

There is no need to be confused. The Church does not reject science, but she explains that Sacred Scripture is not a science book.

Please read this Encyclical “Humani Generis”. If it is too much to read, then start at #36 and read carefully.

w2.vatican.va/content/pius-xii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xii_enc_12081950_humani-generis.html

 

[GEddie]

Animals have souls.

In fact, the Latin word for soul is anima.

The human soul is different though, and it is given directly by God.

ICXC NIKA

 

[Stephen_says]

If this is your only hang-up about Christianity…

I spend more time wondering why God would want to become a man that wondering how evolution and ensoulment work.

 

[tweedlealice]

Salutations
The church got out of science a few centuries ago. It now states THE BIBLE SAYS THAT GOD CREATED NOT HOW HE CREATED.
SO the Holy Spirit inspired Moses w a story of a monotheistic God who created Adam and Eve in this Paradise called Eden. It’s an allegory of a God who wants a loving relationship w His children. The tree of knowledge of good and evil was just that. God would keep them safe in Eden but if they were disobedient, out the door they go. Jesus’s death and resurrection opened heaven’s gate for us. Now,we can be in a relationship, again.
So,Darwin travels south to the Archapeligo and sees all these animals and surmises one cell In a slimy ocean w air high in nitrogen, changes into minnow type creatures to lizards to frogs to something with wings and continues to HomoSapiens. I think we need to rethink it all.
I need to read intelligent design. There is too much order in the universe for a big bang. My humble opinion.
Never doubt the existence of God. He is. Romans wrote of Jesus. There is a document that states Mary was a virgin at time of birth given by the midwife.
I HAVE A PLAN FOR YOU. IT IS A GOOD PLAN WITHOUT EVIL. IT HAS A FUTURE AND A PURPOSE. JEREMIAH 29 / 11.
in Christ’s love
Tweedlealice

 

[PonderingJak]

If this is your only hang-up about Christianity…

I spend more time wondering why God would want to become a man that wondering how evolution and ensoulment work.

I have a lot of hang-ups, this is just one of them

 

[Dorothy]

There is no need to be confused. The Church does not reject science, but she explains that Sacred Scripture is not a science book.

Please read this Encyclical “Humani Generis”. If it is too much to read, then start at #36 and read carefully.

w2.vatican.va/content/pius-xii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xii_enc_12081950_humani-generis.html

To read the above can help you get rid of that hang-up.

Peace,

Dorothy

 

[tweedlealice]

I have a lot of hang-ups, this is just one of them

   Salutations Jak,
    At 15yo, you will have a lot of questions.  God puts a spiritual  place in your heart and soul to find Him..At least you are asking in the right place..A lot of teens read the Enquire for this NEW SCROLL that can debunk the Vatican.

Now, There are times, I wish some of the stupid stuff was destroyed. If you have intelligent parents who are involved in the church, know that they researched stuff when they were growing. Remember to ask them.
Aproximately, 5 B.C.,Abraham met God, in the burning bush, that didn’t burn.God told Him to take his people out from Ur in Chaldea to the promised land filled with milk and honey. Now, these people could not read or write. So, he has to tell illiterate people. How much science did Abraham know? So, he told them of this wonderful God, who would lead them to a great land that would provide their needs. He explained Adonai created them. And he tells the Genesis story. So,
What does it say! We have a loving Father who will provide for us. He created us in His image and likeness. If we return that love and behave ourselves, he will be with us always in a loving relationship. But, he explained about Adam and Eve and Eden. How they were disobedient and they were thrown out of this Paradise where they would have to work the land for their food. Their wives will suffer with childbirth. So, though this is good, we better behave ourselves.
This story wasn’t written yet. Abraham is the Father of Ishmael by the slave Hagger who branches off to the Arabs. He was first born. He was a child of doubt. Sarah was Abraham’s wife was promised a child that would start a genealogy tree more than the sands of the earth. A long time passed from when the promise was made. Sarah was old, as was Abraham. She doubted God and told Abe to sleep with Haggar. There are rules of inheritence. The first son is to inherit most everything and gets the Father’s blessing… So, when the promise happened and Sara, got pregnant, she delivered Isaac who branched out to the Jewish nation. Now, Sarah knew Ishmael was entitled to the blessing and inhertence. She knew God wanted Isaac to have it. So, she asked Abe to send Haggar and Ishmael into the wilderness with provisions. Both sons were loved by their Father. But, Sarah was forceful and Haggar and Ishmael, who was proficient with a bow and arrow, we’re sent out on their own. They got to a point of dehydration. Haggar cried out to God, who sent an angel, who saved them.
Ishmael was reported to have a wild nature. God promised 12 tribes to both Ishmel (the Arabs ) and Isaac (the Jews).
Decades later, when Moses was around that is where the word of mouth tradition was written down in the first book, GENESIS. Scholars are bickering about Moses writing the first 5 books (the Pentateuch) He may have had a secretary. Later on in the Bible, they noticed a different hand writing, they call that author “Q”.
While you are searching for theological deep answers don’t lose your relationship w Jesus. "Lord, I love you so much. Forgive me my sins and direct
my paths in life.Memorize Jeremiah 29/11–“I HAVE A PLAN FOR YOU, JAK. IT IS A PLAN FOR GOOD AND NOT FOR EVIL. IT HAS A FUTURE AND A PURPOSE.”
REMEMBER:“SEEK YE, FIRST, THE KINGDOM OF GOD AND EVERYTHING ELSE WILL BE ADDED UNTO YOU.”
I need to read up on Intelligent Design.
A person considered a fundamentalist will defend Adam and Eve as true creation. An evolutionist is a Darwin thinker.
in Christ’s love
Tweedlealice

 

[Frankenfurter]

I have studied evolution and theology with some wonderful people. There is no conflict. Please read some of Alfred North Whitehead for starters. Basically, his ‘process theology’ describes how the essence of things is a process, so God created the universe with an essence that is a process of ever creating a better condition for itself, hence life evolves. In fact, the creation of a self-evolving thing is far more wondrous than a static one. God creates processes, not static things.

Regarding your two points, for the second point, I don’t think you have described the position of non-believers in evolution correctly. Most creationists will give you that animals change in appearance, skin color, local adaptations etc as you have described. What they do not agree with is that one species can change into another. A species being an animal that can only reproduce with its own kind.

Regarding your first point, you seem to be envisioning a soul as something that God could have injected into an animal but didn’t. It seems more straight forward that a certain amount of development had to happen (hence the whole reason for the process of Creation to begin with) before the host was capable of receiving a soul.

Remember that a human (or an early human) offspring represents a unique combination of the Mother and the Father. Something completely new that never existed in the universe.

Today, with so many people, you may see that most people are very similar so nothing remarkable happens in terms of big changes when a person is born. But back thousands of years ago, from a biological perspective, taking two primitive humans and bringing them TOGETHER could result in a new unique creation with altogether new features and capabilities. Perhaps it was the combination of two different types of early humans. Evolution is punctuated and is the result of sometimes radical mutations that occur in ONE generation and is NOT a smooth and steady change. That is a scientific fact. There really are miracle babies born. However, today non of the proto- humans exist anymore so there are no animals that exist today that can go from soul-less to soul-ful in one generation.

 

[Bradski]

As a lot people have said, there is nothing wrong with understanding and accepting evolution as the process by which life has arisen on the planet.

And just a quick note…there is no longer any accepted use of the term ‘race’. It’s kinda quaint to use it these days. Meaning politically incorrect in some people’s minds.

For example, ‘Chinese’ is not a racial descriptive but a national one. To say that someone is African is only to describe where he or she came from.

 

[Gorgias]

Oh boy. Lots of problems here…

 Aproximately, 5 B.C.,Abraham met God, in the burning bush, that didn't  burn.

Umm… no. The timeline for Abraham is quite a bit earlier. And, you’re confusing your Biblical characters: the burning bush is part of the Moses story.

God told Him to take his people out from Ur in Chaldea to the promised land filled with milk and honey.

Again, you’re thinking of Moses, I’m afraid.

Now, these people could not read or write.

Writing was certainly already part of the picture by the time Moses (or even Abraham!) was around…

Later on in the Bible, they noticed a different hand writing, they call that author “Q”.

No. There’s no ‘handwriting analysis’ going on in Scriptural scholarship, and certainly nothing that leads to ‘Q’. The ‘Q’ source is a hypothesis regarding the Gospels, not the Old Testament. Looking at sayings by Jesus that are in common in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, scholars hypothesized that, perhaps, there was a source that they all drew from; they called this hypothetical source ‘Q’.

 

[Gorgias]

There’s two sides of Christianity: those saying that evolution happened and those that don’t.

Well, there are probably more ‘sides’ than these…

if humans and animals evolved from the same thing, then why would humans have souls? Unless God chose to start adding souls to humans

That’s precisely the point. God immediately (i.e., without any mediation – all by Himself) created the first human souls and thus created the first humans.

but evolution is a very gradual process, which means that the generation of humans (or species that would become humans) that God had started giving souls would be extremely similar to the generation before them.

Physically identical, but not ‘human’, by virtue of the lack of a human soul.

So essentially God would be keeping from Heaven the fathers and mothers of the generation given souls. I don’t believe that God would do this, since it would be cruel and God is loving.

If this is cruel, then by definition, it’s ‘cruel’ that God doesn’t allow every single animal that ever lived into heaven. That doesn’t really hold up.

He would be separating families with next to no difference between them (with the absence of the added souls, of course)

That’s a pretty huge difference, wouldn’t you say?

And to the ones that don’t think evolution exists: when God put Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, we don’t know what race they were, but since then, many races have erupted. African-Americans, Asians, Caucasians, etc. This really makes no sense, since unless they were evolving, their offspring wouldn’t inherit their adaptations.

This kind of confuses the question, doesn’t it? The problem that creationists have with evolution isn’t micro-evolution (i.e., existing species change (but remain the same species)), but macro-evolution (i.e., species change over time into other species). Moreover, the problem is evolution prior to becoming human, not (micro-)evolution once already human.

 

[thinkandmull]

I have studied evolution and theology with some wonderful people. There is no conflict. Please read some of Alfred North Whitehead for starters. Basically, his ‘process theology’ describes how the essence of things is a process, so God created the universe with an essence that is a process of ever creating a better condition for itself, hence life evolves. In fact, the creation of a self-evolving thing is far more wondrous than a static one. God creates processes, not static things.

Regarding your two points, for the second point, I don’t think you have described the position of non-believers in evolution correctly. Most creationists will give you that animals change in appearance, skin color, local adaptations etc as you have described. What they do not agree with is that one species can change into another. A species being an animal that can only reproduce with its own kind.

Regarding your first point, you seem to be envisioning a soul as something that God could have injected into an animal but didn’t. It seems more straight forward that a certain amount of development had to happen (hence the whole reason for the process of Creation to begin with) before the host was capable of receiving a soul.

Remember that a human (or an early human) offspring represents a unique combination of the Mother and the Father. Something completely new that never existed in the universe.

Today, with so many people, you may see that most people are very similar so nothing remarkable happens in terms of big changes when a person is born. But back thousands of years ago, from a biological perspective, taking two primitive humans and bringing them TOGETHER could result in a new unique creation with altogether new features and capabilities. Perhaps it was the combination of two different types of early humans. Evolution is punctuated and is the result of sometimes radical mutations that occur in ONE generation and is NOT a smooth and steady change. That is a scientific fact. There really are miracle babies born. However, today non of the proto- humans exist anymore so there are no animals that exist today that can go from soul-less to soul-ful in one generation.

If two primitive humans came together and resulted “in a new unique creation with altogether new features and capabilities” this new species could not reproduce with the old species and therefore there would have to be a female and a male of this new unique creature. As with Adam and Eve, the children would reproduce with themselves

 

[Ben_Quincy]

Evolution is a banned topic in the Philosophy Forum