Tenek

Not for any particularly good reasons, mind you, but I figure these are a few reasons it ain't going nowhere:

Common Sense

How many of you have seen something along these lines:

'The odds of evolution randomly producing man from monkey is so small it can't be! It doesn't make sense!" (insert typos as necessary)

Great anti-evolution argument... if you're John Q. Public and have neither the time nor the inclination to bother looking it up on your own. "It doesn't make sense" becomes the rallying cry of creationists simply because people grounded in normal, everyday lives rely on it. I myself have been accused of having no "common sense" for either doing or meaning to do something which is commonly known to be dangerous/stupid/etc. So it makes sense that "common sense" would be the greatest weapon of preachers - it's very hard to apply K.I.S.S. to the theory of evolution, but imagine how much more simple "Goddidit" is. It's all about the type of reasoning. Scientists sacrifice layman's clarity for technical accuracy; imagine radiometric dating reduced to "measure the stuff in a rock and know how old it is". If you investigate a scientific theory yourself, you might well understand the complex theory much better than the other end of the spectrum.

Things that you would assume given common sense:
-Determinism - "you can't mix blue paint and red paint and get white, every 'cause' has only one possible effect"
-Hidden Variables - "you can take a car apart and see all the parts, so why not anything?"
-Absolute frame of reference (I myself thought there was one up until 11th-grade physics) - "there *has* to be something fixed"

Common Sense and Creationism

The question many people ask at some point is, "Where did everything come from?" Religion seeks to answer that with a simple, down-to-earth, common sense idea - God created it all. God, of course, being so omnimax, uses simple methods in working His will. The Bible mentions God saying "Let there be light" - isn't it just dandy that God needs to speak to nobody in particular. And so forth. An uplifting message that one is a member of God's Chosen People and suddenly common sense dictates that since there would be no point in a universe without the Chosen People, that they must have existed at the beginning, and with a relatively short existence, the entire universe has its aged dogmatically fixed at a few thousand years. And still, it makes sense. People believe that the earth is flat and fixed, and the holy books are written accordingly, because it makes sense.

Unfortunately, that which makes sense may not always be so. Imagine the plight of Apollo 11, Armstrong and Aldrin lost forever on the Moon when they touch down and are instantly torn apart as the Moon's orbit crushes them against the face and the rotation flings them off across the craters. Oops. Time for Universe 2.0.

Generally speaking, however, common sense lives on, because Farmer Jones cares little for whether the Earth is flat or not so long as his crops grow. People end up deleting "flat, immovable Earth" from their repository, but the rest stays. Most of it is, after all, useful.

In the past few centuries, science has grown and religion has shrunk. Most Christians ignore conflicts between the Bible and science on such issues as the flat, immovable Earth - not all, I might add, but most - and take the book with a grain of salt. However, literalism has returned with a vengeance. Even the fundementalists usually accept round-earth heliocentrism these days... but the idea of a God who created everything still persists in common sense and is open to exploitation. Add the complexity of the ToE and once again those who don't know much about evolution are given the opportunity to apply common sense to the question of our origins. The strawman of evolution the creationists put forth presents no problems for the scientifically-apathetic layman. Even the real deal still has a random element to it which gets clobbered by common sense when taken apart from the rest.

It also "makes sense" for people who believe in God to assume that with power comes simplicity - why bother with the details if you can just make a pound of X? I'm rather thankful the Bible doesn't mention the four elements - could kiss atomic theory goodbye in the orthodox churches.

Elitism

I know something you don't know! Nyah nyah nyah!

Let's face it. Ego stroking is fun. Perhaps not good in the long run, but neither is alcohol. Moderation is just as key there, methinks. However, it's the "you are special" part of religion that provides incentive for belief no matter what. Atheists tend to be portrayed as having their eyes covered with regards to the Absolute Truth of (insert deity here). Logic and reason tend to fail miserably when used by people who "just don't understand that they're wrong" against those who "just know that they're right".

It's not really so much "keeping up with the Jones'" now but "staying ahead of the Jones'". You *need* a bigger car, you *need* more money, you *need* a prettier face. Logically, you would *need* to know the Truth more than your neighbour as well. So hey. People believe that they and a select few of their friends know the Truth, and that they are better than the rest because they understand the way it "really" works.

Misinformation

This one is fairly straightforward. It would take a mighty intelligent - and patient - and immortal - man to replicate all our scientific knowledge from scratch. People bombarded with material from both sides, and who agree with the creationists on the existence of God, are apt to fall for the charisma of the fundementalists. Evolution-accepting Christians tend to be flattened by their YEC counterparts; personal experience has taught me (grains of salt on me for this one) that when Xians argue with one another, the liberals tends to either a) be labeled a false Christian or b) capitulate. Literalism is far and away the easiest way to interpret the Bible, so people who try to argue that it doesn't mean what it literally says are faced with the task of contradicting the Word of God without really contradicting the Word of God. Not a particularly easy one, it seems. *takes a breath*

So when a Christian is faced with the false dichotomy of YEC / strong atheism... it tends to pose problems for scientific inquiry.

Ignorance

And then there are some who just don't know any better, and don't care either. Unwillingness to so much as listen to anything which contradicts one's beliefs, rejection of science - except the parts that give them a medium for downloading pr0n, the idea that God is the greatest liar of them all (either with the "delusion" Bible quote or the appearance-of-age bit) - they're not really going anywhere.

***

This is probably the most disorganized post I have ever made. Feel free to glean a bit of wisdom from it, if any. It was originally intended to be solely about the common sense angle, but it seemed to sprawl into other departments. If you can get the idea that the foundations of creationism are about as stable as the Leaning Tower of Pisa during a flash flood and earthquake, that'll do for me.

Albion

I've also read that appeals to people's sense of fair play are powerful - the sort of attitude that there are two stories out there and only one of them's getting a hearing because it's protected by the scientific establishment (the same people who brought you genetically modified food and industrial pollution), which isn't fair.

And then there's access and money. These days, with the Web so accessible, all you need is a website and some cut-and-paste stuff from the professional creationists and you have your own site. And when someone comes along to look up vestigial organs or cytochrome c or something, the first 50 hits contain 45 creationist ones. If you can get your site to look nice and professional, people will believe you (especially if they're inclined to do so anyway). The creation ministries and places like DI have rich Christian backers, which gets them access to Congress and allows them to produce and distribute slick propaganda. They're very good at getting straight to the public, but then that's their aim, not trying to challenge the scientific community.

lpetrich

Tenek:
'The odds of evolution randomly producing man from monkey is so small it can't be! It doesn't make sense!" (insert typos as necessary)

That's mainly an argument against natural selection; other proposed mechanisms of evolution are probably easier to intuitively understand:

Divine direction or something similar
Internal strivings
The inheritance of acquired characteristics

However, such mechanisms are either hopelessly metaphysical, untestable, or falsified by a large body of evidence.

I'm rather thankful the Bible doesn't mention the four elements - could kiss atomic theory goodbye in the orthodox churches.

The Bible's writers were not very interested in what we'd call the natural sciences; Dr. Isaac Asimov once called it the authentic voice of the ancient nonscientist. But you do have a good point. Imagine if 1 Enoch, which discusses astronomy in detail, had gotten into the Bible.

Although 1 Enoch is correct about directly-observable details like some stars being circumpolar and the Sun rising at different azimuths over the course of a year, it is very off-the-wall when it goes any further.

The Earth is, of course, flat, and the sky is an inverted solid bowl, just as Genesis 1 states. The Sun, Moon, and stars move along its edge from their setting points to their rising points; if they dawdle, they get tossed into a jail. There is no explanation for why the stars move in such remarkable lockstep; Ptolemy's sphere of the stars seems much more reasonable.

Elitism
I know something you don't know! Nyah nyah nyah!

And these guys turn around and moan and groan about elitists.

Evolution-accepting Christians tend to be flattened by their YEC counterparts; personal experience has taught me (grains of salt on me for this one) that when Xians argue with one another, the liberals tends to either a) be labeled a false Christian or b) capitulate.

I also marvel at the cowardice of many professed non-fundies. Why don't they show some guts? At the way they're going, they'll wind up like Mensheviks at the hands of Bolsheviks.

Literalism is far and away the easiest way to interpret the Bible, so people who try to argue that it doesn't mean what it literally says are faced with the task of contradicting the Word of God without really contradicting the Word of God. Not a particularly easy one, it seems. *takes a breath*

I agree -- literalism has a simplicity that partial allegoricalism lacks.

emotional

More about 1 Enoch here:
http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/febible.htm

gcameron

Yes, the refrain "All we are asking is that students be allowed to see both sides of the story" [never mind the bifurcation fallacy] is commonly heard. Throw in a few comments about the "high priests of the scientific establishment" and you'll get people's egalitarianism rankled.

I am impressed with the rhetorical skill with which creationists have turned barbs against them into barbs against evolution.

Instead of asserting "I believe so-and-so because the Bible says so," they say, "I am skeptical of evolution because so-and-so." Put evolution on the defensive; assume the mantle of the skeptic. Take away the high ground (in an arena where skepticism is framed as the high ground). Then by calling evolution a "religion" or referring to its "high priests" etc., they summon up some of the negative connotations that have previously been aimed at them.

Tenek

The Scripture Bat is hideously powerful against the faithful. I've yet to see a fundementalist with a rational basis for their beliefs - always literalism. So the people who don't take it all literally have to come up with reasons why some things should be taken allegorically, and get flattened by dogma. Literalists are exceedingly difficult to get to admit defeat - probably ends up as a "why bother?" issue.

Well it beats thinking. Especially when you have lousy translations.