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I've Sacrificed my belief in Evolution for Religion

Subduction Zone

Veteran Member
Sounds intellectually dishonest and, really, kind of
cowardly, dont you think? Those are like big red flags,
danger ahead!

I personally find it impossible to decide, or choose
what I believe, cannot do it any more than I can
decide how tall I am.

I cannot look at the blue sky and decide it is midnight.

Maybe you can talk them out of their foolish beliefs.
That would be the courageous thing to do.
The problem is that her family is Jehovah Witness members. If one goes against the teachings of the church members are eventually shunned. It can be very hard on a person to have all contact with their family ended.
 

Katzpur

Not your average Mormon
Perhaps the best you will ever be able to do is compartmentalize your beliefs, much like those Utah professors of the evolutionary sciences who are good Mormons. Monday through Friday, while doing their jobs, they believe in evolution. Sunday, they go to church and don't believe in evolution. Never do they examine their beliefs in evolution in light of their religious beliefs, nor examine their religious beliefs in light of their scientific beliefs. Those belong to separate compartments in their minds.
Now how would you know what's going on in their minds? Many Christians, not just Mormons, accept evolution as a fact. They just believe that God directs the process. They may talk about Adam and Eve in a church setting (as I might) but realize (as I do) that they didn't just get deposited here on earth on "Day 6" as the first homo-sapiens, all of the animals having been deposited here on "Day 5." I know that doesn't make sense to a lot of people, but for millions of us, it does.
 
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Sunstone

De Diablo Del Fora
Premium Member
Now how would you know what's going on in their minds? Many Christians, not just Mormons, accept evolution as a fact. They just believe that God directs the process. They may talk about Adam and Eve in a church setting (as I might) but realize (as I do) that they didn't just get deposited here on earth on "Day 6" as the first homo-sapiens, all of the animals having been deposited here on "Day 5." I know that doesn't make sense to a lot of people, but for millions of us, it does.

I was just digging up vague memories of an interview with some professor from Brigham Young done some years ago. He impressed me as wise to compartmentalize his views because he said he could not reconcile them, if I now recall correctly.

I compartmentalize some views myself when I know two things are both true yet I have as yet no way of reconciling the two.
 

sandy whitelinger

Veteran Member
Please be sensitive when saying things like that. You have no idea how some people might take it.
sad0122.gif
I was being sensitive.
 

Thermos aquaticus

Well-Known Member
I've recently committed to rejoining my family's religion (the Jehovah's Witnesses). In doing so I'm obligated to give up my belief in evolution. This is hard for me because I find evolution so logical.

To combat my resistance to rejecting evolution, I've been researching all the objections to evolution and studying all the arguments for creation. It's not working. I can't seem to give up my belief in evolution, despite the fact that it goes against Jehovah's Witness theology.

What should i do?

How do I manipulate my logical facilities so that I can genuinely reject evolution and genuinely accept creation?

"If the tenets of young earth creationism were true, basically all of the sciences of geology, cosmology, and biology would utterly collapse. It would be the same as saying 2 plus 2 is actually 5. The tragedy of young-earth creationism is that it takes a relatively recent and extreme view of Genesis, applies to it an unjustified scientific gloss, and then asks sincere and well-meaning seekers to swallow this whole, despite the massive discordance with decades of scientific evidence from multiple disciplines. Is it any wonder that many sadly turn away from faith concluding that they cannot believe in a God who asks for an abandonment of logic and reason?"--Dr. Francis Collins, "Faith and the Human Genome"

"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use."--Galileo Galilei
 

David1967

Well-Known Member
Premium Member
I've recently committed to rejoining my family's religion (the Jehovah's Witnesses). In doing so I'm obligated to give up my belief in evolution. This is hard for me because I find evolution so logical.

To combat my resistance to rejecting evolution, I've been researching all the objections to evolution and studying all the arguments for creation. It's not working. I can't seem to give up my belief in evolution, despite the fact that it goes against Jehovah's Witness theology.

What should i do?

How do I manipulate my logical facilities so that I can genuinely reject evolution and genuinely accept creation?

I see no reason you cant believe in aspects of both. I do.
 

QuestioningMind

Well-Known Member
I've recently committed to rejoining my family's religion (the Jehovah's Witnesses). In doing so I'm obligated to give up my belief in evolution. This is hard for me because I find evolution so logical.

To combat my resistance to rejecting evolution, I've been researching all the objections to evolution and studying all the arguments for creation. It's not working. I can't seem to give up my belief in evolution, despite the fact that it goes against Jehovah's Witness theology.

What should i do?

How do I manipulate my logical facilities so that I can genuinely reject evolution and genuinely accept creation?

You'd have to ask a theist who is somehow capable of turning off the logical reasoning part of their brain. Personally I've never understood how anyone can do so. The bigger question is, why would you possible WANT to be able to disregard logic and reason? What kind of a loving family insists that you live a lie?
 

Hockeycowboy

Witness for Jehovah
Premium Member
You won't be able to. Once you have understood the scienc,e you will not be able to put that genie back in the bottle.

You would be well advised to adhere to a more mainstream account of creation, in which God is able to uphold the order in creation without needing to continually tinker with the unfolding of nature as it goes along.

Whatever you do, DO NOT get involved in so-called "Intelligent Design", as I see someone is advising. This is a deceitful pseudoscience, invented by right-wing lawyers as a scam to get religion taught in US schools. It is a total dead end from a science point of view.

Now this is deceptive, saying "lawyers" are behind it, as if there are no scientists supporting it!

Just because science chooses to restrict itself in pursuing subjects that can be tested, ie., falsified, and ignores the concepts it can't test, like invisible life and events in which people have paranormal experiences, in no way negates these things existing!!


"You won't be able to. Once you have understood the scienc,e you will not be able to put that genie back in the bottle."

Please! I've known of several scientists and biology professors -- a couple of them personally -- who towed the line while working, they had to, to make a living.....the DI can't financially support everyone....but they abandoned those beliefs, once they retired!

Richard Sternberg is a good example of what happens when you veer from the herd mentality.
 

stvdv

Veteran Member
I've recently committed to rejoining my family's religion (the Jehovah's Witnesses). In doing so I'm obligated to give up my belief in evolution. This is hard for me because I find evolution so logical.

To combat my resistance to rejecting evolution, I've been researching all the objections to evolution and studying all the arguments for creation. It's not working. I can't seem to give up my belief in evolution, despite the fact that it goes against Jehovah's Witness theology.

What should i do?

How do I manipulate my logical facilities so that I can genuinely reject evolution and genuinely accept creation?

Just meditate on “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results”

Edit: Audie was so nice to warn me in time, that this quote was not made by A.Einstein
 
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exchemist

Veteran Member
Now this is deceptive, saying "lawyers" are behind it, as if there are no scientists supporting it!

Just because science chooses to restrict itself in pursuing subjects that can be tested, ie., falsified, and ignores the concepts it can't test, like invisible life and events in which people have paranormal experiences, in no way negates these things existing!!


"You won't be able to. Once you have understood the scienc,e you will not be able to put that genie back in the bottle."

Please! I've known of several scientists and biology professors -- a couple of them personally -- who towed the line while working, they had to, to make a living.....the DI can't financially support everyone....but they abandoned those beliefs, once they retired!

Richard Sternberg is a good example of what happens when you veer from the herd mentality.
Read the Wedge Strategy document. This was drawn up by Philip Johnson, a lawyer who describes himself as "father" of the intelligent design movement,
Phillip E. Johnson - Wikipedia

with the explicit object of getting God back into US society by a variety of means, prominent among which was to get religion taught in the schools. This was done via the introduction of the idea of an "intelligence", never to be referred to as God of course, as that would break the law.

Here are some quotations from the Wiki entry on the Wedge Strategy:
QUOTE
Elaborating on the goals and methods of wedge strategy, Johnson stated in an interview conducted in 2002 for Touchstone Magazine that

"The mechanism of the wedge strategy is to make it attractive to Catholics, Orthodox, non-fundamentalist Protestants, observant Jews, and so on."
He went on to elaborate:

"So the question is: "How to win?" That's when I began to develop what you now see full-fledged in the "wedge" strategy: "Stick with the most important thing" —the mechanism and the building up of information. Get the Bible and the Book of Genesis out of the debate because you do not want to raise the so-called Bible-science dichotomy. Phrase the argument in such a way that you can get it heard in the secular academy and in a way that tends to unify the religious dissenters. That means concentrating on, "Do you need a Creator to do the creating, or can nature do it on its own?" and refusing to get sidetracked onto other issues, which people are always trying to do."

Other statements of Johnson's acknowledge that the goal of the intelligent design movement is to promote a theistic and creationist agenda cast as a scientific concept:

"Our strategy has been to change the subject a bit so that we can get the issue of intelligent design, which really means the reality of God, before the academic world and into the schools."

and

"This isn't really, and never has been a debate about science. Its about religion and philosophy."

The whole Wiki article is here: Wedge strategy - Wikipedia

This is why I say Intelligent Design is deceitful.

The reasons why it is not science, I have elaborated for you on another thread.
 
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Audie

Veteran Member
Now this is deceptive, saying "lawyers" are behind it, as if there are no scientists supporting it!

Just because science chooses to restrict itself in pursuing subjects that can be tested, ie., falsified, and ignores the concepts it can't test, like invisible life and events in which people have paranormal experiences, in no way negates these things existing!!


"You won't be able to. Once you have understood the scienc,e you will not be able to put that genie back in the bottle."

Please! I've known of several scientists and biology professors -- a couple of them personally -- who towed the line while working, they had to, to make a living.....the DI can't financially support everyone....but they abandoned those beliefs, once they retired!

Richard Sternberg is a good example of what happens when you veer from the herd mentality.

You know, if he were a good example, he would not be the only example
but of course, it is not about veering from "the herd mentality" anyway.

IF you had a case to present, you'd not have to misrepresent anything, would you?

Anyone who, btw, "abandoned a belief" when he retired, had no intellecual
integrity in the first place, and whatever they think or dont think now
is of no interest.
 

stvdv

Veteran Member
First off, he didnt say that

Thank you. I just read it here on RF. I mostly check quotes, not this time.
So I will take A.Einstein reference out [thanks for reminding me in time]

I still like the quote a lot and seems valuable to me especially in the context of this post
[going against your own conscience and expecting it to feel good].
 
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