Former Atheist turned Born Again Christian

originally posted by: TheConstruKctionofLight
a reply to: Raggedyman

Oh Terry, if you cant play with the adults try this www.stardoll.com...

So thats where Christians hang out?

didnt think I would trigger all the atheists, my bad

a reply to: RP2SticksOfDynamite

It's actually quite easy. Have a profound personal experience that is difficult to dismiss, or actually look at the evidence with a logical mind and find how flawed the paradigms truly are.

Jaden

a reply to: StandingTallForChrist

Welcome to ATS. I hope you are able to find your way to the truth through the madness.

originally posted by: StandingTallForChrist
a reply to: Dudemo5

That's a whole lotta prayer talk for an atheist.... you might lose your membership card if you keep that up. They are very sensitive...

this seems very much like a performance. A very enthusiastic one

So many declarative sentences. You must be young so I will give you that.

Time is a wonderful teacher. I wish you many years of learning; please open your, heart, eyes and ears and take in as much as you can.

Then, you might want to edit yourself.

Best wishes at ATS-I'm afraid it's going to be a bumpy ride until then.

a reply to: Raggedyman

Well you did show your intelligence with that link.....

Good Morning ATS!

Wow quite a few new comments since bed time last night. Instead of replying to them individually, I will try to answer them as I remember them... but my memory sucks, so wish me luck.

1) It is absolutely AMAZING to me how many times an atheist has said to me "you're a fraud". They are so delusional they cannot even fathom a life changing experience, and quickly resort to silly high school attacks in defense of their FAITH. I know, because I used to do the same thing. Christians are weak minded. They need a crutch to get through life. BLAH BLAH BLAH. As stated in my OP I was an atheist (and quite a belligerent one) for my first 35 years... well I should say 20 as the first 15 were spent doing kid stuff. This is a truth statement about my life. It is not mean't to impress you or rile you up. It is simply a FACT (that will not change by the way).

2) I am currently 46 years old as of yesterday.

3) I do not question the speed of light as we measure it today. I ABSOLUTELY question the notion that the speed of light was a constant from the time God CREATED IT. In fact, the Bible teaches us that Adam was created full grown and mature (YES Adam was a real man, created from dust) AND that the stars in the sky were clearly visible to him in that moment. That means God placed the stars in the sky and they didn't require billions of years to become visible to Adam. The universe was created in a mature enough state to be of use to Adam and all that followed.

4) Evolution has SOOO many flaws of basic logic. Consider just one small example of MANY... Evolution proposes that the strongest traits will survive in natural selection and move a species forward into a better evolved state. The weaker traits DIE off. Let's take a look at the young of wild animals in the animal kingdom... when they are born they are QUICKLY able to get on their feet, run, climb and do many things to aid in their own survival (a necessary trait in the wild)... even baby Apes are able to LIVE on their own after 3 years (I had to Google that one). They climb easily in their first year. Many other animals Stand, Run, Fly within hours, days and weeks of birth.

But not us pesky Humans... THE MOST HIGHLY EVOLVED creatures on EARTH. Our human babies are completely helpless FOR YEARS AND YEARS AND YEARS. This is not a trait that would be passed on through evolution... We should pop out of our mothers and be running within a few days. But that's only if evolution were true, which it is not.

This is not to say that a species doesn't adapt, of course we can see adaptation all around us. We can measure it, predict it and observe it. But adaptation does not take a single celled organism and come up with a human in a few billions years. How do I know this? Well for many reasons, but in the simplest terms it has never been observed.

Many people think Christians are arrogant, and I don't claim I am not. But what is more arrogant than a group of people who study science which has been around earth for what... a few hundred years? And have done nothing but change their minds over and over and over... and to have THAT group of people claim they know how Humans arrived on earth...
Better yet, they can tell you how old the universe IS and how it all came to be. That my friends is PURE ARROGANCE.

I am happy to have learned about the Big Bang theory... it marked another instance of Science FINALLY coming around to what the Bible has been teaching ALL ALONG.

a reply to: StandingTallForChrist

Good luck to you here.

I'm a strong Christian myself, and this place has plenty of traps to twist the unwary. So if you aren't strong in your faith, you might want to look somewhere else. I'm not advising you to be belligerent, quite the opposite. This is also an intriguing place full of good conversation.

Don't be antagonistic and you'll get along fine.

Don't be afraid to be who you are, but don't expect that you will change the world either. Go with the flow. Most folks are going to be who they will be, but that lets you be who you are too. Seek to converse and step out if you get upset, so that you can cool off before you say something you will regret. Don't hide the truth, but understand it will be met with hostility.

Just let it come and let it roll off.

See ya round.

welcome from an atheist with zero political preference.

a reply to: ketsuko

Nice to meet you! Thanks for the advice.

a reply to: RoScoLaz5

Thank you!

originally posted by: chr0naut
a reply to: StandingTallForChrist

Welcome, StandingTallForChrist.

I was just watching the film about Lee Strobel's "The Case for Christ" where he goes from atheist to Christian. But so did C.S. Lewis and his wife, Joy, Nicky Gumbel, Malcom Muggeridge, Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Peter Hitchens amongst many others. You are in fairly good company.

I'm a fairly conservative and traditional Christian with a background in the sciences.

I believe that science is a revelation of God. It is an investigation of His handiwork, because there is discoverable order in the universe it couldn't arise from randomness as some have foolishly suggested.

I'm not exactly driving a wedge between being a young earth creationist nor a deep time believer. I think that there are certain conditions where different views of the same events are on different time scales because of the Lorentz contraction (especially close to the singularity or possibly from God's perspective).

Here's my thread on it: One answer to the dilemma of a seven day creation vs Scientific views of creation.

I also don't say that God does not use evolution as a mechanism for biological change, I believe evolution can shed light on biodiversity. I just don't believe that God is limited to only that method of introducing biological change. As far as actual origins go, evolution really doesn't explain how life started, only how it might change once it exists, but even then, I don't think evolution explains biodiversity fully. IMHO there are lots of mechanisms of biological genetic change that aren't covered in evolutionary processes.

Evolution also does not encompass co-operative defences against natural selection (as Julian Huxley said of the MES, "natural selection is red in tooth and claw"). Nor does it encompass future directed biological change through genetic engineering. I feel that some Christian interpreters as well as scientists are limited severely in believing that what we are now is all there is and all there will be. God's plan has got to be 'mind blowingly' bigger than that.

The truth is, if life arises through chemical abiogenesis and changes through evolution (and somehow speciation is overcome), then it is a miracle from a wise and creative God anyway. The whole universe tells of His glory.

I LITERALLY watched that LAST NIGHT!

I was thinking about that movie while reading this thread.... nice!


Welcome aboard Standing! Glad to have you!

a reply to: StandingTallForChrist

Can someone explain the flag system por favor????

How to Star or Flag a Post
There are many helpful threads here:
ats freshman's forumpage
The site has been overhauled a few times over the years. Last one 2012 or 2014 ?

Any way, newer posts describing how to do things like avatars and background pictures will be more accurate than something from 2005. But old 2005 threads may still have later posts that update procedures.

Good luck.

originally posted by: StandingTallForChrist
a reply to: mOjOm
You might ask, so how do you know the Earth isn't Billions of years old? I am glad you asked.

Billions of years was only proposed when the Theory of Evolution failed at the Millions of years mark... it needed more time to be plausible (which by the way it has never become).

This is known as a strawman. The Evolutionary theory has nothing to do with the age of Earth. Billions of years were proposed by scientists because that is the time frame that geologic testing has determined the Earth's age is. Periodically scientists may move the time frame back millions of years or so, but that is only because their testing methods have become more accurate. So scientists can reduce the margin of error they've been working with.

One more thing. You don't sound like you were any real atheist. More like you just weren't religious or spiritual and then you were, but there appears to be no logical connection to why you were an atheist before. Also, as a Trump supporter as well I have trouble believing you are a Christian as I'm not sure how a real Christian would support Trump's antics.

a reply to: StandingTallForChrist

Former Atheist turned Born Again Christian

Despite lying to yourself twice as an Atheist and Born Again Christian welcome aboard. The truth is more along the lines of agnosticism .

From your post you appear to have very strong biased opinions with no room to expand or question things as you have already made your mind up, so you should fit right in the political mud pit fairly well.

I look forward to your post and threads in blaming the other side for all the issues and overlooking your own parties faults. Why hold your side accountable where you can make a difference when you can blame the other guys. If I misread where you stand from your initial Post , my apologies and I look forward to be proven wrong.



none the less, Welcome

a reply to: interupt42

The truth is no one can prove one way or the other. This is why we call it faith. A lot of atheists (not all) are simply in a form of denial about it, not that they don't believe, we get that, but that they don't have faith -- they do, faith that there is nothing. Agnosticism admits they have no firm faith on way or the other.

originally posted by: ketsuko
a reply to: interupt42

The truth is no one can prove one way or the other. This is why we call it faith. A lot of atheists (not all) are simply in a form of denial about it, not that they don't believe, we get that, but that they don't have faith -- they do, faith that there is nothing. Agnosticism admits they have no firm faith on way or the other.

That was my point.

originally posted by: StandingTallForChrist
But not us pesky Humans... THE MOST HIGHLY EVOLVED creatures on EARTH. Our human babies are completely helpless FOR YEARS AND YEARS AND YEARS. This is not a trait that would be passed on through evolution... We should pop out of our mothers and be running within a few days. But that's only if evolution were true, which it is not.

Humans aren't the most highly evolved species on earth. In fact, there is no such thing as "most highly evolved" anything. A species evolved enough to fit within its niche within its environment. That doesn't mean it is perfect or that it is the best even for its own environment. You are mistaking the human ability to think and reason as being "highly evolved" when it is just a random trait we gained that happens to be the unmatched in evolution, but the rest of our human capabilities can easily be overcome by any number of other animals in the animal kingdom. Humans have been evolving from species to species over time just as much as any other species in the world.

How about you explain why God supposedly designed humans with a vestigial tail? Why do our spines end with a small, useless bump at the end that would easily be explainable if humans used to have tails (evolution), but doesn't make sense if humans were created as is by some omnipotent being.

Many people think Christians are arrogant, and I don't claim I am not. But what is more arrogant than a group of people who study science which has been around earth for what... a few hundred years? And have done nothing but change their minds over and over and over... and to have THAT group of people claim they know how Humans arrived on earth...
Better yet, they can tell you how old the universe IS and how it all came to be. That my friends is PURE ARROGANCE.

Correcting yourself when you show yourself to be wrong makes for a stronger argument. How about you tell us how you know the Bible is the true word of God? How do you know it isn't just a bunch of phooey some old goat herders came up with because they had a terrible understanding of the universe and sought to explain it with their limited understanding?

I am happy to have learned about the Big Bang theory... it marked another instance of Science FINALLY coming around to what the Bible has been teaching ALL ALONG.

Which is? The Big Bang isn't the start of the universe. It is just the start of time and space. We can't say if that is when the universe truly started or not.

a reply to: StandingTallForChrist

You speak arrogantly like the anti christ. And not humbly like Christ.

a reply to: StandingTallForChrist

But what is more arrogant than a group of people who study science which has been around earth for what... a few hundred years? And have done nothing but change their minds over and over and over..

Based on that comment you completely don't understand what Science is , nor critical thinking.

You do understand there is no honor, or worth to yourself ,or society to continue to believe in something when evidence suggest you are wrong.

That is the beauty and importance of science.Its not about being right its about trying to get to the truth and understand how things work as much as possible. EVEN if it means your initial thought was wrong.

From what I have seen:

A fool that is always right , will always be a fool.