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Belief in God, miracles & heaven declines as Darwin's theory of evolution rises

Rev, I understand the traditional Christian belief that God came to earth in the form of Jesus. This connotes that God and Man are separate. In many of the eastern religions, God is in everyone.

Do we not hear this from Jesus in the Thomas Gospel, to wit: "He who drinks from my mouth will become as I am, and I shall be He". That is basic Buddhism and Hinduism.

I mean, there's certainly that line of thought in Genesis- making humanity in the divine image. But yea, you're right, there certainly is a separation of God from Creation though that goes through Abrahamic faiths. Not sure that the separation proves anything one way or another, but certainly influences some thought. So for example, many evangelical Christians do end up with a heretical sort of dualistic theology and an over-separation of Heaven and earth, when Jesus seems to bring the two closer together (I tell you- the Kingdom of God is at hand). The Thomas text is interesting, but taking one line out of context from a non-canonical gospel isn't going to win very many arguments.
 
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A lot of it has to do with the idea that "you just can't question faith." So "rational" can have degrees and be reasonably intelligent, but also believe "well, so things we just can't understand because they operate on a level that our brains can't." While I disagree with that (in most instances), I think that's how people believe in Adam and Eve as their biological first-parents, etc.

Regarding imagination, there's always some of that, but also part of what makes Christianity so compelling- God came to earth in Jesus. John 1 talks about the Word becoming flesh. The problem is that when most people think "word of God," they think of the Bible as being supreme, but that's wrong. The Word (capital W) of God is Jesus, and Jesus is God; therefore, the imagination isn't as needed. The Bible is the word (lower case) of God. And confusing the Word with the word has caused a lot of confusion and done a lot of harm.

Yea...how could anyone be confused by that?

:thumbsup:
 
The bible's authors did not intend it to be a history book or a science book; it was written to reveal truths about man's relationship with God.
 
I'm not sure I'm following this. So you're saying that the fact that 153 is a number which doesn't change based on the language spoken is helpful? This is a genuine question, how so? Also, I'm fairly convinced that "John" (whoever the author was, especially of chapter 21) wouldn't have included an arbitrary number just because. I'm glad that you find it helpful though, just not sure how.
I should have left out the comment about language. I love this passage because a) I am a fisherman, and b) it creates a great mental image of Peter and the disciples counting out the 153 fish. I believe the precision of the number shows it is an eye-witness account. I can see one of the disciples saying, "Look at all of these fish! I wonder how many there are?"

That's all from me on this thread!

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Yea...how could anyone be confused by that?

:thumbsup:

Yea, not exactly the most black/white issue, but not that complicated. The doctrine of sola scriptura really made things worse because it took the emphasis off of Jesus and put it on the Bible. It would be as if people only considered the letters of MLK and didn't concern themselves with the author.
 
Rev, we've probably had this discussion previously, but I don't accept the notion that a particular text is "invalid" because it's "non-canonical". I mean, didn't the early church basically vote on what to include in our bible? The so-called "lost Gospels" were not unearthed until 1947.
 
Rev, we've probably had this discussion previously, but I don't accept the notion that a particular text is "invalid" because it's "non-canonical". I mean, didn't the early church basically vote on what to include in our bible? The so-called "lost Gospels" were not unearthed until 1947.

Yea, and I agree with you. I wouldn't say not valid, just slightly less valid. But in any case, context matters.

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This post reads like it was taken directly from ICRs website.
Yuck. It's not, I can assure you. Just a fan of Ancient Aliens. Evolution is both a process and a term used to hypothesize our origins..ie often used as short for human evolution (which someone pointed out). That's another reason why these polls are so f'd up. The process obviously occurs and I wager a lot of people who respond to the polls negatively would agree if the term were spelled out that way. The long term arc that produced humans is not as definite. So it's not fair at all to label my view as extreme by equating it to literal Bible creationism. They don't believe in aliens anyways.
 
Can you explain why you think belief in god was necessary for our evolution? That is a really strong statement.
I think consciousness is rooted in belief...ie in some sort of implicit trust of the senses that animals without consciousness don't have. In order to believe, we had to place meaning on things. The salt shaker on the table for a cat might signify something that satisfies a craving the cat has paired over time with salt, and the need to jump up to get to it. For us it means....there's a salt shaker on the table that I can use for X,Y,Z on top of said pairing. The cat reacts, we believe. Those are very different things but we made some sort of a jump. How did that happen?

If you think about how that must have happened.....a belief in reality could not have occurred instantly because reality throws a lot at you. It must have happened step wise. It must have been difficult to understand or place meaning on parts of reality like a rock that you could throw at a rabbit, but not other parts of reality like the meaning of a thunderstorm or the stars or those psychoactive plants. That likely caused major issues in attaining the consciousness that we know..part dream and part reality. I think of waking up in a strange bedroom. The clock on the nightstand I can understand instantly but the room is foreign. IMO as soon as we found a way to convey meaning on the things we didn't understand and label that meaning as being from higher beings/Gods, then full consciousness as we know it could be attained...and we evolved.

So IMO a belief in a higher being caused us to evolve...because we are at the core a unique creature of belief. We have to believe something about everything. Ever think about that?

I also think believing in a higher being probably helps us believe in the reality around us, ie it makes us more human whether it's real or not because it helps concretize reality. I don't think everyone has the same sense of reality (could be levels of consciousness?) and I think people question reality in their lives more than we want to admit.

My sort of misfit take, but I'll credit Collins back at Wake for sending down this path!
 
I don't understand. You claim belief in a higher being caused humans to evolve. Would humans not have evolved without that belief? Do only humans evolve? Did humans' ancestors not evolve because they did not believe in a higher being, and if so, how did they evolve into humans? I really don't understand.
 
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You do realize that this argument completely undermines any truth claims out there about religion or a deity? Sort of pulls the rug out from the concept of revelation.
Well...maybe, maybe not. These issues are all human constructs, built for us to understand something we either can't grasp or can't sense fully but which interacts with our reality. We could be interacting with something in a different dimension. We could be existing in dimensions we haven't yet figured out how to be conscious of. The recent "discovery" of an amplituhedron kind of plays into that too which gets rid of localization and unity as necessary, as does the string theory work that just came out. What is the truth? It could exist but be very abstract.
 
Would humans not have evolved without that belief? Do only humans evolve? Did humans' ancestors not evolve because they did not believe in a higher being, and if so, how did they evolve into humans? I really don't understand.
IMO human consciousness would not have evolved like it has. Of course other things evolve, but if you took humans out of the system and let things re-evolve, I bet belief in a higher being would re-emerge. It is part of this process, part of how our brain works that we haven't figured out. Belief in reality probably depended on physical brain capacity to have more complex reasoning, but I don't think that translated directly into "consciousness". Belief in higher beings also helped us socially evolve...build systems, organize, and myths. Mythology is another part of our evolution. Mythology is more powerful than the truth IMO. Human ancestors evolved into humans so I'm not sure I understand that one.
 
Pourdeac has significantly different conceptions of consciousness than I've ever read before, from neuroscientists, religious people, anyone.
 
Just look at the placebo effect. We now know it's not just some sort of "some people get better statistically" sort of mass action phenomenon, it happens when people believe they will get better. It's becoming a major area of study because no one can explain it.

A friend of mine at Wake, Mike Nader, showed that environmental factors can significantly alter brain chemistry which alters addictability to cocaine. The alpha male of a group of 4 rhesus monkeys has higher D2 receptor densities (autoreceptor in the mesolimbic dopamine system) and it is harder for them to get addicted. The opposite is true for the lowest monkey. It means environment/state of mind can alter neurochemistry and behavior. Several other good examples. We know it also affects immune systems, glial cells, etc. These results imply belief/religion can do the same thing....and belief wouldn't have evolved if it caused a negative outcome, yes?
 
Huh? The placebo effect is fairly well understood.
 
IMO human consciousness would not have evolved like it has. Of course other things evolve, but if you took humans out of the system and let things re-evolve, I bet belief in a higher being would re-emerge. It is part of this process, part of how our brain works that we haven't figured out. Belief in reality probably depended on physical brain capacity to have more complex reasoning, but I don't think that translated directly into "consciousness". Belief in higher beings also helped us socially evolve...build systems, organize, and myths. Mythology is another part of our evolution. Mythology is more powerful than the truth IMO. Human ancestors evolved into humans so I'm not sure I understand that one.
A lot of this sounds like you don't understand evolution as a process. At it's core, evolution has no trajectory. It is not directed. The very idea that something would re-evolve in the same way it did historically, absent the same environment is antithetical to the theory itself.
 
Yes it is by definition random, chaotic, unpredictable.
 
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