you are generalising, wellwisher.
for one, atheism is about not believing in the existence of god or gods. Nothing more, nothing less.
everything else about the religions, including any scriptures, if such texts exist, are something else, altogether…including the Bible’s Genesis.
of course, the bible, is central to the beliefs of Christians, however the Bible, only present stories about the God and all the other characters (from Adam to Jesus’ disciples). For one, God didn’t write any part of the bible, they were by bunch of people who really didn’t understand the nature of the planet or that of human biology. For another, atheism is still about not believing in the existence of God, not about “not believing” in the bible’s stories.
Second, you don’t know the background of every & each atheists. Some may have been atheists all their life, while others were former Christians, who may understand the Bible as well as you do, including understanding the Genesis creation.
you cannot pigeonhole every atheists in a single hole with regarding to their Bible literacy.
Plus, many atheists didn’t stop being “Christian” because of number of other reasons that have nothing to do with the Creation story.
edit:
btw, wellwisher. Number-wise, not percentages, there are lot more Christians in the western world, who worked as biologists (who accepted Evolution) than there are atheists working as biologists. You wouldn’t call these Christians “atheists“, would you?
Lastly, the 3rd point. Science is science. History is history. Science and history have nothing to do with atheism.
Often creationists, lump people who don’t believe in the Genesis Creation, but accepting Evolution as science, as “atheists“.
Evolution is biology, not atheism. You are forgetting that
@Dan From Smithville ,
@metis and other Christians here, accept Evolution, are still Christians, not atheists.
@shunyadragon may not be a Christian, but he is a theist (he is a Baha’i).
like, I said, you are generalising. You are ignoring the fact, that there are theists, be they Christians or from some other religious backgrounds, they cannot be called atheists simply because they accept Evolution as biological fact.
I, myself, while not be officially a Christian, when I was younger, did believe in the bible, including the Genesis Creation and the Flood. I didn’t started-out being agnostic because of science or Evolution. I started to have doubts because of the gospel’s signs didn’t align up with the OT passages, for instance Matthew 1:23 & Isaiah 7:14. When I reread Isaiah 7, the whole chapter, I came to realisation that Isaiah’s original sign had nothing to do with Mary and Jesus.
And so with that in mind, I began to doubt the validity of other gospel’s signs.
this was how I became agnostic, back in 2000, when I was 34 years old. I didn’t have problems with Genesis Creation until 2003, when I encountered arguments about Evolution and Creation, at the first internet forum I had joined. When I looked more closely at Evolution and at Creation, I realised that Genesis authors didn’t know much about biology at all.
Hell, I didn’t know much about biology myself. My education in biology, was back in high school at Year 9 level, where I was only taught very basic genetics, but nothing about Evolution, like mutations or Natural Selection. In Year 10 and later, I had focused my electives on maths, physics & chemistry, ignoring biology.
and while I may have heard of evolution, natural selection & mutations on TV, eg the Fly, Spider-Man, Ninja Turtles, X-men, etc, I had never understood them, until I had borrowed an old biology textbook fro my cousin in late 2003.
prior to 2003, I also never heard of “creationism“ or “creationist”, but I did know and believe in Genesis creation before joining that 1st forum.
but just because someone is atheist or agnostic, it doesn’t mean they don’t understand Genesis creation.
Anyway, creationism isn’t science, and Genesis isn’t science or history.