Just had a discussion with the wife about this. She's a deist who identifies as Christian in a nebular sense that I still can't quite figure out. She seems to have no problem with the entire bible being metaphorical, but is stuck on some strange parts she thinks were literal.

I have a point here, I promise. I'll try not to make this a personal support thread.

Early in our relationship, she insisted, for example, that Microevolution occurred, but Macro did not. I informed her that born terms referred to the same thing over different periods of time, gave examples, and she quite reasonably and rationally put together information she'd never been exposed to before, and concluded evolution was in fact, undeniable scientific fact.

We used to talk about religion frequently, but there were a few points I just let her have. The occasional comment about Noah's Ark, or a Garden of Eden reference.

Recently, she noticed I have been actively commenting on several Facebook pages, including Shit Creationists Say, a group that presents gems such as

I have a problem with people who think this way. I see the end result of it: My wife was raised YEC but intelligent enough to question and make her own judgements, even though she was deprived of the education she deserved due to similar thinking.

Anyway, it came to a head, and she asked why I was openly belligerent against creationism.

She was genuinely hurt. I've mentioned before that she's insecure about her intellect for no good reason, and I strongly suspect she's a good deal smarter than I am. My wife will literally stop in the middle of an argument to think, announce that she's hormonal and her emotions are overwhelming her, and tell me she needs to calm down and re-approach the discussion when she's not emotionally compromised. I've never encountered that before.

I cited Francis Collins, who maintains a strong Christian faith while running the Human Genome Project, and scientists like him who have a faith, but choose to embrace science -- Read: Reality -- rather than deny it because of their religious views, and that Collins has openly stated that the Adam and Eve story of Genesis is genetically impossible; there could have been no less than 10,000 individuals on earth to account for the genetic variations seen today.

If you see something as a metaphor, I told her, you're counting it as a simplified story, and not a literal play book rundown.

She paused, like she usually does when presented with an angle she hasn't considered before, and agreed.

Her entire gripe with my belligerent attitude toward Creationism was feeling her beliefs were being belittled; her intellect was being belittled, and I was doing the same to other people.



There's a fundamental (pun unintended) difference between respecting an individual's faith, and an individual who walks up to you on the street and informs you they own a larger than average purple inter-dimensional toaster named Xorflax that is currently manifesting behind you.

I believe that faith is respectable, insofar as f is independent of reason. People who deny reality whenever it conflicts with their beliefs are, by definition, delusional.

On an atheist forum, I can express the idea that supernatural beliefs of any sort are irrational. In everyday life, not so much.

The difference between a Young Earth Creationist with a fundamentalist, literal interpretation of the bible, and a believer who accepts the reality of science while still maintaining their faith in a cosmic order is light years apart.

I wish we had better terms for those differences. A deist who believes in guided evolution is an ally of reason, and not an enemy. And yet they get lumped in with the group who think a bearded man descended from Heaven and molded their bodies out of clay before breathing life into them, and will repeatedly ask you why there are still monkeys if we're descended from monkeys, no matter how many times you explain what a common ancestor is, and their assessment is flawed.



I have, and will continue to attack irrational beliefs, and ridicule them when they deserve it. As I hope you will. But I think we need better terminology to do so.

I think that, regardless of terminology, they'll skew it to sound like something else and we'll still have the same problem.

Such is the nature of the conman.

There's Theistic Evolution.

Quote:Theistic evolution, theistic evolutionism or evolutionary creationism are the views that hold that religious teachings about God are compatible with modern scientific understanding about biological evolution. Theistic evolution is not a scientific theory, but a range of views about how the science of evolution relates to religious beliefs.

Supporters of theistic evolution generally try to harmonize evolutionary thought with the belief in God, rejecting the conflict thesis regarding the relationship between religion and science – that is, they hold that religious teachings about creation and scientific theories of evolution need not contradict each other.[1][2]

Quote:The difference between a Young Earth Creationist with a fundamentalist, literal interpretation of the bible, and a believer who accepts the reality of science while still maintaining their faith in a cosmic order is light years apart.

There's a difference but light-years apart? I'd say Creation Days apart but I don't know about light-years. To fully embrace evolution by natural selection is somewhat antithetical to this vague notion of "cosmic order," and moreover "cosmic order" appears rather antithetical to reality.

No doubt theistic evolutionists aren't as credulous or deluded as YECs, but their position isn't in any way "reasonable." And deism, well, that's pretty much the most boring, meaningless belief ever.

Generally speaking, deism is only held by certain people because they can't understand how a universe can exist without some divine intelligent force behind it.

They're all absurd views and should be treated as such.

Unfortunately, it does seem to be a default defense - maybe automatic and unconscious - to interpret an 'attack' on any aspect of a religiously-minded person's beliefs as an attack on them personally. We've seen it around here before: a discussion about the evil actions alleged to their god all too often translates to “why do you hate xtians/me so much?“

“No, you're wrong and here's why“ doesn't, or shouldn't, equate to “fuck, you're stupid and I hate you“. I think I've mentioned before how someone posted a comment on Facebook using the term 'pate de fwar grar'. Me being me, I posted the correction, fully expecting the typical Grammar Nazi promotion. Instead, he thanked me politely for teaching him something new, saying that he'd only ever heard the words and never seen them written. It could so easily have erupted in flames.

It's weird in a way; understandable in another. People obviously dislike being corrected and made to feel belittled, generally speaking. Yet we could argue about sport, politics, film preferences, food likes/dislikes all day long, disagreeing on all of them without anybody getting offended (unless we're doing it properly). As soon as god beliefs are invoked, the Martyr Chip starts throwing up its smokescreen of standard error messages.

I was raised in a very Christian home, but not a fundamentalist, Evangelical, or creationist one. The party-line was that the Bible is "spiritually inerrant" (don't ask me exactly what this means as I never could get a really coherent answer) not "factually" inerrant. And that religion answered the "why" questions (meaning moral and meaning of life questions) and science the "how" questions.

That view of religion is certainly meshes better with science. However, as modern mores have gotten more liberal about premarital sex, homosexuality, abortion, pornography, etc., Mom's gotten more and more anti-evolution. She wants to shoehorn in proof of god's involvement and that leads a number of nutty places. I don't think she's alone in this. Unfortunately people, including Christians, who feel themselves threatened tend to entrench. And in the case of Christians, entrenching often means denying evolution or the big bang.

OP, I still don't understand what do you want with this thread. Advise on terminology?

As pointed out in Post #1 it's impossible to have a discussion with someone who claims to be religious but has never read one word of their favorite ethnocentric religious fairy tale. The Garden of Eden story plainly says that it was down the road from Cush and Assyria. Those were separate countries with their own populations and cultures. So it should be obvious to any dummy who knows how to read and who has any comprehension at all that there were countless people in the world with Adam & Eve.

I'd say it's way more important to be kind to people you know in RL than strangers on the internet. I don't go around busting people's chops for being creationists even though I think the idea is silly. But I DO think it's silly and after a long day of not busting people's chops in a state where the majority of people are creationists, I like to unwind by bashing it on the internet.

But I don't blame creationists for being creationists. They're raised in a bubble, and that's not their fault. And their parents are trying to do the right thing by supplying the bubble. I won't say none of them are acting 'in bad faith', but most of them aren't. I don't blame members of a tribe who think their ancestors manipulate events, it's normal to believe what everyone you respect takes for granted as being true. It's pro-social, and our instincts lead us to do it.

Skepticism is going against the flow, it puts reason and science over group solidarity and tradition. It's the best guide in the long run and has brought us nearly everything the modern world has to offer. But I understand and sympathize with those who resist changing their foundational beliefs. Furthermore, I think that empathy gives me a better chance of persuading someone to modify their beliefs.

However, my signature illustrates that my empathy only goes so far.