I believed the Bible was absolute truth. As the word of God it should be perfect. What was i supposed to think when the evidence showed something contrary to the words i trusted implicitly?
The real turn in this story came from whales ability to smell, or lack there of.
Evolutionary biology shows the direct genetic link between animals. The theory of evolution predicts that the genes of ancestors will be present in some form in the DNA of creatures today.
The evolution of whales comes from land mammals which came from some aquatic critters further down the line (these aren't exactly the most technical terms but you get the idea.)
While I dint have time to discuss the entire lineage, and as far as fossils are concerned, there are some large gaps, but you can fill those gaps with whale DNA.
Because land animals evolved from a distant ancestor they have the genes for olfactory receptors which function under water only, but the genes are switched off in most terrestrial creatures. But what about whales? If they evolved from sea to land to sea again what do you think their genes would say?
Toothy whales have both genes for aquatic and airborne olfactory receptors, but they're all turned off.
I believed that God made everything. Why would he add junk genes to a creature? Genes it didn't need or use and indicated quite specifically the lineage of a creature's evolutionary process.
When I didn't know too much about genes, I assumed they all did something whether we knew it or not, but that's not the case. Organisms do not need every gene. Pseudogenes are abundant in organisms. This idea brought up an image of God sitting at a computer hitting "copy" and "paste" like a maniac as he created.
So if God presents the truth in a way that indicates a lie, is He lying?
Is it a lie for God to create every organism as if it had evolved even though it didn't?
Let me warn you now, from here I only find more lies that creationists shift their theories and stance on quite often to keep the position that their faith is grounded in truth. The reason this is such a hot topic to Christians is because the entire Bible must be true in order for the whole belief to not fall apart.
How can we inherit sin from Adam, if there was no Adam? If the creation story is false, why would Jesus, being God in flesh, mention it? I know that the domino effect is quite over used, but it applies overwhelmingly here.
Deep time is a term to describe the massive expanses of time, which are so mind-boggling large that they are difficult to truly comprehend, that make up the history of the universe.
I had never believed the universe to be older than 6,000 years, so how can we see stars billions of light years away?
Some of the creationist answers were as archaic as the Bible itself, such as the light-in-transit model which postulated that everything beyond 6,000 light years from us was played out like a movie on a galactic screen.
I immediately doubted the veracity of the claims of the distance of stars... until I studied how we find those distances through magnitude, parralax, and redshift. These methods give us an approximation which creationist argue with shifts in light travel fluctuations, but the theories are completely unfounded in reality, and it still leads to the same problem of "appearance of age."
Did God just make it appear old? Why would he form the cosmos in a way that alludes to an old universe? Maybe it wasn't in his plan for us to be able to measure those distances, but then why are we still here if it's not in his plan?
Over a period of months, which I am recounting in a single post, my faith was falling apart like a Jenga tower. I was pulling blocks to fill holes, but I was only creating new holes in my faith and my worldview.
The moment I realized that what I had been taught was untrue was the most profoundly lonely moment I have ever experienced.
Up until then I had imagined that we were all spiritually connected in a way that transcends belief or faith. That the souls of humanity existed on a plane indiscriminate of time or place.
What made it so profound for me was that for the first time ever I was alone in my mind. It was the first time I had ever conceived that God was not watching everything that went on in my mind like a continuous facebook feed filled with pictures, statuses and videos.
I was alone.
There were people nearby, but I was truly alone. It was frightening and liberating at the same time.
Even after all this I still felt the need to be sure. What if I was wrong? We're talking about ETERNAL consequences here. This goes well beyond the idea of deep time and was truly a concern. Had I been deceived? Was I lured away from my faith by the devil? What if the reason I felt so alone was actually separation from God? Am i just to dumb to see the message God has for me? Had i fallen into the same trap as my uncle and was i failing in my mission to win him back for Christ? Is the Bible absolute truth?
To answer these questions I had to turn back to the scriptures.
The real turn in this story came from whales ability to smell, or lack there of.
Evolutionary biology shows the direct genetic link between animals. The theory of evolution predicts that the genes of ancestors will be present in some form in the DNA of creatures today.
The evolution of whales comes from land mammals which came from some aquatic critters further down the line (these aren't exactly the most technical terms but you get the idea.)
While I dint have time to discuss the entire lineage, and as far as fossils are concerned, there are some large gaps, but you can fill those gaps with whale DNA.
Because land animals evolved from a distant ancestor they have the genes for olfactory receptors which function under water only, but the genes are switched off in most terrestrial creatures. But what about whales? If they evolved from sea to land to sea again what do you think their genes would say?
Toothy whales have both genes for aquatic and airborne olfactory receptors, but they're all turned off.
I believed that God made everything. Why would he add junk genes to a creature? Genes it didn't need or use and indicated quite specifically the lineage of a creature's evolutionary process.
When I didn't know too much about genes, I assumed they all did something whether we knew it or not, but that's not the case. Organisms do not need every gene. Pseudogenes are abundant in organisms. This idea brought up an image of God sitting at a computer hitting "copy" and "paste" like a maniac as he created.
So if God presents the truth in a way that indicates a lie, is He lying?
Is it a lie for God to create every organism as if it had evolved even though it didn't?
Let me warn you now, from here I only find more lies that creationists shift their theories and stance on quite often to keep the position that their faith is grounded in truth. The reason this is such a hot topic to Christians is because the entire Bible must be true in order for the whole belief to not fall apart.
How can we inherit sin from Adam, if there was no Adam? If the creation story is false, why would Jesus, being God in flesh, mention it? I know that the domino effect is quite over used, but it applies overwhelmingly here.
Deep time is a term to describe the massive expanses of time, which are so mind-boggling large that they are difficult to truly comprehend, that make up the history of the universe.
I had never believed the universe to be older than 6,000 years, so how can we see stars billions of light years away?
Some of the creationist answers were as archaic as the Bible itself, such as the light-in-transit model which postulated that everything beyond 6,000 light years from us was played out like a movie on a galactic screen.
I immediately doubted the veracity of the claims of the distance of stars... until I studied how we find those distances through magnitude, parralax, and redshift. These methods give us an approximation which creationist argue with shifts in light travel fluctuations, but the theories are completely unfounded in reality, and it still leads to the same problem of "appearance of age."
Did God just make it appear old? Why would he form the cosmos in a way that alludes to an old universe? Maybe it wasn't in his plan for us to be able to measure those distances, but then why are we still here if it's not in his plan?
Over a period of months, which I am recounting in a single post, my faith was falling apart like a Jenga tower. I was pulling blocks to fill holes, but I was only creating new holes in my faith and my worldview.
The moment I realized that what I had been taught was untrue was the most profoundly lonely moment I have ever experienced.
Up until then I had imagined that we were all spiritually connected in a way that transcends belief or faith. That the souls of humanity existed on a plane indiscriminate of time or place.
What made it so profound for me was that for the first time ever I was alone in my mind. It was the first time I had ever conceived that God was not watching everything that went on in my mind like a continuous facebook feed filled with pictures, statuses and videos.
I was alone.
There were people nearby, but I was truly alone. It was frightening and liberating at the same time.
Even after all this I still felt the need to be sure. What if I was wrong? We're talking about ETERNAL consequences here. This goes well beyond the idea of deep time and was truly a concern. Had I been deceived? Was I lured away from my faith by the devil? What if the reason I felt so alone was actually separation from God? Am i just to dumb to see the message God has for me? Had i fallen into the same trap as my uncle and was i failing in my mission to win him back for Christ? Is the Bible absolute truth?
To answer these questions I had to turn back to the scriptures.
I love how you question everything. That, in itself, is very Biblical. Only the truly enlightened can say "I know nothing".
ReplyDeleteI'll take that as a compliment, but to be honest it doesn't feel very enlightening to say "I don't know" when I'm used to having answers in black, white and red
DeleteFor your consideration, I think perhaps many Christians confuse Miracles with Magic. Magic is an illusion with no roots in reality or physics, a lie or trick if you will. A miracle is supposed to be something different; something real. If a miracle is real then we should likely be able to trace it's roots back to reality, something that occurred somehow, something that left a trace, something that we can perhaps figure out and reproduce. Why then is it that as soon as we find miracle is actually real that we no longer believe in it? Why must a miracle be mysterious? So far science tells us that there really was nothing, then there was light, then there was everything else. Man was created from dust. What of it if was through many steps to be the current form? I write computer code. As we get smarter, we learn to re-use portions of code where ever we can. I create very dissimilar applications that share perfected code.
DeleteLastly, there is a problem that occurs after the big bang. Nature broke it's own rules. We can't reproduce it in the lab or find it in nature. Somehow matter was generated without any corresponding anti-matter. The proof is that there is anything here at all. Physicists can't explain it, but it happened. Source: Nathan Degrase
The baryon asymmetry is an interesting issue, but I think it assumes there aren't massive amounts of antimatter somewhere and we just don't know it. Regardless it's very interesting that there is something rather than nothing and I think it's a great argument for a force outside the universe acting on our reality. That could be a god or maybe some hyper law which we don't know yet. I could speculate a lot on this, but im no expert and I will continue to look into this.
DeleteI am totally on board for perfect code being viable in multiple programs, but what we find in genetics is a lot of non-functional genes. If all genes were functional and there was an unusual disparity between animals we considered related, you would have an excellent case against evolution.
Miracles rooted in reality is a great way to connect faith with reality. Maybe there can be excellent explanations for many miracles, but what about lots wife becoming a pillar of salt? Jesus feeding thousands with only a small amount of food? Miracles must require God's supernatural input, otherwise they are just happenings. Saying God made man from dust in many stages over a long period of time is in direct conflict with the biblical story of 6 days of creation (if you research the word yom in Genesis you will know what im saying.) Also, if God used evolution it would be quite difficult to pinpoint the first man and why did God need to make a woman out of his rib? This would make eve much more soecial in my eyes, but the Bible clearly states it is Adam's sin which brought this world down, even though very clearly Eve sinned first and before her the serpent did. I can think of more than a few ways God could have revealed his power to us, like maybe he could have written his name on the moon with volcanic eruptions after he gave it to his people. We would be able to verify a date and it would be a daily reminder of who runs the universe. If God acts on the universe, there should be a way to at least recognize his supernatural intervention. Not knowing how something happened is not proof of god.
And thanks for posting Captain Crunch. I always appreciate a different perspective to think about.
DeleteWhy would you trust science? Why would you trust Man ? Why would you discount the wonderful design in nature for another belief system when you simply felt the God of your parents was too small? Science is a belief , it should be a study group that looks at every idea to test and see if it is a possibility . I tested everything but atheism , because the Universe is just to wonderful to think it happened by time and accident . The whale you speak of was not always living in the same conditions , the world has gone through earth changes , air was different , the land was different ... The Whale Has DNA and was designed with features that do not work now .. So ? His DNA design did not change , his world did .. Look at prehistoric animals , they all were bigger .. Dragonflies were bigger , even neiandrathals were bigger and had stronger bodies and bigger brains , thier teeth were made to last , the skeletons were designed to live longer than ours . Science might be overlooking a few things to go along with thier beliefs .. Everyone has beliefs , everyone has gods , if not beyond us ,we think we are Gods ... I do not think you are an atheist , I think you are still agnostic and have not yet found the Unknown God you can trust in .. I found Jesus to be bigger than anything even the Church can contain . I know him as Special .. His blueprint is in and on everything pure and honest ... He is a scientist , he is a friend ,
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for your reply. To be honest I did consider this many times, if I was just trading one god for another and I havent labeled myself as anything such as atheist or agnostic quite yet because I dont think im any where near informed enough to make that decision. I can say it would be very easy to prove evolution false by finding a fossil out of order in geological layers. I dont have faith in men, but I do have faith in their sense of pride. Every scientist dreams of being a part of a landmark discovery. They love to prove each other wrong, which usually happens in peer reviewed science journals. Can you find anything from a creationist in those journals? I did hold onto my faith at this point and my next post outlines what happened when I went back to the Bible. Thank you again for responding, as I know you do so because you care. Could you point me to where I can read more about the theory of animals dna being varied for the changes in the world? I never heard that before and I'd like to know more
DeleteI've stumbled across your blog tonight and read most of your posts. Thanks for writing all this down, it is interesting to read and I hope you're finding it therapeutic... the process of questioning and rebuilding your worldview can be incredibly lonely. I went through some similar processes, trying to persuade atheists and evolutionists of how false their beliefs were but only becoming more and more doubtful and embarrassed the more I examined the different sides of the debates. The Jenga-tower effect (very good way of putting it btw) happened somewhat slowly with me because I tried to avoid confronting these problems for a few years before I finally admitted I didn't believe in Christianity anymore.
ReplyDeleteGood luck with handling your family's reaction and all the other struggles that come with this process.
Thanks for the comment. It has been therapeutic to get all this out and I hope others can use it as a way to share the process to unbelief and encourage those in the process. I'll continue this blog beyond my coming out so keep looking out for weekly posts
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