An amazing story

Take the evolution discussion elsewhere

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Evolution is an explanatory system,

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Right.Just like the Atomic Theory of Matter is an explanitory system, and the several Theories of Gravity are explanitory systems, and theGerm Theory of Disease is an explanitory system.Why do you single out a single Biological theory, which uses the exact same scientific method as the others I've mentioned, as somehow not being scientific?Do you also reject the scientific legitimacy of these other theories?

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it is not science as such.

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As crashfrog explained, science is, in short, an explanitory system.

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Science is merely misused to support evolution.

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Yeah.According to you, hundreds of thousands of professional Evolutionary scientists who have been studying life on Earth over the last century or so are a bunch of complete, knucleheaded morons and are utterly incompetent at doing what scientists do: i.e. testing theory.What was MD saying about people being unable to deal with reality, and so make up preposterous explanations for why their beliefs contradict it?This message has been edited by schrafinator, 01-06-2006 11:44 PM

Let's stop this off-topic dispute.Stay on topic. That's to all of you involved - you know who you are.

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No that's according to YOU. I merely see a gigantic belief system that everybody feeds out of habit while engaged in their own corner of the science field fitting their piece into the whole without questioning it. It's not a falsifiable theory, since it's merely an imaginative scenario, so anything can be MADE to fit it by this or that interpretive twist.

I am going to be strating a new thread for us to discuss this, Faith, as it is off topic here.I have one question to ask at first.See you there.

I think it was a great story. She does go on quite a bit, but how can you tell a story like that succinctly? There's a lot of emotion to get across and I think she did it pretty well. The only part I was tempted to skip was when she talked about her relationship with her biological mother - she could axe that out and not take away anything from the rest.

Go Bucks

Does it make sense to you, that people could get accurate results from a theory that's just wishful thinking?How does that work? If we live in a universe where theories that are just wishful thinking are just as useful as the theories that actually describe reality, then what's the point? If any old made-up thing is as useful as the truth, then what does it matter what you or I believe about the world? Does "right" or "wrong" even have meaning in such a world?

"Authority," no. But she knows what's it like to have been a nun, so she can talk about that knowledgably. She knows what's it like to attempt to become worldly, and to fail. That's interesting. It supports my contention that some people have an unworldly, religious nature no matter what their beliefs at the time. That's my view of Armstrong, and I suspect the same of Laura.This message has been edited by robinrohan, 01-07-2006 09:55 AM

In point of fact, Armstrong discusses this in the book.

Of course I only skimmed her book so you'll have to fill me in. I don't see how she failed. She got out of the convent, after which the very idea of religious practice made her feel sick; she studied world religions from an anti-Christian point of view which atheists also do; she wrote many books, got involved with the world of publishers and TV programming, did quite well as a worldling it seems to me. In fact all I saw of any return to religiosity was her claim that she lost all sense of her own personal viewpoint, her "self" in the writing about world religions, which she identified as "ecstasis" or being outside the self or ego, which some religions consider a spiritual goal. Is that what you mean?Also I'm not sure exactly what drew her into the convent. I poked around in that part of the book and it seemed to me she had rather more negative than positive reasons for becoming a nun, some feeling she needed the discipline, would lose track of God if she didn't, and finally as a sort of last straw if I read it right, had a mixed reaction of envy and loathing to the discovery of her friend Suzie's make-out session with her cousin Anthony. As I said, maybe I didn't read this section carefully enough and you can clarify her motives. Of course the problem with that for me, at least with respect to Christian belief, is that it contradicts Christian theology of salvation and makes it all into a psychological phenomenon. And I doubt that anyone who studied it carefully would find more than a very few Bible-believing Christians to have such a temperament too.I don't have any problem with the idea of a religious temperament when it comes to New Age spirituality though. Some people are attracted to that sort of thing and others aren't. And I kind of think of "Trekkies" and followers of the Star Wars series as that sort of temperament.This message has been edited by Faith, 01-07-2006 07:44 PM

Faith, you have to read the book and pick up on the personality. This is a very religious person.

Coragyps did explain, but careful reading should have caught that the first post explains the thread, but for others who may have missed it, the very first thing is says is:

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[Admins note: what follows is user/moderator/all around decent human being christ-on-a-stick's story of her path into atheism, as originally begun in the thread "At thescholar's Request: A Salvation Story".

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The first couple dozen posts were copied from that thread, which has become bogged down in chatter, while the remaining installments of COAS's story were posted here directly.

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COMMENTS CANNOT BE POSTED TO THIS THREAD, AS IT IS LOCKED. If you would like to discuss COAS's story or join in the discussions surrounding it, please use this link to the original thread and post there. --W@L]

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Originally posted by christ-on-a-stick, 19 December 2003:

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Then it actually lists exactly why it was edited by someone else.

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Last edited by Barefoot Bree : November 17, 2004 at 04:26 PM. Reason: to correct the entire thread of minor punctuation errors that crept in during the recent VB conversion.

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So the admin split part of the posts from one thread into another so that the story would be separate from the discussion taking place in the other thread. Then having changed their forum software it was edited to fix problems with the punctuation.Then you go on to trot out the standard fundamentalist rant to try to discredit her, i.e. not a ”real Christian’ and in doing so you prove her point. So it becomes fair to conclude that without a reliable external way to test for ”real Christian’, and with being a ”real Christian a possible self-delusion (both your claim and hers) then we can’t be sure that any ”real Christians’ have ever existed.

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He was in his mid to late twenties. He obviously didn't really love his wife.

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Seems a bit unfair an assumption to me. He may have loved her and loved something else more. He may have really believed the voices in his head and thought that this was a test of his leadership and if he stayed the course she'd come around. I like her story because it is more than anything a story of what happens when people have two very different world views. I am very sure on his side of the fence there were people saying, "Oh, I really thought she loved him."

she never was saved to begin with. It is impossible to know someone and then not know them...unless you get amnesia.