Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

How science made one software guy lose his religion

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Recently, we featured an item from Richard Dawkins’ site by an atheist who believes in ghosts. More recently, a friend drew our attention to another item from the site, “Former Christian Fundamentalist: How Science Made Me Lose My Religion,” advising that “Bible literalists have good reason to feel threatened by modern science”:

Ed Suominen was raised in a small sect of Lutheran Christianity called Laestadianism. Of the 32,000 denominations into which Christianity has fractured, his is one of the more conservative. Members believe in the literal truth of the Bible, including the creation story. They eschew sins like drinking, dancing, watching television, wearing earrings, and playing school sports. They marry only within their own sect and believe God alone should decide how many children they have. Suominen followed the rules; he met and married the right kind of girl, and together they have 11 children.

But Suominen is also an engineer, trained at the University of Washington. More.

He apparently discovered natural selection, and had a very different experience from the software engineer featured here discussing convergent evolution (not natural selection) in software. Read and judge for yourself, but about his denomination, a friend has wondered how much of the New Testament of the Bible they literally read. Given all their rules, he points in particular to

Jesus replied, “And you experts in the law, woe to you, because you load people down with burdens they can hardly carry, and you yourselves will not lift one finger to help them.

also

“Woe to you experts in the law, because you have taken away the key to knowledge. You yourselves have not entered, and you have hindered those who were entering.”

Hey, dunno. But re computer programs supposedly imitating natural selection, better see this.

Comments
This thread: https://uncommondescent.com/philosophy/did-we-mention-that-harvards-steve-scientism-rules-pinker-was-getting-it-on-all-sides-leon-wieseltier-now-weighs-in/ Post #8.Barb
September 9, 2013
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If you could cut and paste it, or point me in the direction of your earlier post, I'd be very grateful, Barb. If it's not too irksome to do it again.Axel
September 8, 2013
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From the OP: "Bible literalists have good reason to feel threatened by modern science”. *sigh* Do I really have to post the list of scientific facts found in the Bible again?Barb
September 8, 2013
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Apologetics 315 interview with former atheist turned Christian apologist David Wood. http://www.apologetics315.com/2013/09/david-wood-interview-transcript.htmlbornagain77
September 8, 2013
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semi-related: Shaun's Story - Ex-Atheist to Christianity - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mk2fClnpP7w Scientism vs Christianity - JP Moreland, PhD - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeneNZebyOgbornagain77
September 8, 2013
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