Hey everyone I’m Luca Bertotto. People call me Totti because of my last name. it’s a thing in the family. I live in Belgium and i’m (only) 15 years old.
I’ve always been an atheist until i was 13. Where i grew up my friends including I, always laughed with religion. Espescially Christianity. The things the teacher told us in religion class was always very stupid to us. Until a couple days after my 13th birthday a Jehovah witness came to our door and gave us a preach or talk i don’t know what to call it. And that day i gave it a honest thought.
Of course i began searching the internet about religion and came to a site named Gotquestions.
They gave a good explanation for things/resurrection of Christ and why you should believe etc.
And it really did make sense to me. Then while reading answers i found that they believed the Bible said that the earth is 6000 years old. It was directly against what i always knew about the world by reading books about dinosaurs(and i love dinosaurs). So that was hurdle 1 in my faith. Then i found articles about not being able to believe in evolution if you were a christian.This was the second hurdle that i could not cope with. I sent a message to the people at gotquestions and they redirected me to sites as AIG and CMI. I directly began to read all of their articles and stances on interpretation of the bible. Why evolution could not be true. How to rationalize the world without millions of years. etc. Of course i had no clue about the deep science of evolution. And so i bought in to the things CMI and AIG said. Reason 1: because they told us they had real Ph D’s and were true scientists so i trusted them. And reason 2: that they said all Christians must believe that the earth was so young.
This for me meant that literally every single christian denied evolution, So why not me too.
After Being a YEC a year. And discussing evolution. People kept bringing up evidence for evolution.
So i sent messages to CMI and AIG about the evidence they gave me. And mostly they either pasted an article or said “that site is full of old articles and are full of lies”. This of course was very fishy to me. Also the fact that they deleted comments that seemed to answer or refute their articles.
After 8 messages of asking a question they gave me an ultimatum: You either believe what the Bible says and are a Christian. Or you believe what the atheist scientists say about the earth and evolution. This to me was very rude. And not helpful. I was on the brink of giving up christianity again. Because it was slowly coming to me that i always knew that evolution made more sense than dinosaurs on a boat. And because the way they said it wasn’t possible to be a christian while also trusting in evolution. Shortly after, i quit going to sites like CMI AIG ICR because i kept finding issues/ contradictions/problems with their explanations of things.Then a couple weeks after i found a blog called “is there a god?” The creator of this Blog had articles about evolution not being a problem for Christianity. And i of course was like: What on earth is this. So i sent a mail to him.
And ever since he is a good friend of mine because he has shown me that you can be a christian and trust in evolution. He has also helped me when i had doubts about certain things or when i had a difficult time understanding something. Then i went on a search to find more people like this. And sure enough i found tons of blogs sites including biologos that have the same worldview.
And now i’m here finally dared to get onto the biologos forum!
So from that point i made the conversion from YEC to EC.
Being a Christian here in Belgium isn’t easy. Alot of people are quite hostile against it.
Actually i don’t have any friends who are christian. I have told someone and directly i got rediculed for it. Belgium is actually the country where most people think religion does more harm than good.
I personally go to a catholic school. And it has gone so far that the class religion doesn’t actually talk about the bible anymore but talks about social problems or bullying. God is barely mentioned.
My teacher for religion is really nice. We talk about the bible and God a lot when the other classmates are going to another class. But when God does come up. I see myself in the other students. They are exactly as i was. So i’m sure that if they gave it a true thought and were shown the way it really is that they could change their minds as well.
My family isn’t very christian or catholic.(They don’t ever talk about it really) I was never forced to believe anything. It was my own choice to believe what i do now. But now that i have you guys to help me if i have problems. And also UnkleE (The mr who has that blog) it softens the blow a little. That i am not all that alone in the way i see the world.
I hope my age doesn’t reduce the credebility you guys give me. And i hope my english wasn’t too big of an obstacle for this post.
I might be making alot of edits to fix things or add stuff that i have forgotten!