As in “There’s no incompatibility between a Creator and evolution, whether that evolution is biological or intellectual or social”.
So here a bit of reddit.atheist triumphalism:
There’s plenty of evidence to suggest that homo sapiens (including that special people called Israel) evolved in their understanding of God under the influence of His Spirit. So the suggestion of scholars like Stavrakopoulou that Israel evolved from a henotheistic (the God of Israel is the most important in a pantheon of gods and mysterious cosmic powers) to a purely monotheistic view of God (the God of Israel is the only god there is and whatever other cosmic powers there be are either his servants or demonic enemies) neither intimidates nor embarrasses me. You can watch the evolution of Israel’s thinking in the pages of the Old Testament and on into the New. In Exodus, the gods of Egypt are regarded as inferior to the God of Israel, not as non-existent. Likewise, the Psalms hail the Lord as “the great king over all other gods”. Meanwhile, in the New Testament the reality of gradual and progressive revelation, already alluded to in passing in the prophets (otherwise Jeremiah makes not sense prophecy a “new covenant” is made explicit again and again as Jesus repeatedly tells his disciples “you have heard that it was said… but I say to you” and announced that the new covenant Jeremiah prophesied is now here. Indeed, Hebrews spells out the concept of progressive revelation plainly when it says, “In many and various ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets; but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son.” (Heb 1:1–2).
But for that species of Fundamentalist one finds in reddit.atheist circles, progression in human understanding is clearly imagined to be a body blow to faith because, just like the Christian Fundamentalists they mirror, evolution of any kind is imagined to somehow be a mortal threat to faith.
“She knows vastly more about your god and your religion than you do” absolutely drips with contempt. The funny thing is, I doubt seriously Stavrakopoulou shares this contempt. But the reddit.atheist culture warrior who made the meme? He imagines every member of every Abrahamic faith in the world just sustained a death blow from which he can never recover, because, like so many of these atheists, he is just as much a fundamentalist as any Christian fundamentalist.
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Religion is dynamic, not static. It evolves. Christianity today is not the same as it was in 400AD. We now have Catholics, Protestants, Eastern Orthodox, Coptic Christians and other sects, all Christian. Judaism has evolved, with Orthodox, Conservative and Reformed. All Jews. Islam has Sunnis and Shiites. All Muslims.
It has been said that religions are either looking for converts or hunting heretics. I wish right wing Catholics, both clergy and laity would stop hunting heretics for a while and listen. It’s interesting how some people think that they, and only they speak for God.