? A Question For All Former Christians Who Fell Away ?

[YahDough]

This is a question addressed only to former Christians who have left the faith.

Why did you become a Christian?
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[YahDough]

That's the wonderful thing about Jesus. He can be trusted regardless of how much one knows about Him.

Sorry I'm late responding. I missed this post until today.

I trusted in Jesus for over 30 years of my life believing him to be the one and only God. Believing he'd died for my sins and saved me. Believing I was hearing from him and being guided by him.

According to many Christians now, I was mistaken and I wasn't really a true Christian at all. Although no Christians ever told me that WHILE I was a Christian - in fact the opposite. That means I lived my life following a false version of Jesus, maybe even the devil himself. If this is the case then Jesus has clearly let me down big time, allowing me to be misled for many many years without making any ounce of effort to steer me in the right direction. Even though I genuinely believed I was following him, he made no efforts what so all to put me right. If these Christians are correct then one can hardly claim Jesus to be trustworthy.

I don't know if you got Christianity right or not. But I know giving up and blaming Jesus for it is wrong. Consider this:

Would you rather blame Jesus for the fact that you didn't get it right, or thank Him because now He is giving you the opportunity to get it right?

[Divine Insight]

With Creation there is a starting point. Evolution can't even address the beginning point. Evolution theory just assumes the process.

Actually abiogenists are addressing the beginning point and making progress all the time. So what you have said here is blatantly false.

Moreover, with Creation this is no starting point. Creationists just assume there is a God. A God that they cannot explain how it came to be. Moreover, unlike the abiogenists they are not making progress in that area. On the contrary they have nothing but a totally empty claim that "God must have done it because I can't figure it out".

Well, of course they can't figure it out. They are quitters. They give up before they are even willing to look for a rational answer.

And as KenRU points out, tossing up your hands in total ignorance screaming, "God must have done it because it hurts my brain to think about it!", doesn't point to any particular God anyway.

The Biblical God is far too stupid to have created or designed anything. That is pretty obvious from the Biblical Scriptures. So even if there was a God that created reality it wouldn't have been the ignorant and self-centered egotistical God Yahweh, or Allah. Both of those God myths are about a God who doesn't have the maturity of a teenager even.

So even if there was a creator of reality we can rule out all the Abrahamic religions. Arguing that there must be a creator doesn't point to the Abrahamic religions at all.

[YahDough]

Are you kiddig??? Your very existence is evidence of the power of God.

And your evidence to support such a claim?

I told you, Ken. You are the evidence.

How do you know that I’m not the product of space aliens? Or Allah? Or any of the Roman gods?

Because no matter "Who" created you, you're still a creation. Can't you accept the fact that you are a created being?

Evolution has a mountain of evidence to support its accuracy.

Ever hear of "making mountains out of mole hills?"

Creation has the (rhema) word of God to support its accuracy.

With Creation there is a starting point. Evolution can't even address the beginning point. Evolution theory just assumes the process.

Still, not knowing how life started does not disprove the fact that evolution occurs.

Yes it does. Without a "start point" there is nothing to "evolve."

And the thing about creation is that God can do it quickly. He doesn't need six billion years to go from an ameba to an elephant.

You know this how? Please cite your evidence.

The dude is GOD, man. Who can give time constraints to God?

Six billion years is too long. Our sun would have burned out long before that.

Just a quick google search showed how wrong your science is. The sun has existed for about 4.6 billion years, life has been on our planet for about 3.8 billion years, and our sun should last another 7 billion years.

You're getting your info from the 95% who don't seem to have "common sense".
Statistics like these are based on false premises, like evolution is true and the sun had to be around that long for it to be true.

[OnceConvinced]

I don't know if you got Christianity right or not. But I know giving up and blaming Jesus for it is wrong. Consider this:

Would you rather blame Jesus for the fact that you didn't get it right, or thank Him because now He is giving you the opportunity to get it right?

What makes you think I blame Jesus for anything? I no longer believe in Jesus or the God of the bible. I don't blame non-existant beings for anything, just like I don't blame fairies for pulling the leaves of trees in Fall and planting weeds in spring. You've got it wrong YahDough. I do not blame God or Jesus for anything.

I did go through a brief anger faze when I deconverted and I actually questioned who was to blame for all the years I spent in a religious delusion.

God was never on the list.

I thought about my parents indoctrinating me, but then thought "no" it's not their fault. They were indoctrinated themselves as children and were only doing what they thought God wanted.

I considered blaming myself for being so gullible, but then I knew I couldn't because I was indoctrinated from birth. I had to learn critical thinking skills before I was able to get real and even then it took a long time to completely break free from the mindsets instilled into me at birth.

Maybe I can blame society for allowing people to indoctrinate their children? Maybe.

But blame God? That's a joke. No blaming of God. No blaming of Jesus. I don't see them as real. Would you blame something you didn't believe in?

And as for giving up. I begged and begged for a number of years for God's help but didn't get it. I didn't just simply wave my hands in the air and give up. I tried and I tried and I tried to no avail. They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing again and again and expecting different results. Why would I keep trying with something that clearly doesn't work?

Would you say I should keep praying to Allah and not give up. Just keep doing it anyway? What about Hare Krishna? Or Buddah? It makes no sense to keep praying to a being you don't believe in.

[YahDough]

I don't know if you got Christianity right or not. But I know giving up and blaming Jesus for it is wrong. Consider this:

Would you rather blame Jesus for the fact that you didn't get it right, or thank Him because now He is giving you the opportunity to get it right?

What makes you think I blame Jesus for anything? I no longer believe in Jesus or the God of the bible.

You told me you would consider it His fault for leading you wrong. Here's your post. I highlighted the comment.

I trusted in Jesus for over 30 years of my life believing him to be the one and only God. Believing he'd died for my sins and saved me. Believing I was hearing from him and being guided by him.

According to many Christians now, I was mistaken and I wasn't really a true Christian at all. Although no Christians ever told me that WHILE I was a Christian - in fact the opposite. That means I lived my life following a false version of Jesus, maybe even the devil himself. If this is the case then Jesus has clearly let me down big time, allowing me to be misled for many many years without making any ounce of effort to steer me in the right direction. Even though I genuinely believed I was following him, he made no efforts what so all to put me right. If these Christians are correct then one can hardly claim Jesus to be trustworthy.

[Divine Insight]

You told me you would consider it His fault for leading you wrong. Here's your post. I highlighted the comment.

There is nothing in that about placing "blame" on anyone, or even pointing "fault".

On the contrary all he suggested is that Jesus would have let him down and would have been untrustworthy.

A religion that claims that God is trustworthy can hardly have its cake and eat it too by proclaiming that Jesus can't be trusted for guidance when asked.

I fully understand what OnceConvinced is saying. He's not "blaming" Jesus for anything, but rather pointing out the absurdity of a fairytale that proclaims to have a trustworthy deity that clearly isn't trustworthy.

It's just reveals that the religion is false.

Mother Teresa did the same thing.

“What do I labor for? If there be no God, there can be no soul. If there be no soul then, Jesus, You also are not true.� - Mother Teresa.

This is not "blaming" Jesus for not being real. That would be absurd. It's simply a recognition that the dogma is nothing but false fairy tales, and therefore Jesus is simply not real.

No blame being pushed onto a Jesus that clearly doesn't exist.

[KenRU]

Are you kiddig??? Your very existence is evidence of the power of God.

And your evidence to support such a claim?

I told you, Ken. You are the evidence.

How do you know that I’m not the product of space aliens? Or Allah? Or any of the Roman gods?

Because no matter "Who" created you, you're still a creation. Can't you accept the fact that you are a created being?

Evolution has a mountain of evidence to support its accuracy.

Ever hear of "making mountains out of mole hills?"

Creation has the (rhema) word of God to support its accuracy.

With Creation there is a starting point. Evolution can't even address the beginning point. Evolution theory just assumes the process.

Still, not knowing how life started does not disprove the fact that evolution occurs.

Yes it does. Without a "start point" there is nothing to "evolve."

And the thing about creation is that God can do it quickly. He doesn't need six billion years to go from an ameba to an elephant.

You know this how? Please cite your evidence.

The dude is GOD, man. Who can give time constraints to God?

Six billion years is too long. Our sun would have burned out long before that.

Just a quick google search showed how wrong your science is. The sun has existed for about 4.6 billion years, life has been on our planet for about 3.8 billion years, and our sun should last another 7 billion years.

You're getting your info from the 95% who don't seem to have "common sense".
Statistics like these are based on false premises, like evolution is true and the sun had to be around that long for it to be true.

So, its “common sense� to disagree with science (these facts that scientists use to determine such things) when it contradicts a bronze age holy book?

I assume you trust science when you get immunized? Drive a car? Fly in airplane? Wear glasses? Utilize your microwave? Watch TV? Science is fine then, I assume?

Why do you suddenly trust those scientists who don’t have “common sense� then? The answer of course, is that the products of science have been shown to work.

Evolution has just as much evidence (if not more) to show that it occurs as gravity does. It also has been shown to work (immunizations, domestication of animals, DNA, etc).

I no longer wish to ignore evidence. That is common sense.

[YahDough]

Are you kiddig??? Your very existence is evidence of the power of God.

And your evidence to support such a claim?

I told you, Ken. You are the evidence.

How do you know that I’m not the product of space aliens? Or Allah? Or any of the Roman gods?

Because no matter "Who" created you, you're still a creation. Can't you accept the fact that you are a created being?

Evolution has a mountain of evidence to support its accuracy.

Ever hear of "making mountains out of mole hills?"

Creation has the (rhema) word of God to support its accuracy.

With Creation there is a starting point. Evolution can't even address the beginning point. Evolution theory just assumes the process.

Still, not knowing how life started does not disprove the fact that evolution occurs.

Yes it does. Without a "start point" there is nothing to "evolve."

And the thing about creation is that God can do it quickly. He doesn't need six billion years to go from an ameba to an elephant.

You know this how? Please cite your evidence.

The dude is GOD, man. Who can give time constraints to God?

Six billion years is too long. Our sun would have burned out long before that.

Just a quick google search showed how wrong your science is. The sun has existed for about 4.6 billion years, life has been on our planet for about 3.8 billion years, and our sun should last another 7 billion years.

You're getting your info from the 95% who don't seem to have "common sense".
Statistics like these are based on false premises, like evolution is true and the sun had to be around that long for it to be true.

So, its “common sense� to disagree with science (these facts that scientists use to determine such things) when it contradicts a bronze age holy book?

On some issues, yes. The word of the Lord endures forever. It's ridiculous to think our sun has been pumping linear amounts of heat for billions of years.

I assume you trust science when you get immunized? Drive a car? Fly in airplane? Wear glasses? Utilize your microwave? Watch TV? Science is fine then, I assume?

I don't "trust" science. I use it. I "trust" the Word of God.

Why do you suddenly trust those scientists who don’t have “common sense� then? The answer of course, is that the products of science have been shown to work.

Look Ken...I have nothing against science. I use it every day. Christ created it. But contemporary science does not always get it right and the Word of God can trump the scientific method every time.

Evolution has just as much evidence (if not more) to show that it occurs as gravity does. It also has been shown to work (immunizations, domestication of animals, DNA, etc).

As I said before, the evidence of Darwinian evolution is based on false and/or misleading premises. Time should make that clear.

Here's some interesting read if you have time:

EVOLUTION DEBUNKED

“Stasis, or non-change, of most fossil species during their lengthy geological lifespans was tacitly acknowledged by all paleontologists, but almost never studied explicitly because prevailing theory treated stasis as uninteresting nonevidence for nonevolution. .... The overwhelming prevalence of stasis became an embarrassing feature of the fossil record, best left ignored as a manifestation of nothing (that is, non-evolution)."

Gould, Stephen J., "Cordelia's Dilemma," Natural History, 1993, p. 15

Stephen J Gould was on of the most well known evolutionists and the inventor of the “punctuated equilibrium� theory, and professor geology en zoology at Harvard university.
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"Paleontologists just were not seeing the expected changes in their fossils as they pursued them up through the rock record. ... That individual kinds of fossils remain recognizably the same throughout the length of their occurrence in the fossil record had been known to paleontologists long before Darwin published his Origin. Darwin himself, .... prophesied that future generations of paleontologists would fill in these gaps by diligent search .... One hundred and twenty years of paleontological research later, it has become abundantly clear that the fossil record will not confirm this part of Darwin's predictions. Nor is the problem a miserly fossil record. The fossil record simply shows that this prediction is wrong.
The observation that species are amazingly conservative and static entities throughout long periods of time has all the qualities of the emperor's new clothes: everyone knew it but preferred to ignore it. Paleontologists, faced with a recalcitrant record obstinately refusing to yield Darwin's predicted pattern, simply looked the other way."

Eldredge, N. and Tattersall, I., The Myths of Human Evolution, 1982, p. 45-46
Niles Eldredge is an evolutionist en co-inventor of the punctuated equilibrium theory
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"Paleontologists have paid an enormous price for Darwin's argument. We fancy ourselves as the only true students of life's history, yet to preserve our favored account of evolution by natural selection we view our data as so bad that we almost never see the very process we profess to study. .... The history of most fossil species includes two features particularly inconsistent with gradualism:
1. Stasis. Most species exhibit no directional change during their tenure on earth. They appear in the fossil record looking much the same as when they disappear; morphological change is usually limited and directionless.
2. Sudden appearance. In any local area, a species does not arise gradually by the steady transformation of its ancestors; it appears all at once and 'fully formed."

Gould, Stephen J. The Panda's Thumb, 1980, p. 181-182

Stephen J Gould was on of the most well known evolutionists and the inventor of the “punctuated equilibrium� theory, and professor geology en zoology at Harvard university.
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".... we have proffered a collective tacit acceptance of the story of gradual adaptive change, a story that strengthened and became even more entrenched as the synthesis took hold. We paleontologists have said that the history of life supports that interpretation, all the while really knowing that it does not."

Eldredge, Niles "Time Frames: The Rethinking of Darwinian Evolution and the Theory of Punctuated Equilibria," Simon & Schuster: New York NY, 1985, p. 44
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"The fossil record flatly fails to substantiate this expectation of finely graded change."

Eldredge, N. and Tattersall, I., The Myths of Human Evolution, 1982, p. 163
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"Given that evolution, according to Darwin, was in a continual state of motion .... it followed logically that the fossil record should be rife with examples of transitional forms leading from the less to more evolved. .... Instead of filling the gaps in the fossil record with so-called missing links, most paleontologists found themselves facing a situation in which there were only gaps in the fossil record, with no evidence of transformational evolutionary intermediates between documented fossil species."

Schwartz, Jeffrey H., Sudden Origins, 1999, p. 89.

Schwartz, Jeffrey H is professor anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh and also evolutionist, writer of boek about evolution: “Sudden Origins�, a provocative new theory on how evolution works by sudden leaps and bounds:
http://www.post-gazette.com/books/revie ... iew395.asp
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"Species that were once thought to have turned into others have been found to overlap in time with these alleged descendants. In fact, the fossil record does not
convincingly document a single transition from one species to another."

Stanley, S.M., The New Evolutionary Timetable: Fossils, Genes, and the Origin of Species, 1981, p. 95, speaking about the Bighorn basin in Wyoming USA.

S.M. Stanley is an American paleontologist and evolutionary biologist at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
He wrote many articles, also together with Niles Eldredge, de co-inventor of the punctuated equilibrium theory.
One of his articles is “Paleontology and earth system history in the new millennium� which has been published in “Geological Society of America�
For more info about prof Stanley look here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_M._Stanley
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"The Eldredge-Gould concept of punctuated equilibria has gained wide acceptance among paleontologists. It attempts to account for the following paradox: Within continuously sampled lineages, one rarely finds the gradual morphological trends predicted by Darwinian evolution; rather, change occurs with the sudden appearance of new, well-differentiated species. Eldredge and Gould equate such appearances with speciation, although the details of these events are not preserved. .... The punctuated equilibrium model has been widely accepted, not because it has a compelling theoretical basis but because it appears to resolve a dilemma. Apart from the obvious sampling problems inherent to the observations that stimulated the model, and apart from its intrinsic circularity (one could argue that speciation can occur only when phyletic change is rapid, not vice versa), the model is more ad hoc explanation than theory, and it rests on shaky ground."

Ricklefs, Robert E., "Paleontologists Confronting Macroevolution," Science, vol. 199, 1978, p. 59

Robert E Ricklefs is an evolutionist and professor biology at the University of Missouri te St. Louis:
http://www.umsl.edu/~ricklefs
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"Paleontologists are traditionally famous (or infamous) for reconstructing whole animals from the debris of death. Mostly they cheat. .... If any event in life's history resembles man's creation myths, it is this sudden diversification of marine life when multicellular organisms took over as the dominant actors in ecology and evolution. Baffling (and embarrassing) to Darwin, this event still dazzles us and stands as a major biological revolution on a par with the invention of self-replication and the origin of the eukaryotic cell. The animal phyla emerged out of the Precambrian mists with most of the attributes of their modern descendants."

Bengtson, Stefan, "The Solution to a Jigsaw Puzzle," Nature, vol. 345 (June 28, 1990), p. 765-766

Stefan Bengtson is an evolutionist en head curator of the Swedish museum of natural history in Stockholm Zweden.
For more info about S. Bentson look here http://palaeo-electronica.org/staff/stefan.htm
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"Modern multicellular animals make their first uncontested appearance in the fossil record some 570 million years ago - and with a bang, not a protracted crescendo. This ‘Cambrian explosion’ marks the advent (at least into direct evidence) of virtually all major groups of modern animals - and all within the minuscule span, geologically speaking, of a few million years."

Gould, Stephen J., Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History, 1989, p. 23-24

Stephen J Gould was on of the most well known evolutionists and the inventor of the “punctuated equilibrium� theory, and professor geology en zoology at Harvard university.
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"The record jumps, and all the evidence shows that the record is real: the gaps we see reflect real events in life’s history - not the artifact of a poor fossil record."

Eldredge, N. and Tattersall, I., The Myths of Human Evolution, 1982, p. 59

Niles Eldredge is an evolutionist en co-inventor of the punctuated equilibrium theory
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"The fossil record itself provided no documentation of continuity - of gradual transition from one animal or plant to another of quite different form."

Stanley, S.M., The New Evolutionary Timetable: Fossils, Genes and the Origin of Species, 1981, p. 40

S.M. Stanley is an American professor, paleontologist, and evolutionary biologist at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. For most of his career he taught geology at Johns Hopkins University (1969-2005) He is best known for his empirical research documenting the evolutionary process of punctuated equilibrium in the fossil record.
He wrote many articles, also together with Niles Eldredge, de co-inventor of the punctuated equilibrium theory.
For more info about prof Stanley look here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_M._Stanley
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"The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to construct functional intermediates in many cases, has been a persistent and nagging problem for gradualistic accounts of evolution."

Gould, Stephen J., "Is a New and General Theory of Evolution Emerging?," 1982, p. 140

Stephen J Gould was on of the most well known evolutionists and the inventor of the “punctuated equilibrium� theory, and professor geology en zoology at Harvard university.
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"Gaps between higher taxonomic levels are general and large."

Raff R.A, and Kaufman, T.C., Embryos, Genes, and Evolution: The Developmental-Genetic Basis of Evolutionary Change, 1991, p. 35

"The lack of ancestral or intermediate forms between fossil species is not a bizarre peculiarity of early metazoan history. Gaps are general and prevalent throughout the fossil record."

Raff R.A, and Kaufman, T.C., Embryos, Genes, and Evolution: The Developmental-Genetic Basis of Evolutionary Change, 1991, p. 34

Rudolf A Raff is an evolutionist en professor biology at the Indiana University in Bloomingdale, Indiana, USA, and also Director—Institute for Molecular and Cellular Biology, Distinguished Professor, Adjunct Professor of History and Philosophy of Science.
More info about prof Raff can be found here: http://newsinfo.iu.edu/sb/page/normal/608.html
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"The known fossil record is not, and never has been, in accord with gradualism. What is remarkable is that, through a variety of historical circumstances, even the history of opposition has been obscured .... ‘The majority of paleontologists felt their evidence simply contradicted Darwin’s stress on minute, slow, and cumulative changes leading to species transformation.’ .... their story has been suppressed."

Stanley, S.M., The New Evolutionary Timetable, 1981, p. 71

S.M. Stanley is an evolutionist and professor at the John Hopkins university in Baltimore.
He wrote many articles, also together with Niles Eldredge, de co-inventor of the punctuated equilibrium theory.
One of his articles is “Paleontology and earth system history in the new millennium� which has been published in “Geological Society of America�
For more info about prof Stanley look here: http://www.jhu.edu/~eps/faculty/stanley ... l#research
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"In spite of these examples, it remains true, as every paleontologist knows, that most new species, genera, and families, and that nearly all new categories above the level of families, appear in the record suddenly and are not led up to by known, gradual, completely continuous transitional sequences."

Simpson, George Gaylord, The Major Features of Evolution, 1953, p. 360

Simpson George Gaylord is anevolutionist and professor paleontologie in Columbia and Harvard.
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"Paleontologists had long been aware of a seeming contradiction between Darwin’s postulate of gradualism .... and the actual findings of paleontology. Following phyletic lines through time seemed to reveal only minimal gradual changes but no clear evidence for any change of a species into a different genus or for the gradual origin of an evolutionary novelty. Anything truly novel always seemed to appear quite abruptly in the fossil record."

Mayr, E., One Long Argument: Charles Darwin and the Genesis of Modern Evolutionary Thought, 1991, p. 138

Ernst Mayer was one of the leading evolutionistic biologists of the 20th century, see here: http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Ernst_Mayr
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"The record certainly did not reveal gradual transformations of structure in the course of time.
On the contrary, it showed that species generally remained constant throughout their history. New types or classes seemed to appear fully formed, with no sign of an evolutionary trend by which they could have emerged from an earlier type."

Bowler, Evolution: The History of an Idea, 1984, p. 187

Peter J. Bowler, a scholar of Darwin and evolution, is a prolific author and professor of the history and philosophy of science at Queens University of Belfast.
http://www.americanscientist.org/author ... ter-bowler
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"The paleontological data is consistent with the view that all of the currently recognized phyla had evolved by about 525 Ma. Despite half a billion years of evolutionary exploration generated in Cambrian time, no new phylum level designs have appeared since then."

"Developmental Evolution of Metazoan Body plans: The Fossil Evidence," Valentine, Erwin, and Jablonski, Developmental Biology 173, Article No. 0033, 1996, p. 376
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"Chicago Field Museum, Prof. of Geology, Univ. of Chicago, "A large number of well-trained scientists outside of evolutionary biology and paleontology have unfortunately gotten the idea that the fossil record is far more Darwinian than it is. This probably comes from the oversimplification inevitable in secondary sources: low-level textbooks, semi-popular articles, and so on. Also, there is probably some wishful thinking involved. In the years after Darwin, his advocates hoped to find predictable progressions. In general, these have not been found yet the optimism has died hard, and some pure fantasy has crept into textbooks .... One of the ironies of the creation evolution debate is that the creationists have accepted the mistaken notion that the fossil record shows a detailed and orderly progression and they have gone to great lengths to accommodate this 'fact' in their Flood."

Raup, David, "Geology" New Scientist, Vol. 90, p.832,1981

David Raub is an evolutionist, and professor emeritus (former Sewell L. Avery Distinguished Service Professor) in Geophysical Sciences and former curator Geology at the Field Museum of Natural History at the University van Chicago. See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_M._Raup
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"A major problem in proving the theory (of evolution) has been the fossil record; the imprints of vanished species preserved in the Earth's geological formations. This record has never revealed traces of Darwin's hypothetical intermediate variants instead species appear and disappear abruptly, and this anomaly has fueled the creationist argument that each species was created by God."

Czarnecki, Mark, "The Revival of the Creationist Crusade", MacLean's, January 19, 1981, p. 56
Czarnecki Mark is an evolutionist and a paleontologist.
. _____________________________________________________________________
"It is as though they [fossils] were just planted there, without any evolutionary history. Needless to say this appearance of sudden planting has delighted creationists. .... Both schools of thought (Punctuationists and Gradualists) despise so-called scientific creationists equally, and both agree that the major gaps are real, that they are true imperfections in the fossil record. The only alternative explanation of the sudden appearance of so many complex animal types in the Cambrian era is divine creation and (we) both reject this alternative."

Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker London: W.W. Norton & Company, 1987, p. 229.

Richard Dawkins is very well known evolutionist en author and professor zoology at the Oxford university.
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"All paleontologists know that the fossil record contains precious little in the way of intermediate forms; transitions between major groups are characteristically abrupt. Gradualists usually extract themselves from this dilemma by invoking the extreme imperfection of the fossil record."

Gould, Stephen J. The Panda's Thumb, 1980, p.189

Stephen J Gould was on of the most well known evolutionists and the inventor of the “punctuated equilibrium� theory, and professor geology en zoology at Harvard university.
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"Instead of finding the gradual unfolding of life, what geologists of Darwin’s time, and geologists of the present day actually find is a highly uneven or jerky record; that is, species appear in the sequence very suddenly, show little or no change during their existence in the record, then abruptly go out of the record. and it is not always clear, in fact it’s rarely clear, that the descendants were actually better adapted than their predecessors. In other words, biological improvement is hard to find."

Raup, David M., "Conflicts Between Darwin and Paleontology," Bulletin, Field Museum of Natural History, vol. 50, 1979, p. 23

David Raub is an evolutionist, and professor emeritus (former Sewell L. Avery Distinguished Service Professor) in Geophysical Sciences and former curator Geology at the Field Museum of Natural History at the University van Chicago. See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_M._Raup
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"But just in proportion as this process of extermination has acted on an enormous scale, so must the number of intermediate varieties, which have formerly existed on the earth, be truly enormous. Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely-graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and serious objection which can be urged against my theory. The explanation lies, as I believe, in the extreme imperfection of the geological record."

[Nickman]

This is a question addressed only to former Christians who have left the faith.

Why did you become a Christian?
[/b]

In a true heart to heart fashion, I was born into Christianity. I was raised Southern Baptist. I went to AWANA (approved workmen are not ashamed) and became a deacon. It was just me and my Paw since I was 3. I loved my Lord and Savior. I trusted my Church. I had a relationship with Jesus. He walked with me and talked with me everywhere I went. He told me what was right and what was wrong, even though sometimes I didn't heed his words. Sometimes I would ask for guidance, and sure enough I found my way.

He told me once to ask for new friends to replace my old ones, and lo and behold I found new ones. I praised God for my new found friends.

He asked me to minister to those in need and I answered the call. I told everyone I knew about Jesus and the Gospel of eternal salvation. I laid my hands on the sick, and clothed the poor. I fed the hungry.

Later, I moved from the Baptist faith into oneness which is a faith that Jesus and the Father are one person. This didn't last long, but I learned a great deal of religious Ideology.

I also ventured into Mormonism which taught me to be humble to a point I never reached before. My kids were most likely the culprit for my new found humility.

So why did I become a Christian? I was born into it like most people, but I truly believed and had a relationship with Jesus.

Why do you ask?

[McCulloch]

I "trust" the Word of God.
…
But contemporary science does not always get it right and the Word of God can trump the scientific method every time.

I agree. If God himself has given his word on something, then his word would be more certain than even the scientific method. However, there is no evidence that any writing or collection of writing is from God. You claim to have the Word of God. So do others. The Hidden Words of Bahá’u’lláh, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, The Book of Mormon, The Pearl of Great Price, The Doctrine and Covenants, Qur’�n, The Tanakh, The Urantia Book, the Holy Piby, The Guru Granth Sahib, Divine Principle, the Old Testament and the New Testament. It is easy to claim to have a revelation from God. Many do it. It is another thing entirely to show that what you have is, in fact, from God. Do you argue that it is from God because it is reliable? Then you cannot claim that it is reliable because it is from God. That would be circular.