In my last post I asked atheists to talk about their relationship to their guilt.
And man, oh man, did they ever respond.
Turns out atheists are quite the … cyber-communicators.
It also turns out that atheists — or the many from whom I heard, anyway — care just as much as we Christians do about loving and doing right by others.
Curse the atheists! Why couldn’t they be the craven sensory-hounds they’re supposed to be? Must they reject God, and be intelligent and sensitive?
How are we to tolerate these people for whom toleration is a tenant?
Anyway, they got me thinking. (Another reason not to like them.)
I could no sooner imagine what it would be like inhabiting a consciousness devoid of the constant awareness of God than I could what it would be like to be a … Venusian cannibal.
Right? I have no idea what it’s like to be a cannibal from Venus.
Be pretty lonely, I’d guess. Or pretty full.
Point is: Mystery. Can’t imagine it. Just like I can’t imagine what it would be like to be an atheist. Even before I was a Christian — for just about every second of my waking life, in fact — I was intensely aware of what to me was the fact of God. It’s never even occurred to me there isn’t a God.
Atheists, of course (and insofar as such generalizations have merit), can’t imagine that there is a God. (Well, of course they can imagine there’s a God. They just can’t imagine why anyone would give themselves over to what to them is so obviously a fantasy.)
So we Christians are over on our side of the fence, and the atheists are over on theirs.
And we keep lobbing Bibles over the fence at them. And (alas) they keep lobbing them back at us.
We Christians want the atheists to come over to our side of the fence — to join us, to become one of us. They would much prefer it if we would quit wanting that, and leave them be. They would naturally prefer it if we could actually respect them for, say, their intellectual (not to mention moral) integrity — but they aren’t exactly holding their breath waiting for that to happen. Because they know that Christians believe atheists to be at best lost, and at worst damned.
And let’s face it: If you know the best someone can think about you is that you’re lost, you’re hardly inclined to, say, invite that person to your birthday party. Ever.
Hence the fence.
I hate that fence! What is it doing there?
Listen, Christians: I hate to be the one to say it, but can we all just admit that all the good music is coming from the other side of the fence? Can we at least give the godless folk that?
Anyway, here’s what the atheists have taught me: We Christians need to listen to them. And not just because they have all the good music. (Okay, that’ll be the last of the “Christian music always sounds like soggy white bread” line of humor, which I realize is just totally obnoxious.) We need to listen to the atheists because … well, because we never do. We try to listen to them, but we fail. And we fail because while we’re listening to them, we’re secretly thinking how they really, really need to become Christian.
And it’s just about impossible to really, really think something about someone and not, in one way or another, really, really communicate what that something is.
And then before we know it: No birthday party invites for us! Again.
So I say: Let’s every once in a while put aside our Christian Agenda (none of us are thinking that we don’t have one too, right?), and just listen to atheists. Let’s just hear what they’re saying, and what they’re thinking, and why they’re saying and thinking whatever they are.
Let’s actually respect them. Why not? How could such a thing possibly hurt us?
Who knows? If we listen to the atheists long enough, isn’t it just possible that we might actually learn something from them?
Hey.
Miracles happen.
Some related posts o’ mine: “Are The Great Commandment and the Great Commission Incompatible?”, “More on The Great Commandment vs. The Great Commission” , “To My Recent Commentators” , and “Adults Aren’t Children–and None of Us is God.”
(If you like my stuff, you can be of true help to my ever-burgeoning writing career by simply joining my Facebook group. Thanks a lot.)
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![John Shore on The Huffington Post](http://johnshore.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/huffpost.jpg?w=120 "John Shore on The Huffington Post\")
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By the way, Marcy, Stephen Jay Gould, in his comments about transitional forms, was I think talking about inter-species transitions (he argued that such transitions are typically too rapid to show up in the fossil record; subsequent work indicates that they do in fact sometimes do so). If he was talking about transitions between larger groups he was, despite his eminence, simply wrong – as the examples I’ve listed show.
trust you john, when bringing up debates here, you get religion, not so much religion, and science all involved. I think you do it on purpose. I think you delibertly try to find subjects that every one can argue about. Not just from religions stand point. But- I'm sure you knew that you were doing that. lol
“It would be much more convincing if scientists could produce substantive proof of animals that had developed an extra chromosome, for example, and had benefited by that in terms of survival of the fittest.” – Marcy Muser
Google “gene duplication”. This is an important process in evolution. You might also google “autopolyploidy” and “allopolyploidy”, although these appear to be important only in plant evolution. As is usual with creationists, you are simply exposing your abysmal ignorance of science in general, and evolutionary theory in particular.
“As I’ve grown in my faith and been changed by it, therefore becoming more Christlike (I hope) I see things in people including loved ones that isn’t good and that previously when I didn’t believe I never noticed. With some it’s stuborness with others it’s ungraitfulness for some it might be dishonesty here and there or any other such thing that to most people wouldn’t be considered anything at all yet I see it as sin and to be quite frank, serious. I want to make it clear this doesn’t mean I’ve become more judgmental in any way,” – Ross
But quite clearly, you have.
“He will not force them to serve Him – that’s not the kind of God He is.” – Marcy Muser
Right. He’ll just torture them for ever if they don’t. Sick.
“The thing about hell and it being eternal is that we have no comprehension of how horrible sin is to God. If you were to see the way God did, you would praise Him for hell.” – Ross
That is utterly disgusting. You choose to worship a being who (you believe) will torture people for ever. That being, if it existed, would be evil far beyond anything human beings are capable of.
Nick: You've said a lot of interesting and compelling things here. I've blocked you from the site, though, because once you say things like, "What a fantastically stupid thing to say," "Are you sure you understand English?" and, "Again, you reveal your profound ignorance" (all statements I've deleted from your comments) you show yourself to be someone too vitriolic for me to have to put up with.
"Furthermore, neither theory can be proved or disproved logically and/or evidently. That means strict atheists should also have to take a leap of faith to believe in something that can’t be reached with logical reasoning." – Blizzinho
No, they don't. One can accept a theory or assumption provisionally, because it is currently the best supported by evidence and argument, but be ready to abandon it if new evidence comes to light. That is the scientific attitude (and one that theistic scientists, if they are any good, follow in their scientific work); but it is emphatically not the attitude most theists take toward their religious beliefs. Rather, many of them boast about how certain they are, and how they will never change these beliefs whatever happens. That's faith.
"So where are the transitional forms, with traits of dinosaurs and traits of birds?" – Marcy Muser
See my earlier comment, on Archaeopteryx, and on recent discoveries of flightless feathered dinosaurs.
"And there are many other issues that bring evolution into serious question, from criticisms of the Big Bang theory (even from evolutionists), to chemical hurdles in creating a living cell from nonliving matter even when strictly controlled by human intelligence" – Marcy Muser
Neither of these has anything to do with the theory of evolution in the usual sense, which is about how life diversifies and changes once in existence. There is, however, fascinating work on abiogenesis going on – google "Shostak" for example. My hunch is that living cells will indeed be created in the laboratory within the next few decades. However, I know very well that creationists will then shift the goalposts – indeed, I predict that they will try to argue that this is evidence for creationism (because the lab procedure required intelligence), despite having insisted up to that point that the fact scientists have not created living cells is evidence for creationism.
"fossil evidence of steps in the process from one major category to another – from single-celled to multi-celled, or from invertebrates to vertebrates, for example." – Marcy Muser
In the first cae, we have living examples, such as sponges and various groups of algae. Between invertebrates and vertebrates, the fossil Pikaia is a fine intermediate. We also have, again, lots of living animals which have some of the features we think of as typical of vertebrates, but not all – look up tunicates, hagfish, lampreys for example.
"But by any currently observable mechanism, an organism descended from another organism either has the same amount of genetic data – the same amount of DNA – as the parent, or it has less genetic data – it has lost something." – Marcy Muser
This is absolutely and unequivocally false. See my earlier comment about gene duplication and polyploidy.
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