Sunday, December 21, 2008

The Objective Christian

If you're brave enough to take a completely human and objective look at the bible and all the people who wrote it and all the people who compiled it and embrace the considerable amount of truth that journey leads you to, but still come away a believer, then you're in for life and there's nothing anyone can ever do to change that.

There's not even very much that can upset you. If you already know all the criticisms, but still believe then there's nothing humanists, atheists, agnostics, Satanists, Pagans or Scientologists can say to upset you.

You might even agree with them on some points, but since you already know these things, but still remain faithful, then it's no challenge to you.

It's the people who wont take that journey, who won't look at the bible objectively whose faith is in jeopardy, because it's built on the sand of superstition and not stone of reason.

For example: the objective christian knows that there is a vast collection of evidence in support of Darwin's theory of evolution, so that means the creation story in genesis must mean something other than what we thought it meant and they go on with their life.

They may or may not try and find out what that "something other" is, but it doesn't matter because their faith isn't threatened if every single word of the bible isn't historically and scientifically accurate. They know that's not the case and they don't care.

On the other hand: the theory of evolution has the superstitious christian under siege. For them, if genesis goes down then the whole bible is bullshit and they've been fools all their lives, so they fight like hell to keep that from happening, even if it means isolating themselves from the rest of the world.

Now, who serves God better, the woman who walks freely in a changing world but still believes, or the man who digs himself a bomb shelter to live in because he might have descended from apes?

2 comments:

Roz said...

well what i want to know is if that evalution crap is right...then why aren't apes still turning into humans?? Hmmm I don't know either cause I wasn't there..all I know is that I believe God created man to love him..he wanted a people that loved him..that's my opinion and it ain't worth a lot but there it is.

A. Boyd Campbell, II said...

I agree with you completely that God created us and even why he created us, the question is how.

All organisms, including apes and humans, are still evolving. We have no way of knowing what they are evolving to, but we can actually track those changes with genetic mapping.

Statistically it's incredibly unlikely that apes would evolve into humans again, but they could easily evolve into something else, so could we.

That doesn't mean that some organisms won't survive a very long time with the genes they have now. Some of their offspring might evolve into something else, but the base population can remain unchanged for millions of years.

The thing is, evolution isn't crap. It's absolutely verifiable in dozens of different ways. The story in genesis isn't verifiable in any way.

If we Christians maintain that the genesis story is accurate in the face of an already vast and rapidly growing body of evidence to the contrary then we lose an awful lot of credibility before we even get into the rest of the bible.

Official Ted Lasso