Why do Creationists deny Evolution in face of tons of evidence supporting it?

[Der_Trihs]

@PBear42

I agree this is an important element of evolution denial. When you get down to it, the theory has very little substantive impact on people’s lives. Conan Doyle has Sherlock Holmes say something similar about whether the Earth revolves around the Sun or the other way around. Thus, disregarding or disbelieving evolution is cheap. If one believes inerrancy or giving respect to God is important and conflicts with evolution, it’s not much of a price to pay to reject the latter.

That’s not true at all, it kills people. That’s why even creationists finally broke down and admitted the existence of what they call “microevolution”; because microbes don’t care how much you deny that they can evolve drug resistance, they’ll do it anyway. Evolution in heavily involved in all sort of important, practical matters; pesticide resistance, antibiotic resistance, cancer, agriculture, etc; pretty much everything involving the life sciences, which since we happen to be alive are very important to us.

There’s also the problem that the opposition to evolution inevitably involves censorship and persecution. It has to, since opposition to evolution requires the deliberate denial of so much of science.

[Farmer_Jane]

@Der_Trihs

No, it isn’t. The evidence for evolution is overwhelming. And the denial of evolution has been exclusively a religious movement for a century or so. And choosing to ignore evidence to defend fantasy is a major part of what religion is all about.

Again. Lumping all religions together, like we’re some kind of Bureau.

[FinnAgain]

@CitizenPained

I guess I never thought of evolution as a testable falsifiable hypothesis

Sure it is. You can test it yourself with fruit flies, for example.
Several theories of evolutionary mechanics also make predictions which can be tested going forward or by looking at the fossil record. Endogenous retroviruses, molecular clocks and transitional fossils all spring to mind.

[Der_Trihs]

@CitizenPained

Again. Lumping all religions together, like we’re some kind of Bureau.

They are lumped all together; you just did so yourself, by using the word “religion”.

[Farmer_Jane]

@FinnAgain

Sure it is. You can test it yourself with fruit flies, for example.
Several theories of evolutionary mechanics also make predictions which can be tested going forward or by looking at the fossil record. Endogenous retroviruses, molecular clocks and transitional fossils all spring to mind.

I suppose I always thought of Darwinism as an approach to several problems in biology.

Maybe I’ve just been heavily indoctrinated by the public school system and never thought about it.

[Farmer_Jane]

@Der_Trihs

They are lumped all together; you just did so yourself, by using the word “religion”.

Um, no.

You said

No, it isn’t. The evidence for evolution is overwhelming. And the denial of evolution has been exclusively a religious movement for a century or so.** And choosing to ignore evidence to defend fantasy is a major part of what religion is all about.**

This is you lumping all religions together.

Nice try.

[FinnAgain]

I see you haven’t met Der yet.
Free advice, drop the tangent and step away from it as fast as possible. You’ll thank me later.

@CitizenPained

I suppose I always thought of Darwinism as an approach to several problems in biology.

Yes and no… but you might want to be cautious of the term “Darwinism”, as it’s generally used by Creatoinists as a back-door attempt to imply (or as part of an explicit claim) that evolutionary biology is faith-based and just another religion.
But no, evolutionary biology, while it certainly does tie together many biological concepts, is essentially predicated on the fact that evolution occurs.

On that level, it really is as solid as the fact that gravity exists. In order to observe evolution in progress, all you need to do is see that allelic frequencies have shifted in a population. Past that, yes, there are numerous theories on how cladogeneis or anagenesis work, whether evolution tends to happen in fits and starts or via a continual, gradual process, etc. But the various theories of evolutionary mechanics are open to being falsified.

[Farmer_Jane]

@FinnAgain

I see you haven’t met Der yet.
Free advice, drop the tangent and step away from it as fast as possible. You’ll thank me later.

Yes and no… but you might want to be cautious of the term “Darwinism”, as it’s generally used by Creatoinists as a back-door attempt to imply (or as part of an explicit claim) that evolutionary biology is faith-based and just another religion.

I guess I just took it for granted that evolutionary biology came from Darwinism? Or rather, Darwin gave some credibility to the idea? (Obviously people were picking up dinosaur bones before Darwin.)

But no, evolutionary biology, while it certainly does tie together many biological concepts, is essentially predicated on the fact that evolution occurs.

Fair enough. Again, I never thought about the framing hard because by the time I got to 8th grade biology, I just sort of…well…it was a DUH! to me. The semantics of these debates is not something I’m used to since I don’t generally participate in them. It only matters to me when it concerns educational or government policy.

On that level, it really is as solid as the fact that gravity exists. In order to observe evolution in progress, all you need to do is see that allelic frequencies have shifted in a population. Past that, yes, there are numerous theories on how cladogeneis or anagenesis work, whether evolution tends to happen in fits and starts or via a continual, gradual process, etc. But the various theories of evolutionary mechanics are open to being falsified.

The part that I bolded is what I think I was alluding to.

I always feel a little sad that I never took advanced science courses or anything (I’m bad with the maths). I get pretty geeked out at National Geographic, neandertal & cro-magnon debates, sci-fi movies that show how much we don’t know about science ;), etc.

In loose philosophical terms, evolution and creation don’t have to be mutually exclusive (like you pointed out), but in scientific terms, the language does have to change. I will try to be more conscious of that. I just don’t think people really make those distinctions.

Framing is a huge part of any debate, and I’m just now realizing how clever some of these creationists are. :smack:

[Mangetout]

For some people (and I speak from experience of having occupied the creationist stance, and having debated against it), the sheer weight of evidence is the problem - or rather, it takes patience and effort to join the evidence up in order to see the big-picture version of evolution.

This is why so many debates with creationists get derailed with argument about ‘micro/macro evolution’, or result in the creationist saying that God could have decided to make it look that way, or perceiving the tenacity of their debating opponent as being motivated by a desire to tear everything down that the creationist holds sacred.

It’s generally not too hard to get a creationist to accept any given piece of properly-presented evidence, or to accept that any given standard creationist objection they raise may be unsound. The difficulty exists in requiring them to join that all up and accept what it means, in a broader sense.

In short - for some, perhaps many creationists, there is no apparent motive for them to look at evolution in both breadth and depth - it’s a hard path to somewhere they don’t particularly care to visit, so they don’t bother.

[SmartAlecCat]

@Der_Trihs

That’s not true at all, it kills people.[…]
There’s also the problem that the opposition to evolution inevitably involves censorship and persecution. It has to, since opposition to evolution requires the deliberate denial of so much of science.

That’s perhaps its biggest problem. People who are indoctrinated in religion believe creationism over science, but that’s just the start. Once you’ve made that leap, you assume all science is wrong, anti-religion, etc. Then it is a small leap to say that climate change science is wrong (since those scientists who believe in evolution believe in it), etc.
It becomes easy to dismiss scientific evidence if your religion/church/etc. tells you to.

[Hentor_the_Barbarian]

One essential conflict that it seems to me must be very difficult or impossible to resolve even for the scientifically-minded creationist is the idea that we (homo sapiens, if I may be so presumptuous) are supposed to be here as we are. We are the end product in his own image, and all that. It may be a concept that even non-creationists might have a hard time fully wrapping their mind around. Just like the rain puddle in the ground, we may tend to want to believe that we shaped the hole rather than the other way around.

In that sense, accepting that god may have just started the ball rolling with evolution rather than plunking Adam and Eve down fully formed seems like just playing along. Oh, okay, so he gave a nudge, but he knew in advance that the kingdom would be populated like that anyway. I suppose if you want to buy into an omniscient god, it doesn’t really matter what terms you want to use to describe the formation part.

Evolution didn’t follow any path to get to us, and isn’t finished yet.

@Mangetout

It’s generally not too hard to get a creationist to accept any given piece of properly-presented evidence, or to accept that any given standard creationist objection they raise may be unsound. The difficulty exists in requiring them to join that all up and accept what it means, in a broader sense.

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.

[RickJay]

@Der_Trihs

Besides which, there is no non-religious opposition to the reality of evolution.

“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.

[aruvqan]

@Voyager

Descent with modification is a very simple concept - even if a person never gets into the actual complexity, they would know enough to understand antibiotic resistant bacteria. I suspect that the very last thing most of these people want to do is to try to understand it, for fear that their belief system might change - especially if they have been told from childhood that evolution is godless.

Then we have the liars who lead the movement, who certainly know better - but that is a tiny minority.

My dad died as a result of antibiotic resistant buggies, and at the funeral obsequies I met an person he had been involved in on some committee or another who was convinced that the devil killed my dad … When he heard by chatting with my mother and brother what he died of, this jackass said that it was such a shame that the devil made the bacteria change to kill such a righteous man :dubious::rolleyes::smack::dubious:

So much for evolution, it was EVILution…

[Der_Trihs]

@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.

I see no reason to buy that. It just doesn’t take much intelligence to understand the basic ideas. I doubt that anyone actually too stupid to understand the basics would be literate.

And the only reason that there’s any idea out there at all that evolution is in doubt, is religion. Most people don’t understand DNA, but you don’t see people expressing doubts it exists - because there’s no religion backed campaign to convince people that DNA is fake and we all run on ectoplasm or something.

[x-ray_vision]

@RickJay

“Dilbert” creator Scott Adams is famous for his skepticism in evolution, which isn’t based in any religious underpinning.

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

Pascal’s Wager

[Derleth]

@CitizenPained

I guess I just took it for granted that evolutionary biology came from Darwinism? Or rather, Darwin gave some credibility to the idea? (Obviously people were picking up dinosaur bones before Darwin.)

It’s a code word: When someone says ‘Darwinism’, they’re almost always a Creationist who wants (needs!) to turn evolutionary biology and, really, all of science and rational thought into yet another mindless faith.

I think some of them honestly can’t understand that there are people on this planet who are not driven by faith. The only way they can approach the world is by attaching themselves to their group wholeheartedly and blindly booing what they book and cheering what they cheer, with never a serious thought of their own. If you disagree with them, you must be just as blindly attached to an opposing group. There’s no other explanation.

That doesn’t describe all of them. I know that. It might not even describe a large number, all told. But I’m pretty well convinced it describes some of them.

[AlienVessels]

IMO, if you’ve already assimilated the existence of the supernatural, it’s much more difficult to achieve explanations requiring a lot of knowledge triangulation.

The scale over which macroevolution occurs is simply too large for intuition to encompass.

And I think that most people that accept the evidence for evolution do so having faith in the general system without specifically understanding the actual numeric pressures of selection over the time scales involved.

When your metric is science, evolution is simply the best explanation available. If you allow for the supernatural, it’s not even close.

[FinnAgain]

@CitizenPained

I guess I just took it for granted that evolutionary biology came from Darwinism? Or rather, Darwin gave some credibility to the idea? (Obviously people were picking up dinosaur bones before Darwin.)

Well, while Darwin pretty much got the ball rolling, we also don’t call ballistics “Newtonism”, for example. Or relativity “Einsteinism.” Or genetics “Mendelism” or “Watson-and-Crickism.” or what have you. Much of the time the word “Darwinism” really is code so that people can suggest that evolutionary biology is just another “ism”, so that they can suggest that it’s essentially faith based or a religion-of-science. That way they can suggest that it’s just another form of faith (just, ya know, wrong), and not as rigorous as ‘real science’ is.
It’s similar to the “just a theory” gambit.

On another note, while Darwinhttp://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/newreply.php?do=newreply&p=13696856 got the ball rolling, things have developed significantly since Darwin’s day.

@CitizenPained

The semantics of these debates is not something I’m used to since I don’t generally participate in them. It only matters to me when it concerns educational or government policy.

Well, part of the issue is that this is all very important when it comes to governmental/educational policy. The Discover Institute’s Wedge Strategy is an all-out assault on not just our educational system but a rational, ‘materialistic’ worldview as well.

For instance, the original Creationism ‘textbook’, Of Pandas and People, had a great many references to Creationism. But when it was ruled that creationism was of course state endorsement of religion, they simply switched the term to Intelligent Design. This was evidently done by a fairly sloppy global search-and-replace function in a word processing program, which left one interesting term “cdesign proponentsists”, that was discovered during the trial over whether or not “Intelligent Design” could be taught in schools since “Creationism” was right out.

Even now, how the issue is framed is of critical importance. Beaten on both “Creationism” and “Intelligent Design”, they’re hoping to get the tip of the wedge into public policy by framing the debate in terms of “controversy”. There is controversy, they say, over just what evolution is, how it works, etc… and as such, you don’t have to teach “Intelligent Design” anymore, but you must “teach the controversy”. That is, of course, just another backdoor way to get their demands put into the school system, so that teachers have to teach both the actual facts of evolution, and then include a unit on not-evolution. That is, Intelligent Design/Creationism/The Controversy.

[Farmer_Jane]

@FinnAgain

Well, while Darwin pretty much got the ball rolling, we also don’t call ballistics “Newtonism”, for example. Or relativity “Einsteinism.” Or genetics “Mendelism” or “Watson-and-Crickism.” or what have you. Much of the time the word “Darwinism” really is code so that people can suggest that evolutionary biology is just another “ism”, so that they can suggest that it’s essentially faith based or a religion-of-science. That way they can suggest that it’s just another form of faith (just, ya know, wrong), and not as rigorous as ‘real science’ is.
It’s similar to the “just a theory” gambit.

All right, all right! I used the wrong word! I’m sorry! I also promise to never say “pro life”, “tax relief” or “Darwinism” again!

//Lakoff.

[Farmer_Jane]

@FinnAgain

Even now, how the issue is framed is of critical importance. Beaten on both “Creationism” and “Intelligent Design”, they’re hoping to get the tip of the wedge into public policy by framing the debate in terms of “controversy”. There is controversy, they say, over just what evolution is, how it works, etc… and as such, you don’t have to teach “Intelligent Design” anymore, but you must “teach the controversy”. That is, of course, just another backdoor way to get their demands put into the school system, so that teachers have to teach both the actual facts of evolution, and then include a unit on not-evolution. That is, Intelligent Design/Creationism/The Controversy.

I understand *that *part. I’d never use the words “Intelligent Design”. blechhy.

Hey, isn’t there something called Newtonian physics?

I promise to never use the term “Darwinism” again. :o Unless I am in Europe. Then it’s OK.