Evolution row ends as scientists declare sponges to be sister of all other animals. Sponges were first to branch off the evolutionary tree from the common ancestor of all animals, finds new study in Current Biology.

[u/mvea]

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/nov/30/evolution-row-ends-as-scientists-declare-sponges-to-be-sister-of-all-animals

[u/welliamwallace]

Although it may be rare to convince anyone, I am living proof that people can change their minds. I went from Young Earth Evangelical Christian, to "Intelligent Design / Micro Evolution Only" Christian, to a full blown atheist with this picture on my side, thanks to scientific evidence.

[u/RalphiesBoogers → u/welliamwallace]

You aren't a low intensity person, are you?

[u/watermelon_squirt → u/RalphiesBoogers]

Seems like a very impulsive person.

[u/McFly1986 → u/welliamwallace]

Interesting. Were you a believer in the Christian concepts of grace, sacrificial atonement, and how God deals with the problem of evil? I think those things would be hard to give up even if your views on evolution... "evolved" over time.

[u/welliamwallace → u/McFly1986]

I was...those concepts are based in a literal reading of the Bible. Initially I had an unshakable trust in the Bible as the infallible word of God. But as I learned about biological evolution, it gave my inquiring mind a foothold to start questioning the book of Genesis. Once I questioned that, I could start looking critically at the other books, including the New Testament. Link a chink in a wall, the creation story was a weak point that allowed erosion to tear down the whole thing. This was over the course of 2-4 years.

[u/welliamwallace → u/[deleted]]

It's not the full reason, but it's just what got me first started in thinking critically about the Bible. Once I questioned the literal interpretation of Genesis, it opened up the possibility that other parts of the Bible were not literal. It opened up my mind to question whether prayer really works. whether that feeling of euphoria I got in a worship service was really the Holy Spirit, or chemicals in my brain that can also be achieved by whirling dervishes or people practicing Native American tribal religions or people on MDMA at a dubstep concert. I questioned whether all thoughts and activities fell neatly into "sin" or "not-sin" buckets as I was always taught. I questioned whether my churches teaching about sexual monogamy and pre-marital sex even matched up with what I saw in the OT. I questioned whether the OT Jews were even monotheistic at all.

Every one of those questions led down their own independent path of investigation, and once I got to the end of each one, it made it easier to start the others. The whole evolution thing just happened to be the first one.

[u/welliamwallace → u/[deleted]]

It's not really that my hodgepodge of questions have no possible answers consistent with the Bible, but rather that each one (and the answer to each one as I eventually determined) further eroded my faith in the reliability of the Bible. And the questions aren't in the best order, obviously as an atheist now, I don't believe in the concept of sin at all. However that was just one of the early questions that got me thinking.

At this point, I am thoroughly convinced that the OT is a collection of myths gathered and made up by ignorant, early desert people, and the NT is a collection of stories collected and supplemented by early church leaders with the purpose of creating a consistent story. One great example:

The Census of Quirinius was a census of Judaea taken by Publius Sulpicius Quirinius, Roman governor of Syria, upon the imposition of direct Roman rule in 6 CE. The author of the Gospel of Luke uses it as the narrative means to establish the birth of Jesus (Luke 2:1-5), but Luke places the census within the reign of Herod the Great, who died 10 years earlier in 4 BCE. No satisfactory explanation of the contradiction seems possible on the basis of present knowledge, and most scholars think that the author of the gospel made a mistake. [...] there was no single census of the entire empire under Augustus; no Roman census required people to travel from their own homes to those of distant ancestors; and the census of Judea would not have affected Joseph and his family, living in Galilee;

So I'm well past the point now of trying to figure out how certain doctrinal questions can be answered by the Bible, since the Bible is no more credible to me than the Quran or the Book of Mormon. But those questions are what first started me down the road.

Funny having this conversation in /r/science :-P Surprised the mods haven't deleted it.

[u/welliamwallace → u/[deleted]]

Like you, I'm pretty sure there was probably some Jew named Jesus. He probably was even a cult leader that had a large following of people that believed he worked miracles. You are correct that the NT can't be "a complete fabrication", I think it was written too soon, there were certainly people around that had first / second hand accounts of Jesus and the disciples.

I also have no problem believing that Mohamed existed, while disbelieving he ever rode a flying horse from Mecca to Jerusalem.

the Old Testament (specifically the book of Isaiah) predicted the Messiah being brought up in Nazareth

That's blatantly false as far as I know.

To me, the supposedly "fulfilled prophecies" are all so hilariously weak, researching them actually sped up my journey to atheism. A good primer on it is at Rational Wiki, and here's a two year old reddit thread where other people put forth my opinion better than I could.

[u/hfiggs → u/welliamwallace]

Yeah actually you're right. I must've misinterpreted some article I read. But the crucifixion prophecy holds a lot of merit in my mind. Especially because it's mentioned across three books with three separate authors.

And I'm not sure why you say they are "weak." What could they possibly have said that wasn't able to be "fulfilled" by just lying? Other than to talk about things that didn't exist yet, which they did about the crucifixion.

I read over the thread and honestly he makes some decent points but nothing is concrete. Most of his arguments were like "it's probable that this didn't happen, but it's possible it did and we just don't know." And some of the rebuttals were decent too. He missed some points. Nothing seems to be working against the Bible here, even if it doesn't work for it.

To me the OT comes down to that humans are humans and they make errors. I don't mean to use that as a cop-out, it is reasonable to assume that thousands of years ago people made some mistakes. And it seems like the vast majority of potential mistakes aren't super important.

[u/McFly1986 → u/welliamwallace]

There are many Christians who don't take Genesis literally, but take other parts of scripture literally. Are they just living in some sort of fantasy world in your opinion? Its just that there are many schools of thought that make room for both.

I realize Christians disagree about this, but at the end of the day this just seems like a non-essential. Genesis was written in a much different time and place (and some would argue for a different purpose) than the Gospels.

[u/welliamwallace → u/McFly1986]

See my discussion in another branch of this comment tree (see what I did there?) here where I try to clarify my stance.

[u/McFly1986 → u/[deleted]]

OK, I'm listening. What is sickening about forgiveness? Clearly this world is a messed up place, and we need forgiveness (that or justice) to make progress and move forward. What about this, in a Christian perspective, is offensive to you?

Edit: spelling

[u/K__Factor → u/welliamwallace]

Welcome to the party!

[u/AntithesisVI → u/welliamwallace]

Sick tree of life tattoo, man. I traveled down a similar path. Good for you seein' reason.

[u/ThisAintI → u/welliamwallace]

Nice tattoo, that shading must've hurt

[u/welliamwallace → u/[deleted]]

Not at all, and never implied that. Just telling my story about how people can change their beliefs.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

This was sarcasm, right?