Do evolutionists start out as atheists? Or do they study evolution first and then become atheists? I can think of a lot of thread titles it could contain. The descriptive line that I suggested above, about what the mindset is of beginning evolutionists/atheists could be applied to the authors of the following books;
quote:
. . .
Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America’s Leading Atheists / Barker/Dawkins — 2008
We already know that you had never read Dan Barker's book. Nor have you ever even looked at the cover, because if you had then you would have seen that its sole author is Dan Barker; Richard Dawkins only wrote the
foreword.
We also already know from Dan Barker's own testimony in his book that his deconversion had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with evolution and everything to do with evangelical Christianity and his having committed the unforgivable sin (to evangelicals, at least) of daring to
think.
Similarly, my own deconversion was not caused by evolution, which we didn't even study until a couple years later. Rather, what turned me into an atheist was reading the Bible and realizing that I simply could not believe the weird stuff I was reading and reasoning that, if being a Christian required me to believe that stuff that I found I could not believe, then it was time for me to leave. Evolution had nothing to do with my decision, whereas the Bible and, to a lesser extent, Christianity had everything to do with it.
Over the years, I have read and heard many different stories of deconversion and the only role that I have ever heard of evolution playing would be when the person who had been raised on the lies of creationism would then learn what science actually taught and what evolution really is and he would come to realize that his parents and religious leaders and teachers had been lying to him his entire life. Many other deconversion stories involved having been lied to about other things or otherwise betrayed by their religion or their religious leaders.
Some deconversion stories involved having one's eyes opened by learning the truth. One such story involved a Baptist boy who went to college and started dating a Catholic girl, whom he really liked and for whom he felt really sorry because she was damned to Hell for not being a "true Christian". Then one day she suddenly burst out in tears and told him that she really liked him and felt really sorry for him because he was damned to Hell for not being Catholic. Hello! That got him thinking, so he decided to research the matter. He went into the college library and asked for the most complete history of Christianity that they had. The librarian tried to talk him out of it, telling him he didn't want to read it. He insisted and checked out a thick book on the history of Christianity. It took him a month to read the entire book, at the end of which he decided that while he was now no longer certain that God existed, but if He did, then He sure wasn't Christian!
While my own opinion is that it's the lies of creationism that cause believers to lose their faith, I've read that the humanities do much more than learning science does in undermining evangelical/fundamentalist Christian faith. Evangelicals and fundamentalists are locked into a mindset that allows for only one point-of-view, theirs, as being valid, plus that's the only perspective that they ever learn or hear. Far too often in my discussions with creationists, they would refuse to think about what I was describing and adamantly refused to learn about evolution, because they believed that that would require them to believe in those subjects -- to counter, the US Air Force trained us NCOs in Communism, obviously
not for the purpose of turning us into Communists, but rather so that we would learn about the enemy. In the humanities, these evangelical/fundamentalist students learn that there are many other perspectives and they learn what those other perspectives are and they learn to discuss the valid and invalid points of those other perspectives. Even the process in literature classes of viewing the events of the story through the perspective of different characters is a major revelation for these students. And as they learn to
think, the scales fall from their eyes and they begin to shake off the shackles their religion had clamped about their minds. It's not evolution nor science that you need to fear, but rather
English class!
marc, you repeatedly and persistently demonstrate that you have absolutely no idea what atheism is nor how people become atheists. You need to
learn, not to continue to stew in and spew your ignorant nonsense. Rather than continue to accept the lies that your church keeps telling you, go out and talk with atheists to see what they actually think and believe and how they had become atheists, for what reasons, and what had caused it. A good place for you to start would be the ex-Christian.net forum's testimonial section at
http://www.ex-christian.net/...timonies-of-former-christians. Although it wouldn't come up in a search here on EVC, I'm positive that I have posted links to that forum several times before and I'm sure that some of those times have been in response to your clinging to your ignorance. Go forth and
learn something for a change!
The new arrival of puberty, a desire to free themselves from the 10 commandments, a study of evolution, and presto — atheism!
Nonsense! Though I know that that is what your (plural) churches, in their blessed ignorance, teach. It seems that, unable to understand why they cannot convert everybody, they have had to rationalize it somehow, so they projected their own desires onto the unconvertable. And by teaching that nonsense to their children, they create a strongly compelling self-fulfilling prophesy. And then have the audacity to act surprised when children actually do what they had taught them to do, become atheists in order to "free themselves from the 10 commandments"! That's right,
you're the ones doing it to your own children. Stop looking for scapegoats and take responsibility for your own actions!
I had a long correspondence with a local creationist activist, Bill Morgan, who had written an error-laden essay (here is a link to a forum where he posted it in 1997:
http://www.bio.net/bionet/mm/mol-evol/1997-March/005421.html). I'm quoting here part of that essay in which he repeats your own pipe-dream, though greatly abbreviated to save space here; at that link, the complete text lies a bit more than half-way down:
quote:
I was raised in Buffalo, New York, and was fortunate to have great parents They took my sister and I to church every Sunday, we attended Sunday school and church camps in the summer. I believed in God, and never gave the issue much thought.
In sixth grade, I remember seeing a big colorful book produced by Time-Life. . . . This is called the ascent of man chart that nearly everyone is familiar with.
In sixth grade, I looked at that chart for a while, smirked, thought it was ridiculous, and went outside and played softball.
Eventually I made it to ninth grade. While in a Biology class, the teacher was teaching us about evolution and placed the same chart up on the wall. I still remember it. I sat there and studied that chart for a long time. It was on that very day that I recognized a major conflict existed between what this teacher was saying and what the Bible taught. Should I believe my science teacher, who is teaching man has ascended from ape-like animals, or do I believe mommy, daddy, and that book (the Bible) that says God made man instantly from the dust of the ground?" I reasoned that this teacher is a scientist after all, so this must be valid information.
. . .
In ninth grade I chose to go with the science teacher, and considered myself to be an atheist for about 14 years.
. . .
Question! Why in 6th grade did I think the drawings were ridiculous, but in 9th grade I believed them?
Was it because I was more intellectual? No. Was it because the Biology teacher explained it so convincingly? Not really. The real reason for my becoming an atheist in 9th grade can be summed up in one word...hormones. In 6th grade I did not have much temptation in my life. . . .
But in 9th grade a whole new world opened up to me. The temptation of drinking, drugs and premarital sex presented themselves to me at exactly the same time I was being taught evolution. I knew the Bible said that being drunk and having sex outside of marriage was wrong, but here is my science teacher, telling me the origin of man is completely contradictory to what the Bible taught as the origin of man. I felt excited.....and decided the Theory of Evolution was for me, after all the Bible was scientifically wrong on the very first page!! I considered myself to be an atheist. As an atheist I no longer had to abide by any rules but my own. If I wanted to get drunk, no problem, if I wanted to try to have premarital sex no problem, I now belonged to the evolution "religion" (religion meaning a system of beliefs built on faith) that allowed me to sin without guilt.
It was not the data that made me an atheist, it was the conclusion, a belief that made me the judge of right and wrong. Those cartoon drawings of ape men did look sharp, but I wanted to believe them emotionally, more than I really believed them intellectually.
He let a lot slip there. It wasn't evolution that caused his decision, but rather his desire to use evolution as an excuse, which doesn't disagree much with your own statement. But was it evolution that gave him those ideas? No, not in the least. Well where did he get those ideas from? From his own Christian teachings! He had been taught that the way to get around all those "thou shalt not"'s was to become an atheist and, sure enough, that's exactly what he did! In fact, he let even more slip when I tried to point that out to him: he stated that during all the time he was an "atheist", every night he prayed to God. What real atheist would do
that? He wasn't even an atheist, but rather he was just
pretending to be an atheist, fooling nobody but himself, the most important person for him to fool!
So your churches' false teachings about morality create the very scenario that you want to blame on evolution. Instead of teaching them the true importance of morality and the very real reasons why it is so very important (which it is, despite your (plural) attempts to trivialize it!), you teach them that it depends on whether God exists and that if God did not exist, then morality is meaningless. Then you don your seedy overcoat and hat and from a dark corner whisper sleazily: "Psst! Hey, kid! Lookin' for a good time? It's easy! Become an atheist and you won't have nobody to answer to. You can then do everything and anything you want to, free of quilt, because there's no god to answer to. You won't be responsible
nobody! It's easy! You don't even have to actually become an atheist neither; all you need to do is
pretend to be one! Give it a try! It'll be fun!" After feeding all those restrictive and arbitrary rules, you then offer them a great big gaping loophole like that and you don't think they'll grab it as quickly as they can? Especially when you also pound them with your false teachings that accepting evolution will turn them into atheists. Since that's your own big hot claim, that evolution turns people into atheists, that makes
you personally responsible for the spread of atheism that you hypocritically decry. If you don't like it,
then stop causing it to happen! When the ICR was still in Santee, there was a stone mason just down the street from them, who I would assume gave them very good rates on millstones because of the volume business the ICR offered them; you should contact the ICR to find out who's supplying them now that they're in Texas.
In summary, the true cause of atheism is
Christianity, especially false teachings emphasized by evangelical and fundamentalist Christian sects. Those false teachings booby-trap the faith of sect members to self-destruct in highly predictable ways. They also teach non-members that their teachings are false and cannot be taken seriously. Even more, those false teachings, especially "creation science", accomplish what nobody else ever could do: prove that God does not exist. Proof by False Teachings such as "If evolution is true, then God does not exist", and "If even one error is found in the Bible, then throw it in the trash.", and "If the earth is more than 10,000 years old, then Scripture has no meaning." (John Morris, President of the Institute for Creation Research). Nor is that proof lost on outsiders, who accept it at face value and are eternally grateful to have nothing to do with Christianity.
You're creating the situation. Only you could possibly change it, but only by abandoning your false teachings and replacing them with true teachings. Which I am quite certain will never happen, so if there exists a award for promoting and encouraging the spread of atheism, you will win it.
marc, I'm quite certain that you will refuse to learn anything and will continue to cling desparately to your ignorance, so I'll conclude with a quote, reconstructed from memory, by a past Governor of Mississippi (circa 1990, give or take half a decade either way) who was defending his campaign for educational reform:
quote:
We know that ignorance doesn't work, because we've already tried it!
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