left behind series says evolution the root of all evil

[Lord Zentei]

When Im wrong, Im wrong -shrugs-
My belief was that god was an all around nice guy. When it was shown he wasnt (mark 7:27), I tried to rework it as the bible was true, but god was evil. It had me in a suicidal depression for about 4 months, and then I decided atheism was the only sensible alternative.

I've read over DW's creationism page and all his arguments about how God really existed He'd be evil, and they never convinced me much. The Bible is at best the word of God interpreted by men and distorted through Heaven alone knows how many generations of oral retelling. It would be ludicrous to think the Bible is literally true, because what we have today is the end result of a long game of Telephone at best. Besides, just as my personal totally subjective opinion, the idea that human beings could be more moral than God if He did exist turned me off, it struck me as tremendously arrogant. But if it convinced you that's fine with me.

You are aware that that page is targeted at the YECs who regard the Bible as the literal truth, right?

[Enforcer Talen]

Can a mod split the deconversion topic, plz?

[General Zod]

I've read over DW's creationism page and all his arguments about how God really existed He'd be evil, and they never convinced me much. The Bible is at best the word of God interpreted by men and distorted through Heaven alone knows how many generations of oral retelling. It would be ludicrous to think the Bible is literally true, because what we have today is the end result of a long game of Telephone at best. Besides, just as my personal totally subjective opinion, the idea that human beings could be more moral than God if He did exist turned me off, it struck me as tremendously arrogant. But if it convinced you that's fine with me.

So you're willing to admit that the bible isn't 100% accurate, but not the possibility that it's completely wrong and there is no god? The vast majority of christian religions rely on the bible's infallibility as their premise. What kind of method do you use to distinguish what's true and what's simply metaphor? There has to be some kind of 'benchmark', to use as a distinguishing factor, or else it all may as well be false.

[Zero]

If you admit that the bible is fallible, you ought also admit that it's quite likely that the peoples in the bible often attributed things they didn't understand to some notion of a diety, and exhagerated their claims through oral tradition over the years. They also probably did just what christians did in the crusades, and justified attacking enemy tribes by saying that it was God's will, thus attributing all the horrific events in the OT to him. None of it makes much sense if you actually take the position that there is a God, but if you think of it as the writing of an oral tradition based off of initial events that aren't supernatural at all, but were too inconvievable to be attributed to anything understandable, and thus attributed to the supernatural, the whole thing starts to make a lot more sense. When you also consider that the NT had several years to change and shift before it was ever formally recorded, you can also understand how such things aren't reliable at all.

Of course, to one such as myself, no religion has any credibility. That's why we have an idea of something called 'faith,' but not enough people understand that it's a bad thing...

[CaptainChewbacca]

I found the quote:

From The Glorious Appearing pg 318.

Jesus continued "For all your lies about having evolved, you are a created being."

Now, taken out of context, this is a rebuke of evolution, but earlier in the series, the antichrist does a monologue about how he was not created by God, but that he merely evolved from nothingness after God did, and that God is not superior. These passages don't refer to human or biologic evolution, but spiritual.

[DPDarkPrimus]

I found the quote:

From The Glorious Appearing pg 318.

Jesus continued "For all your lies about having evolved, you are a created being."

Now, taken out of context, this is a rebuke of evolution, but earlier in the series, the antichrist does a monologue about how he was not created by God, but that he merely evolved from nothingness after God did, and that God is not superior. These passages don't refer to human or biologic evolution, but spiritual.

Sounds like apologetics to me. Unless you can come up with a quote from the authors that they specifically intended that...

[Junghalli]

So you're willing to admit that the bible isn't 100% accurate, but not the possibility that it's completely wrong and there is no god? The vast majority of christian religions rely on the bible's infallibility as their premise.

I acknowledge the possibility that it's all bullshit. That's not the same thing as thinking it must be all bullshit (that would be one hell of a false dilemma there, no?). I choose to live my life as I would if He did exist. Taking the Bible as infallible is ludicrous, for the reasons I stated above.

What kind of method do you use to distinguish what's true and what's simply metaphor?

Personally I view the Bible as a collection of moral parables and lessons, some of which reflect the primitive and savage time in which they were written and some of which are timeless. Obviously as a scientific or historical document its close to worthless (it was never intended to be one). As for the rest of you, all I can say is we really don't know the truth, and there's no telling who's right. You may very well be right, there is no God, and it's all bullshit. But I choose to live as if God did exist, as for all I know He does. So you can go your way and I can go my way and there's no need to bother each other.

You are aware that that page is targeted at the YECs who regard the Bible as the literal truth, right?

Yes, that's why I didn't find it particularly convincing or unsettling.

[Augustus Caesar]

In my own opinion, the LB series is moronic.

As a Christian, I would think that God would be willing to forgive sins and let people repent. I found the idea that all righteous people will ascend to Heaven instantly to be ridiculous. I wonder, in La Haye's mind, does he really think there is a straight line between the righteous and those who aren't? I think there really isn't a hell, but there is an afterlife.

I agree Junghalli's post about the Bible being an interpretation of a hundred other interpretations, and that the original message was heavily skewed, if not lost altogether. So I find those ministers in the Bible belt relentlessly quoting it without any thought to if the section or quote is authentic rather foolish.

I never did get the issue between the Church and evolution. If life is created in the first place, that really doesn't mean it can't evolve. You were created by your ancestors, who in turn evolved from the first cell, which was created by the conditions of Early Earth. In my subjective opinion, again, creation and evolution go hand in hand. For the creationists who claim that the Earth is only a few thousand years old, well, to me it sounds like a Trekkie saying the Enterprise could blow up the Death Star with a proton torpedo. It's rather strange for me saying it, but I believe in God and the theory of evolution.

Btw, my creation theory is a lot simpler- God made that particle at the beginning of the universe undergo the Big Bang and let life evolve on Earth. The fundies will call me a blasphemer, but I don't agree with them either. Religion is based on faith, not proof or logic.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Sounds like apologetics to me. Unless you can come up with a quote from the authors that they specifically intended that...

I don't have appologetics, all I have is the context of the quote in the story. In book 9 or 10, Lucifer claims that God is no greater than he because they both evolved from nothingness and that God evolved first. Its just your conjecture that it is calling all evolutionary thought "evil", a phrase which isn't said in the books. Again, I choose to read this as a rebuke of Lucifer's own ego, which makes the most contextual sense in the story. You read it differently.

You can't come up with quotes for most of the things people interpret out of Shakespeare or Steinbeck, but they do anyway.

I do agree, however, that the LB books are a remarkably literal view of Revelations and are probably not "what will really happen".

[Netko]

I never did get the issue between the Church and evolution.

As someone who is living in a predominatly Catholic country the usage of "Church" and a problem with evolution gets a from me. The Catholic Church has for a while now had the opinion that God basicly set things up and then let evolution take it's course, a view that is much more sensible then the YEC stupidity that is present in the US. Hell, I had a question on a test in my Religious lerning class (rough translation, basicly catholicism class compleate with nun and all - hey, it was either that or an ethics class that was even more boring but that didn't have the fun parts of annoying the nun with all the unapropriate questions ) that asked how do you resolve conflicts between Genesis and the teory of evolution, with an emphasis that both are correct in a way.

P.S. personaly a atheist with deistic leanings but as you can see I was exposed to some religious classes and all.

[DPDarkPrimus]

CC, you wouldn't happen to be able to post the comments about evolution in context, would you?

[CaptainChewbacca]

CC, you wouldn't happen to be able to post the comments about evolution in context, would you?

I just got back from my parents', so it'll take me a few days to find someone else with the books. Basically the antichrist, posessed by lucifer, was doing an "evil villain" monologue about how God isn't actually "God" in an all-powerful sense, and how he hasn't always existed; that he simply evolved before lucifer.

If someone else can tell me which Left Behind book had the scene where Carpathia has the 3 demons (Astaroth, Cankerworm, and Beelzebub) posess the 3 look-alikes, that's the same scene where he does the monologue about having evolved. I think its the next-to-last book, but I'm not sure.

I'll make this a long-term project of mine.

[Lord Zentei]

What kind of method do you use to distinguish what's true and what's simply metaphor?

Personally I view the Bible as a collection of moral parables and lessons, some of which reflect the primitive and savage time in which they were written and some of which are timeless. Obviously as a scientific or historical document its close to worthless (it was never intended to be one). As for the rest of you, all I can say is we really don't know the truth, and there's no telling who's right. You may very well be right, there is no God, and it's all bullshit. But I choose to live as if God did exist, as for all I know He does. So you can go your way and I can go my way and there's no need to bother each other.

Enter Occam's razor. As for your Pascal's wager type argument, there is a flip side to that which is the "sucker's penalty" and the possibility that a world in which people beleive in God is not the best of all worlds. This is articularly the case when moral questions are answered with reference to religious dogma and not reason.

You are aware that that page is targeted at the YECs who regard the Bible as the literal truth, right?

Yes, that's why I didn't find it particularly convincing or unsettling.

Well, then you are not it's target audience. It is perfectly convincing and valid within it's range of intent, i.e. to support evolution against creationism. It is not intended as a anti-religious rant at all, so your assertions seem to be based on a false premise.