Reply #111: I'm a Christian and i don't see incompatibility between science and xtianity

[supernova]

:shrug:

Sure, science and religion (in this case xtianity) are trying to answer similar questions, among them:

Who are we?

Where did we come from?

Where might we be headed in the future?

What is this place and of what is it made?

But, for me, they are coming at those question from different areas.

Science is interested in answering "how" and "why?"

Religion offers a "who" with an overlapping "why," as in "why am *I* here?"

Anyway, I don't see science and xtianity as incompatible at all. I accept with wonder all that human science as to offer and I equally am fascinated with and enjoy a relationship with God. They are like two sides of the same coin to me, going after the same goal but with differing methods. There is no reason I can't enjoy the benefits of both.

The Universe is, near as we can tell 14 billion years old. The sun is roughly 13 billion years old (middle-aged for similar stars apparently) The earth is 6.5 billion years old. Life happens on this planet through evolution. We humans evolved through millions of years and Homo Sapiens, our current species, is about 100,00 years old.

To me the Bible is a record of the Jewish People (the OT), and of other ordinary human beings in the Jewish and wider classical world trying to explain, what they believed to be encounters with the Divine (NT). I never believed the bible was literally true and was never taught that in the first place. As with other great writing, the authors in the Bible use all rhetorical devices to get their meaning across: fables, metaphors, allegory, symbolism, and so on. Do I believe a person called Jesus was divine. No. I think he somehow made a humongous leap in his thinking about what makes communities work and what makes a great life, and how to protest living under occupation and wanted to share that with everyone. This message was so clearly dangerously effective, he was put down by the state (the Roman Empire) for it. As for miracles, I believe that the people who wrote them believed in them.

edit: Now, I am not an evangelical, and haven't read the whole thing, but it appears Francis Collins is of a similar mindset to me. And I don't think of myself as unusual at all. If he's an effective top scientist in his field, my beef isn't with him.