Did You Try To Reconcile What You Learned About Science And Your Religious Beliefs?

[Skeptic]

I did. I tried hard, too. This thread was inspired by a question someone in a group I participate in on Facebook asked. The question was: if we are supposedly made in god's image, then why are there people of different races? That question reminded me of when I wondered about how Adam and Eve were able to spawn people of different races. I reconciled it with the belief that they were created with the genetic potential to give birth to people of different races, but when I learned more about science, and genetics in particular, I found that that doesn't make any sense at all. If that were true, there would have had to be some type of evolutionary change at some point in time for people to have a dominant genetic code that marks them as a particular ethnicity. Also, two parents of the same race would be able to have a child who is of a different race, just as two parents with blue eyes are able to have children with brown eyes because it would be a recessive trait. As far as I know, this has never happened. I already mentioned before how I tried to reconcile the flood story. I believed that all animals were created on the same continent, Pangea, and after the flood, they migrated onto their respective continents. I also consider this to be totally false. Again, there would have had to be some evolutionary change to make some animals not able to survive in a desert climate and they would have had to have a reason to migrate in the first place. How did you try to reconcile science and religion?

[Praxis_Of_Evil]

I never went so far as to reconcile Noah's Ark, but upon learning of evolution, I figured God must have done that too, but I still believed that it was possible that evolution was false. As for the genetic diversity and different races, I told myself this was a result of Angel DNA mixing with the population....they looked upon that sexy mortal tail and saw that it was fair...and this spawned the Nephilim giants or something....I really don't remember, but I think my general belief in my ignorance was that the different races came from introduction of angel poonanny to the population.

 

It's quite embarrassing how I used to believe garbage like this......but God was all I knew at the time, and I guess I was afraid to find out that I had been lied to, so I sought to justify it rather than question.

[PandaPirate]

I am still guilty of this now and again. But, I'm living along the lines of being a Taoist now.

[Vomit Comet]

Oh yeah, I certainly did.

 

- On Adam and Eve and the different races. Well, they know the first humans appeared in the Ethiopian Highlands and then they migrated all over Africa and then up into Eurasia and then the Americas. Everybody comes from Africa, be they Japanese, German, Icelandic, Sioux, you name it. So I just figured that Adam and Eve were Africans.

 

- I went with the "six days actually meant six phases" take on Creation. So, like... a "day" was actually a billion years. Because a day to God is like an eternity to men, yadda yadda. So that put that at ease.

 

- Evolution? Shit... Well, going with the "six phases = six billion years" thing, I just figured everything was designed to evolve except for humans. That way, I was able to reason that the ape-like creatures had nothing to do with man, and that man just appeared *POOF* like magic in the Garden of Eden.

 

- "No death" prior to the fall? I figured when God created man, everything started over. But then man fucked up and it went back to being how it was for billions of years.

 

- Noah's Ark? Well, I had to go with the standard fundie line on that one....

 

But even after all that, the contradictions and inconsistencies still bugged the shit out of me. Towards the end I systematically discarded even the above sophisticated bits of mental gymnastics, and I started to realize why so many Europeans ditched the faith in the wake of Darwin. Because if Genesis is bullshit, what the fuck else is bullshit!? And "metaphor" my ass, there was no way I was going to go over to the liberal/mainline side.