Wounded King

Is what you are asking restricted to questions of mentality or can we ascribe a physical basis to it? Is there perhaps some fundamental benefit to sheer bloody mindedness and intransigence in the face of, in the opinion of many people, overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

This is hardly a topic restricted to E/C debate, there are many areas where people with strongly held beliefs will cling to them, come what may.

How many of these people feel they have had a personal revelation, or some other radical form of subjective experience, and how many are merely espousing the faith they were brought up in?

Is it less irrational to cling to a belief, in the face of opposition, if you feel you have personal experience confirming that belief?

Psychic

of course a cost/benefit analysis is not appropriate for choosing a belief. but we are trying to point out the factors that prevents theist to accept our theory of evolution.
is our theory too weak and doesn't hold-water, or are we using a wrong approach? what should be the right approach?

Ovazor

The approach that most creationists willl accept evolution if it is clearly, logically and rationally explained will not work.

Presenting theory of evolution as "our" or "atheist" would probably be counterproductive, and it is untrue as well. To do this would equate theory of evolution with atheism, which would only make theists -even liberal theists- more hostile to it.

I think a good approach to educate theists about the theory of evolution might be to try to encourage those theistic biologists who understand the evolution and don't see any conflicts with it and their religious beliefs to do it. This way educating people about evolution wouldn't seem to be trying make them undergo a religious conversion.

Ovazor

annelise

The belief convictions of the religious mind has been discussed at length in Science Journals and in Philosophical textbooks. The childhood mind of a person that has grown up being exposed to theology and taught to believe what they hear are very unlikely to be able to grab the concept of not having any faith/s. I have encountered on numerous occasions, a conversation with faith based people and their reactions of my having a belief or knowledge in science and my conviction on how the universe is extremely large and beyond human imagination (the fact that planet earth is not the centre of the universe) I always get the same reaction. Utter disgust! It is understandable to see that they live life with the knowledge that science is out there and discovering new information all the time on the history of the planet, but they just choose to think about something else. I think man has to be more humble with his approach to his existence and his role in nature. I hope that our children will have the wisdom to live and love life, just as we do.

trillian

Education is the answer. Authoritative creationists press this belief on their congregations.
In the US you will find a correlation between states that even consider a debate teaching such things and the states with the lowest literacy rates and lowest rates of higher education (mainly southern).
First you must teach critical thinking and the basics of science, then evolution has a chance of getting through.

Some may be brainwashed with the dogma and it's reinforced on them continually, so even though they are educated they still believe. But I believe the majority are simply undereducated persons blindly following the authority of their religious leaders.

Just a thought.

Wounded King

I do not want to seem rude but there seems to be a very condescending attitude to theists around here. Theism and Creationism are by no means equivalent. I know many evolutionary biologists who might describe themselves as theists, but only one who might describe himself as a creationist.

To suggest that we need to educate theists is insulting. We need to educate everyone, atheists do not spring from the head of Zeus with an inherent grasp of evolutionary theory.

Nic Tamzek

It would, however, be rather entertaining if it turned out that atheists *did* spring from the head of Zeus.



This is after all an "Internet Infidels" board so the non-atheists among us should cut the anti-theists a bit of slack. However, I agree that the truth of theism and the truth of evolution are highly separable issues (which is why they have separate boards here, I expect) and agree that there are plenty of perfectly good evolutionary biologist theists.

I think there are a number of theist evolutionists on the II E/C board, probably because it's the only decent "pro-evo" UBB around (for some reason evoforums.com never really seems very interesting).

trillian

I wasn't talking about theists in general, just creationists...if you read my post correctly.

I went to Catholic school all my life and even they taught evolution, not creation (at least not past story time in 4th grade or so.)
These people may be "smart" but they certainly are missing some of their objective rationality. What other way to bring that back than education? I just tell it like it is (with the info and experience I have).

Ovazor

I agree with this completely. The entire notion that to be theist or christian or muslim or whatever requires one to reject theory of evolution or that most of them do that (around here most christians have no problem with theory of evolution) leads to nothing.

I'm as quilty to this as anybody, but I still think you are right. Most crerationists I see around here are, in fact, highly educated (most are engineers) in a country where there is no serious attempts to stop teaching evolutionary biology in schools. For example, they do have been taught how radiometric dating works both in school and again in the university, but still they think the method is unreliable and based on circular reasoning. They have the same knoledge as people who accept evolution, but they reject it. I don't see how increasing education would improve this. Admittedly some of them have very strange ideas what theory of evolution actually means, but this comes mostly from creationist sources.

I wrote in my previous posting that it might be a good idea of letting theists educate other theists about evolution. I meant that a religious person who thinks that theory of evolution might be in conflict with his religion doesn't really look for scientific but theological arguments ("is it acceptable for me to think like this"), and these would have to come from somebody who shares the person's faith.

Ovazor

Wounded King

I was actually replying to Ovazor, Trillian, I just type very slowly :boohoo: . And may I just say what a lovely, and certainly not condescending, post that last one was Ovazor :notworthy . As you can see I am trying out the smilies .

Doesn't your line of reasoning have a flaw though? Are other christians of the same faith as creationists? To the extent where their word might be considered authoritative at least. Consider, for example, the disdain for the opinion of the Pope which Albert Cipriani holds.