@Professor Kent: Why not just buy the book and read …

Comment on A big reason why so many people are leaving the church by Sean Pitman.

@Professor Kent:

Why not just buy the book and read it (Already Gone by Ken Ham and Britt Beemer)? After all, since you’re spending so much time trying to find out what it says, isn’t your time better spent simply buying the book itself?

After all, it was our friend Eddie who first argued in this forum that, “Many Christians have lost their faith because of the empirical evidence for long ages of life on Earth.” Do you not agree with Eddie’s observation?

In any case, I will give you a few of the findings from the book:

The top ten reasons to the open ended question, “Why did you leave the church?” were like so many other studies asking this question – not at all surprising:

1. Boring service (12%)
2. Legalism (12%)
3. Hypocrisy of leaders (11%)
4. Too political (10%)
5. Self-righteous people (9%)
6. Too far to travel (7%)
7. Not relevant to personal growth (6%)
8. God would not condemn to hell (6%)
9. Bible not relevant/not practical (5%)
10. Preferred denomination not local (5%)

Such are the usual standard excuses given. However, answers to more specific questions are a bit more revealing.

According to the study, those who accepted the accounts and stories of the Bible as true had a much different viewpoint throughout all the questions in the survey.

When those 20-29 years of age were asked, “Do you believe that the accounts/stories in the Bible are true and accurate?” 38% of those who left the church said “Yes” while 44% said “No” and 18% “Didn’t know”.

When those who did have doubts regarding the reliability of the Bible’s stories were asked when their doubts first started to arise:

Middle school: 38.9%
High school: 43.7%
College: 10.6%

When asked the question: “Do you believe that God used evolution to create human beings?” 24.6% of those who went to church school said “Yes” while 18.5% of those who did not attend church school said “Yes”. When asked if God used evolution to create the different varieties of animals 27.2% of church school attendees said “Yes” while 18.8% of those who did not attend church school said “Yes”.

It seems, ironically, that church school attendance actually fostered a belief in evolutionary theories over the biblical view on origins!

Further questions revealed that only 12% of those who left the church fully accepted the Bible as credible and Divinely inspired.

What is also interesting is that there was a group who said that they were planning to return to church when they had children (about 1/3 of the total) and a group who said that they would not return when they had children (also about 1/3 of the total). When these two groups were asked, “Do you believe in the creation of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden?” 91.3% of those planning to return said, “Yes” while only 50.6% of those who did not plan to return said, “Yes”. When asked, “Do you believe the Bible was inspired by God?” 76.4% of those planning to return said “Yes” while 41.9% of those not planning to return said “Yes”. When asked, “Do you believe in creation as stated in the Bible?” 92.1% of those planning to return said “Yes” while 47.8% of those not planning on returning said “Yes”.

To add to this perspective, it seems like the Methodist Church was having a similar problem.

“Methodism has been sidestepping the issue of evolution for quite a while now,” Kuelling says, adding he believes it had to be confronted to keep young people from leaving the church. “I walked from my commitment to be a minister, and I walked away from the church for over a decade over this,” he says. “Now Methodism is joining many other denominations around the world that find no conflict between religion and science.”

Kuelling, who has worked with youth and whose wife, Judith, was a United Methodist Christian education director, says he felt he needed to press the issue because he had missed opportunities to pass along to young people his understanding of the biblical creation stories as “a metaphor.” When a Methodist pastor cast the Bible in that light and told him many other Christians do as well, he says, he immediately felt comfortable again with the church. If the church doesn’t acknowledge the legitimacy of evolution in science, religion comes off as “out of touch with reality” and loses credibility when it makes moral statements on areas involving science and technology,” he says.

“What we’re saying is the Bible … tells us who created the world and what we should do to care for it,” he says. “Genesis teaches about relationships and responsibility. But it does not teach science.”

Read More…

Then, there’s the following report, by an evolutionist, on a pole taken by the Montana Origins Research Effort (M.O.R.E.):

But let’s talk about a fact that we could both agree on: People are leaving the church because of the creation vs. evolution issue. It was stated several times during the conference that 66 percent of the young people in their church were not returning after college. When polled, the number one reason for leaving was because of their religion’s stance on evolution. [emphasis added]

Read More…

In short, I think that college, high school and even middle school kids are a lot more perceptive than you seem to think. They are, generally speaking, very intelligent and know when they’re being sold a bill of goods – and they don’t like it. This is part of the reason why many organizations specifically target young people. They know that if you convince them when they’re young, you’ve pretty much got them for life.

After all, there seems to be some truth in the purported Jesuit motto “Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man.” – said to be based on a quotation by Saint Francis Xavier.

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com

Sean Pitman Also Commented

A big reason why so many people are leaving the church
@Professor Kent:

Rejection of the Seventh-day Sabbath because of a rejection of the clear reading of the Genesis account of origins is a rejection of the nature of inspiration of the Bible that Mrs. White (and the SDA Church) was trying to promote. Such a rejection completely changes the picture of God in one’s mind and the nature of the Bible as well as the Bible’s power to change one’s life and one’s world perspective. The Bible means something very different if it is viewed as a allegory vs. if it is viewed as literally true on those topics where the author(s) clearly intended to be taken as describing real historical events.

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com


A big reason why so many people are leaving the church
@Professor Kent:

There are many different ways to “believe in the Bible” that are completely opposed to the type of belief or faith that Mrs. White was trying to promote. Many believe that the Bible is a book of good moral instruction, but has nothing of any real value to say about the physical world. Many believe that the Bible is a collection of man’s best wisdom over the centuries, but is not actually the Word of God.

What Mrs. White was talking about is that a belief in mainstream evolutionary theories destroys a belief in the Bible as the clear Word of God on every topic it touches upon – to include the topic of origins. The evolutionary perspective undermines faith in the character of God that Ellen White understood and which the SDA Church is trying to promote. It undermines faith in the reasonableness and rationality of God – suggesting that God is willing to “command men to observe the week of seven literal days in commemoration of seven indefinite periods, which is unlike his dealings with mortals, and is an impeachment of his wisdom.”

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com


A big reason why so many people are leaving the church
@Shane Hilde:

Exactly! Not even Abraham was asked to believe in the naked word of God devoid of empirical evidence that would appeal to the rational candid mind. God was not offended when Abraham asked for this evidence because without such evidence, Abraham would truly have been insane to simply follow voices in His head claiming to be the voice of God without any external empirical confirmation…

There are false spirits out there that will lie to us. These spirits must be tested. And, the only basis upon which to employ and interpret tests is our God-given human reasoning abilities.

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com


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