a christian view of atheism
If you really believe that you and I and everyone else are just dirt waiting to return to it’s true dirt-state, then why are so worried about what other people are teaching their kids, or saying in the “public arena”, etc.?
Are you worried that somehow anything said or done will jeopardize your dirt-fate? Because that’s the thing. If you’re really, truly CONVINCED of your own beliefs, then you should feel quite safe that no amount of delusion is going to stave off the dirt-hood that awaits us all…
And s/he wrote, I’ll say it again. If we’re all just waiting to become dirt again, then what does any of it matter….(?)
That needs a Christian answer.
I am not Christian because I whistle in the dark, seeking meaning outside myself. I see the beauty of the world- whether Created or not- and of human beings, and know that life which ends completely after around 70 or even 110 years is still wonderful, an amazing experience. I fit, here, either because I evolved here over four billion years or because I was created for here, all the hairs on my head numbered.
Of course it matters! My friend spent the afternoon at her grandchild’s primary school show, with kiddies dancing and singing, full of confidence, bathed in the love of the parents and relatives. I took the bus, which passes down an avenue, where all the trees are covered in blossom right now. A friend phoned and we laughed and cried together. If it ends in unconsciousness, it is still wonderful.
I am Christian (now, aged 48 and quite able to make a choice in the matter) because of the example of Jesus. Not because I hope for a reward after or before death. Not because I need meaning in my life. Not because I need rules in order to feel safe.
No-one, however certain of extinction after death, is just waiting to become dirt again. Christians ought to see non-Christians better than that, for they too are made in the image of God- loving, powerful and creative.
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Although the dirt rant is ridiculous, I can understand it. When I was a Christian I had the same kind of misconception about what life would mean without the god character God inventing it all and providing an afterlife.
Looking forward to seeing some blossom, it’s not here yet.
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You could always move a bit Southwards.
That some Christians have that view does not mean it is a necessary part of Christianity. I came across this bloke yesterday, on “Not judging” and quite how profound that is. “Love your neighbour as yourself”- part of that has to be seeing them, as they are, and what meaning their lives have.
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He seems alright as far as Christians go, a new blog buddy for you?
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He has followed.
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I think you both are missing the point… It is not at all a matter of debating whether or not theists or atheists FEEL and experience “meaning”, (because they both clearly do!), it is simply a matter of how the Evolutionary universe can even begin to explain the meaning that everyone inherently recognizes… (does that make any more sense?)
Clare, it is not at all about devaluing non-Christians, but in fact the very opposite! If we are all nothing but randomly evolved bits of the broader universe, then I’m sorry, but the reality is that we then ultimately have no more “value” than any other snippet of the universe. You and Violet (and I as well…) can all appreciate the beauty of things like trees in bloom, yet in a universe without God, randomly evolving, we’re just like the petals of those, magnificent for a moment, then gone…
If you are a Christian because of the example of Jesus, then wouldn’t it make sense to listen to the many things that Jesus has to say about matters such as life/death, eternity, (sin)….?
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OK, not no meaning at all, but no ultimate meaning, you say. I consider practical examples.
In a billion years the sun will warm up and Earth will suffer runaway global warming, if Earth has not before. So- I see a flower, am moved, but then think it has no ultimate meaning, so ignore it. My local food bank needs donations, but because its beneficiaries will all die eventually I ignore it. These things are silly and impossible.
Ultimately, you say, that food bank beneficiary would have no meaning- but s/he has meaning now. That is enough.
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They, of course, are entitled to their opinion as you are yours. The problem is one of ideology where one person wants to impose their way of thinking, and being, onto others. History is full of such people and many text books are also written by people with similar attitudes. Be careful, though, that you don’t become like them; that is, wanting to impose your way of life onto others.
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Haven’t seen you for a while. Have you met bornfromabove? He has an unorthodox approach to religion as well. I wonder if you two could click. You can see him on the “request for help with Matthew 24” post.
I do want to impose my beliefs on others, because I appear to be one of the few who knows the Truth. Odd how many of us there are (with different Truths).
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There’s only one Truth and none of us were intended to find it, only to look for it as life is not a destination but rather a journey.
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Such a view is completely devoid of empathy. That we all will cease to exist at some point is *more* of a reason to be rid of delusion rather than less. We do not have an infinite time, and pretending that it is otherwise only gives more excuses to make life miserable for others.
That some promote this fiction is sufficient grounds to speak out against it.
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Well said.
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It’s just how he imagines life without his god must be. It’s difficult to imagine atheism until you reach it.
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No, it won’t “stave off the dirt-hood that awaits us all, but it will affect the happiness, for the brief time they live, of those I care about, and that I will not tolerate. Confine your venom to theist sites, where you can high-five each other, but if you bring your vitriolic philosophies to the blogs of sane people, I will fight you. Count on it.
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I don’t think he meant it with venom. It’s just a skewed understanding of life without gods. That’s why people like him are so afraid of releasing the delusion switch – the other side looks terrifying. And he’s welcome here.
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I didn’t say he wasn’t, but he wanted to know why it mattered to me what he believed, and I told him.
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(I have actually lived “life without gods” myself, and so shockingly, I do know that life doesn’t automatically become devoid of all meaning/love/laughter/joy/passion, and all the many other facets of human experience…)
Even more shockingly, I can say from experience that I was somehow able to live for many years doing more or less exactly as I pleased, completely unencumbered by any kind of “residual religious guilt” that sought to invade my thinking and ruin the party…
So no, there is absolutely no “venom” intended. It’s simply been an admittedly drawn-out exercise of going, “Look, take your OWN cosmology out, let’s put it on the table, and really ask ourselves if this evolutionary explanation you all claim is really that adequate at explaining the various levels of human experience that in fact we all share….”
I don’t see it as an attack on any of “you”, since none of you were the inventors of the theory of Evolution yourselves. (and so nor do I feel like any rant against the God of the Bible is really a personal attack on me, since I don’t claim to have come up with a single word of that…)
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“ “Look, take your OWN cosmology out, let’s put it on the table, and really ask ourselves if this evolutionary explanation you all claim is really that adequate at explaining the various levels of human experience that in fact we all share….”
And yet I’m betting you’ve never read Dawkins’ The Ancestor’s Tale, have you? Some examination –!
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That comment deserves the FUCKWITERY AWARD OF 2015.
Does this assclown understand that the little pleasures and ease of life he/she experiences today are only in place because dirt-fated people before him/her took the time to improve the standard of living of those who’d come after them.
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I thought so too, quite hilarious in many respects. It was Ark’s badgering that elicited it, so all credit to his ability to drive theists to oddest corners of their minds.
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He’s the unchallenged Master, there’s no question there
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I don’t think you’re taking it back far enough, by any stretch there john… What is “pleasure”, anyhow? Is it nothing more in the end then chemical reactions in your brain? (as Evolution claims…)
If so, then what you just said could be translated, “Do the chemical reactions in his brain compute the fact that the chemical reactions of previous humanoid organisms all worked together to enable his own “pleasurable” chemical reactions to occur…?”
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Do you appreciate having electricity and running water?
Well, thank some forward-thinking dirt-fated person who bothered.
Now, if you don’t feel this way, and do not wish to act positively in the present to improve our lot (in small ways, or perhaps large ways), and therefore the lot of future generations then you are a useless human being just wasting our finite resources.
I hope you’re not a useless human being.
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You are simply stepping right over the real underlying questions…
By “appreciate”, do you mean that chemical processes occur in my brain which communicate positive responses to the ingestion of water or the ability to see at night?
It’s not just a matter of being “dirt-fated”, but that according to Evolution, even before death we are all really just highly organized “clods of dirt” parambulating around. (With our little systems of internal running water and electricity making us move…) 😉
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Refresh my memory… I called you an idiot in a previous thread, didn’t I? That was you, wasn’t it?
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(And amazingly it isn’t any stronger of an intellectual argument this time around either…)
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“we are all really just highly organized ‘clods of dirt’” – Isn’t that what your own Bible claims?
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There is a significant difference tho. What is added to the flesh and blood in Genesis, which scientific materialism insists does nor exist?
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And the Templeton Foundation has spent over a billion dollars so far (over nearly 30 years) funding research to try and find this “thing”…. But to no success.
Good on them for trying. It’s private money, and no one should shy away from research, but at what point do you stop looking for unicorns and instead simply focus on making this world a better place, now?
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You say that like it’s a bad thing —
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I just wanted to say that I love how you’re trying to use the term “chemical reactions” to downplay real and measured advances in the quality of human life. It’s as if reducing thought to its basic structure somehow makes human technological advancement less desirable. Ultimately what you’re trying to argue is that evolution makes no sense or is diminished compared to God because you can use different words to describe it.
The biggest hurdle you have to overcome is that if we compare the results of belief in God to the results to knowledge gained from science, there is no competition. Belief in a Cloud Riding Magician got people praying for relief from pestilence. Science gave us vaccines which we can get from the nearest clinic or drugstore.
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Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it cured Polio.
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Why do you guys keep trying to make it about “technological advances” and the many ways science has improved human life? If that’s basically all you’re thinking when you hear the word “science”, then again, you’re not thinking big enough, deeply enough, and still missing the point. Forget technology for a minute, what I’m talking about is the essence of life itself. Seriously y’all, you can go read the post I wrote earlier today in response to Ark’s request for “extrapolation” on this very thing (which so far he’s pretending not to have read)
All these repeated appeals to things like the benefits of technology etc are just really nothing but rabbit trails, intended to pull the conversation away from the glaring underlying questions….
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You’ve got it backwards. There’s 2 reasons why my comment is on topic. You replied to John’s comment, which asked if you appreciated how life has improved from the efforts of other humans. I’m replying to your first attempt to dodge that issue.
Second, it is incredibly relevant to the question you posed in the original post. In the original post, you asked why atheists are so worried about what other people teach their kids. It carries with it the implied assertion (in the next paragraph as well) that there is no greater purpose to life, that atheists should just leave Christians alone because we’re all going to become dirt again.
Technological advances refute this notion because it is evidence that what people have done in the past have affected and benefited us today. From the discovery of controlled fire and the invention of the wheel to the computers we use today, we all stand tall on the shoulders of those who have come before us.
So there you have it. I’m saying that your dirt rant is misguided because what people do actually echoes through to the lives of others.
By all means, ask your other “glaring” underlying questions. I’ll be more than happy to respond to them.
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I saw a good meme concerning this the other day, Siri. It went something like:
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Not entirely true, John – McDonalds will take anybody.
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🙂
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Oh, and the Republican Party! 😉
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If I found that meme, it would be going on one of my posts.
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Good, huh? Quite cutting, but also painfully true. There is a real danger to teaching kids such utter nonsense. Thankfully, its only really the evangelicals who go to such extremes, and you have to feel terribly sorry for these home-schooled kids who are placed at such a disadvantage because of their parents craziness.
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I know you read Jonny Scaramunga’s blog, John – you should post a link to some of the horror stories from home-schooled kids.
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I haven’t visited his blog for ages. I should, he was doing mighty fine work
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Well, John’s original point about “appreciating the improvements of people before, etc.”, was of course just an example of the whole underlying Victorian/Darwinian/Enlightment-era philosophy rearing it’s head, (as it so often does), which assumes a bunch of certain values/perspectives it’s approach, such as empiricism and pragmaticism, etc. In a nutshell, “progress”. You can’t argue with “progress” after all!
But ok, if we’re gonna roll up our sleeves and really let ourselves examine certain philosophical questions/assumptions, then this a decent place to start. It’s where I’ve been TRYING to start, in fact… 😉 Not “dodging”, I’m actually pointing to the “metaphysical baggage” that is inherent in a very question like “do you appreciate advancements from prior generations….”
The question itself makes all kinds of value statements, philosophical assumptions, which Darwinian evolution itself has no explanation for. Why does that matter? Because that “Darwinian sandbox” is the one that you’re insisting everyone else “play in”, so ok, then you have to as well….
Yes, scientists who believe in Evolution can produce real scientific discoveries which do contribute towards the betterment of human life. So can scientists who believe in God.
So the point of my “dirt rant” is still one you’re not really absorbing. Never have I been arguing that we should not of course work towards the “betterment” of society, humanity, what I am saying is that Darwinian Evolution, as a comprehensive belief system (and that’s what it is, like it or not) has no “unifying principle” whatsoever, from which to base any reason as to WHY things like “progress” is “good”, etc. You ignore the philosophical vacuum Evolution hands you, because hey, we all still have personal experience, and personal experience tells us things like “progress is obviously better than regression”, “pleasure is better than pain”, “existence is BETTER than non-existence”, etc…
All of these things contain value judgments. Metaphysical assumptions. So the real question is, why does your personal experience and practical approach to life in general, TOTALLY conflict with the comprehensive belief system you hold….?
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I’ll try to keep my points brief.
1) Evolution is a scientific theory and not a system of beliefs. It explains how life becomes more diverse through a process of natural selection. As a scientific theory, it makes no claims about morality or other areas of philosophy. All it explains is how natural selection occurs.
2) What you are getting at is conflating evolution with other secular value systems. Yes, they rely on assumptions, but the assumptions aren’t exactly controversial. For example, I might not have bedrock philosophical underpinnings for building a house for an impoverished family, but I’d still do it anyways. I could assume that it will benefit that family and be done with my philosophical quagmire.
3) Just because theism has invented a stringent set of justifications for everything existing ever does not mean that secular thought has to do the same. It is not a deficiency to have a morality that is incrementally improved over time based on personal experience and deliberation with other human beings.
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1). Even when reduced to a “scientific theory” (even though it IS a belief system nonetheless) it still doesn’t even go so far as to truly explain how natural selection occurs. It makes mere generalizations about genetic changes, but can’t ever get into the nitty gritty of explaining how SO many specific genetic changes could all magically occur in ways that only ever seem to produce new, functioning “code”. If natural selection was indeed the thing which was guiding biology, we should honestly be able to look around and see far more horrific-looking, non-functional genetic mutations, rather than functional ones (but yes, I know, Evolution always claims that such “bad mutations” always get weeded out…)
2). Yes, you simply “do it anyways”, and “assume”. That’s all.
3). “It is not a deficiency to have a morality that is incrementally improved over time based on personal experience and deliberation with other human beings. ”
Obviously, I completely disagree, in that I’d say you only ever have the illusion of morality, when in fact morality can turn upside down on it’s own head, as many times as it wants, solely based on “personal experience” and “deliberation with other human beings”…
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“…when in fact morality can turn upside down on it’s own head, as many times as it wants, solely based on [‘]personal experience[‘] and [‘]deliberation with other human beings[‘]…”
What, you mean like religious views on slavery as a for instance? Religion is so superior as a basis of morality.
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Fallen men use religion to try and justify their evil practices all over the place. God has never actually changed His view on the value/sacredness of human life. Straw man argument. Try again.
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So basically I’ve learned two things from my conversation with you:
1 – You don’t know what the Theory of Evolution is.
2 – You don’t know what a straw man fallacy is.
These terms are easily found on Wikipedia. I highly recommend you read up on them.
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The theory of Evolution is not limited to the evolution of biology “Biz”, despite whatever you might believe…
And yes, I know what a straw man is, and that is why I used the term, because I believe you are creating an incorrect description of something in order to argue against that false construct. (just as you believe I am doing about Evolution…)
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You’ve still not read Dawkins’ The Ancestor’s Tale,” have you Fiction?
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(I think Dawkins is incredibly foolish… but I thought you knew that.)
“An itinerant selfish gene
Said “Bodies aplenty I’ve seen.
You think you’re so clever
But I’ll live forever
You’re just a survival machine.”
There you go. People are illusions, only DNA is what actually “lives on”…
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I would expect you to aspire to nothing more. However, his theological opinions aside, he is, after all, an evolutionary biologist and writer. He is an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford, and was the University of Oxford’s Professor for Public Understanding of Science from 1995 until 2008. The Ancestor’s Tale has nothing to do with religion, strictly evolutionary biology, for which he is eminently qualified.
As I haven’t the time (nor the inclination) to educate you regarding the subject of species evolution, and since you obviously know very little of the matter, I can’t imagine that we have much more to say on that subject until you read something akin to The Ancestor’s Tale, and by that, I don’t mean something from Answers In Genesis —
In the now-famous words of Arkenaten, the Great: T’ra
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You don’t have time to “educate me” eh? I guess the years of “education” I went through in school weren’t sufficient to explain the theory of Evolution, biological or otherwise? It’s not a complex idea overall. Genetic mutations. Do you seriously think I don’t understand the premise of genetic mutation?
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Apparently not. And as far as the amount of time you’ve spent in school is concerned, I don’t think years spent in the same grade count.
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That’s funny. You’re very clever you know. Very amusing indeed.
Almost as amusing as watching that video someone left for me to watch showing Dawkins “explain” how the eyeball evolved. Hilarious…
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“Never have I been arguing that we should not of course work towards the ‘betterment’ of society, humanity” – Why would you want to do that, Fiction? Wouldn’t you, I doing so, simply be postponing the time a needy member of society/humanity could well be spending in the “heaven” you profess to believe in? When you feed a starving African child with a stomach distended by hunger, aren’t you preventing him from hurrying to that magnificent paradise? How much better to let him starve and speed his ascent?
I would feed him, because I don’t believe there IS such a place, and so I would prefer to make his life on earth more pleasant, but that’s just me —
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I know you would feed him. I would too. That’s the point. Because the shared inclination that other people are worth caring for in the first place has no answer in Evolution. You experience the inclination, even as an Atheist. Point granted.
What you don’t want to look at is how your inclinations and experience conflict with your own worldview. It’s pretty simple.
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“Because the shared inclination that other people are worth caring for in the first place has no answer in Evolution” – How do you know that the next phase evolution will take, is to develop a universal sense of compassion for others? In a technologically advanced world, where we could blow ourselves up with the touch of a button, the “fittest” may well be those who believe that caring for our fellow humans, as opposed to – oh, I don’t know, slaying all of the Amalekites and ripping all of the babies from the bellies of their women – might well be the one thing that saves Humanity and continuity of the species is what evolution is all about.
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“…and continuity of the species is what evolution is all about.”
But WHY? Why is this? Why is there any ultimate difference between flashes of compassion, and flashes of slaying, in the grand scheme of the Evolutionary universe?
The more you talk, the more you really do sound like a pantheistic mystic than I think you realize…
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“Why is there any ultimate difference between flashes of compassion, and flashes of slaying, in the grand scheme of the Evolutionary universe?” – The Evolutionary universe works in mysterious ways —
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🙂 as most gods do….
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“pantheistic implies, here a god, there a god, everywhere a god, god – what part of A-theist did you not entirely understand?
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Exactly…. “Peter-pantheism”.
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“Tick, tock,” Hook!
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Besides, you haven’t answered my question – why wouldn’t a theist want to hurry them to heaven?
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(cuz your “question” is absurd on it’s face, and I know you already know Biblical theology well enough yourself to understand it’s self-contradictions…)
If that was REALLY what Christianity espoused, then hey, I guess I’d be have to be lining up alongside all those Darwinian-fueled eugenicists who claimed (and still do actually, only slightly more covertly) that we need to “cull the herd” in order to get rid of the weak and undesirables….
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If we really had such a dastardly plan like that in mind, don’t you think that theists would be the first ones culled? Don’t start giving me ideas —
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(It’s not a new idea….)
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