Good Morning...It has occurred to me often that religions with some sense of scientific inquiry about them [I think of Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Yoga...] are growing in popularity [well, maybe not Taoism] whereas Christianity is so very focused on accepting things as true without much tangible evidence...Jesus did not experiment with meditative techniques or postulate the principles that guide nature and produce natural phenomena, nor the operating principles of Dharma and Karma - He spoke to his disciples and others about God and about man's behavior, and, about the need to believe in Him and be saved [with no mechanism involved other than faith and that God can do all things]...Now, it has been said that Islam is also gaining converts steadily - and I suspect that this is due to both a political impetus [in some situations it may be expedient to espouse Islam for one's own safety] and because it is in some ways more accessible to people - sin-debt is more simple: the balance of your acts, good and bad, over the course of your life...there are simple daily and lifetime actions to carry out and prescribed roles for members of this group...is it possible that Christianity is so focused on what we choose [rather than on the hidden "scientific" mechanics of how salvation operates] that it seems inaccessible to people who have been raised to think more empirically/scientifically? Is Christianity too complex in all that it allows and appears to forbid, especially without an apparent scientific basis for banning certain things?
David Moyer Posted: I am a Christian Engineer/Scientist and I have no problem with conflicts between the facts of science (as opposed to some hypotheses of science) and the teachings of scripture. I know literally dozens of other engineers and people with doctorates in technical fields including medicine, veterinary medicine, biology, etc. who also see no conflict. I was once a staunch evolutionist and I could easily teach a high school or community college course on evolution. There are some aspects of evolutionary theory/hypotheses with which I have no quarrel. But nearly the entire field is a matter of hypotheses with very little of it proven by the scientific method, because so little of it is falsifiable. It certainly does not deserve to be classified as a theory- that is a hypothesis that has been tests by real scientific methods so often that almost no one can devise another test that might disprove it. Remember, that scientific hypotheses are not proven, but rather
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As for whether Christianity is too complex, I'm not sure that's true either. What's complex about the idea that a sovereign God is Love and because of that became one of us so that we might come into relationship with Him? That's the heart of the Gospel. Now, your suggestion that, raised to think empirically, we might have problems with the nature of faith in the spiritual dimensions of life--I think that's a serious issue. But to me what Christianity "allows" and "forbids" is a red herring. On the other hand, the legalisms of other religions and especially of the fundamentalisms have the attraction of being unambiguous. They also give the illusion of control ("all I have do to get to heaven is this, this, and this"). But both the "crystal clarity" and the sense of control are mirages. What I want to hear is "God so loved the world that He gave...."