# Why do Creationists hate Evolution? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 5, 2003, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-creationists-hate-evolution/153019 "2003-02-05T19:02:13Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![WRENCHEAD](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/958977/32.png) [@WRENCHEAD](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WRENCHEAD)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2003, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-creationists-hate-evolution/153019/61 "2003-02-10T20:16:43Z")
> [@](#): > > _Orignally posted by hardcore_Hmmm… I don’t think an actual red-blooded creationist has responded thus far, but please correct me if I’m wrong. If a creationist would like to participate that has not yet done so, I hope you are not put off by the tone of the debate. It is not my intention to denigrate – I honestly just want to examine and debate the justifications used to separate evolution from the rest of science. Well, here it is hardcore. I’m guessing you have been waiting for someone like me to stick my neck onto the chopping block. 🙂 . I don’t claim to speak for all creationist but i think hate is a little strong. I would simply leave it as “don’t believe”. My personal reasons for not believing are first, i chose to believe more in the Word of God than the reasoning of man and secondly, to believe in an account that is always the same, never changes over one that changes over the course of time due to new information, warranted or otherwise. I don’t need scientific proof of what happened because, in my opinion, i have what i need. Of course to take this stance one must have faith since i cannot claim to understand all of the powers of God. “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the LORD . 9 "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts Isaiah 55:8-9 > [@](#): > > _tracer_Yep, that’s the way I figured it, too. > > It’s the same reason why the Church so vehemently attacked anyone who believed in a sun-centered (rather than Earth-centered) universe in the 16th century: If the theory is true, then it means that human beings aren’t as special as we previously believed. Nobody wants to hear that they’re not special. Being special is not the issue, IMHO, its being accountable. Man does not want to hear that he is accountable. If there is no God or Creator then man is the ultimate being and therefore only accountable to himself. If God does it exist but didn’t actually create things as he said he did, then there is a credibility issue. Either way, evolution is probably used more to discredit God than any other discipline of science and therein lies the rift. Go ahead and blast away, i know its coming. “Explain this, explain that…” its the moment you have all been waiting for. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Meatros](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Meatros](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Meatros)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2003, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-creationists-hate-evolution/153019/62 "2003-02-10T20:31:34Z")
**WRENCHEAD** -if it’s your belief, through faith, then so be it-I can’t touch that. However if it’s you belief because you believe science has it wrong some how, then I will take issue with that. How do you explain all the evidence for evolution? Do you explain it, or do you just have faith that it did not happen? Also one other thing: > [@](#): > > Being special is not the issue, IMHO, its being accountable. Man does not want to hear that he is accountable. If there is no God or Creator then man is the ultimate being and therefore only accountable to himself. If God does it exist but didn’t actually create things as he said he did, then there is a credibility issue. Either way, evolution is probably used more to discredit God than any other discipline of science and therein lies the rift. Mankind will do what it pleases with or without God. It is not accountability that makes people unbelievers (not all of them anyway). If you take the bible literally, then credibility is a huge issue-there are internal contradictions in the bible. Also evolution may be used _improperly_ to discredit God, but that doesn’t mean that it really does. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2003, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-creationists-hate-evolution/153019/63 "2003-02-10T20:37:03Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by WRENCHEAD \* > \*\* > > Being special is not the issue, IMHO, its being accountable. Man does not want to hear that he is accountable. If there is no God or Creator then man is the ultimate being and therefore only accountable to himself. If God does it exist but didn’t actually create things as he said he did, then there is a credibility issue. Either way, evolution is probably used more to discredit God than any other discipline of science and therein lies the rift. > \*\* If God exists, isn’t man accountable to him no matter which way man came about? As for the Bible, unless you worship the Bible, don’t you agree that god is responsible for what is found in the earth, directly? And that people wrote the Bible (no matter how inspired you think they were.) If God’s direct evidence in the earth for evolution (and there is a lot of it) contradicts what some person wrote in the Bible, which do you want to believe? The real damage that this debate does to religion is from those who say, in effect, unless you believe that 1+1=3 you’re an atheist. At least some people look at this, and figure, well, since 1+1=2, I must be an atheist. Ta-ta church. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2003, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-creationists-hate-evolution/153019/64 "2003-02-10T20:43:14Z")
> [@](#): > > Either way, evolution is probably used more to discredit God than any other discipline of science and therein lies the rift. Yeah, but I suspect that that is a two-way street. Certainly Huxley got the ball rolling in the 1860s by latching on to Darwin’s recently published Origin of Species, (and caused Darwin no end of grief by misunderstanding and misrepresenting what Darwin had actually said). Of course, he was just grabbing a new tool for a fight that he had already been waging before Darwin pubished his book. However, many Christians have had no problem reconciling Natural Selection with the perceived myth of Creation, and have not attempted to use one against the other. In fact, when Darwin’s theory was rather dormant, it was a series of Christian scientists such as Theodosius Dobzhansky who did the work and did the math to show how Mendelian genetics actually provided the until-then-unknown mechanism and revived Darwin’s theory of Natural Selection. I suspect that had _some_ Christians not rolled Evolution, Literary Criticism of the Bible, and the “Search for the Historical Jesus” into one all-encompassing _perceived_ attack, Evolution would not be a significant sticking point. (Note that, while there are anti-evolutionists outside the U.S., the frequently promoted fight of Evolution Vs Creation occurs in a religious context most frequently in the U.S. where Christian Fundamentalism was first conceived and still has its strongest adherents.) ---
**Author:** ![Darwins\_Finch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darwins_finch/32/20304_2.png) [@Darwins\_Finch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darwins_Finch)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2003, 10:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-creationists-hate-evolution/153019/65 "2003-02-10T22:24:45Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by WRENCHEAD \* > **My personal reasons for not believing are first, i chose to believe more in the Word of God than the reasoning of man and secondly, to believe in an account that is always the same, never changes over one that changes over the course of time due to new information, warranted or otherwise.** Does not one become a Biblical scholar through a process of reasoning? Do you likewise discount what such scholars have to say about the Bible? ---
**Author:** ![Apos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/838e76/32.png) [@Apos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apos)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2003, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-creationists-hate-evolution/153019/66 "2003-02-10T22:49:38Z")
—And this shakes the fundamental “belief” that only humans have souls (and therefore can go to heaven, or be damned).— Catholic theology is, for the record, now perfectly fine with this, because they allow the possibility that God could have simply ensouled man whenever he pleased along mankind’s evolution. So they can accept both evolution and souls/special place of humans. ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2003, 3:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-creationists-hate-evolution/153019/67 "2003-02-11T03:22:55Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by WRENCHEAD \* > **Being special is not the issue, IMHO, its being accountable. Man does not want to hear that he is accountable. If there is no God or Creator then man is the ultimate being and therefore only accountable to himself.** However, this is because on both pro- and con- sides of the issue, some key points get missed: (a) **Darwinian Theory makes absolutely no reference whatsoever to the existence or nonexistence of a God or creator**. That some view it that way is the result of either reductionism or preset ideological agendas. (b) Darwinian Theory does not, repeat NOT lead a scientist to conclude “man is the ultimate being”. Man = Crown Jewel of the temporal Universe is a special-creationist principle. On the contrary, Evolution posits that Man is just another being. © BUT the condition of Man as “just one more being” in the biosphere does not relieve him of accountability (that would come under Naturalistic Fallacy). His possession of reason makes him a moral agent. BTW Objectivists (followers of Ayn Rand) scorn organized religion but believe in the existence of an objective morality, that you must live by. \*\* > [@](#): > > ``` > If God does it exist but didn't actually create things as he said he did, then there is a credibility issue. ** > > ``` ONLY if for some reason we wish to impose upon God the restriction that He cannot ever use symbolic or allegorical language to get His point across. Remember, it is GOD that is Never-Changing. The way we understand the words used to describe His workings will of course change. After all you’re most likely not reading them in the original language. That _people_ with agendas against religion have grabbed on to Evolution as some sort of all-purpose God-disprover only points out how people with agendas will latch on to anything. ---
**Author:** ![Meatros](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Meatros](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Meatros)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2003, 12:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-creationists-hate-evolution/153019/68 "2003-02-11T12:42:06Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by JRDelirious \* > **ONLY if for some reason we wish to impose upon God the restriction that He cannot ever use symbolic or allegorical language to get His point across. Remember, it is GOD that is Never-Changing. The way we understand the words used to describe His workings will of course change. After all you’re most likely not reading them in the original language.** Also we have to keep in mind that the bible was _inspired_ by God and _written_ by man. Personally I don’t think people back in the day would have known what God was talking about if he described the process of life _literally_. ---
**Author:** ![Dinsdale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/97f17d/32.png) [@Dinsdale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dinsdale)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2003, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-creationists-hate-evolution/153019/69 "2003-02-11T15:34:32Z")
Last week our Humanists’ discussion group sponsored a talk by AHA President Fred Edwords in celebration of Darwin Day **(Tomorrow - 2/12!)** on the impact of Darwin on religion and Humanism. IIRC, he suggested christian folk legitimately were threatened by evolution not simply because it was inconsistent with the Bible story of creation. But, if we merely resulted from a non-directed natural process, that means God did not create man and place him in and subsequently cast him from the garden. If that were the case, we would not have original sin, and would have no need for salvation - a major product line of christian churches. He also said when he used to tell his kids to stop acting like wild animals they would respond, “But dad, we ARE animals.” “Yes,” he would respond, but you are DOMESTICATED animals!" 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2003, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-creationists-hate-evolution/153019/70 "2003-02-11T17:03:07Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Meatros \* > \*\*Also we have to keep in mind that the bible was _inspired_ by God and _written_ by man. Personally I don’t think people back in the day would have known what God was talking about if he described the process of life _literally_. \*\* > [@](#): > > 1. Then Moses came down off the mountain, and saith: “The Lord hath revealed great things to me! 15. For He caused all things to come into being in a mighty flash of light, 16. and from that great flash spun off great pinwheels of stars. 17. And then He showed me the Sun, and lo! around it came into being balls of molten rock, 18. and as they cooled, upon their surface came there to be mighty seas, and the breath of life was given off by mighty volcanoes, 19. and in the waters he caused life to form, as small as the tip of a hair, and it grew and multiplied, 20. and lo!, he caused it to change, and great fishes came to be, and then they grew legs and climbed upon the dry land. 21. And their descendents grew large like dragons. 22. And then they were slain, and small beasts like mice multipled, and flourished across the land. 23. And then He shaped one of these beasts that resembled an ape into the semblance of a man. 24. And it became like unto a human being. 25. And He gave me to know that I should make a record of all these things, that men should know the mightiness of His works, and the intricacy of His plan. 26. Bring Aaron, with much parchment, that I may record all this, while it still lies fresh in my mind!” 27. Then came Aaron unto Moses, and he saith, “But Moses, we have but six sheets of parchment left.” 28. And Moses saith, “Then we must boil down the tale, as women boil down thin broth to richness.” ---
**Author:** ![Meatros](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Meatros](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Meatros)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2003, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-creationists-hate-evolution/153019/71 "2003-02-11T17:34:53Z")
**Polycarp** -That was good! 😃 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-creationists-hate-evolution/153019.md?page=3)