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skip,

That is just an example, of evolution in action.

We start off discussing one thing, and the discussion naturally, evolves, into the discussion of an associated topic.

A form of 'natural selection' ???         

I didn't say it was 'fake" I said it could be.

Either way it doesn't make a jot of difference, oh and I already explained evolution from a religious perspective anyway.  Not a fundie never have been.  How forgetful of you.

It's not a threat to anyone's religiosity or beliefs.  it is just another animal.

muso wrote on May 25^th, 2009 at 8:34am:


That is logic of atheists who try to attack religion "faithholders" while conveniently forgetting that Darwin was a "faithholder" while Stalin and Mao were mass murderers. More then that when atheists were replied in the same key they used they started whimpering about derailing thread by "faithholders" conveniently forgetting that they themselves derailed it earlier.

Muso, get a grip on reality you really if you want people take you seriously about environmental issues.

Was Darwin a Christian? Did he believe in God?

Many people are under the impression that Charles Darwin, the most well known promoter of evolutionism, died a Christian and renounced his theory. This is mainly due to rumors surrounding his death, and the fact that he studied at seminary as a young man and is buried in Westminster Abbey. This article reveals the truth.

...“I had gradually come by this time, [i.e. 1836 to 1839] to see that the Old Testament was no more to be trusted than the sacred books of the Hindoos or the beliefs of any barbarian.”

Having abandoned the Old Testament, Darwin then renounced the Gospels. This loss of belief was based on several factors, including his rejection of miracles: "the more we know of the fixed laws of nature, the more incredible do miracles become"; his rejection of the credibility of the Gospel writers: "the men of that time were ignorant and credulous to a degree almost incomprehensible to us"; his rejection of the Gospel chronology: "the Gospels cannot be proved to have been written simultaneously with the events"; and his rejection of the Gospel events: "they differ in many important details, far too important, as it seemed to me, to be admitted as the usual inaccuracies of eye-witnesses."

Summing up the above, he wrote, “by such reflections as these... I gradually came to disbelieve in Christianity as a divine revelation.”

On another occasion he wrote, “I never gave up Christianity until I was forty years of age.” He turned 40 in 1849. Commenting on this, Darwin's biographer, James Moore, says, "... just as his clerical career had died a slow 'natural death,' so his faith had withered gradually."

“I can hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so, the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my Father, Brother, and almost all my best friends, will be everlastingly punished. And this is a damnable doctrine.”

The descent into darkness did not stop there. In 1876, in his Autobiography, Darwin wrote,

“Formerly I was led... to the firm conviction of the existence of God and the immortality of the soul. In my Journal I wrote that whilst standing in the midst of the grandeur of a Brazilian forest, 'it is not possible to give an adequate idea of the higher feelings of wonder, admiration, and devotion, which fill and elevate the mind.' I well remember my conviction that there is more in man than the mere breath of his body. But now the grandest scenes would not cause any such convictions and feelings to rise in my mind.”

In 1880, in reply to a correspondent, Charles wrote, “I am sorry to have to inform you that I do not believe in the Bible as a divine revelation, & therefore not in Jesus Christ as the Son of God.”

http://www.christiananswers.net/q-aig/darwin.html

Oh my "other people's delusion", Darwin was a mass murderer!!  

Darwin was Agnostic, just as are the many who are labelled "athiest" because they do not believe in Christ or follow the writings of somebody else's version of what God is or what he supposedly said.

Religious Belief
By Charles Darwin

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This is an extract from:

The Autobiography of Charles Darwin 1809-1882

With original omissions restored
Edited with Appendix and Notes
by his grand-daughter
Nora Barlow.
(1958)

During these two years I was led to think much about religion. Whilst on board the Beagle I was quite orthodox, and I remember being heartily laughed at by several of the officers (though themselves orthodox) for quoting the Bible as an unanswerable authority on some point of morality. I suppose it was the noveltry of the argument that amused them. But I had gradually come, by this time, to see that the Old Testament from its manifestly false history of the world, with the Tower of Babel, the rainbow at sign, etc., etc., and from its attributing to God the feelings of a revengeful tyrant, was no more to be trusted than the sacred books of the Hindoos, or the beliefs of any barbarian.
The question then continually rose before my mind and would not be banished, -- is it credible that if God were now to make a revelation to the Hindoos, would he permit it to be connected with the belief in Vishnu, Siva, &c, as Christianity is connected with the Old Testament. This appeared to me utterly incredible.

By further reflecting that the clearest evidence would be requisite to make any sane man believe in the miracles by which Christianity is suppoted, -- that the more we know of the fixed laws of nature the more incredible do miracles become, -- that the men at that time were ignorant and credulous to a degree almost incomprehensible by us, -- that the Gospels cannot be proved to have been written simultaneous with the events, -- that they differ in many important details, far too important as it seemed to me to be admitted as the usual inaccuracies of eyewitnesses; -- by such reflections as these, which I give not as having the least noveltry or value, but as they influenced me, I gradually came to disbelieve in Christianity as a divine revelation. The fact that many false religions have spread over large portions of the earth like wild-fire had some weight on me. Beautiful as is the morality of the New Testament, it can hardly be denied that its perfection depends in part on the interpretation which we now put on metaphors and allegories.

...Although I did not think much about the existence of a personal God until a considerably later period of my life, I will here give the vague conclusions to which I have been driven. The old argument of design in nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed to me so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection has been discovered. We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by man. There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings and in the action of natural selection, than in the course the wind blows. Everything in nature is the result of fixed laws. But I have discussed this subject at the end of my book on the Variation of Domestic Animals and Plants, and the argument there given has never, as far as I can see, been answered.

...The state of mind which grand scenes formerly excited in me, and which was intimately connected with a belief in God, did not essentially differ from that which is often called the sence of sublimity; and however difficult it may be to explain the genesis of this sence, it can hardly be advanced as an argument for the existence of God, any more than the powerful though vague and similar feelings excited by music.

I cannot pretend to throw the least light on such abstruse problems. The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble to us; and I for one must be content to remain an Agnostic.



http://www.update.uu.se/~fbendz/library/cd_relig.htm


...I suppose that means he was just a serial killer?  

Darwin was more "Godly" than most people could ever hope to be.

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But not quite as modern as the Shroud of Turin hey?  

You guys believe anything.