I would also recommend reading the Bible. Read it for what it is, a collection of very old texts that were collected from a much larger collection. Don't worry about trying to hunt down contradictions and don't try to read it through the mind of a believer. It's a book, it has some interesting parts and a fair number of boring parts, and it retains considerable cultural significance today.
I don't think it'll help you understand the "theist mind" any better, though.
I don't think it'll help you understand the "theist mind" any better, though.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
