(December 26, 2014 at 6:09 am)AwakeOSleeper Wrote: Fair point, however, it is not hatred, loathing, disownment etc. that I fear. I put myself in their shoes. In their view (which I disagree with but respect) people who do not believe in God are destined to hell, so, if I tell them I am no longer a Christian, some of my closest friends and family will now have to deal with the burden that I am going to hell. That simply is not something I would want to put on them, it would be selfish.That is the thing that makes religion so harmful, though. Their belief in something that is imaginary yet demands such devotion that they might be emotionally scarred if they feel that they did not measure up. Or that causes them to turn away from loved ones, to the point of shunning them completely as if they were enemies. We are social creatures, and many religions exploit that in very cruel ways.
"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
