My boss said it best. “My faith requires that I ignore everything I learned. I grew up believing in science but to follow my faith I must believe in the Bible.”
This was his response to me asking him how he thought carbon dating was fake.
Im not religious and I talk circles around him about the Bible endlessly. He’s so stubborn about it that I can basically shut him up about anything but simple quoting the Bible at him and then spinning and s twisting it to fit anything I want.
I’ll even point out to him that I’m doing it and how it’s manipulative. But he just says if you can make the argument from the Bible then no matter what it must be true.
He’s explained he’s so scared of going to hell he’s willing to “unlearn anything” if it means he will be saved
Wow. I grew up in a similar environment, but am now an Episcopal priest and I guess I just sometimes forget how much proudly willful ignorance exists in the Evangelical world.
I was a pretty staunch Creationist until I went to a program offered by the science department at my university. I went to an Evangelical school, but the head of the science department was a pretty devout Catholic. So he and the Catholic student’s club invited Fr. Coyen (I think that’s how it’s spelled), the former director of the Vatican’s observatory in Arizona (he was still director when he came; he died some years back). He was a Jesuit, wearing his black shirt and clerical collar, and he used images taken from the observatory and the Hubble Space Telescope to basically demonstrate to all of us how we know the Big Bang is real and the age of the universe, etc. He spoke deeply of his faith while talking about all of this and it was then that I realized science and Christianity did not have to be in opposition to each other (I know that there will plenty here who will disagree).
The irony is that my Christian faith was enriched by a science talk given by a Catholic Jesuit at an Evangelical University. Not sure the administrators at the school would have wanted that, but here we are.
My boss said it best. “My faith requires that I ignore everything I learned. I grew up believing in science but to follow my faith I must believe in the Bible.”
This was his response to me asking him how he thought carbon dating was fake.
Im not religious and I talk circles around him about the Bible endlessly. He’s so stubborn about it that I can basically shut him up about anything but simple quoting the Bible at him and then spinning and s twisting it to fit anything I want.
I’ll even point out to him that I’m doing it and how it’s manipulative. But he just says if you can make the argument from the Bible then no matter what it must be true.
He’s explained he’s so scared of going to hell he’s willing to “unlearn anything” if it means he will be saved
Its baffling.
Wow. I grew up in a similar environment, but am now an Episcopal priest and I guess I just sometimes forget how much proudly willful ignorance exists in the Evangelical world.
I was a pretty staunch Creationist until I went to a program offered by the science department at my university. I went to an Evangelical school, but the head of the science department was a pretty devout Catholic. So he and the Catholic student’s club invited Fr. Coyen (I think that’s how it’s spelled), the former director of the Vatican’s observatory in Arizona (he was still director when he came; he died some years back). He was a Jesuit, wearing his black shirt and clerical collar, and he used images taken from the observatory and the Hubble Space Telescope to basically demonstrate to all of us how we know the Big Bang is real and the age of the universe, etc. He spoke deeply of his faith while talking about all of this and it was then that I realized science and Christianity did not have to be in opposition to each other (I know that there will plenty here who will disagree).
The irony is that my Christian faith was enriched by a science talk given by a Catholic Jesuit at an Evangelical University. Not sure the administrators at the school would have wanted that, but here we are.
What about the part where the devil cites scripture to tempt Jesus? Does he think the devil was correct? Or Jesus? They can’t both be.