IMHO, the two primary fundies posting in this thread typify what is often at the core of the religious impulse for many fundies: search for meaning which they otherwise aren’t finding in their lives and an abiding sense of fear – fear of the unknown.
Hollie, you love to put folks in boxes. You think my religion is about fear?? Ha! It is the peace that I have that makes life more enjoyable. When I was on the SWAT Team, I always trusted God every time we kicked someone's door in. I knew that if my life ended that night, my life still had meaning, and I was, and am, secure in what was to come after death. This allowed me to operate nightly
without fear. I guess the question is,
if you are so free in your atheism, why are you so scared to reveal anything about yourself? What do you fear that keeps you in hiding?
Let me put you in the same box. I can imagine your life isn't very meaningful. I would also think you live with the daily stress that your entire existence could end at any moment, and what would have all been for? Ahh, the great cosmic accident of human life. From an evolutionary point, it is pointless. It is pain. It is tragedy. It is death. It is the cruel joke of a conscious, formed by randomness. You desperately want to believe that Christ followers are wasting their lives because they believe something goes on after it is all over. The sad reality is that you have it all backwards. It is the "peace that passes all understanding" that makes life even more enjoyable. With Christ, comes security and peace.
I will share the following story. I used to work with Bill years ago:
Following is Kimberly Hosey’s painful and tragic story of Emma Simpkins. Bill, Emma’s loving father, was gracious enough to share his story in the interest of making parents aware of a far too-common tragedy.
Emma Simpkins’ fiery hair and wide smile made her stand out in any crowd. She had a fiery personality too, but was generous with her love, telling those close to her, “I love you more than bunnies” to show just how much she loved them—because what kindergartener doesn’t love bunnies?
Those aren’t the only reasons her father, Bill Simpkins, tears up when he talks about her. In a tragic accident in 2006, Bill accidentally backed his truck over Emma in the family’s driveway. She later died.
Despite the tragic and preventable nature of the accident, Bill readily discusses it, and talks plainly about his campaign since then to help and protect children, but he really lights up when he talks about his daughter.
“She has fiery red hair,” he says, talking about the 6-year-old in the present tense even though the accident occurred more than four years ago, “and a temper to go with it. She’s my shadow. Wherever I went, Emma was with me.”
Bill isn’t sure at exactly what moment his vehicle hit Emma. He assumed Emma was inside with her mother. Bill had gone outside to move his truck so that he could take out his sons’ go-karts.
“I backed up and pulled up to the curb facing the opposite direction, and that’s when I ran over her,” he says. “I never saw her. I don’t know if she came running out, I don’t know if she was sitting on the sidewalk. I just don’t know where she came from.”
The accident remains a blur for Bill, but he remembers tiny details from the minutes preceding it, as if his mind somehow knew to hold onto those last mementos from his time with his daughter. It was during spring break. They had just returned from a family trip to Disneyland. He remembers Emma cuddled between him and his wife, Abby, on the sofa. He remembers the NASCAR race they were watching. The mint chip ice cream Emma was eating. Then it all fell apart.
“In just one second, our whole world was turned upside down,” he says. “It has never really been the same.”
The atheists view this situation from the standpoint of "If there really was a God, how could he have let this happen???" This feeling eats at their soul, and turns from sadness and tragedy, to anger, and then
intense hatred.
The Christian, which Bill is, cries out in the night,
"God, how could you have let me kill my little girl???" He weeps for a month straight. He has vivid dreams of his daughter when she was alive. He continually asks God for strength, because without God, without some way to make sense of this, he can only see his way clear to putting a bullet in his brain. And then, the peace begins to wash over him. He realizes that he will see Emma again. He realizes that while there was intense pain for him, Emma was swept up into God's loving arms. He doesn't know why God didn't intervene, but there is a calmness inside of him that says
"God knows what He is doing. God is still in control." He goes on to form a foundation in Emma's name, and he still talks about what a great kid she was all the time. And he looks forward to the time when the vivid night time dreams of her playful spirit and echoes of her calling him daddy will again become ultimate reality, when he goes to his real home to be with God.
For me, God is the only way to make sense of this world. You can say I'm weak and call that a crutch, but I can't imagine the horror that your life is. The atheist evolutionists can't fret over accidents like this. It is just the way it is. No sense spilling any tears. W
e are all an accident anyway. None of us should have been here, and it won't matter when we are all gone. On the universe timeline, human existence will be like a micro-second moan. Evolution does guarantee anything, not even the first breath. And it certainly doesn't guarantee anything but the law of the jungle. Under evolution, fitness rules. If you are weak, you will be trampled. It amazes me that the weak and trampled adopt the atheist viewpoint, and that is the only way they can make sense of the lack of acceptance in their lives. It seems like they would gravitate towards knowing that God is there, and that he accepts them regardless of
how cruel and evil the other human animals can be.
For some reason, we get pigeon holed into only speaking about Creationism from a scientific standpoint. The philosophical ramifications of evolution are more disturbing. In fact, there are certain principles that necessarily abide under the materialistic worldview. If everything comes from nature, than everything is natural.
Even the child molester is only doing what is programmed in his dna. Have a penchant for kidnapping and raping men, then storing their body parts in your fridge?? Somehow natural selection didn't rid us of the genetic defect that motivated you do such a thing.
And evil? Forget that. There is no such thing. That is a term those fundies came up with. Smoke meth until you are total freaked and decide your you need to cut off your sons head? All natural. Your decision to smoke meth came from your conscious thought which came from your brain which came from millions of years of tiny changes.
http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/9997015-man-cuts-off-sons-head
Two year old daughter pissing you off? Light her on fire and watch her burn. This guy came from nature. His brain malfunction from millions of years of random mutations.
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2009/07/21/20090721mr-grell0721-ON.html
According to evolution, Lady Gaga has it right. We're just born this way. Do we really have a choice? My dna made me do it, that, and millions of years of natural selection. Heck, there are other animals that eat their own, right?
Biological determination (also biologism) is the interpretation of humans and human life from a strictly biological point of view, and it is closely related to genetic determinism. Another definition is that biological determinism is the hypothesis that biological factors such as an organism's individual genes (as opposed to social or environmental factors) completely determine how a system behaves or changes over time.
Consider certain human behaviors, such as having a particular taste in music, committing murder, or writing poetry. A biological determinist would posit that such behaviours, and personality traits in general, are mediated primarily by biological factors, such as genetic makeup. An extreme variant of biological determinism might assert that an organism's behavior is determined entirely by biological factors, and that all of these factors are innate to that organism e.g. DNA. By asserting that biological factors are the primary determinants of behaviour, biological determinism implies of course that non-biological factors, such as social customs, expectations and education, have less or no effect on behaviour. Similarly, a variant of biological determinism might consider non-innate biological factors, such as the biological aspects of an organism's environment, to have a lesser effect on the organism's behaviour than innate biological factors.
I laugh when evolutionist, and particularly, post modern humanists claim that biological determinism isn't valued because society has influences on behavior. I'm not sure where the logic jumps off for them.
If evil humans aren't genetically predetermined, then it must be society that causes them to do evil acts. But wait a second, where does society come from? Isn't society made up of humans? Under the materialistic worldview, humans evolved from a common ancestor. Part of the evolutionary process was to evolve into social animals, running in packs or cooperating for the greater good of the tribe. If under materialism, everything comes from matter and random forces, can we really say anything is "evil".
Hollie and Loki, I welcome your non-scientific, philosophical rebuttal to the statement: Under evolution, or materialism, i.e., matter is the only reality, we can not use concepts like evil, because,
even though they shock our senses, these so called "evil" acts are purely natural, and shouldn't be so shocking and upsetting to us when they occur.
You see, it not just that life isn't fair, it is that the concept of fairness should not exist in the little cosmic accident we know of as earth, and even more so, the accident of human existence.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_determinism
