Quite right. I guess you have a point in the OP.
-
Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.
Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:- Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
- Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
- Access to private conversations with other members.
We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!
Why do some creationists think evolution = atheism?
- Thread starter Jose Fly
- Start date
Jose Fly
Fisker of men
Thanks. I'm really anxious to hear from some of the creationists here, especially the ones who seem to argue from the standpoint of evolution equating to atheism.
Last edited:
Yes, but only methodologically. I speak of materialism as a metaphysic.
The idea that environmental pressures result in accumulative changes in a species over generations is not in and of itself offensive to a Christian worldview, it's only dangerous to a certain kind of Protestant fundamentalism. Nevertheless it is not totally misplaced to be suspicious not so much in the principle of evolution itself, but of evolution as a doctrine of a wider materialistic ideology.
Does accepting evolution necessarily imply an atheistic worldview? No. But can evolution play a part in the propagation of certain kind of atheistic worldview? Of course it does.
Last edited:
The Kilted Heathen
Crow FreyjasmaðR
How so?
It goes back to my first post. If the development of the diversity and seeming design of biological life can be understood within a purely mechanistic framework, then you have an explanatory foundation (solid or not is up to you) that logically allows for the wholesale denial any possibility of divine agency in the emergence of that seeming design in biological systems. Life (or rather design) can be 'explained' simply as an accident of mutation and environmental pressures. The atheistic implications are not hard to see once you accept evolution along that sort of line.
Last edited:
Doesn't that amount to saying that if it possible to give naturalistic as opposed to supernaturalistic explanations for the origin of life then there is one less reason to disapprove of atheism?
It seems to me that there are no atheistic implications as such.
Instead, there ceases to be an expectation of a gap where one would have to presume divine, supernatural intervention until a better explanation came to be.
At first glance at least, any explanation or even speculation with some grounding on facts, any falseability at all, would indeed better than a claim of miraculous intervention, since those are ultimately explicitly disconnected from verifiable phenomena.
Which brings to fore the interesting matter of how much religious significance such gaps are supposed to have in the first place. Once upon a time the behavior of magnets had no naturalistic explanation either. Is the origin of life supposed to be more significant from a religious perspective? If so, why?
No, because I think evolution understood among purely materialistic lines has much more to do with ideology than science. Which is why I'm saying that theistic suspicion of evolution as part of an materialist ideology is not utterly groundless. Don't misunderstand me, I'm not saying we resort to injecting theism into science itself, but that the creationist/evolution argument really isn't about what the science actually says. It's a clash of worldviews. The creationists have an obvious agenda, but very often so too does the 'evolutionist' side.
The facts of evolution are Science. There is not really a whole lot of room for ideology in them.
So we are all left with little beyond three main choices.
1. Accept the scientific, observable, predictable and testable facts and presume a divine intent behind it.
(That is what should be called Creationism these days, although that is not how it turned out).
2. Accept the scientific, observable, predictable and testable facts and not presume a divine intent behind it.
This, of course, is a natural choice for atheists. How that would be a matter of ideology, I have no idea.
3. Reject the scientific, observable, predictable and testable facts and instead proudly if regretably offer defiance to actual knowledge.
This is what so-called "Creationism" amounts to. And this is very much ideological in nature.
That is circular reasoning, based on suspicion that exists only to protect a very specific, very fragile form of theological expectation.
Indeed. One which accepts scientific fact, and one that refuses to.
Are you saying that it is scientifically established that the history of life in all its changes and adaptations can be reduced purely in terms of the happenstance occurrence of blind environmental and genetic pressures? I'm not questioning the mechanics of natural selection, but that we must believe it is completely unguided seems to me to be more of a belief than science.
Metaphysical materialism isn't a scientific 'fact'.
No. I am saying that there is no need for such a claim.
I believe the term for what you are proposing is "straw man".
Indeed. But that is not at all what is being discussed here.
Quite true.
And because that is true, the rejection of known, demonstrable facts that is necessary to sustain so-called "Creatonism" is that much less forgivable. There is not even a respectable ideological justification for it.
Last edited:
psychoslice
Veteran Member
Who really cares what creationist think, do they really think ?.
They exist in a society that needs to deal with them constructively if at all possible.
A Vestigial Mote
Well-Known Member
Wow... "bring Genesis into the science world?" Seriously? You want to point a scientifically investigative eye at text that calls the moon "a light" and hope that it stands up to the scrutiny? Are you, by chance, crazy out of your mind?
james bond
Well-Known Member
No, I understand science and creation science is more right than atheist science. I should ask you if you are a madman because you believe in pseudoscience. You believed in the following wrong science already (I'll dedicate this to the OG here ha ha):
Today, you believe wrongly that the universe just popped into existence, the moon was formed from an asteroid which chipped off a piece of the earth, humans are fish, birds are dinosaurs, the universe and earth are billions of years old and other brainwashed notions because of evolution:
Last edited:
A Vestigial Mote
Well-Known Member
So, do you believe that the moon is "a light"? Yes or no is all I am looking for.
james bond
Well-Known Member
Do you understand anything I just told ya madman ha ha?
In as much as things can be established in science, as there's always margin for error, there's been no evidence of gene flow or trait development that is inconsistent with natural, not artificial or unnatural, selection. To me assuming guided evolution makes more unevidenced leaps than natural selection does. Which, to be honest, is probably why, more than any other natural science, biologists tend to be irreligious.
So, to the OP at large, evolution doesn't equal atheism. But evolution, I believe, conflicts with more than just a literal Genesis account, but the idea of a creator which does anything more than act as a substitute for abiogenesis.
james bond
Well-Known Member
Vestigal Mole, where did you run off to? You cannot answer my questions. Can you answer your own ha ha? You got a 50/50 chance of being correct. I'll let you call someone for help. The floor is yours. What claims do you want to make?
Here's what I wanted from the atheist scientists who run Nature and Science -- to bring in Genesis. What's so hard about that? Give a creation scientist a chance to speak on the origins of life. Isn't life and death determined by 1) religion, 2) science and 3) experience? Let these creation scientists explain their theories? If it's not a valid hypothesis, then what are they afraid of?
Here's what I wanted from the atheist scientists who run Nature and Science -- to bring in Genesis. What's so hard about that? Give a creation scientist a chance to speak on the origins of life. Isn't life and death determined by 1) religion, 2) science and 3) experience? Let these creation scientists explain their theories? If it's not a valid hypothesis, then what are they afraid of?
Jose Fly
Fisker of men
Why are you bringing metaphysics into it, and why just for evolutionary biology?
So your problem is with atheism, not evolution.
I see you expanded on this point later, so I'll put that here....
The same can be said for pretty much any other scientific explanation for things. Gravitation explaining the formation of planets and galaxies, glacial erosion explaining the formation of u-shaped valleys, plate tectonics explaining the formation of mountain ranges, electromagnetism explaining the formation of molecules......
Yet I don't see creationists associating those things with atheism.
The same reason that some scientists believe Darwin or neo Darwinism is evolution, it certainly is not. The Catholic church knows it has a problem with evolution and the internal narrative of the faith, and they correctly assume that it will become clearer over time in God's time. It's interesting to follow Catholic thinking on evolution since they were intimately involved from it's earliest development in the early 1800's before Darwin. Young earth creationism is really neo evangelical more than catholic and neo evangelicalism tends to be extremely, literal, paranoid, hyper individualistic and this hyper reductive. A kind of splintering, that creates splinters that creates more splinters. Hillsboro Baptist in the USA is a famous example. It's not really Baptist congregation but a splinter militant group of baptists. Nuttiness isn't the sole domain of religion but some in it are intent on perfecting it, and labeling God's will.