I was really hoping that would look better on desktop. I posted in on mobile. Anyway, it's about climate change, something many YEC's protest is a problem or even real.

The irony is that every YEC would dismiss that because they believe it's based on fiction.

@fredsbend YECs pretty much dismiss . . . science.

Yeah.

So I was reading back in this thing, just cuz I like to waste time apparently, and ... well ... I've wasted so much time in this room.

I thought about writing a userscript that would keep my messages, one's I replied to, and those replying to me, change the styles, the print them out, just to see how many pages I've burned here.

But that, for some reason, seems an even grander waste of time.

So I must therefore proceed immediately.

@LeeWoofenden Having been there, I understand them. If you think your faith hinges on that theological point, which pretty much all of them do, pretty much no amount of scientific study is going to pull you out of it. Seeding that doubt is the hardest part, and it will never happen for most of them. The only exception is the stereotypical story of the farm boy raise right, sent off to college, comes back a non-believer because of that evil biology course.

Or, at least, no longer a YEC, depending on how many sociological studies he'd done.

@fredsbend Why, in particular, do you think it was wasted time?

@LeeWoofenden For at least half of it, I was shirking certain responsibilities, namely work, which pays the bills.

@fredsbend Ah yes. All too familiar.

What about the other half?

@LeeWoofenden Meh. I mean, it wasn't wasted at the time. I was going through a conversion. I was letting go of God and I needed a place to spell out my thoughts.

But if I could change time, I would have never believed at all.

I spent a great deal of effort on my religion, and now it all seems a waste. My only consolation is that I feel I'm in a unique position of someone with a very high degree of understanding of Christianity and Christian American culture, yet am not a believer.

@fredsbend Buuut . . . you can't change time. And you wouldn't be where you are now without where you were before.

@LeeWoofenden Yes, see above

@fredsbend I still think your understanding of Christianity is somewhat narrow.

@LeeWoofenden I'd rather not spend the next 20 minutes disagreeing with you on that.

@fredsbend np

But among the many things I read on the internet, I find most Christians do not understand the thoughts and feeling of unbelievers and the unbelievers do not understand Christians. I feel that I understand both.

@fredsbend Yes, there's that.

But besides wasting time on forums, facebook, and writing blogs people won't read, I'm not sure what good I can bring to the world with this rare perspective.

I think I generally understand both as well--including the thoughts of Christians who take a more literalistic approach than I do. And I find it somewhat sad that there is so much misunderstanding and shallow understanding.

@fredsbend Maybe write blog posts that people will read?

@LeeWoofenden Ha. I'm not sure the audience for my thoughts is big enough to bother.

@fredsbend I suppose it depends who you're trying to reach. What would you hope to accomplish?

I have my blog set up, but ... the time commitment compared to the likelihood of failure, as measured by lack of viewers over a long time frame, does not encourages me to try.

@LeeWoofenden Build understanding for believers about the non-believers and vise versa.

@fredsbend You have to have a fire in your belly to communicate something you believe is important to some particular audience out there.

They both have steeply ingrained ideas about the other camp.

@LeeWoofenden Well, I don't even know if it does matter. If I write a book like Dawkins', but with my outlook, Christians will reject it as fast as Dawkins' and atheists will reject it because it doesn't say what they want to hear.

@fredsbend You have to talk about things that people are searching and asking about.

Yeah, I know. That's why youtube is filled with cat videos and nonsense.

The blog posts of mine that I most wish would be popular aren't always the ones that are.

Though I'm happy with the message of the most popular ones as well.

I don't write junk. ;-)

@fredsbend Right. But people are also searching for answers to serious questions.

I'd bet the one's that are are more fanciful. Like "what is heaven like?"

It's amazing what people type into Google, hoping to solve the mysteries of life on the Internet.

I don't think anyone is typing "How can I understand christians/atheists better?"

@fredsbend I find people are more worried about hell than wondering about heaven. My second-most-popular blog post for quite some time now has been: If You Think You’re Going to Hell, Please Read This First.

Probably more like "Christians/atheists are stupid" and "how can I prove christians/atheists wrong?"

But they do also search for answers about parents and children who have died, and where they are.

@LeeWoofenden lol. I guess I'm not surprised. I'd bet most of them are worried moms, because their son is such a sinner.

@fredsbend Many, many people are worried that they themselves are going to hell because they masturbate or had sex before marriage or have evil thoughts or doubt their church or are addicted to drugs or other similar things. And some of 'em you can't convince they're not headed straight to hell.

I thought that was a great point in Dawkins' book. The emotional trauma of death is exponentially harder when you believe the deceased is being tortured in hell.

The messages of fundamentalist and evangelical preachers get in there deep.

@fredsbend Yes. And for yourself if you believe that God is going to send you to hell for something you did.

I recall in my childhood that my first thoughts and questions regarding news of someone's loss was almost always "how christian was he? maybe he's in heaven so it's not that bad."

But of course, the downside is "well, he was a stubborn atheist and hated god, so he's probably in hell."

@fredsbend It's awful stuff to inculcate in innocent children.

@LeeWoofenden I've honestly never met this person, but I have met the person who's a pathetic little worm because "he's such a sinner".

@fredsbend I've had a number of people leave comments or submit questions to my blog saying that they're sure they're going to hell because they did X, or have a "reprobate mind," or some other thing. I have ongoing conversations with some of them. And with some of them it's very hard to shake them out of the conviction that they're doomed, even though they're really not bad people.

They'll even tell me that they pretty much keep the Ten Commandments, don't screw people over, etc. But they still think they're horrible people headed for hell. Even though they're actually fairly decent people who've just had it pounded into their heads that they're terrible sinners.

Wow. All I can say is "your religion and your god suck. You should just move on and enjoy life now."

@fredsbend I say, "Their religion and their god suck." Meaning the one they were raised with. "Move on to a better one."

But I usually don't say it in quite those terms. :-)

@LeeWoofenden I guess I've met this person, then. Almost always it's been a young man who masturbates frequently.

@fredsbend Yes, masturbation is a big one. I ended out writing 3.5 articles on masturbation because people kept asking, and kept coming back and asking for more.

This despite the fact that the Bible says nothing at all about masturbation.

Traditional Christianity has taught way too many really stupid and destructive things.

And most of them are never taught at all in the Bible, or it's just a passing reference here and there.

@LeeWoofenden It's the last major control point religion has on people. How cruel is it to tell people that sex, an utterly natural desire, is fundamentally wrong and all thoughts about it are depraved? It's something they cannot change, so it's easy to keep them coming for their penance.

gtg

@fredsbend Well, we partly have Paul to thank for that . . .

@fredsbend okay, cya later.

@fredsbend But yes, I say in article after article that sex is normal, healthy, created by God, and so on. Sure, it can get badly screwed up. The best when corrupted becomes the worst. But people's normal sex drives and normal sexual fantasies are not evil. God put them into us for a very powerful reason, or else they wouldn't be so powerful.

And Christianity has become far more prudish than the Bible ever was, for no good reason.

I just wanted to add one completely unrelated thing:

Surely, the fact that man's best friend lives only tens years is the work of a cruel god.

However, beer is proof that God loves us.

@LeeWoofenden "If any of you look at a woman lustfully, you have committed adultery with her in your heart." - Jesus

Jesus propagated the thought-crime, not Paul.

And the idea that thoughts are actions was not new. "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife." - Moses

Okay, really gtg now. Just had to come back to store that pithy bit about dogs.

@fredsbend Coveting, and looking at a woman lustfully, as used in the Bible, are not mere fantasies. They are active, burning desires that will result in a person actually doing it if possible. That's why they are forbidden. See my article: "Is Masturbation Always Sinful? Does it Always Come from Lust?"

The Bible is not talking about idle fantasies of imagining some woman naked and having sex with her when the person having these fantasies clearly understands that it is a mere fantasy, and it's never going to happen, nor would he actually do it if he had the opportunity.

@fredsbend I didn't know God ran breweries!

@fredsbend Well . . . I have a dog . . . but only because I married into it.

@fredsbend Mind you, I'm not saying it's A-OK to fantasize about having sex with someone else's wife. But if that's all it is--a mere fantasy--then it's not what Jesus was talking about.

@LeeWoofenden Hmm, I've never heard that before. How do you support that interpretation?

@curiousdannii The article linked above goes into it more fully. Jesus used a very strong word for looking at a woman lustfully. It comes from a word meaning to burn with passion. The word itself suggests that he was not talking about mere daydreaming and fantasizing, but about something far more burning and powerful.

And as explained in the article, that word in the NT is linked with the word for "covet" in the OT, suggesting that this is how the NT authors read the word "covet" in the OT. It was not mere fantasizing or daydreaming, but a driving, burning desire to have or do something.

The Septuagint uses the same Greek word to translate the Hebrew words for "covet" in Exodus 20:17 and Deuteronomy 5:21.

So Jesus' statement could also be translated, "Whoever looks at a woman to covetously has already committed adultery with her in his heart." Both words carry a meaning stronger than "with fantasy and daydreaming."