Motivations for Evolution Denial. Why is there any controversy at all?

[LuisDantas]

It just occurred to me that there are in fact a surprising number of reasons, albeit none with any substance to it. I will try to categorize them as they appear in this thread.

Quite a few come from poor understanding of the theory and its implications.

Poor grasp of the Theory of Evolution is so common and consequential that it sometimes leads to "believing in Evolution" for entirely the wrong reasons. I have once seen a Kardecist Spiritist who was too attached to the word itself and attempted to present his doctrine as "compatible with Evolution", while in truth Spiritism is just unchecked mystification with no connection whatsoever with biological knowledge.

The word itself was probably ill chosen. It suggests value judgments and therefore some form of conscious chooser, when there is (far as can be observed) nothing of the sort. I wonder how different history would be had Darwin chosen instead "selection" or even "fortuitous adaptation".

Another reason is the psychological hardships of accepting the degree of uncertainty that the Theory of Evolution predicts. One of the main attractors of religious beliefs is a sense of certainty and reassurance. It may be difficult for some people to so much as accept that current scientifical knowledge fails to present any evidence of purposeful creation of humanity as an inherently separate species, and therefore to support expectations that humanity was "meant to be".

Yet another reason, of course, is good old mass mentality. It is a plain if often disconcerting fact of life that people tend to run with the flow of the ideas presented to them.

A specific form of that is the need to presume some form of scripture as a literal if weirdly worded truth and work from that premise in order to find one's certainties. It is a regrettable, hopefully rare yet very visible trait that some people have.

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So here is an attempt at describing the most significant motivation supporting denial of evolution, often if regrettably called "Creationism".

1. Poor grasp of the theory and of its implications

1.1. Assumption that Evolution is guided, intentional, purposeful or involves conscious judgement of worth of some kind.

1.1.1. Misreading of the word itself leading to the conclusion that evolution makes value judgements.

1.1.1.1 Attribution of some sort of moral significance to biological evolution, either as a measure or as a challenge to morality.

1,2 Inability to conceive the time scales involved in speciation.



2. Perceived threatening of a sense that humanity was created intentionally and, presumably, for a purpose.




3. Peer pressure. It is often difficult to resist or even notice that the social environment directs one towards certain opinions and behaviors.

3.1 Scripture literalism. There is a certain worldview that tests reality by scripture instead of the other way around.



4, Poor grasp of the nature of scientific inquiry and its role in the development in the Theory of Evolution.

4.1 Poor understanding and representation of the meaning of the word "theory" in scientific word.

This one often takes the form of claims that "Evolution is only a Theory".



Anything else comes to mind?

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Anything else comes to mind?

Poor grasp of what both "theory" means in scientific literature and how scientific inquiry works.

 

[LuisDantas]

Thanks. I will add that now.

 

[Laika]

1.1.1.1 Attribution of some sort of moral significance to biological evolution, either as a measure or as a challenge to morality.

In so far as Evolution proposes an objectively existing law of nature, it has moral implications IF we treat human beings an animals and therefore potentially without a "soul" and subject to the laws of evolution apply to humans.

Social Darwinism represents a 19th century attempt to apply the theory of evolution to humans based on assuming that is provided a "scientific" explanation of human social behaviour and evolution. If man is an animal, it means that human beings can be studied as a "natural" phenemeona governed by physical laws. This view was not simply a product of Darwin but was an undercurrent in western thought as such as French Materialists in the 18th century (one of whom regarded man as an animal, and another as a machine). It wasn't until the 20th century, when Nazi (and to a lesser extent Communist) interpretations of Social Darwinism and treating human beings in a "biological" way as animals without intrinsic moral properties or rights, that it came under attack as a form of "scientism" because of the ideological and moral threat it posed. The difference between Nazi and Communist attitudes on Social Darwinism was over the specific relationship of evolution to understanding society but both were in agreement that it did have an effect on how we understood ourselves. In so far as social darwinism represents attempts to use biology to explain human behaviour, it was also used by Peter Kropotkin to justify a natural predispostion amongst humans towards co-operation in his works on Anarchism. This was not however a view exclusive to "extreme" ideologies but had widespread intellectual acceptence in liberal societies such as the United States, particuarly with regards the study of Eugenics (as a form of domestic selection of human populations as opposed to natural selection).

The efforts to reject the moral implications of evolution on society are somewhat laughable in the " let's look the other way" and "it didn't really happen" level of intellectual argument. It is heavily dependent on a variety of politically charged and philosophically complex issues which were only settled in any sense by the victory of Liberalism over it's Nazi and Soviet adversaries. seeing natural science and social science as mutually exclusive and independent asserts that humans in a "special" place in the natural world where being endowed with consciousness and free will makes human beings "above" the laws of natural selection and the evolutionary process. It's possible to argue that that is a legacy of a theological view where because man has a "soul" or a "mind" he is "above" the laws of nature and possess divine properties to chose whether or not to obey the laws of natural selection. Creationists have every right to bring up this point because Secularists have simply failed to address it beyond insisting that science is morally neutral and or has very little to say on morality- a view peculiar to the late 20th century as we struggle with the historical and moral legacy of totalitarianism and their respective "scientific moralities".

It is fair to characterise attempts to assert a direct link Darwin to Hitler as extremely crude, simplistic and propagandistic, but saying evolution has no effect on man's "moral significance" strikes me as perverse. If man was not created in god's image and therefore cannot aspire to attain divinity or even needs to doubt scripture as a source of religious authority- we are forced to re-examine our relationship to the natural world and to religious belief (particuarly abrahmic) as a whole. Evolution is largely a starting point for 19th century attempts at a "Science of Morality" and so does provide a basis for moral judgements. They aren't widely accepted now though particuarly because of the holocaust, etc. Eugenics is simply the elephant in the room.

 

[LuisDantas]

I guess I disagree, although for the most part I am just not following.

Social Darwinism, despite having been named that way, is quite unconnected to Darwin or to the Theory of Evolution, which is really a very ill fit to any attempts at moral claims.

Much of the point of morality specifically and of sentience in general is to transcend natural tendencies as opposed to seek support from them, from misrepresentations or unfair extrapolations from them.

 

[Thief]

I believe in evolution.
God is behind it.

 

[Laika]

Social Darwinism, despite having been named that way, is quite unconnected to Darwin or to the Theory of Evolution, which is really a very ill fit to any attempts at moral claims.

Think of Social Darwinism as attempts at "Domestic Selection" next to a spontaneous process of "natural selection" and you are pretty much there. This is in the same way farmers breed chickens for meat or eggs, and then people believe that they can "select" humans through reproduction based on certain traits by Eugenics. Darwin drew his conclusions about evolution partially from agricultural practices that had existed before his time, including pigeon fancying and tried to explain these processes of domestic selection in agriculture by finding an economic mechanism to explain the origin of species as the struggle for subsistence. He borrowed the idea that animals compete for survival based on limited food resources from the economist Thomas Malthus who argued that uncontrolled human reproduction would lead to a population explosion and a sudden collapse in population as human population numbers returned in eqilibrium with their surrondings.

Much of the point of morality specifically and of sentience in general is to transcend natural tendencies as opposed to seek support from them, from misrepresentations or unfair extrapolations from them.

It's specifically to do with a materialist reading of evolution as turning man into a purely physical entity. if "consciousness" is a product of the brain and therefore of matter/nature, it follows that consciousness is determined by it. putting it crudely, Nazis would say it is biologically determined (nature) and Communists would say it is environmentally determined (nurture). They were however both deterministic approaches to morality which claimed to derive morals from nature. By treating man as a physical being subject to biological laws and whose consciousness was determined by physical laws they considered it scientific because it was based on observation and could claim to make predictions about human behaviour and social development.

 

[Windwalker]

The word itself was probably ill chosen. It suggests value judgments and therefore some form of conscious chooser, when there is (far as can be observed) nothing of the sort. I wonder how different history would be had Darwin chosen instead "selection" or even "fortuitous adaptation".

I think no matter what word was chosen the misapplication of them would still be present. This is as true of people who are magical and mythical thinkers misapplying scientific and rational truths to fit into their prerational frameworks as it is spiritual truths and principles that get 'dumbed down' into something other that what their original contexts support. It's not just a lack of education, it's a developmental thing. If someone can't think in certain conceptual frameworks, it doesn't matter how much evidence is presented. Their minds are only able to interpret it in the way they are able to. As Emerson said well, "What we are, that only can we see."

Another reason is the psychological hardships of accepting the degree of uncertainty that the Theory of Evolution predicts. One of the main attractors of religious beliefs is a sense of certainty and reassurance.

Certainly in some cases this provides emotional resistance to being open to certain ideas. No doubt. But don't overstate this to say that "religious beliefs" can be defined as offering a sense of certainty. I'd say only immature religious beliefs do that. Certainly Buddhism doesn't do that, as Nagarjuna was all about creating uncertainty, breaking down one's ideas of truth. That's the opposite of offering certainty and reassurance. And I'd say Christianity as well in its more advanced forms does as well, especially the mystical strains of it. The "Cloud of Unknowing" is most certainly about moving past 'certainty and reassurance'.

But I'll add in this context as well, that this resistance to ideas out of dismantling one's sense of certainty applies to anyone about anything within any belief structure. It applies to atheism as well as to theism. It really has much more to do with one's emotional intelligence, their EQ versus their IQ.

Yet another reason, of course, is good old mass mentality. It is a plain if often disconcerting fact of life that people tend to run with the flow of the ideas presented to them.

And that applies to all belief structures, both religious and secular. I look at it in terms of Consensus Trance. How the culture one is part of translates the world becomes the framework those participating in it will largely adopt and see through themselves. Mass mentalities shift and evolve, but they always exist and always will no matter what the belief structures or modes of thinking are at the time.

A specific form of that is the need to presume some form of scripture as a literal if weirdly worded truth and work from that premise in order to find one's certainties. It is a regrettable, hopefully rare yet very visible trait that some people have.

That trying to take the belief of divine revelation of one's religious text and turn it into a book of magical scientific knowledge is a symptom of what I said at the outset. Those that are operating at the magical and mythical levels will try to make something beyond itself fit into what can be known and related to by them. They know and relate to their scriptures as supernatural truth, and when they encounter scientific truth, they try to make it fit downward into their mythic system. What hasn't happened yet is for them to grow into the rational systems and make their mythic systems evolve and integrate upward into that, casting off the bathwater of myth and redeeming the baby of human truth.

 

[Rick O'Shez]

Anything else comes to mind?

An inability to visualise the vast time-scales involved.

 

[Thief]

so don't use scripture......

 

[LuisDantas]

so don't use scripture......

Excuse me?

 

[Thief]

Excuse me?

Man believed in God long before anything got wrote down.

Scripture is what other people think of God.
you need not follow scripture to believe.

 

[LuisDantas]

Think of Social Darwinism as attempts at "Domestic Selection" next to a spontaneous process of "natural selection" and you are pretty much there. This is in the same way farmers breed chickens for meat or eggs, and then people believe that they can "select" humans through reproduction based on certain traits by Eugenics.

Those are explicitly artificial processes and not natural selection, aren't they?

(...)

It's specifically to do with a materialist reading of evolution as turning man into a purely physical entity. if "consciousness" is a product of the brain and therefore of matter/nature, it follows that consciousness is determined by it. putting it crudely, Nazis would say it is biologically determined (nature) and Communists would say it is environmentally determined (nurture). They were however both deterministic approaches to morality which claimed to derive morals from nature. By treating man as a physical being subject to biological laws and whose consciousness was determined by physical laws they considered it scientific because it was based on observation and could claim to make predictions about human behaviour and social development.

However it might originate, consciousness originates morality by its turn. Morality is a necessary and unavoidable consequence of sentience, of the ability to make predictions about the likely consequences of our actions and their effects on the well-being of others.

 

[LuisDantas]

Man believed in God long before anything got wrote down.

Scripture is what other people think of God.
you need not follow scripture to believe.

Not sure I agree, but how would that apply here?

 

[Thief]

God might not care.

 

[LuisDantas]

About?

 

[Thief]

attempting to square up evolution to a text written by people who knew not the word.....evolution.....
is unreasonable.

the text only hints of Man as a species.....Day Six
no names...no garden.....no law....
go forth, be fruitful and multiply.

Day Seven....no more is created.....

Chapter Two is actually Day Eight
it's just not written that way.
and the event of the garden is manipulation.....not creation....
not evolution either

but to say that God as Creator cannot tweak His creation as needed.....
is also unreasonable.

 

[Augustus]

Social Darwinism, despite having been named that way, is quite unconnected to Darwin or to the Theory of Evolution, which is really a very ill fit to any attempts at moral claims.

Historically, the people making arguments connected to, for example, scientific racism were indeed motivated by Darwin's ideas (See Ernst Haeckel, Thomas Huxley, etc.). People subscribing to such views also believed they were being genuinely scientific, and often considered themselves progressive and enlightened for their views.

That people today, with the benefit of hindsight and increased knowledge, see them as unconnected does not mean those expressing such ideas were not motivated by Darwin's ideas and their implications.

They also raised profound moral questions for many people. You might believe that theory of evolution should have any effect on questions regarding morality, but in reality the effects were enormous and cumulated in some of the atrocities committed in the 20th C.

2. Perceived threatening of a sense that humanity was created intentionally and, presumably, for a purpose.

Back to your OP. One reason people may reject evolution is:

The idea that most systems of morality are based around human exceptionalism with us having innate value bestowed on us by a creator, thus are undermined by evolution telling us we are just another one of the animals.

Many people see the implications for their system of morality.

 

[LuisDantas]

An inability to visualise the vast time-scales involved.

Right! Added as 1.2. Thanks.

 

[Laika]

Those are explicitly artificial processes and not natural selection, aren't they?

ONLY if you argue human beings, the "mind" and our capacity for decisions isn't part of the natural world.

However it might originate, consciousness originates morality by its turn. Morality is a necessary and unavoidable consequence of sentience, of the ability to make predictions about the likely consequences of our actions and their effects on the well-being of others.

I agree morality is necessary, but the issue is that the content of that morality will radically differ depending on whether we view morality as the result of free will or determined by biological, genetic, environmental, economic, tecchological (etc) factors. If man's behaviour is determined by physical laws, that also changes what we consider the nature of "freedom" without free will.