# Why do Creationists deny Evolution in face of tons of evidence supporting it? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 17, 2011, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-creationists-deny-evolution-in-face-of-tons-of-evidence-supporting-it/578692 "2011-04-17T03:24:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![FinnAgain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/finnagain/32/12500_2.png) [@FinnAgain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FinnAgain)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2011, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-creationists-deny-evolution-in-face-of-tons-of-evidence-supporting-it/578692/61 "2011-04-17T18:53:14Z")
> [@CitizenPained](#): > > Hey, isn’t there something called Newtonian physics? We do, and there’s also no real problem with “Darwinian evolution”. The problem comes in, linguistically, when it’s cast as “Darwinism”. ---
**Author:** ![Farmer\_Jane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Farmer\_Jane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Farmer_Jane)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2011, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-creationists-deny-evolution-in-face-of-tons-of-evidence-supporting-it/578692/62 "2011-04-17T18:55:17Z")
> [@FinnAgain](#): > > We do, and there’s also no real problem with “Darwinian evolution”. The problem comes in, linguistically, when it’s cast as “Darwinism”. Noted. Forgiven? :smack: ---
**Author:** ![Raygun99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/6f9a4e/32.png) [@Raygun99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raygun99)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2011, 6:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-creationists-deny-evolution-in-face-of-tons-of-evidence-supporting-it/578692/63 "2011-04-17T18:56:36Z")
> [@x-ray\_vision](#): > > How do you know it’s not based on any religious underpinning? Based on some other nonsense he’s stated, I’d bet that it was. > > [http://atheism.about.com/b/2007/08/05/pointy-haired-cartoonist-scott-adams-misrepresents-atheism-agnosticism.htm](http://atheism.about.com/b/2007/08/05/pointy-haired-cartoonist-scott-adams-misrepresents-atheism-agnosticism.htm) > [http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the\_dilbert\_blog/2007/07/pascals-wager.html](http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/07/pascals-wager.html) It’s possible, I suppose, but I’ve read the thing he’s talking about (IIRC, it was in The Dilbert Future), and the gist of his argument was, “humans have been wrong about big things before, therefore there are big things we’re wrong about now”. Which is justifiable on the surface, but nonsense when you apply it to the literal mountains of evidence we have for evolution. Something I’ve seen crop up again and again in Adams’ controversial writings is that he can’t quite conceive of someone smarter than himself, or at least he has a deep-seeded insecurity about not being as smart as he thinks he is, so anything that sound complicated must be bullshit. ---
**Author:** ![FinnAgain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/finnagain/32/12500_2.png) [@FinnAgain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FinnAgain)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2011, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-creationists-deny-evolution-in-face-of-tons-of-evidence-supporting-it/578692/64 "2011-04-17T19:04:12Z")
> [@CitizenPained](#): > > Forgiven? Nevar! ---
**Author:** ![Farmer\_Jane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Farmer\_Jane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Farmer_Jane)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2011, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-creationists-deny-evolution-in-face-of-tons-of-evidence-supporting-it/578692/65 "2011-04-17T19:11:46Z")
> [@FinnAgain](#): > > Nevar! haters gonna hate 🆒 ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2011, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-creationists-deny-evolution-in-face-of-tons-of-evidence-supporting-it/578692/66 "2011-04-17T19:21:43Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > “Dilbert” creator Scott Adams is famous for his skepticism in evolution, which isn’t based in any religious underpinning. If you read his books where it mentions it, it’s quite obvious why; he doesn’t understand it. Adams is good at sounding smart but if you dig a little deeper he’s a person of moderate intellect at best. Adams is just barely smart enough to convince himself he’s smarter than he is. > > Generally speaking it’s all about religion of course, but the phenomenon of “I don’t get it so I don’t believe it” certainly does exist. I worked for a guy that doubted evolution, but not from religious motivation. Many of his arguments were the same - based on irreducible complexity, but he was arguing that the whole thing was, and would remain an obscure mystery to us - I guess this is a bit like hard agnosticism, but he explicitly stated that he didn’t think anyone in any camp - religious or scientific - was right. ---
**Author:** ![Icerigger](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/icerigger/32/432_2.png) [@Icerigger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Icerigger)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2011, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-creationists-deny-evolution-in-face-of-tons-of-evidence-supporting-it/578692/67 "2011-04-17T20:33:12Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > “Dilbert” creator Scott Adams is famous for his skepticism in evolution, which isn’t based in any religious underpinning. If you read his books where it mentions it, it’s quite obvious why; he doesn’t understand it. Adams is good at sounding smart but if you dig a little deeper he’s a person of moderate intellect at best. Adams is just barely smart enough to convince himself he’s smarter than he is. Wow, this can’t be any more timely, PZ Myers has some interesting information about Mr Adams. [http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/04/why\_sockpuppetry\_is\_stupid.php](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/04/why_sockpuppetry_is_stupid.php) ---
**Author:** ![x-ray\_vision](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/x-ray_vision/32/351_2.png) [@x-ray\_vision](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/x-ray_vision)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2011, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-creationists-deny-evolution-in-face-of-tons-of-evidence-supporting-it/578692/68 "2011-04-17T21:00:09Z")
> [@Raygun99](#): > > It’s possible, I suppose, but I’ve read the thing he’s talking about (IIRC, it was in The Dilbert Future), and the gist of his argument was, “humans have been wrong about big things before, therefore there are big things we’re wrong about now”. Which is justifiable on the surface, but nonsense when you apply it to the literal mountains of evidence we have for evolution. The claim was: > [@](#): > > “Dilbert” creator Scott Adams is famous for his skepticism in evolution, which isn’t based in any religious underpinning. So what if what the gist of his argument was what you said it is? IME, folks that don’t except evolution because of religious underpinnings and attempt to give reasons why, don’t start and end with “because God did it.” They sometimes say crap like this: > [@](#): > > The bottom line is that DNA tests (which do not set off my bullshit detector) have shown that you can’t really tell what set of bones begat other sets of bones just by looking at how they differed and how old they are. Apparently evolution is more complex than imagined, and there were lots of ape-people varieties wandering around at the same time. Some had modern features that they weren’t supposed to have. The so-called modern features apparently popped up and disappeared more than once, and in more than one species. > > My bullshit filter accepts this new information. I was having a hard time with the idea that some goober in tan pants would dig up a bone fragment in Africa and know it was his own (great X 1,000) grandmother. It just didn’t feel right. And now we know, assuming the DNA evidence is solid, that the guy in the tan pants was full of shit. All that the fossils show is that there used to be ape-people who are not us. > > To be fair, there’s still plenty of evidence for evolution. It’s not going away anytime soon. But personally, I’m cautious about any theory that keeps the same conclusion regardless of how many times the evidence for it changes. There was a time when the seemingly straight line of fossil evidence was the primary foundation for the theory. Now it seems that that straight line was like Little Billy from Family Circus finding his way home from the playground. And there was a time when it seemed evolution was probably a fairly continuous and gradual process. Now it seems it happened in bursts, relatively speaking. And there was a time when it seemed that mutations had to give some sort of survival advantage to endure, and now scientists believe that isn’t necessarily true. > > And if this isn’t enough to spike my blog hit count, I should add that the first person to explain that science continuously revises itself – and that’s what makes it so great! – has no free will. [http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the\_dilbert\_blog/2007/03/fossils\_are\_bul.html](http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/03/fossils_are_bul.html) That along with what he bothered posting online in the links I provided in post #55 lead me to believe Adams’ God belief has a little something to do with his non-acceptance of evolution. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2011, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-creationists-deny-evolution-in-face-of-tons-of-evidence-supporting-it/578692/69 "2011-04-17T21:14:39Z")
> [@Icerigger](#): > > Wow, this can’t be any more timely, PZ Myers has some interesting information about Mr Adams. As God is my witness I was unaware of this article or the issue it discusses. My criticism of Adams was based on his previous work. Yikes. Adams looking bad here. Actually I came to the conclusion Adams isn’t very smart when in The Dilbert Future he presented, as a thought experiment, the idea that gravity could be caused by all matter in the universe doubling in size (by which he meant physical volume) every second. According to Adams, there’s no way to distinguish between this phenomenon and gravity. He claimed that he’d gotten feedback from lots of people and there was no hole in his theory. No hole at all. Unprovable, he admitted, but completely unfalsifiable as well. Yup. No chance at all of any sort of little error like oh I don’t know GRAVITY ISN"T PROPORTIONAL TO SIZE, IT’S PROPORTIONAL TO MASS!!! I had to read it about fifty times to be sure he was writing what I thought he was writing, and that he was serious. ---
**Author:** ![Farmer\_Jane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Farmer\_Jane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Farmer_Jane)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2011, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-creationists-deny-evolution-in-face-of-tons-of-evidence-supporting-it/578692/70 "2011-04-17T21:40:22Z")
It’s hard for me to wrap my mind around the idea of big lizards walking the earth millions of years ago. I have a hard time wrapping my mind around what went on five thousand years ago. I think failure to “get” evolution is a testament to comprehension of paradoxical ideas rather than religious dogma. ---
**Author:** ![Farmer\_Jane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Farmer\_Jane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Farmer_Jane)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2011, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-creationists-deny-evolution-in-face-of-tons-of-evidence-supporting-it/578692/71 "2011-04-17T21:49:57Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > As God is my witness I was unaware of this article or the issue it discusses. My criticism of Adams was based on his previous work. Yikes. Adams looking bad here. > Actually I came to the conclusion Adams isn’t very smart when in The Dilbert Future he presented, as a thought experiment, the idea that gravity could be caused by all matter in the universe doubling in size (by which he meant physical volume) every second. According to Adams, there’s no way to distinguish between this phenomenon and gravity. He claimed that he’d gotten feedback from lots of people and there was no hole in his theory. No hole at all. Unprovable, he admitted, but completely unfalsifiable as well. Yup. No chance at all of any sort of little error like oh I don’t know GRAVITY ISN"T PROPORTIONAL TO SIZE, IT’S PROPORTIONAL TO MASS!!! > > I had to read it about fifty times to be sure he was writing what I thought he was writing, and that he was serious. :giggle: If something doubles in size - er, volume - can’t its mass increase? Maybe he had right idea, wrong terminology? I never took HS physics, just chem. And I cheated. Unfortunately, whatever I learned about physics was either in LOST or having conversations about aliens and time travel with scientist boyfriends. ☹ I’m woefully undereducated in this department. I had no idea before this thread that Adams was anything other than the creator of a crappy comic strip. :eek: ---
**Author:** ![scamartistry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/919ad9/32.png) [@scamartistry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scamartistry)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2011, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-creationists-deny-evolution-in-face-of-tons-of-evidence-supporting-it/578692/72 "2011-04-17T21:58:00Z")
> [@SSgtBaloo](#): > > The voice of experience. Before I unbent and discovered that G-d must really like us, much of my religious indoctrination came from my grandmother. She was a really nice person, but she had some really weird ideas about G-d and religion in general (Did you know the Bible, old and new testaments both, were written in King James English? :rolleyes:) Iit took me a few years to shake off my indoctrination and start reading the Bible for myself. can’t you write the word “God”? ---
**Author:** ![FinnAgain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/finnagain/32/12500_2.png) [@FinnAgain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FinnAgain)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2011, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-creationists-deny-evolution-in-face-of-tons-of-evidence-supporting-it/578692/73 "2011-04-17T22:04:05Z")
> [@scamartistry](#): > > can’t you write the word “God”? Eh, google “Jews G-D write”, or something. Should be lots of answers for you. ---
**Author:** ![x-ray\_vision](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/x-ray_vision/32/351_2.png) [@x-ray\_vision](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/x-ray_vision)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2011, 10:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-creationists-deny-evolution-in-face-of-tons-of-evidence-supporting-it/578692/74 "2011-04-17T22:23:30Z")
> [@CitizenPained](#): > > It’s hard for me to wrap my mind around the idea of big lizards walking the earth millions of years ago. I have a hard time wrapping my mind around what went on five thousand years ago. I think failure to “get” evolution is a testament to comprehension of paradoxical ideas rather than religious dogma. See posts 7, 10, 14, 22 and so on. What “paradoxical ideas”? ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2011, 10:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-creationists-deny-evolution-in-face-of-tons-of-evidence-supporting-it/578692/75 "2011-04-17T22:24:29Z")
> [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](#): > > I’m reading Dawkins’ _The Greatest Show on Earth_ right now, which is a great book for someone like myself who doesn’t really know much beyond the basics of evolution. > > Anyway, he relays a great anecdote that is very much on point as regards your observation above, which is about a biologist with whom another passenger struck up a conversation during a plane trip. Apparently, the fellow traveler found the biologists work fascinating and was really engaged in discussion about it. The work involved introducing a particular species of guppy into varying systems in which there was a strong predator, a weak predator or no predator, and in which the bottom of the “riverbed” was either fine gravel or larger stones. The point was to demonstrate that when predation was present, the skin of the guppies changed over generations to blend in better with the bottom, but when no or weak predation was present, the skin changed to be more distinctive from the bottom. > > Apparently the fellow traveler was engaged, intrigued and happy right up to the point at which the biologist explained that the former outcome was evidence for natural selection through predation and the latter through sexual selection. When realizing that they were discussing a process of evolution, the guy apparently turned away from the biologist and gave him the cold shoulder for the remainder of the trip. Certainly, I’ve seen that sort of reaction (as well as more canny rejection earlier in the conversation, if the listener happens to have been in similar discussions before), but another thing that seems to happen a lot is the sheer difficulty of getting a creationist to join any concept to any other concept. So you might have a focused discussion about how we can deduce the branching of the tree of common descent by tracking shared mutations and endogenous retroviral insertions - and might actually end up getting agreement that this does demonstrate relatedness, only to get to that point and have them say “yeah, but so what? Where are the fossils?” - so you have a lengthy discussion on some particular lines of descent that are well-represented in the fossil record, only to get to the end of that one, and they say “Yeah, but there’s no way to prove what’s ancestrally related to what!” - because they’ve lost the thread of the previous topic. I refuse to attribute this to plain stupidity, because I know that the same people are capable of chaining all sorts of data together in their theological explorations, but neither do I think they’re being particularly obtuse - it’s just that it takes effort to resolve, which is hard to commit from a position that doesn’t appreciate the end goal as desirable. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/73ab20/32.png) [@The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Tao_s_Revenge)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2011, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-creationists-deny-evolution-in-face-of-tons-of-evidence-supporting-it/578692/76 "2011-04-17T22:39:22Z")
> [@CitizenPained](#): > > It’s hard for me to wrap my mind around the idea of big lizards walking the earth millions of years ago. I have a hard time wrapping my mind around what went on five thousand years ago. I think failure to “get” evolution is a testament to comprehension of paradoxical ideas rather than religious dogma. Well Dinosaurs weren’t lizards anymore then birds are lizards. They were reptiles, but so are birds. Dinos were their own thing. The truly amazing thing is they’re still around, not as lizard like things, but as birds. Birds are a dinosaur type, and dinos are reptiles. That’s a simple string of facts that makes a walk outside magical. There’s dinos in the pet store, in the trees, hopping on the ground, eating road kill. Chicken nuggets are made of dinosaur! I fed dinosaurs bread in the park! I save a dinosaur from my cat! They were still alive all this time. I thought they were just birds. Another interesting thing is the biggest vertebrate wasn’t a dinosaur at all, but a [Blue Whale](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Whale). We have giant things and dinos right now! Another thing that helps make it more intuitive is the numbers. In humans there’s about 23,000 genes that have functions that do things. These genes have a mutation rate of about 0.00000001 per gene. 0.00000001 \* 23 000 = 0.00023. So for every 23,000 humans one of them has a mutation on a gene that does something, resulting in telekinesis, super healing factor, magnetic control, controlling the weather, or laser vision. The difference between a human and a chimp in important dna is about 2,000 genes IIRC. 2,000 tweaks and you make the dramatic leap from a bonobo to Charlie Sheen. I could have picked better examples but you get the idea. Most of those aren’t any good. But when you consider how many hundreds and millions, even billions of human ancestors, and their kin, it makes a lot of sense. ---
**Author:** ![MOIDALIZE](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e274bd/32.png) [@MOIDALIZE](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MOIDALIZE)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2011, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-creationists-deny-evolution-in-face-of-tons-of-evidence-supporting-it/578692/77 "2011-04-17T22:49:12Z")
Human embryos have tails. How do creationists explain that? I know a geologist who, as part of his job, has used the fossil record to pinpoint the location of natural gas deposits. How do creationists explain that? ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2011, 11:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-creationists-deny-evolution-in-face-of-tons-of-evidence-supporting-it/578692/78 "2011-04-17T23:09:33Z")
> [@MOIDALIZE](#): > > I know a geologist who, as part of his job, has used the fossil record to pinpoint the location of natural gas deposits. How do creationists explain that? [ul] [li]Satan put the fossils there to deceive us.[/li] [li]God put the fossils there to test our faith.[/li] [li]Natural gas must have been created during the Flood, which is what laid down all those fossils.[/li] [li]Your geologist friend is lying, all evidence for evolution is faked.[/li][/ul] ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2011, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-creationists-deny-evolution-in-face-of-tons-of-evidence-supporting-it/578692/79 "2011-04-17T23:43:22Z")
> [@MOIDALIZE](#): > > I know a geologist who, as part of his job, has used the fossil record to pinpoint the location of natural gas deposits. How do creationists explain that? Generally speaking, they don’t. Creationists and petrochemical geologists are pretty much non-intersecting sets. You can’t really be successful in both domains simultaneously. At first glance, it sometimes seems like the creationist camp has a fair population of members with a scientific bent, but on closer examination, they tend to be engineers, mathematicians, dermatologists, etc - professionals whose career path has limited their involvement in/experience of paleontology, genetics, population dynamics, etc. ---
**Author:** ![sqweels](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f19dbf/32.png) [@sqweels](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sqweels)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2011, 4:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-creationists-deny-evolution-in-face-of-tons-of-evidence-supporting-it/578692/80 "2011-04-18T04:41:29Z")
> [@CitizenPained](#): > > It’s hard for me to wrap my mind around the idea of big lizards walking the earth millions of years ago. I have a hard time wrapping my mind around what went on five thousand years ago. I think failure to “get” evolution is a testament to comprehension of paradoxical ideas rather than religious dogma. When I was a kid, I–like a lot of other kids–was really into dinosaurs. This led to me reading a lot of library books on paleontology and geology and so on. You learn, for example, that there was a time when amphibians ruled the earth. Well, when you look at a tadpole, it’s easy to see how fish led to amphibians, and when you compare a salamander to a lizard, it’s easy to see how amphibians led to reptiles and so on. And so even though my eyes tend to glaze over when we start talking about frequency of allels, armed with a basic understanding of the course of natural history–microorganisms-worms-fish-amphibians-reptiles-mammals-monkeys-cave men–it becomes easy to see evolution as an underlying thread. If you know _what_ happened, it becomes easier to grasp explanations as to _how_ it happened. So perhaps imposing all the technical details of evolution on students before they have a grasp of the basic story of natural history can result in a lot of them not understanding it. And then of course there’s all the religious bias. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-creationists-deny-evolution-in-face-of-tons-of-evidence-supporting-it/578692.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-creationists-deny-evolution-in-face-of-tons-of-evidence-supporting-it/578692.md?page=5)