Heleilu

This is probably old hat and in the wrong forum, but here it goes:

Creationists, YECs in particular, see "evolutionism" or "secular humanism" as competing religions because they can't imagine belief systems that aren't religions competing with their own. They still live in the medieval paradigm of faith-based communities. By extension, a secular, areligious community is actually a competing religious community. I think that's the same process that created gods; assume that everything is fundamentally like yourself until proven otherwise. You get upset when you're disrespected; so does your mother; so will that tree. Your boss likes presents; so do storms. That's still the cornerstone of the personal universe worldview.
Please forgive the ranting, I know this is probably the wrong forum but it was inspired by something here.

Kevin Dorner

A valid analysis, but I would expand that to state that the view that "secular humanism", "darwinism" and/or "evolutionism" are "religions" is deliberately promoted to make it seem that there is no proof whatsoever of evolution occurring or of Darwin's theory of evolution through natural selection, which makes "belief" in spontaneous creation by a higher power and "belief" in evolution equivalent. This motive is that if laypeople think that there is no proof for biological evolution, that they will choose creationism because it is more "appealing."

This was already overturned by the U.S. Supreme court in what was probably a test case by the creationists (Peloza v. Capistrano School District, 1994.) The teacher took the school district to court claiming that the requirement to teach evolution violated the establishment clause as the "religion" of "evolutionism" was being promoted. The court's decision was that there is no such religion, and biological evolution is not a religious idea. (Several other court decisions have of course upheld that creation "science" and "intelligent design" are religious ideas.)

Edit: <a href="http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/peloza.html" target="_blank">Talk.Origins transcription of the court's decision</a>

[ January 05, 2002: Message edited by: Kevin Dorner ]</p>

theyeti

Now you're gettin' it. In my opinion this has a lot to do with the black/white, good/evil, us/them way that they have of looking at the world. It doesn't really occur to them that other people don't polarize everything like that, and not only is there some grey area, but for many things a bipolar categorization doesn't apply. For example, scientific theories are amoral. They are neither good nor evil, they are only accurate or inaccurate in regards to the way things actually are, not the way we wish things were. But in the creationist black/white way of looking at things, everything must be either good or evil, and it's obvious where Darwin falls.

theyeti

P.S. This is fine for this forum. I'm curious though, what inspired you?

Heleilu

I've had the idea for a while, but after reading a comment in the thread "Why do creationists hate the big bang?" I realized how perfectly it applies to creationists. Their religion gives all the answers; science has alternate answers; therefore science is a religion. I still can't really enter into their worldview, with or without that theory.