Speaking from a personal standpoint here, I do believe that if things were "created", there is a CREATOR. Even if the stories in the bible, Qu'ran, and all other religious books are not real, something had to start from a beginning... and logically, everything was CREATED.
The state of existence, life, and consciousness are pretty trippy things. Synonymous at first glance, but mindbendingly overwhelming in each case. wrt to the topic, the Catholic Church has been openly supportive since Pope Benedict. They even trash Intelligent Design as a pseudoscience while establishing that even if all life is a "natural occurrence" that doesn't preclude the existence of a God responsible for creation. They've moved beyond the Bearded Man in the Sky.... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_and_evolution#Pope_Benedict_XVI It's mainly backwardass America and it's brand of Evangelical Christianity that's playing up Creationism/Intelligent Design card.
I always thought evolution denial is more of an American thing than a Christian thing in modern times. if you believe in evolution you are a communist twinkle toe C***sucker that does not want freedoms.
The world ends when I end. Y'all are just holograms in an experiment with me as the sole subject kinda of feels like that sometimes eh?
They've built a crap load of hospitals, research universities and basically invented middle-class private schooling: so no surprise they're good enough at compartmentalizing dogma from apolitical social good. Evangelicals, possibly due to fewer numbers and less longevity, only seem to produce a lot of Sunday morning programming and book deals.
There are billions of people who never receive formal education and only adhere to their traditional beliefs, so probably wrong on that count.
I didn't hear any disgust for 'layman' from him. I think you are reading a bit too much into his mind. He's just trying to educate a layman on the definition of Scientific Theory. It's often confused with 'it's just a theory' when it's exactly not 'it's just a theory'.
I know folks that believe in both. The earth is 6k years old and is created by God. Evolution (and big bang) is also real enough. Don't ask me how but they do believe in both.
I wouldn't say that. Evangelicals are less likely to promote the charitable things they do. For example, you can google "Gateway Church" all you want, but you'll never find any mention from either the media, any press releases, or from Gateway's website about the $13million dollars they spent last year for charitable reasons - things like feeding the poor, buying cars for single mothers, repairing/remodeling houses in low-income areas, or the overseas stuff they do. Many evangelical churches do a lot of great stuff, you just never hear about it. The only reason I know about that is because I actually go to that church. Same thing with Lakewood - I've personally been to functions where Lakewood gave a check for $50,000 to help out. If I hadn't have been there, I would have never heard about that donation.
Nothing new for the Catholic church, Pope JPII said evolution was real, and that was like 20+ years ago. No news. It's mostly the hardcore conservative Protestants that believe the world to be less than 10,000 years old.
A whole $50k? They make $600K+ a week at that place. I don't want to crap on charible contrabutions, cause it is aholish, but this just struck me as funny. Lakewood church shouldn't brag about a $50k donation. That's like me patting myself on the back for giving a five spot to a begger.
Mega churches are big businesses. I know a transactional attorney who works on their deals. Some of the figures he worked with shocked me. Still, I had no idea it was $600k/week (I thought it'd be less than half that).
Tangent. I took a wrong turn getting to the Cincinnati airport and ended up outside of the Creation Museum. Perhaps God was trying to tell me something.
They got robbed of over $600K in cash earlier this year, which is the only reason we have any idea of how much money that place generates.
Not true - Lakewood confirmed years ago how much they brought in. Its been public knowledge for years. That was only 1 contribution, and Lakewood NEVER bragged about it. The only reason I know about it is because I saw the donation happen. I don't know how many others they've made, because I was only at that 1 event. It wasn't reported anywhere, so I'm sure they've made countless other contributions that weren't reported anywhere either. I do know that they also support a LOT of overseas charitable organizations as well. How much do they spend in the Phillippines and other countries? I don't know because I'm not there to find out for you.
oh nooes! logic wins again ... my ATW skills are meellttingg ... melllllltiiing ... There's this other Gallup poll that says 42% of Americans believe in creationism ... and it also shows that the young or the well educated generally don't believe it. In other words ... nothing to worry about here. Anyway, good on the Pope for not taking a diametrically opposed stance to science. Thumbs up.