Ok peeps, I'm here
I won't be answering everything because you said personal things I couldn't even think to give an answer, and because you stated yourself that you don't want to talk about certain things (the reasons that brought you to New Atheism, for example). I'm not here to try to convert you either, as I don't think I would be able to, even if I can't deny I wouldn't like to, as my faith is sincere.
But I couldn't resist to the temptation to debate a prepared man like you, and since I found that you disagree with me here, I jumped in.
Now, I said I wouldn't be able to convert you, but I'm confident I can still show how Christianity is not outdated, and neither is in conflict with science or ethics.
However, I will need some inputs from your part in order to debate on a solid topic about this, in order not to get dispersive.
The thing I can make sure to actively deny here is the claim Christianity is dying, or already dead. Whether it referred to an ethic point or a social point, it's not true.
About ethics, I believe Christian morals are not dead at all. Yes, you can claim Christianity is a lie, but yet you respect its moral code. Let me explain it with an example: children. You would be horrified in hurting or killing a child, and in our society, this is arguably considered as the worst of the crimes. Before Christianity, children were generally considered as sub-humans, and quietly abandoned if not desired. In the ancient Rome, Christian families were often recognized because nobody found children in their trash.
About numbers, this is pure disinformation. The number of the Christians is still the same of 100 years ago (about 2 billions). While Christians in Europe are decreasing, they are increasing their number in Southern America, Asia, Russia and even Arabia.
Yes, you may object that the number of the world population 100 years ago was smaller, but still the number of Christians is pretty high to be considered a dying phenomenon.
Lastly, a question: do you believe you can successfully raise your children with a thing you're not convinced about?
Don't worry about me. The reason I try to avoid arguing with Christians these days is that by nature debates degenerate into polemics and my intention is not to undermine anyone's Christian faith - if anything I want the opposite.
Christianity is in fact in severe decline, by which I refer to its practice and social influence, in the western world, especially western Europe. I should have made it clearer that I was specifically referring to the west in my post, sorry.
And my problem has not to do with Christian ethics, though I think that like all pure things in this world, it's little more than a quixotic ideal, but that is a philosophical story for another day. So I have no qualms with the Christian view of how the world ought to be - the problem is that I find it hard to reconcile virtually all religions with what I know of how the world is.
Since you asked for input let me take you just a little down the rabbit hole.
A juggernaut of science is accumulating on human behaviour now, including parts of it that cut at the heart of all religion.
Consider, for instance, the disturbing but increasingly likely possibility that many forms of criminal behaviour has a partial hereditary basis in personality.
For a century now kinship studies have shown that criminality runs in families more than can be expected by chance, or even explained by purely environmental factors (a great deal of the poor and disadvantaged never resort to any form of crime).
And today we are finally identifying specific genes that underlie those inference-based studies:
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"Two separate genetic traits have been linked to violent crime in a study that raises the possibility of there being an innate, biological basis for serious criminality.
Scientists in Finland said that between five and 10 per cent of severe violent crime in the Scandinavian country could be attributable to both sets of genes, each of which can modify the activity of the brain...
“One way of putting it is that if these two genes did not exist, there might be between five and 10 per cent less violent crime in Finland, but we cannot be sure of what the mechanism is that causes this,” Professor Tiihonen told The Independent.
“We’ve observed two genes that have a relatively big effect on violent behaviour but there are possibly tens or hundreds of other genes that have a smaller effect. This is why a ‘test for criminality’ is not possible from this study,” he said...
A study published in 2002 on more than 400 men found that boys who inherited the low activity version of the MAOA gene and who were subjected to childhood abuse were twice as likely as non-abused carriers of the gene to become violent criminals."
Two genes that were before these studies linked to neurotransmitters and associated with impulsivity and aggression have unsurprisingly turned out to have alleles that are elevated in the criminal population - statistical analysis
suggests that as much as 10% of Finland's crime can essentially be blamed on two genes.
Now as the authors stress this does not mean that everyone with those alleles are predestined for crime - most people with the individual variants alone do not become criminals - but inheriting those two alleles significantly increases your chances of violenct behaviour because they make you more impulsive and prone to anger.
And there are probably many more genes of that nature; now here is the ethical dilemma for you guys: what can we say about God's choice to give those unlucky souls the lot of inheriting multiple genes associated with violence, not just those two?
Man is neither born free nor is the lot he's given distributed fairly.
This is the tip of the iceberg of the disturbing things I've come to learn about the world, and which I find hard to reconcile with what any religion says how the world is, regardless of what they say how it should look like.
Oh and I think I will leave the religious part of the upbringing to their grand-mother, my mom, who's happily agreed to it.
