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Perhaps I wasn’t clear enough. The defiance BECOMES disbelief. One does not stand in contradistinction to the other, disbelief (or as I said earlier, a dedication to disbelief) is actually the punishment for defiance.

I did not quote the rest of the first chapter of Romans, but perhaps you should review it at you convenience.

102 posted on 05/22/2012 9:31:40 PM PDT by papertyger ("And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if..."))

The first chapter of Romans refers more to the practices of polytheistic idolaters than to what we see with an agnostic like Darwin (a mild-mannered person, if I recall correctly, who had once wanted to be a clergyman). I agree, though, that it seems to say that God's existence and qualities are "manifest" but because people defy him anyway, he causes them to disbelieve.

I don't attach as much importance to that passage as you do, but rather than explain why, I'll refer you to what I said at greater length in another thread (in posts 44, 47, and 48).