Hi SW,
Thanks for your response.
Of course, to the Christian, primarily it is our core faith, that really matters.
Having said that, there are matters of importance.
There are also matters of what is of interest to us. From childhood I have been interested in the planet, the way it works and the lives and history of its creatures.
Some know a lot about sports or gardening......the natural world happens to be my field of interest and has been for the best part of sixty years.
Hello Derek,
Thanks for not taking it too seriously, and believe me, I'm with you when it comes to this common interest of science. Having grown up with a scientifically astute genius of a father who intensely disliked my WT affiliation (or anything attached to Godliness), I've lived almost my entire life sharpening my resposes to his atheistic arrows.
But recently I've tried to change my approach since belief tends to override reason on so many levels. So I've decided not to make these my main focus as though every argument posed against reason need be won.
At times brother SW, I get the feeling you are trying to close, tpoics you are not really comfortable with, down. Of course I could be wrong?
The feeling will pass, Derek. I have little interest in trying to close anything (unless the arguments are just downright silly). As for subjects I'm not comfortable with, I simply don't comment. Others, I'm just not qualified since there are far more learned people on here than me. Now, if someone is making the membership of this DB uncomfortable or maliciously attacking viewpoints with bias or prejudice, then that is a matter for administration, but I'm rarely involved in that. All they're doing is keeping the home fires burning
On another forum, we heard just recently of those anticipating and actually leaving J.W's, believing their only choice was between the WTS and agnosticism.
In a similar vein, I feel it is quite sad when Christians cannot engage with science and believe 'flat earth' type ideas. The educated young hearing these ideas, feel, like some leaving JW's, that they have only one real choice, agnosticism.
So this is why this subject matters to me, SW. Better a mill stone!!!
We (I) may not have many of the right answers, but I'm fairly well convinced of some of the wrong answers which are given by YEC's :)
shalom
Derek
Ps. And yet I see, there is even more 'tilting at windmills' in the controversy section! :;)
Yeah I see the Don Quixote episode going on there, but so far no one is attacking, just a little rhetoric from our resident "Jesus is the sole creator" advocate, who I believe was relegated to that room because he insisted on hijacking every thread that had nothing to do with his issues.
As for the flat-earthers, I hope that I said nothing more than a tongue-in-cheek reference (At the beginning of my YEC Revisited thread). To me, it's all pseudoscience as is the trinity argument pseudoscriptural, since in both cases, belief preceeds proof. My entire premise in arguing against atheism is just that ... lack of proof.
So if people are interested enough to investigate for themselves, they will get proof and their belief should follow, ie, belief springs from where the proof lays. Unfortunately, most are just not that interested and cherry-pick their way, gathering up only what proves their already concluded belief, or they follow others they feel did their homework better ... which is kind of the current mantra given to JW's by the GB, that asks them to trust the FDS when the only basis for trust is a very thin thread tied to the year 1914, and which had no success in prediction since.
Meanwhile, keep the faith Derek! You're a good thinking man on the same learning curve as the rest of us :thumbup:
sw