Speculating on possible motivations for rejecting evolution

Conversation
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I’m sorry, but it doesn’t work that way. Science is not like art or English literature. Scientific theories – especially mature ones that have more than 160 years of research behind them – are not accepted on the basis of politics or culture. They are accepted on the basis of what provides the best explanation for the evidence, what performs best at making precise and specific testable predictions, and what actually delivers the goods in practical and/or commercial settings.

And yes, there are implications for people who reject science. If you employed them to work in the area of science that they are rejecting – and quite possibly in other areas of science as well – they would need constant supervision and micro-management to stop them from driving your company out of business and quite possibly even killing people in the process.

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I’m not understanding that at all.

Yes, science gets support because it produces results. But I would guess that most scientists think they very little cultural and political power. We see anti-evolutionists being active in politics and other cultural activities, to the dismay of many scientists.

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I think God might say, “Patrick, I think it’s fascinating as well.”

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LOL. If I ever get tired of the arguing here, I might come back just for your humor and your use of language.

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I wasn’t aware, but those seem to be positions that don’t have a strong biblical basis or tradition. Especially since the Bible asserts hell was created for the devil and his angels.

Begging the question. Social behavior is antithetical to “survival of the fittest.” So you’re just saying well, it must have been necessary to evolution because it we see it.

What I was trying to say wasn’t necessarily about consequences, but about inconsistency.

This argument is a misunderstanding of the covenants IMO. The endless animal sacrifices pointed to a reality that the new covenant was necessary, which ended the blood sacrifices. That’s quite a bit different than worshiping a God of sexuality or fertility or a God who sees death itself as good.

Again, what I said was different than saying God exists and is good in spite of evil and suffering in this world. And I think Genesis 1 proclaiming that God created everything good shows that He wants us to contrast what He does with where we now fall short. Theodicy without God initially creating everything good, and A&E making a choice with their own free will against that goodness for a morality in their own image which affected the rest of creation with death, falls short for me philosophically.

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Just tell 'em that the Roman Empire itself was a merging of Greek and Latin.

I agree. And because of my career and life experiences, I’ve accumulated a list of gripes as long or longer than anybody’s. (And don’t even get me started on political appointees totally unqualified for their positions and a lot of what happens on the Supreme Court. Sometimes I want to scream.)

Of course, my post on this topic was not focused on particular elite and powerful individuals but general categories of people groups.

Yep. So true.

Also true. Science stands on its own even when somebody finds it uncomfortable and unyielding to protest.

That certainly fits my experience. And I can’t help but think of various Congressional hearings where some science-illiterate senator (who wields tremendous political, cultural, and media-access power) insults, mocks, and minimizes some scientist who is simply trying to testify by using simple words (by necessity) to educate the ignorant. And who can forget Senator Inhofe smugly assuming he had just debunked all peer-reviewed science concerning climate change by bringing a snowball from a major winter storm into the Senate chamber? (Or the Congressman who observed that a melting ice cube in his full-to-the-rim styrofoam cup doesn’t overflow somehow meant that melting ice caps could never raise sea levels. Face-palm.) I still hear denialists celebrating the day Inhofe “destroyed those silly climate scientists.” That senator enjoys a media platform access which most scientists can only wish for.

There will always be dicyno do’s and there will always be dicyno don’ts.

So if you want to avoid burning in hell, be careful with your dicyno do’s.

(Also, be careful where you walk. You might step on a pile of fossilized dycynodont do.)

“Come for the science. Stay for the science-meets-theology comedy.” (That’s the slogan on my car’s Peaceful Science bumper sticker.)

Matthew 25:41 (“everlasting fire”) and Revelation 20:10 (“the lake of fire”) are described as the eventual destination of Satan and his angels for the ultimate judgement of their rebellion. But that doesn’t contradict the view that God’s original judgment against Lucifer sent him to the earth where he is “then god of this world” (2 Cor. 4:4) and capable of making a legitimate offer to Jesus: worship me and I will give you the kingdoms of this world.

No. Not at all. Social behaviors and cooperative behaviors aren’t just incidental within the biosphere. They are pervasive. Remoras clean parasites off of sharks. Everybody wins (i.e., increases survival prospects.)

No. Necessity in this context sounds like some sort of subjective judgement after the fact. No, we know the social behaviors and all sorts of cooperative behaviors are significant factors in the history of life and evolutionary processes because we observe it throughout. It is reality.

Sorry. I don’t follow on this one.

And nothing in evolutionary biology involves “worshipping” anything. And I doubt that many well informed non-Christians around the world look at the ubiquitous crosses on church buildings and the crucifixes carried and worn by Christians without concluding that the death of Jesus Christ is a central part of the “godspell” (the good news) of God’s redemptive plan for mankind. (Of course, whether one affirms evolution or not, nobody can look at the earth’s biosphere and countless thriving ecosystems without concluding that the creator intended death and nutrient recycling as a vital part of that “very TOV/good” creation—unless one insists on a second but unrecorded creation occurring after the one described in Genesis 1.)

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Yeah, I don’t agree. I don’t think anything in this world can be completely divorced from culture, including science. Obviously if science is not performing in a commercial setting it’s going to be abandoned, but that’s not what I’m talking about.

Yes, I think because people are usually most aware of the opposition. But just because they’re active doesn’t mean they gave power unless they’re actually causing change. It just means we have some freedom of speech in the public square.

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It is nearly impossible to know someone elses motivation but we can get some clues from questions and writings. I am big fan of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs because needs drive our motivations.

Below is graphic of Maslow’s Hierarchy. The order of the needs is not as important as the way we attempt to resolve them. I also have found that when we make an effort to understand the basic needs of others we become more tolerant.

image

The various comments made here provide a decent indication that person’s basic, psychological or self-fulfillment needs.

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If survival of the individual is enhanced by the behaviors which further the common interest of survival of the society, social behavior is not antithetical to survival of the fittest. I will grant, however, that such social behavior can be very tribal. Ants, chimpanzees, and humans, can display pro social behavior within their society while making war on another.

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Just thought I’d drop this here:

Actual study:

http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/ele.13734

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I never would have expected such goalpost-moving from you, Allen.

As others have noted, most charities do not address that Bible passage, which mentions nothing about money. It’s about doing, and there’s no question that the left does much more of this than the right.

The very things that I do with my church and outside my church that are relevant to that passage would not even register after your moving of the goalposts.

I couldn’t disagree more; you’re simply ignoring the verse and substituting money. A multimillion-dollar university building is not relevant to that verse.

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I certainly agree and did not state otherwise. It was Puck who addressed that topic.

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Sorry, but you’re mistaken there. The theory of evolution as science performing in a commercial setting is what you are talking about. It does operate in commercial and practical settings. It finds applications in medical research, conservation, oil exploration, and even my own line of work (software development). Evolutionary algorithms are used in your sat-nav to calculate the fastest route from A to B, on the basis of both current traffic conditions and predictions of what the traffic is going to be like later in the day based on historical data. They are used on large websites to help them decide when to spin up extra servers and then to tear them down again to save costs while accommodating surges in demand.

You could argue that science can be influenced by culture when you are dealing with cutting edge, frontier research. But when you start talking about foundational science, with a history of research stretching back over 160 years and millions of peer reviewed papers in the scientific literature with tens of thousands more being published every year, that has subsequently fed into and informed multiple other areas of research, it is science that will be informing culture, and not the other way around.

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Confessions of a Former Young Earth Creationist

(TLDR version is at the end)

I don’t have to speculate on at least some of the possible motivations for rejecting evolution since I rejected evolutionary science.

When I was 6 I used to enjoy reading our World Book set, especially the dinosaur and tornado sections. One time I took the Ape section to my mom and said, “we do look a lot like Apes”, and she said, “son, do you really think we came from monkeys?” I don’t remember any of the rest of the conversation but I know that as a kid I assumed that evolutionary science wasn’t telling the real story.

When I started following Jesus at age of 15 I found a church to go to, found some Christian books to read (missionary biographies were my favorite) and read a YEC book about pre-flood conditions. As far as I remember that conversation with my mom, that YEC book, and my reading of Genesis 1-11 as a child informed my thoughts about evolutionary science.

My thoughts have evolved over the last 35 years and here are some snapshots in time of how my thoughts drifted and mutated. The time stamp on each new thought is a little fuzzy, so I’ll leave those out.

I realized that not everyone at the church I started attending after I became a Jesus follower thought the same way about everything that was in the Bible.

I came to the conclusion that not everything is the main thing.

I found out that people that went to other churches and Christians throughout the existence of the Christian Church didn’t all think the same way about everything that was in the Bible.

I discovered that people that I really respected, that loved Jesus and loved others, didn’t all give the same answers to the hard questions I asked about the Bible.

I met and became friends with people who loved Jesus and affirmed scientific estimates of the age of the earth and evolutionary science.

I noticed that in all of the debates about the truth of evolutionary claims that I was in or listened to on my college campus that none of us really knew what we were talking about.

I began to notice that Christians were involved in this culture war and that they were making enemies instead of loving their neighbors and trying to gain power through political means rather than seeking the power of God to rescue hurting people. (mid 90’s, I think)

I found while teaching high school (only did that for 3 years) that I really disliked the “World View” class that they offered the students.

My good friend, the Biology teacher, who was one of the people most devoted to Jesus that I knew, told me that he affirmed evolutionary science.

I heard a preacher that I had really benefited from say that Christians rejecting well researched and documented science made them look silly. He also said, “what would be more impressive, a painter looking at a canvas, speaking, and a completed painting appearing? Or a painter setting up a canvas, setting open paint cans all about the room, filling his hands with rubber bouncy balls, throwing the bouncy balls in one swing of his arms, and watching as the bouncy balls bounce through paint cans and hit the canvas until a beautiful picture emerges?”

I found out that YEC flood geology is a fairly recent construct.

I learned that a literal reading of Genesis 1-11 is not the only way Christians have always read those passages over the last 2000 years.

Somewhere in the middle of the last few thoughts and events above, but at different times, I figured that science was right about the age of the Earth and the evolution of life on the planet.

I decided to read about evolutionary science. I stared with Wikipedia and branched out from there. I started to geek out about it and added it to my spare time reading list that already included theology and basketball.

I found good Biblical scholarship, available to the masses, that explored the Bible and it’s major themes through the lens of the historical and cultural contexts that created the texts.

I realized that the Bible isn’t trying to teach me about science, and I found more theological richness in the texts once that distraction was removed.

I saw an interview of Dr. Swamidass, checked out Peaceful Science a few weeks ago, have tried to answer all of both The Johns’ questions as best I can :smiley: , discovered the ID movement, and am developing lots of thoughts about ID that I’ll have to post at some point.

Theology and evolutionary science are now both well represented in my reading lists and I’m enjoying both immensely. Theology is still first :smiley: , but I love the study of the natural world and the awe and wonder towards God and his creation that it produces in me.

TLDR Version

My motivations for rejecting evolution were a conversation with my wonderful Mom when I was 6, a YEC book I read when I was 15, and a misunderstanding of what Genesis 1-11 is all about. I got freed up over the course of many years via friendships with people who thought differently than I did, and through finding better Biblical scholarship. Now I love God, love the Bible and love learning about how Creation has developed naturally over billions of years.

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A tl:dr of my position is more like this:

PS with Josh et al. develop a scenario that affirms a coexistence between many lines of science and being faithful to YEC/ID interpretations and traditions

Many YEC/ID institutions and persons reject this olive branch

There are probably many reasons so let us go with yours: natural evil and death before sin and God’s character.

These are not solved with YECism. God explicitly is proud about feeding carnivorous animals, commits numerous acts which we would consider war crimes, and sets up Adam & Eve for an impossible situation and in some traditions sets up an eternal torture chamber for finite sins of limited beings.

While those topics may be disputed, their mere presence denotes that this concept is not entirely against the picture of God that we can understand through plain reading.

I applaud the efforts of most people in this conversation and think that it is awesome and much better than past alternatives but I also think that science’s impact on theology is not limited to evolution or “historical science” and has real world implications from approaches to climate change, psychology, criminal justice, sociology, and many more areas.

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Evolution is about reproduction of the fittest. The usefulness of social behaviors is much more obvious in a real evolutionary context.

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No, actually it’s not. I’m talking about the parts theory that do NOT have practical, commercial application. I see a differentiation between these parts. I can see why that may be confusing to people.

Ok, we’d probably agree on this, which makes some of evolutionary science even more problematic for me.

You’re bringing in other things that aren’t related at all. That God works within a world that has death and evil once A&E are responsible for evil isn’t the same thing as whether death can enter the world before they temporally choose against God.

I dispute this, because I’m not nobody. I have no idea what you’re talking about regarding a second creation. Viruses and many other organisms could be repurposed after a fall. That things have an ecosystem now based on death or recycling can be part of God’s common grace and just providential for God’s plan in Christ, so that life can still exist. God is still good in that but it doesn’t mean that natural evil is good.

Still begging the question. I’ll try to be clearer on what your statements sound like to me: “Evolution is true, therefore social and cooperative behaviors must have been a part of evolution no matter what evidence says otherwise.”

@Michael_Okoko I’ll try to take a look at the papers but based on the titles they seemed to be about selfishness and not social behavior which may be a different things - I was thinking about unselfishness in regards to the individual, and separately about social group behavior in my earlier comments.

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@thoughtful

They are related in that they are related to character. It is not easy to hand-waive these things away as God working within a fallen structure.

Evil and sin pre-dates the human rebellion in the garden hence the Serpent. Not to mention the necessity of plant and bacterial death and simple single-celled animal death.

Death is discussed as a consequence and there is knowledge of evil already.

As for the other challenges, they are only going to progress:

  • increased evidence that corporal punishment negatively affects people
  • evidence of climate change is significant and fighting to stop reductions and increased efficiency is hurting people
  • Mental illness are real and people need support; there are spiritual aspects
  • Depriving groups of acceptance and access to power hurts people
  • Many approaches to crime based on biblical examples of criminal justice are harmful and ineffective
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Well in that case, you need to be specific about precisely which parts you’re talking about. Saying “in this case of evolution, it is scientists who have more cultural and political power” sounds like you’re dismissing the whole discipline out of hand in its entirety, whether that is your intention or not. So if you mean abiogenesis then say abiogenesis. If you mean universal common ancestry then say universal common ancestry. And if you mean “Darwinism” then go back to square one, because “Darwinism” is a weasel word that means different things to different people.

You also have to stick to the rules in how you approach those parts. The whole point of practical, commercial application is that it tells us – in no uncertain terms – that science has rules. It establishes (a) what those rules are, (b) that they actually work as intended, and (c) that you are not at liberty to disregard them. Just because you won’t kill people by getting things wrong about, say, abiogenesis, that doesn’t give you a free pass to make things up about it.

Besides, if you start telling people to disregard the rules in areas of science that don’t have consequences for doing so, as sure as eggs are eggs they will start disregarding the rules in areas of science that do. And what happens? You end up with Covid denial, climate change denial, anti-vaccination, and all manner of wild and wacky conspiracy theories running rampant among people who have been taught to view science as something “secular” that is not to be trusted.

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I would suggest that such callousness is fairly pervasive among “elite and powerful individuals” of a conservative Christian persuasion. Are you suggesting that such policies, and their underlying attitudes, are opposed by the grassroots on the right? If so, I can see no evidence of it. Such grassroots opposition seems to be entirely from the left.

This is, after all, how a Representative Democracy works. Political groupings elect “elite and powerful individuals” to represent their interests.

Addendum:

White Evangelicals have been found to be more in favor of preventing refugees than other, less conservative, religious groupings:

Figure 11
Figure 112047×1370 128 KB

[Source]

… as well as showing “more negative views about immigrants, than any other religious demographic.”(*)

“Christians, especially white evangelical Christians, are much more likely than non-Christians to view poverty as the result of individual failings.”(*)

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