SKEPTICS SUCKS
I hate to sound rude, but evolution is a few steps beyond theory at this point. especailly in the realm of genetics. It is simpily the best explaination of currently presented facts. It could be untrue, but I think most scientists are willing to take that in stride. I don’t see many avid supporters of evolution, just people like me who are like “I don’t want to believe this, but it makes sense, so let’s give it some creedence.”
Yeah… i really can understand how this looks weird for you. But there are some historical facts that cannot be explained, no no no, that are best explained by the fact that there is a God and that he entered the history of mankind in bodily form, performing an overnatural ministry in which he died so that people could have an relationship with him.
I would say that some of christianity’s core concepts are good. Loving all people, we are all related(EVOLUTION!), casting away materialism, humbeness; all of these are fantastic.
I just think it is not true that there is a being watching us at all time, that we will be alive after we die, and that there was a fellow a couple thousand years back who could do miracles and rise from the dead.
No matter who says it, there is no reasonable evidence for those.
Oh, i forgot to answer what you asked before.
By solid i mean that… God can be immediatelly experienced by a person whe he reveals himself to her. And thats what happened in my life.
I dont claim to believe in Xianity because i followed the evidences. No, i just think that the evidences i see agree with my experience, so that i have no reasons to doubt it.
Ok, I know that doesnt look very solid for you XD
Yes, you’re right. Its really wrong what i did: to say that some scholars think christianity is true. It really doesnt matter who thinks it, but if the thinking is straight. But i think christianity is straight thinking as well as evolution and that s not based on “a few” [:)] books.
I would like to ask what “solid” means.
I also think that “a few” scholars verifying whatever it is that makes christianity “solid” is a few to little.
The scope of evidence is really key to supporting any idea, and again if only “a few’ people are using 1 or 2 books to support the Christian hypothesis then it is not a very sound one.
I agree on your point about evolution. But i have read a few scholars that show christianity to be as solid.
I’m glad to know that. I’m a christian, so i would not dispute that. It’s just that i live in a country where pastors have their mouths full of crap and empty of answers, and their pockets are very lumpy. I also know lots of secularists who are just the same because both sides are all about the fame. Its refreshing to see preachers like Tim.
@lucasdasilvemaria. i would ask, how many evangelical pastors do you know? because i happen to know many, and out of those that i know there are about the same amount of ‘level-headed’ pastors as there are level headed secularists that i know. maybe you should interact with evangelicals a little more often 
That’s a rare LEVEL HEADED evangelical pastor!
just keep searching for truth bro. you’re clearly an intelligent person, and I appreciate your reply about grace narrative.
i agree I cannot defend these beliefs with conclusive proof and a Q.E.D. stamped at the end, but fruit can be seen and there is a change of heart.
but For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God not by works, so that no one can boast. (ephesians 8-9)
faith is crucial. look to the cross and gaze upon Christ.
right. shifts it from moral performance into belief performance, eh?
“Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” (John 20:29).
According to the “grace narrative”, God is more concerned that we be credulous than moral.
That’s better how?
(not to mention, it *doesn’t* break out of the moral performance narrative. it only shifts the reason people think they’re morally superior from actual moral actions to strength of belief)
it’s exactly this attitude that totally undermines the assertion that the “grace narrative” makes it so that you “can’t feel superior to anyone” (39:55)
once you make the assertion that every rejection of Xianity is due to an immoral impulse, you then are definitely pretending to be morally superior.
furthermore, such assertions are cop-outs designed to make you feel good about your beliefs even if you can’t defend them reasonably or evidentially.
The answer for why believe evolution. Multiple, corroborating, falsifiable sources of this uncertain evidence. each single observation supporting a fact is not really useful, but seeing a pattern in a large sample of these potentially false evidence claims allows us to get a better picture of truth. Religion lacks this systematic approach and bases itself on one or two books. Fundamentally broken.
“The root of all rejection of Christ is the desire of self-will to reign supreme.” -Alexander Maclaren
True Christianity is about a man dying for his enemies. It breaks away from the moral performance narrative that says, “I’m superior.”
Altruism does sometimes benefit the ‘wrong’ species, like when humans want to nurture an injured bird or cute puppy. Misfiring altruism still benefits the same species more often than not to grant it survival value, though natural selection can also favour ‘parasites’ that live at the expense of other species, eg birds feeding a cuckoo instead their own chicks, or human immune systems being attacked by viruses. Many factors can affect a species’ survival, including both altruism and selfishness.
So what your saying is that our ideas of good and bad are relative since part of it comes from behavior that is learned. Also being altruistic isn’t always beneficial. I don’t think it’s instinctive for any animal to help another animal that is genetically alien to them. Animals that sacrificed their needs for others would not have been selected to survive and natural selection does not work on whole populations.
Nope, human morality is the coupling of our higher intelligence with learned behaviour, so that children not only instinctively copy their parents behaviour (good or bad), but should eventually understand the reasons why something is good or bad in later years (unless their faculties of reason have been overwritten by uncahangeable ancient religious concepts of morality). Animals with instinctive empathy and altruism do not possess the intelligence to understand why their actions are beneficial.
So are you saying that our morality is just instinct?
we are all closed minded to some extent…i believe in Jesus for my life…therefore I’m relatively closed minded to things I don’t believe to be true. Others don’t believe Jesus to be more than a teacher..therefore they are relatively closed minded to anything other than what they deem truth. Christians don’t have much of choice in truth claims because Jesus said he was the only way..if we believe in him we have to believe what he says.
in that you choose not to even listen to the “other” side (”The dude lost me in the opening monologue…”).
Time for me to be honest: I’m not sure I buy your implicit claim to be open-minded. How can you be open-minded if you have closed your mind to those answerswhich actually claim to be truths? Unless it makes no such claim and instead chooses to be arbitrary, the point of your reasoning is not to be reasonable, but instead to be open-minded for the sake of “open-mindedness”. Why compromise the prospect of truth for an open-minded attitude you yourself don’t even uphold…
Materialism is an unsupported claim just like supernaturalism. There could certainly be a plane of existence that is not material. It is not rediculous to consider such notions. Invoking a God to terminate the infinte regress does not add more problems than it solves. A God would be non-material. There are no moving parts to explain or describe, it is actually the anti-thesis of complication.