Re: Darwin's influence on Stalin

Wayne wrote:

On 7/26/05, Dawsonzhu@aol.com <Dawsonzhu@aol.com> wrote:
> Iain wrote
>
> >But one can also say that, irrespective of its truth,
> >Darwinism does often lead people to abandon their religious faith.
>
> But this could also be an immature faith. I'm sure we
> all have encountered at least a few things that really
> challenged our faith. But we didn't lose it because
> those things happened to us did we?
>

This is true. I don't think one can necessarily attribute loss of
faith to one particular cause. There are many reasons why people lose
their faith. If people build their faith on the premise that it's all
so complex that it can't have evolved, and then lose it because a
respected authority (in my mother's friend's case, the tabloid
newspaper, the "Daily Mail") says it did, then clearly this wasn't a
well-thought out faith.

But I think, rather than asking how many people lost their faith
through reading Darwin, it is perhaps more pertinent to ask how many
people lost it through reading Dawkins, because Dawkins has
deliberately put his own philosophical spin on Darwinism. By the same
token, we must ask how many people have lost it through putting too
much faith in YEC-ism and then having it shattered. Glenn is an
almost-lost-it, I know from reading his personal testimony, and it
appears that Ed did lose it, but I don't know if Ed was ever a YEC.

Iain
Received on Tue Jul 26 08:02:22 2005