Hey Logic and the rest of the EvC community,
I know I am late to this topic and am rather new here to EvC but I thought I would share with the rest of the group my own background and perspective. I think it is important that people from both sides of the camp so to speak understand the other sides experience and background and not make unfounded assertions about the others religious or scientific background.
I too grew up as a Christian. In fact, I am the son of an ordained Christian Church minister, grandson of a minister, and nephew of two other ordained ministers. You could say it is in my blood. I was baptized by my grandfather when I was 8 years old and spent the next 20 years in the Christian faith. I was homeschooled my last 4 years of high school, though I really taught myself as much as my mother taught me (my Dad was in the Air Force for 21 years). And no, not all homeschoolers are sheltered and socially stunted (I was actively involved in Boy Scouts, Explorers, and Civil Air Patrol). Though my parent raised us up in the Christian faith they both were veracious readers and scholars (both graduated college). They instilled in me critical thinking skills which have been the bedrock of my intellect and personality. Having won 2 scholarships to a Christian liberal arts college (scored a 1280 on my SAT and a 29 on my ACT), I enrolled as a pre-med student. Due to the stress at home (my family travelled up with me to college and my Dad was taking courses at a Christian Seminary while at the same time my parents were house parents at a Christian Children's Home) and an overloaded college load (19 SH including Chemistry and Calculus in my first semester), I dropped out and joined the Navy.
I have now been enlisted in the Navy for 16 years and have attained the rank of Chief Petty Officer. I have deployed 4 times and have travelled to well over 20 countries, having seen some of the most destitute of living conditions in the world i.e. Honduras and parts of Mexico. I have grown very cynical of religion in general (as have both of my parents, one of which is an atheist and the other an agnostic though still happily married for over fourty years). Early in my naval career I got involved with a very outgoing evangelistic church. However, later I began to see glaring inconsistencies, hypocrisies and outright lying done by not just one leader in the church but endemic to the whole leadership. For the next 10 years I church hopped and visited a plethora of Christian churches. In the process I have acquired a library of well over 50 Christian apologetics books and other religious material. I have been to a wide range of denominations including Catholic, Baptist (both southern and independent), Episcopalian, Presbyterian, and Methodist all with their very nuances and petty differences in religious doctrine. At this same time I also reawakened my passion for science and began delving back into religious and non-religious books about creationism and evolution. I gradually realized that creationism (as well as the later repackaged idea of intelligent design) had no leg to stand on, so to speak, with respect to scientific evidence. Thus I switched from believing in Creationism to understanding that evolution actually did occur (please don't tell me I didn't 'really' understand creationism because I grew up going to creationist education forums, debates, and read books & listened to tapes by Duan Gish, Ken Ham and others from Answers to Genesis.) I have also actually been able to win my wife over to the understanding that cosmological and biological evolution occurred and she has no problem integrating that into her religious beliefs.
Much like Charles Darwin, my wife is very religious (grew up an Independent Baptist) while I remain an agnostic (leaning towards "weak" atheism). We even continue to go to church (a Methodist church). My wife and I have agreed to disagree of our religious views and we raise our daughter in a very open and loving family. I, like my parents, will ingrain in my daughter the critical thinking skills and love for science that I have but I will not force my religious views on her. We are all sentient beings with the ability to make our own decisions. The key is, do you have evidence to back up your beliefs either for or against.
We are all human, each subject to our own prejudice views and opinions. Let's treat each other with respect no matter what they are. I know everybody may not agree with the quote I am about to post, however before you rip this to shreds let it sink in and think how of how small but destructive we as a species can be (both physically and psychologically). Dr. Carl Sagan (may he rest in peace) had this very poignant statement to say (excuse the length but I think it is important to our very survival):
Dr. Carl Sagan writes:
Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe:, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known. (Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space)
"For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring." Dr. Carl Sagan
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