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Evolution, Atheism, and Religious Beliefs

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Rational Agnostic

Well-Known Member
Richard Dawkins has stated that once he understood the explanatory power of evolution, he abandoned all belief in God. This is interesting, and it seems that many individuals transition from theistic to atheistic beliefs shortly after they understand and realize the fact that evolution can fully explain the complexity and diversity of life. Yet, many religious people (including many priests) fully accept evolution while still holding a strong belief in God.

So, my question is, for both atheists and theists who accept evolution, how much does recognition of the fact of evolution affect your beliefs? For atheists, did it ultimately lead you to abandon belief in God? For theists who accept the fact of naturalistic evolution, does the fact that all species with all of their complexities were formed by entirely naturalistic processes ever cause you to question your theistic faith?
 

icehorse

......unaffiliated...... anti-dogmatist
Premium Member
well i wouldn't be opposed to a cozy afterlife (none of the groveling though), I just haven't seen any evidence for it.

that said, even if we weren't so far along understanding things like evolution, that lack of understanding has never compelled me to think that there are supernatural explanations.
 

Axe Elf

Prophet
I believe that space and time are just two manifestations of the same thing. So if God created all of space (and I believe that He did), then He created all of time along with it. Therefore I believe everything was determined at the moment of creation--God is still responsible for the "naturalistic processes," determining which mutations will occur at what times, which mutations are precursors of new species and which are not, and so on. I have no difficulty understanding that the process of God's creation in the animal kingdom is observable as ongoing evolution.
 

bobhikes

Nondetermined
Premium Member
Richard Dawkins has stated that once he understood the explanatory power of evolution, he abandoned all belief in God. This is interesting, and it seems that many individuals transition from theistic to atheistic beliefs shortly after they understand and realize the fact that evolution can fully explain the complexity and diversity of life. Yet, many religious people (including many priests) fully accept evolution while still holding a strong belief in God.

So, my question is, for both atheists and theists who accept evolution, how much does recognition of the fact of evolution affect your beliefs? For atheists, did it ultimately lead you to abandon belief in God? For theists who accept the fact of naturalistic evolution, does the fact that all species with all of their complexities were formed by entirely naturalistic processes ever cause you to question your theistic faith?

For most Religions that believe in evolution it is my understanding that they believe God was the spark that started life.


For me an Agnostic, I find your quote "after they understand and realize the fact that evolution can fully explain the complexity and diversity of life" overstated. Evolution is a great story teller but does not fully explain anything. Even after the fact we really don't know what causes any mutation and why they are successful but all humans still like to tell and hear good stories. Evolution has some epic story telling.
 

SomeRandom

Still learning to be wise
Staff member
Premium Member
Well my theism isn't really book based, there's no real rules regarding how life got into being and why, like arguably some versions of say, the Bible. So understanding evolution (or as much as I can being a stupid layman) didn't really affect my theism one way or the other. It's just a rational understanding of life.
Titles like theism and atheism are arguably a little......."muddled" in my tradition anyway. They're not really defined the way the West defines them. It's a little more grey area-y.
 

Sunstone

De Diablo Del Fora
Premium Member
Evolution didn't enter into the picture for me as a nontheist. It might have -- had I at some point accepted the argument that the existence of god could be demonstrated by the ways in which life on this planet seems to be designed in so many ways. Had I accepted that argument, then the Theory of Evolution might have played a role in my forming my nontheism. But I turned out a nontheist for other reasons before that could happen.
 

shunyadragon

shunyadragon
Premium Member
Richard Dawkins has stated that once he understood the explanatory power of evolution, he abandoned all belief in God. This is interesting, and it seems that many individuals transition from theistic to atheistic beliefs shortly after they understand and realize the fact that evolution can fully explain the complexity and diversity of life. Yet, many religious people (including many priests) fully accept evolution while still holding a strong belief in God.

So, my question is, for both atheists and theists who accept evolution, how much does recognition of the fact of evolution affect your beliefs? For atheists, did it ultimately lead you to abandon belief in God? For theists who accept the fact of naturalistic evolution, does the fact that all species with all of their complexities were formed by entirely naturalistic processes ever cause you to question your theistic faith?
Fundamentally the Baha'i Faith accepts the harmony of science and religion, and that science is the evolving knowledge of our physical existence including the physical as well as the spiritual evolution of humanity. Baha'is believe the natural processes of abiogenesis and evolution always reflect the intent of God, and for our planet humanity is the 'supreme talisman,' Also the scripture concerning the physical nature of our existence must be understood and interpreted in light of the advancing changing knowledge of science.

The lack of consistent guidance concerning science and evolution in Judaism, Christianity and Islam scriptures convinced me early on to move on,
 

Sunstone

De Diablo Del Fora
Premium Member
Richard Dawkins has stated that once he understood the explanatory power of evolution, he abandoned all belief in God.

I think to understand Dawkins' transformation to atheism, you should take into consideration that by the time he converted in his mid-teens, he'd pretty much stripped himself of any other reason to believe in a god other than the apparent design of life. Thus evolution was more or less the last brick in the wall, so to speak. But for a theist who comes across evolution when they still have other reasons for believing in god, the effect might not be so great.
 

George-ananda

Advaita Vedanta, Theosophy, Spiritualism
Premium Member
For theists who accept the fact of naturalistic evolution, does the fact that all species with all of their complexities were formed by entirely naturalistic processes ever cause you to question your theistic faith?
I certainly believe in evolution but don't necessarily agree it occurred by entirely naturalistic processes as this question implies. Evolution may well have proceeded under the guidance of nature deities is one example.

There are intermediate positions in-between the two poles of belief on the issue.
 

Terese

Mangalam Pundarikakshah
Staff member
Premium Member
Richard Dawkins has stated that once he understood the explanatory power of evolution, he abandoned all belief in God. This is interesting, and it seems that many individuals transition from theistic to atheistic beliefs shortly after they understand and realize the fact that evolution can fully explain the complexity and diversity of life. Yet, many religious people (including many priests) fully accept evolution while still holding a strong belief in God.

So, my question is, for both atheists and theists who accept evolution, how much does recognition of the fact of evolution affect your beliefs? For atheists, did it ultimately lead you to abandon belief in God? For theists who accept the fact of naturalistic evolution, does the fact that all species with all of their complexities were formed by entirely naturalistic processes ever cause you to question your theistic faith?
I see God as all things, and so, would be both "supernatural" and natural. personally to me supernatural doesn't mean something that isn't natural, just an echelon above the material world. Now, due to this, evolution being a naturalistic process has little bearing on my theistic faith, for the Supreme is all things, time, space, cause and effect, and many other conceptual attributes. He too would be the naturalistic process that produces evolution.
 

Estro Felino

Believer in free will
Premium Member
Catholic children learn at a very young age that world and humanity are the direct result of free will...so I remember there was no chance to speak of a Creator-God...it was all about how responsible men are, how guilty we are, especially guilty of crucifying Jesus.
So even something like Intelligent Design is unthinkable in the mind of a Catholic. The concept of a free nature full of randomness is more logical.
I guess I didn't choose neo-Darwinism...I rely on it because it's the only possible explanation that makes sense to me...as for my vision of God.
 
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Mock Turtle

Oh my, did I say that!
Premium Member
Richard Dawkins has stated that once he understood the explanatory power of evolution, he abandoned all belief in God. This is interesting, and it seems that many individuals transition from theistic to atheistic beliefs shortly after they understand and realize the fact that evolution can fully explain the complexity and diversity of life. Yet, many religious people (including many priests) fully accept evolution while still holding a strong belief in God.

So, my question is, for both atheists and theists who accept evolution, how much does recognition of the fact of evolution affect your beliefs? For atheists, did it ultimately lead you to abandon belief in God? For theists who accept the fact of naturalistic evolution, does the fact that all species with all of their complexities were formed by entirely naturalistic processes ever cause you to question your theistic faith?

For me, the appreciation of evolution came much later, when I began to look into all the various faiths whilst at the same time absorbing as much scientific and philosophical information as I could - mostly just out of personal interest since my education was in engineering. Obviously I had to look at such fundamental claims. My lack of belief in religions and doubts as to any God or gods just came from intuition - the likelihood of so many different religions, any being true, or all being true - when most likely none were true, and just inventions of mankind. I haven't seen anything to make me change my mind on this, although I will allow some doubt in as to there being a creator or creative force. Not that this has any impact on humans, I believe, because that hardly makes any sense either. If one acknowledges the scale of the universe at least and all its complexity.
 

It Aint Necessarily So

Veteran Member
Premium Member
I was an atheist before I knew what evolution was, became a Christian knowing what it was, and left Christianity a decade later for reasons unrelated to Darwin's theory.

Still, that doesn't rule out that the theory of evolution didn't have an indirect impact. Perhaps without it, I would not have been raised without religion.

God is still responsible for the "naturalistic processes," determining which mutations will occur at what times, which mutations are precursors of new species and which are not, and so on. I have no difficulty understanding that the process of God's creation in the animal kingdom is observable as ongoing evolution.

You probably realize that that is not Darwin's theory. What you are describing is another form of creationism, but adding some of Darwin's ideas like gradual change through genetic modification over deep time, As long as you include a supernatural agent in the process, it's not Darwin's theory. That would be artificial selection, like developing new roses.

For me an Agnostic, I find your quote "after they understand and realize the fact that evolution can fully explain the complexity and diversity of life" overstated. Evolution is a great story teller but does not fully explain anything. Even after the fact we really don't know what causes any mutation and why they are successful but all humans still like to tell and hear good stories. Evolution has some epic story telling.

Evolutionary theory gives us the mechanism for the expansion of the tree of life. In that sense, it is complete.

What needs to fleshed out is the pathways of the branches of that tree, which is not part of the theory. The theory tells that any two living things have a most recent common ancestor whose descendants evolved along different pathways, and that's it. If you want to know the pathway to human evolution beginning with the last common ancestor of man and his closest relative, you'll have to figure out what that closest relative is without the theory, what our last common ancestor would have been, when they diverged, and decide which extinct hominins are ancestors and which are non-ancestral relatives (aunts and cousins, if you will) whose lines went extinct. The theory answers none of these questions. It just provides the mechanism for the change.

And yes, there are great stories, such as the one that goes with the advent of humanity. North and South America came together forming the Isthmus of Panama several million years ago cutting off the flow of the ocean current from the Pacific to the Atlantic, which changed the climate in Africa and transformed some jungle there into relatively treeless savanna. The creatures that had to come down from the trees to make a living were our forebears, and changed dramatically. The ones that still had jungles didn't change much, as they were already well adapted to their arboreal environments.

The treeless chimplike ancestors became bipedal, freeing their articulate, grasping primate hands for other uses including tool use, which is probably what led to increased cranial capacity and human intellect. The other notable changes in man also relate to this transition from arboreal life to running on the open savanna, such as the relative hairlessness and how it permits releasing heat when running by sweating rather than panting, which is important in peristence hunting, wherein these slower apeman creatures could capture prey that would only sprint and pant, then rest, then run again until exhausted and defeated by hunters that essentially never stopped running.
 

Audie

Veteran Member
There was no religion in my home when I grew
up. A bit of Buddhist thinking on my Mom's part.

So no effect at all on my (non) religiosity.

All ToE does, along with other things
understood in our times re religion is
show a way to better understandin of
nature than by blindly accepting ancient
myths.

ToE is so integrated, one could not twease
it from the rest of the physical sciences.

Science is a method for understanding nature.
As such, I think it is a far better approach
than any religion.

True of some, if not necessarily all religions
is that far from promoting understanding,
they block it. At best, they interpose a mirror
between the spiritual person and what they
are seeing.

To see the "Glory of God" in a sunset is really
just turning things around and looking back into
your own skull.

Religions have their values and utilities.
Those are, I think, entirely separate from
the realm of inquiry into nature.
 

Axe Elf

Prophet
You probably realize that that is not Darwin's theory. What you are describing is another form of creationism, but adding some of Darwin's ideas like gradual change through genetic modification over deep time, As long as you include a supernatural agent in the process, it's not Darwin's theory. That would be artificial selection, like developing new roses.

Gee, I didn't realize that the writings of Darwin came with a codicil like the Bible, not to add to or subtract anything from his holy theory.

I'm talking about evolution in general, not just what Darwin himself understood about it. I don't care if Darwin thought of it, some other scientist expounded on it, or a class of third-graders added to it. The question is about the compatibility of scientific evolution with religious beliefs, and I find them compatible because I see God as being ultimately responsible for all "naturalistic" processes.

That, of course, is a matter of faith and not science--believing it is a matter of opinion, not fact, in the absence of proof either for it or against it. You can't include a supernatural agent in science; science is not broad enough to account for supernatural agency.
 

LuisDantas

Aura of atheification
Premium Member
how much does recognition of the fact of evolution affect your beliefs?

Hard to tell. I learned the basics fairly early in my life - perhaps as soon as I became an effective reader, at about age 8 to 10 - and therefore I have little idea of how appealling the idea of divine creation would have seemed to me otherwise.

For atheists, did it ultimately lead you to abandon belief in God?

Definitely not. Between my being an atheist for as far back as I remember and my understanding that evolution is hardly at odds with honest theism, that just could not happen far as I am concerned.
 

Jayhawker Soule

-- untitled --
Premium Member
So, my question is, for both atheists and theists who accept evolution, how much does recognition of the fact of evolution affect your beliefs? ... For theists who accept the fact of naturalistic evolution, does the fact that all species with all of their complexities were formed by entirely naturalistic processes ever cause you to question your theistic faith?
Sure.
 
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