The study of evolution IS taking a hard look at at how we got here. A harder look than most creationist seem to want to take.
Is this really a research question? If most people repond that it is not a factor will you modify your original hypothosis?
Let me respond for myself. The more I learn about evolution and the spectacular intricacies and interrelation of the living world, the more awe and reverance I have for it. Much more than that story in Genesis ever inspired in me, not that it’s not a cool little myth.
If anything, evolution and everything else science has taught me about the universe has brought me closer to being a theist than anything in Genesis. Closer to being a theist but farther away from presuming I can understand “God” in any easy way. (definatly farther from seeing “God” as Big Daddy in the Sky, if that’s what you mean by God ;).)
Short answer: No, evolution is not the reason I don’t believe in the God of the Bible.
I lack a belief in God, despite fervent efforts during my tender years, because as long as I’ve looked at, experienced, and thought about religion, spirituality, and the Supreme Being, they have seemed like a human response to existence and survival. God in all his wondrous manifestations has always seemed too man-made for me to take him seriously.
In other words, my (reasoned) belief in evolution has nothing to do with my agnosticism.
If evolution were irrefutably debunked tomorrow, I’d immediately become a Velikovskian Catastrophist. At least he was a scientist.
Pooh your own damn self, Kimstu. When it comes to science or history, it is essential to make things simple for the benefit of those among us who have difficulties grasping the very abstract as well as the very specific.
"So here is the question is one of the main reasons you don’t believe in God evolution? "
No.
"Second part, if evolution was proved absolutely WRONG would you be more inclined to believe in God? "
Only if it was God that overrulled and proved wrong all of the evidence of evolution with even stronger evidence that God Himself did all of the creating, in a public press conference, with verifiable data, as well as evidence of how he faked all of the evolution evidence in the fossil record. Also, I would be just as likely to believe that the Pink Deca-tentacled Alien Robots of Omicron Six created the earth and created fake evidence of evolution should, when their spaceships land on my front lawn, they convincingly present their case with verifiable evidence.
And I note that you used the capital ‘G’ God. I presume you are referring to a specific flavor of god in which you believe? Why do you believe in that flavor instead of the Hindu, Jewish, Islam, or Shinto flavor to name a few?
As I grew up (in the early eighties) and looked around and learned things an started reading and went to church a few Sundays a year and went to a Catholic Grade School and learned science from a nun and learned about Evolution from this same nun (perhaps the most important person in my early life, parents included) and learned about the infallibility of the Pope and was Confirmed Catholic and went on to a public High School and took biology and other things and actually continued to take catechism though I was out of St. Colman’s and then started questioning things like the infallibility of the Pope I had never, NEVER, encountered a biblical literalist, !NEVER! and never thought I would, indeed, did not know that such a creature existed.
I was ignorant of these facts:
That somebody could entertain a notion that evolution somehow contradicts scripture.
That there are these people called “protestants” who were kind of like Catholics but did not believe in the infallibility of the Pope on matters of faith, a very smart, educated and Holy man and that there were many of these “protestants” (Or as my Grandmother says: “You know, not Catholic, those other ones.”) who believed that they, indeed, were infallible in matters of Faith. Yes, I knew of Protestants. Just not that there were some so full of pride as to believe that their personal interpretation of certain passages of the Judeo-Christian bible were infallible.
My athiesm (agnosticism, whatever, I don’t necessarily believe that there is no God, just that the question is not relevant to my life. I mean who cares? I’ll live for a while then I’ll die. The weather will change, I’ll do stuff, I’m not a jerk, so what’s to worry about?) stemmed from a sudden realization (an epiphany, if you will, though there were no wisemen involved) that I did not believe in the infallibility of the Pope. That churches were human institutions, not Holy ones. That man formed God in his image and that if there is a God (Hey, who knows? Not you or me, that’s for sure) he is like nothing imagined by those on Earth. Evolution never entered into it.
It wasn’t until later that I learned of this imagined “war” between science and faith.
Wildest Bill: I have read the bible (most of it, at least). How many Stephen Jay Gould books have you read? I would recommend “Rock of Ages,” a treatise on the delusion that there is a conflict between Science and Religion. Tell that to the Jesuits. As a wise man once said: “I am more interested in the Rock of Ages than in the Age of Rocks.” Vice Versa for me.
Oh, and a PS: Any Protestant who would dare accuse a Catholic of not being a Christian is either ignorant or a bigot of the highest order. The word hypocrite comes to mind as all Protestant churches owe their existence to the Catholic Church. (Manhattan, I know you were joking, and you gave me an idea for a thread. I’m talking in general terms. Kind of a pet peeve. I may not be a part of the Church anymore, but I still have a soft spot for it.)
What does this have to do with anything? I haven’t seen a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. Since I haven’t seen any miracles, why should I believe in your god over any other?
Here’s what I have seen:
“The round earth theory is obviously wrong- it clearly contradicts the Bible!”
(a few years later)
“The Bible is obviously right- it clearly said the earth was round back when everybody else said it was flat! But obviously people are going to be turned away from the Bible by this stupid idea that the earth orbits the Sun.”
(a few years later)
“The Bible is obviously right- it clearly said that the earth orbited the sun back when everyone else said it was the other way around! But all this vaccination stuff is clearly Satanic in origin. Everybody knows that germs don’t cause disease- God sends disease as a punishment!”
(a few years later)
“You atheists love your straw men, don’t you? All those people who thought that the Bible was against the germ theory weren’t real Christians. They were fake Christians- just like theistic evolutionists!”
The problem isn’t with Evolution turning people away from God. The problem is that the stupidity and dishonesty of fundamentalists turns people away from the Invisible Sky Goblin. If you ask me, the history of all “Bible science” is nothing more than the story of a bunch of cavemen sitting around a campfire at night. The priest caveman points to a spot just outside the fire and says, “There’s a goblin there. You just can’t see him, because he’s hiding just outside the reach of the fire.” A smart caveman puts another log on the fire, and the fire burns brighter. At the spot where the goblin was supposed to be, the cavemen see nothing. The priest points to a spot a little further away, just outside the light of the fire. “Weren’t you listening? All along I said the goblin was really there.” Another caveman puts on another log, the spot just outside the light of the fire is illuminated, and there is no goblin. The priest points again…
What kind of god is that? Creationists don’t worship the Almighty God- they worship a pathetic little goblin, always scurrying to keep outside the light. You see the same sort of thing when it comes to miraculous healings. Once a fundamentalist assured me that he knew God to be real, because he had seen miracles with his own eyes when he went on a mission to the Philippines. What kind of miracles? “Many of our parishioners had stomachaches and headaches. We laid on hands, and they were healed!” Oh, great- I’m going to bow before a magical bottle of aspirin and an invisible roll of Tums? Sorry, guys. The creationists like to point outside the circle of light and make big pronouncements, but they never seem to get around to stoking the fire. If anyone does try to stoke it, you fundamentalists do everything you can to make sure that the log never hits the fire, even if people die as a result. When vaccination was invented, fundamentalists took to the streets rioting, trying to kill the vaccinators. Nowadays, people like me work on using the lessons of evolution to cure disease, while you try to sink the next generation’s chances of doing any worthwhile medical science by fighting tooth and nail to replace real science with your self-congratulatory fantasies.
WildestBill, you stated earlier that you refused to educate yourself about evolution. My God is Truth, and I educate myself about everything I can get my hands on. My God isn’t afraid of the light. Why does yours hide in the darkness?
(To answer the OP, I should add a final note. I was an evolutionist even when I was a die-hard fundamentalist, believing in hell for unbelievers. What turned me away from Christianity was three things. My prayers were met with absolute silence. A close reading of the Bible, with a completely open mind, revealed Christianity to be false. And lastly, none of the intelligent, considerate, honest people I met in college were Christians. For that matter, I found out later that my friends would marvel at the fact that I was the only Christian they had ever met who “wasn’t an *sshole.”)
WB, now that every single non-Christian posting to this thread has said that evolution doesn’t prevent them from believing in God, what are you going to do with that information?
Are you going to admit that evolution doesn’t turn people from God?
Are you going to tell the Pizza Puppies what you learned?
Are you going to study evolution, now that you know it’s not a snare to lure you away from God?
Or are you just going to take the calorie-conserving route, and not do anything at all?
No. The main reason I don’t believe in God is because there is no scientific proof that he exists. Without proof of existence, the only way to conceive of God is through faith, and faith is an irrational and dangerous concept, and I will not accept anything on mere faith!!!
If evolution is proven wrong, then implicitly a new theory for the existence/sentience of man has been proven to fit the facts better than evolution, and I would believe that new theory. If that proven theory was creationism, then I would believe in creationism and God! Until that point, however, I will continue to accept evolution as the most rational theory.
I explain the universe as a continuance of the process started by the Big Bang 15 billion years ago. I am here because I was conceived by my parents 23 years ago, and reached my point in the hierarchy of life through evolution (especially the evolution of the opposable thumb, which allowed humans to rise above non-sentient beasts).
Thanks. **
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Some common themes seem to be arising in responses here…
Some people are non-believers, and don’t think that the validity (or otherwise) of the theory of evolution has any influence on their religious opinions.
Some people are Christians and accept the theory of evolution. Subject, of course, to the normal process of the review of scientific theories - I may have missed one, but I don’t think anyone’s adhering to evolution as a point of dogma. To these Christians (and I’m one of them), God made the world, and evolution is one of the tools He used to do it.
And some people appear to be open to at least some part of the message of Christianity… but are turned away by the attitude of some Christians, the dogma, the rules, the insistence on accepting some things in defiance of demonstrable evidence to the contrary…
So, never mind how many people have been turned away from God by evolution. How many have been turned away by creationism?
If I died tomorrow and found myself before Jesus on a throne, and he told me the Bible was the literal truth and that the world was created in 6 days a few thousand years ago, I’d automatically assume that somebody with really advanced technology was playing some kind of cruel trick on me. It’s not that I totally discount the supernatural, I actually almost believe there is some greater intelligence shaping the universe that has a personal interest in us, I just don’t believe in Jesus and the Bible. I would go to the more easily believed explanation.
Wildest Bill, I can provide evidence of the exact opposite.
Read Karen Armstrong’s The Battle for God, which says that fundamentalist movements like the one you are a part of, come about when modernity encroaches their world-view. Which means that the Scopes Trial (look it up) probably did more to turn people towards Fundamentalism than if it never happened.
So while such controversies might not have turned people Christian, per se, they do help in turning people into Fundamentalists, for a variety of reasons, most of which come down to a fear of the change that approaching modernity causes. I heartilly suggest this book, though I doubt you have ever picked up a book suggested by anyone here on any subject, and I also doubt that you will start now.
Furthermore, the insistance of so many Protestant Biblical literalists to try and FORCE public schools to teach dogma as science, and to lie (intentionally or not) about science to make results fit what they would like to see has turned off MANY intelligent people who don’t think that any God that needs to be LIED FOR is all that great.
The governor of Kansas called their Board of Education’s decision last year to remove evolution from standardized tests and make teaching it optional an “embarrassment to the state of Kansas” back then. More than a few Christians also felt the same sting of embarassment when it happened. I recall threads here where as much was said. Feel free to check the archives if you want evidence of this.
Your adherance to a literal, inerrent Bible turns off people who could very well get the lessons out of it - the morality, the love, the REAL MESSAGE - but they reject everything out of hand because right off the bat, it all looks silly and wrong.
In fact, Dr. Hugh Ross, a devout Christian and scientist who has debated Creationists such as Hovind, says the following in the forward to Don Stoner book A New Look at an Old Earth (What the Creation Institutes Are Not Telling You About Genesis):
(Emphasis above mine)
So don’t blame science for people not getting the message. Look in a mirror, or at those who have to lie for your God. They are the Pharisees here.
So here is one Christian who feels that people find the insult to intelligence that is Creationism to cause them to reject all of Christianity.
After all, how can they trust someone who can’t even see something in front of their face? Because the evidence of an old world and evolution is as clear, to make an analogy for the abundance of evidence we have for it, as the nose on your face. Yet, we are supposed to listen to them on other matters when they can’t even get the simple shit straight?
I will now, in a related tangent to this thread, ask the Christians here whether they agree with Dr. Ross above? Do they, as Christians, feel the rhetoric of Creationists have caused some people to reject the Bible?
I have yet to see a single non-Christian - here or published - who says that their non-belief is brought on by Evolution or any science. Yet I brought you evidence of a Christian who feels the opposite is true, and while I don’t want to speak for anyone here, I am reasonably sure that some Christians here will agree with Ross’ sentiments, and might even KNOW people who rejected the Bible because of this foolishness.
All that said, William, I don’t expect you to modify your argument. After all, over a year ago I was showing you cites that the ACLU had, several times, fought for religious freedom for Christians in cases where their rights were being scuffed. Well over a year ago on the LBMB, I provided citations of actual cases.
In spite of this, you still refer to the organization as the “Anti-Christ Lovers Union” or similar nonsense.
As such, I expect the book I recommended to you and the words from another book and any testimonials from felow Christians in response to my own question to be similarly sumarily ignored and for you to continue with your claims throughout your life.
You can continue being a Pharisee, William. I fear there is no other way for you.
If evolution were ever disproved, it would mean that science and the evidence had found another explanation for “everything.”
So, this unofficial poll has shown that 100% of athiests and agnostics responding were not “led” to atheism/agnosticism by a belief in evolution. Further, several people weighed in with the entirely accurate statement that belief-in-evolution doesn’t equal atheism/agnosticism. Like Ben, I’d like to know what you’re planning to do with this information.
I recall in grade school we were taught evolution.
Also, in my Cathechism class (Catholic stuff) we were taught otherwise.
I noticed that the two ideas were different.
I wondered which one was correct.
When I got older, I became a christian.
It had nothing to do with creation being proven or anything like that.
I don’t Care if evolution happened; that has nothing to do with being a christian.
