Warning this is just barely an evolution thread:
Ok, with the warning out of the way, has anyone ever (for lack of a better phrase) converted a fundamental creationist to one that accepts evolution? If so, how?
By the way, I’m talk HARDCORE fundamental…(redundant?)
I suppose all you would have to do is show them some proof 
One would think that, unfortunately it doesn’t matter in a majority of cases. I’m just curious because I’ve seen a lot of debates between avid fundies who stick to their guns-even when all of their evidence has been refuted.
That’s either because God lives inside them and there’s no explaining that (or providing any kind of evidence) to someone who’s never experienced it, or it’s because they were raised in their beliefs and too stubborn to give anything else a second thought.
I agree dreamer.
So has anyone ever convinced a fundie?
ever?
I’d be surprised if anyone ‘converted’ a hard-core fundamentalist by debate. IMO such debate–in any direction–tries to cause a non-logical change in non-logical belief by logical means…
I wholeheartedly agree with Sunspace. Sorry, Dreamer, but you get to hear my story again (I missed ya, though).
I was a fundamentalist for about 5 years, give or take. If anyone wanted to argue with me I was ready, and no amount of “evidence” would persuade me. People mess with scientific studies - hell, look at what some people think of marijuana. You have some people saying it’s the miracle crop, and others saying it’ll kill you in a decade (a bit of an exaggeration, but you get the point).
Anyhoo, I DID change my mind, but it wasn’t from debate. Had I continued to debate, I would have never learned. When I was a fundie, I took the debates very personally, and no matter what, I had to come up with answers. When I decided to listen, I was able to see the foolishness of my own arguments. Now, I can hardly help but laugh when I hear the friends I grew up with or taught give me the same tired lines I used to use.
So, what changed my mind? Life experience. That’s what it takes, IMHO. No one who’s telling you that your ideas are crazy, or that you need to be educated, or whathaveyou is ever going to change your mind. You have to really analyze what you believe, why you believe it, and where your beliefs stem from. I realized mine had no root in reality. In my heart, I knew they were wrong, but it’s much more comfortable knowing what’s expected of you and what your reward will be. When you’re the one calling the shots, and when there is no definate reward after life, it’s really scary. I had to get over that.
btw, my Senior thesis in high school was about creation science.
I’ve been thinking about this thread today and while doing some other research I came accross This site which made me wonder how many have turned the other way. Atheist to Christian. I’ve known quite a few agnostics who have turned to Christianity and other religions and have “found their way”, but not very many people who call themselves atheists, at least that I know of.
How about you guys?
My take is creationists have a deep seated desire to be special. They cannot emotionally handle the issue of being on the same level as the Great Apes and dolphins. Therefore, no amount of refuting their arguments will succeed.
If that is the case, the best counter is a theistic evolutionist one. One can maintain that while evolution is a fact, YHWH’s invisible hand is guiding the process so humans would be actualised, so to speak.
I seriously doubt a skeptical evolutionist has ever converted a fundamental creationist to his viewpoint or vice versa. Creation v. Evolution debates seem to me to be two people waiting for their turn to talk without ever really listening to the other side. At the risk of making some sweeping generalizations, I’ve seen that most debating evolutionists are fairly familiar with creationist tactics and beliefs, but the converse is less often true. Most creationists are seemingly ignorant of evolution and keep clouding the debate with the same tired old arguments that have been disproven time and time again. (When I refer to creationists, I am speaking of Young-earth, biblical literalists, believers in “creation science”, if you will. There are, of course, many “creationists” who completely accept the fact of evolution and theory of natural selection.)
I think most people come to their beliefs for emotional reasons, then justify them afterward. Those who want or need to believe in God, who remain ignorant of evolution and critical thinking, tend to become “fundamental creationists”, and those who are competently instructed in evolution and basic skepticism tend to believe in theistically guided evolution (and big bang, etc.). Those who don’t want or need to believe in God, and are ignorant of evolution and skeptical inquiry, tend to retain the beliefs they were raised with, but aren’t particularly devoted to following them, or become ardent “god-haters”, but who have no real interest in origins, or head off into “new age” type belief systems. Those who are schooled in evolutionary theory and scientific procedure, of course, become the familiar atheist/skeptic evolutionist. Without question there are others, but I think a large majority of people fall into one of these categories. It seems to me if those types are arranged on a continuum from “fundamental creationist” to “skeptical evolutionist”, those in the middle are somewhat more likely to be swayed either way by adept persuasion, but the ones on the end tend to talk past each other, since they are looking at the world in such fundamentally different ways.
I agree, Genseric. Having a debate about evolution/creation is just two people (or groups of people) talking AT each other… not TO each other. It gets us nowhere.
I know that Mangetout has moved from a position of creationism to one more accepting of evolution during his time on (and thanks to his exposure to) the SDMB - I don’t know how “fundamental” he was, but the point is that it is possible to change one’s mind.
It is not likely to happen in one sitting, and yelling doesn’t help.
Grim
Hmm. I’m somewhat offended by your first sentence. I am a Christian, and I have no doubt of God’s existence. When I first came to this board I was somewhat a fundamentalist in that I’d always accepted the Bible as the inerrent word of God. However, after reading a few of the Great Debates, which encouraged me to do my own searching, I did question my beliefs and now I have accepted that God is in me as well as the rest of the world, but the biblical Creation story was just that. A story.
That doesn’t mean that God is just a story. Evolution doesn’t take anything away from my faith in God, it just means that the men that wrote the Bible had no idea how the earth was formed or how people came to be. They weren’t scientists, they were storytellers.
I’ll second Rushgeekgirl’s annoyance at the above quote, but for completely different reasons. I was completely fundamental, and I HAD God inside me (or so I believed)… that didn’t mean I couldn’t learn. Not everyone who “experiences” what you have is going to acknowledge the infallability of a book. Secondly, you said, “or it’s because they were raised in their beliefs and too stubborn to give anything else a second thought.” Isn’t that exactly what you’re doing? We were all raised in a Christian society (well, all the Americans here), even if we weren’t raised in a Christian house. Now, the fundamentalist beliefs might not have been ground into us from the time we were all little, but I’d speculate that it was for many current fundies. So, who’s being stubborn?
I’ll third Rushgeekgirls and mandielise’s annoyance. When I first read Dreamer’s statement I assumed he admitted to stubbornness, upon closer examination this isn’t the case.
I’m a christian, I believe in God, he is inside me, but I fail to see how that interfers with my belief (is that the right word?) in evolution.
I have a semi-followup question: How does evolution conflict with belief in God? If it doesn’t then why is there so much fuss about evolution?
I’m addressing Dreamer in this, but others are welcomed to answer.
Meatros, the only Christians who have a problem with evolution (to my knowledge, though I’m bound to be wrong) are fundamentalists who believe every word in the Bible.
To them, the earth is only 6,000-10,000 years old, because you can trace the lineage of Jesus back to Adam. They add up the ages of the ancestors when their children were born and have an approximate understanding of how old the earth is.
It says that God made Adam from the dust of the earth in one day. If that’s the case, he can’t have evolved from other creatures over millions of years.
The earth and everything in it was created in 6 days (and in Hebrew there were two words for “day” - the one meaning 24 hours was the one used in Genesis), and that God completely stopped creating new beings after that.
Those are just a couple things I’ve been able to think of. Now, many Christians believe the Bible to just be like a blueprint - it got the right idea, but nothing’s perfect which is made by man. In that case, none of these trivial things matter, and evolution is possible. I, myself, have decided that if one part’s fictitious, how can I expect the rest to be true especially when so many other things make just as much sense. Therefore, I’m not longer Christian at all. If you wanna know more about the whole evolution vs creation thing just tell me and I’ll email or something. I did a lot of research when I was a fundie, and I even wrote my sr thesis on it - so I know fairly well what the Christian excuses for evidence are.
Mandielise-I think you are right. The thing that bothers me is that unless you are omnipotent and or wrote the bible, why is your interpretation of it any better than mine?
(the general “your” that is.)
I mean, come on, the bible is not exactly a step by step how to guide of how the universe came to be. There are two versions of creations for crying out loud.
Do you still have your sr thesis? I would like to see what the excuses are.
I don’t actually still have it - I wrote it 3 years and two computers ago! I think I might be able to remember some things. I want to remind everyone that these are NOT my beliefs - they used to be. Likewise, I did my research 3 years ago, so some ideas might have changed or become outdated.
One example is Noah’s ark. Evolutionists say it’s impossible to have fit all the animals of the planet on one boat - and the Bible gives exact dimensions which further implies a shortage of space. The creationists theory (as of three years ago) was that at one point there was one breed of every animal. For example: there was one dog that had all the genes possible to become a terrier, lab, etc… Instead of having a copy of each breed on the boat, Noah only had to have a pair of the original dogs - and since the ark was fairly close to the time of Adam, it’s possible to believe that the dogs wouldn’t have bred out by that time. So there was only one type of dog, cat, horse, fly, squirrel, etc… which makes it more plausible that they would have all fit on the boat.
Along with that belief was the belief that dinosaurs had to be on the boat. Now, not all creation scientists believed this, but many did. Again, only one type of dinosaur would have needed to be on the boat. Also, it’s theorized that the “behemoth” in Job 40:15-24 is actually a dinosaur.
"15 Behold now behemoth, which I made with thee; he eateth grass as an ox.
16 Lo now, his strength [is] in his loins, and his force [is] in the navel of his belly.
17 He moveth his tail like a cedar: the sinews of his stones are wrapped together.
18 His bones [are as] strong pieces of brass; his bones [are] like bars of iron.
19 He [is] the chief of the ways of God: he that made him can make his
sword to approach [unto him].
20 Surely the mountains bring him forth food, where all the beasts of the field play.
21 He lieth under the shady trees, in the covert of the reed, and fens.
22 The shady trees cover him [with] their shadow; the willows of the brook
compass him about.
23 Behold, he drinketh up a river, [and] hasteth not: he trusteth that he
can draw up Jordan into his mouth.
24 He taketh it with his eyes: [his] nose pierceth through snares. "
Again, that’s just what some people say. They say you can’t use carbon dating as evidence because it’s been disproven, so we really can’t tell how old anything is - even the dinosaurs. However, I think there’s enough scientific evidence that carbon dating works pretty well.
The only thing that I couldn’t explain away as a Christian was the presense of stars. If we’re now seeing stars which are billions of light years away, wouldn’t they have to be billions of years old? If God created everything in the same week, and our earth and inhabitants are only 6-10,000 years old, how can a star be billions of years old?
Oh yeah, and one more thing…
You said, “The thing that bothers me is that unless you are omnipotent and or wrote the bible, why is your interpretation of it any better than mine?” Well, that’s exactly the excuse most people use FOR believing in the Bible 100%. If God was to give us a book like this to learn from, and he knows how we make mistakes and need things spelled out for us, he’s bound to give us an infallable book. I used to believe that if something in the Bible was written straight-forward, then it was word-for-word true. If it was written with descriptive words (like many of Jesus’ parables) then it was to be taken metaphorically. In this straight-forward way, God was interpretting his word for us.
I think that’s why I changed my mind, actually. I found that everything that’s said in the Bible is not true. Some things are just plain wrong. Therefore, the Bible itself no longer meant anything. The story that went along with it meant as much to me as the stories of Buddha, Mohammed, and the like. So, if it’s got no more value to it than any other religious reading, why should I hold that it has to be true. Furthermore, the religion itself says that no other religions or gods are possible. Who am I to say that everyone else in this world is wrong cause they grew up reading the Torah, or the Koran, or what have you. That’s when I decided that none of it is true. Again, this is just an extremely brief explanation of my enlightenment. It in no way represents even nearly all the reasons why I changed my mind.