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Why do some creationists think evolution = atheism?

Jose Fly

Fisker of men
Quite right. I guess you have a point in the OP.

Thanks. I'm really anxious to hear from some of the creationists here, especially the ones who seem to argue from the standpoint of evolution equating to atheism.
 
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Glaurung

Denizen of Niflheim
But that's how science works. Scientists "reduce to mechanistic processes" everything they study.
Yes, but only methodologically. I speak of materialism as a metaphysic.

The idea that environmental pressures result in accumulative changes in a species over generations is not in and of itself offensive to a Christian worldview, it's only dangerous to a certain kind of Protestant fundamentalism. Nevertheless it is not totally misplaced to be suspicious not so much in the principle of evolution itself, but of evolution as a doctrine of a wider materialistic ideology.

Does accepting evolution necessarily imply an atheistic worldview? No. But can evolution play a part in the propagation of certain kind of atheistic worldview? Of course it does.
 
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Glaurung

Denizen of Niflheim
It goes back to my first post. If the development of the diversity and seeming design of biological life can be understood within a purely mechanistic framework, then you have an explanatory foundation (solid or not is up to you) that logically allows for the wholesale denial any possibility of divine agency in the emergence of that seeming design in biological systems. Life (or rather design) can be 'explained' simply as an accident of mutation and environmental pressures. The atheistic implications are not hard to see once you accept evolution along that sort of line.
 
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LuisDantas

Aura of atheification
Premium Member
It goes back to my first post. If the development of the diversity and seeming design of biological life can be understood within a purely mechanistic framework, then you have an explanatory foundation (solid or not is up to you) that logically allows for the wholesale denial any possibility of divine agency in the emergence of that seeming design in biological systems. Life (or rather design) can be 'explained' simply as an accident of mutation and environmental pressures. The atheistic implications are not hard to see once you accept evolution along that sort of line.
Doesn't that amount to saying that if it possible to give naturalistic as opposed to supernaturalistic explanations for the origin of life then there is one less reason to disapprove of atheism?

It seems to me that there are no atheistic implications as such.

Instead, there ceases to be an expectation of a gap where one would have to presume divine, supernatural intervention until a better explanation came to be.

At first glance at least, any explanation or even speculation with some grounding on facts, any falseability at all, would indeed better than a claim of miraculous intervention, since those are ultimately explicitly disconnected from verifiable phenomena.

Which brings to fore the interesting matter of how much religious significance such gaps are supposed to have in the first place. Once upon a time the behavior of magnets had no naturalistic explanation either. Is the origin of life supposed to be more significant from a religious perspective? If so, why?
 

Glaurung

Denizen of Niflheim
Doesn't that amount to saying that if it possible to give naturalistic as opposed to supernaturalistic explanations for the origin of life then there is one less reason to disapprove of atheism?
No, because I think evolution understood among purely materialistic lines has much more to do with ideology than science. Which is why I'm saying that theistic suspicion of evolution as part of an materialist ideology is not utterly groundless. Don't misunderstand me, I'm not saying we resort to injecting theism into science itself, but that the creationist/evolution argument really isn't about what the science actually says. It's a clash of worldviews. The creationists have an obvious agenda, but very often so too does the 'evolutionist' side.
 

LuisDantas

Aura of atheification
Premium Member
No, because I think evolution understood among purely materialistic lines has much more to do with ideology than science.
The facts of evolution are Science. There is not really a whole lot of room for ideology in them.

So we are all left with little beyond three main choices.

1. Accept the scientific, observable, predictable and testable facts and presume a divine intent behind it.

(That is what should be called Creationism these days, although that is not how it turned out).


2. Accept the scientific, observable, predictable and testable facts and not presume a divine intent behind it.

This, of course, is a natural choice for atheists. How that would be a matter of ideology, I have no idea.


3. Reject the scientific, observable, predictable and testable facts and instead proudly if regretably offer defiance to actual knowledge.

This is what so-called "Creationism" amounts to. And this is very much ideological in nature.


Which is why I'm saying that theistic suspicion of evolution as part of an materialist ideology is not utterly groundless.
That is circular reasoning, based on suspicion that exists only to protect a very specific, very fragile form of theological expectation.

Don't misunderstand me, I'm not saying we resort to injecting theism into science itself, but that the creationist/evolution argument really isn't about what the science actually says. It's a clash of worldviews.
Indeed. One which accepts scientific fact, and one that refuses to.
 

Glaurung

Denizen of Niflheim
The facts of evolution are Science. There is not really a whole lot of room for ideology in them.
Are you saying that it is scientifically established that the history of life in all its changes and adaptations can be reduced purely in terms of the happenstance occurrence of blind environmental and genetic pressures? I'm not questioning the mechanics of natural selection, but that we must believe it is completely unguided seems to me to be more of a belief than science.

Indeed. One which accepts scientific fact, and one that refuses to.
Metaphysical materialism isn't a scientific 'fact'.
 

LuisDantas

Aura of atheification
Premium Member
Are you saying that it is scientifically established that the history of life in all its changes and adaptations can be reduced purely in terms of the happenstance occurrence of blind environmental and genetic pressures?
No. I am saying that there is no need for such a claim.

I believe the term for what you are proposing is "straw man".

I'm not questioning the mechanics of natural selection, but that we must believe it is completely unguided seems to me to be more of a belief than science.
Indeed. But that is not at all what is being discussed here.

Metaphysical materialism isn't a scientific 'fact'.
Quite true.

And because that is true, the rejection of known, demonstrable facts that is necessary to sustain so-called "Creatonism" is that much less forgivable. There is not even a respectable ideological justification for it.
 
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A Vestigial Mote

Well-Known Member
This is a stupid thread, Jose. You should follow your own advice in the sig ha ha.

Let's bring Genesis into the science world. Then we can talk.
Wow... "bring Genesis into the science world?" Seriously? You want to point a scientifically investigative eye at text that calls the moon "a light" and hope that it stands up to the scrutiny? Are you, by chance, crazy out of your mind?
 

james bond

Well-Known Member
Wow... "bring Genesis into the science world?" Seriously? You want to point a scientifically investigative eye at text that calls the moon "a light" and hope that it stands up to the scrutiny? Are you, by chance, crazy out of your mind?

No, I understand science and creation science is more right than atheist science. I should ask you if you are a madman because you believe in pseudoscience. You believed in the following wrong science already (I'll dedicate this to the OG here ha ha):

Today, you believe wrongly that the universe just popped into existence, the moon was formed from an asteroid which chipped off a piece of the earth, humans are fish, birds are dinosaurs, the universe and earth are billions of years old and other brainwashed notions because of evolution:
evolution_fraud.png~original
 
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A Vestigial Mote

Well-Known Member
No, I understand science and creation science is more right than atheist science. I should ask you if you are a madman because you believe in pseudoscience. You believed in the following wrong science already (I'll dedicate this to the OG here ha ha):


Today, you believe wrongly that the universe just popped into existence, the moon was formed from an asteroid which chipped off a piece of the earth, humans are fish, birds are dinosaurs, the universe and earth are billions of years old and other brainwashed notions because of evolution.

So, do you believe that the moon is "a light"? Yes or no is all I am looking for.
 

ADigitalArtist

Veteran Member
Staff member
Premium Member
Are you saying that it is scientifically established that the history of life in all its changes and adaptations can be reduced purely in terms of the happenstance occurrence of blind environmental and genetic pressures? I'm not questioning the mechanics of natural selection, but that we must believe it is completely unguided seems to me to be more of a belief than science.
In as much as things can be established in science, as there's always margin for error, there's been no evidence of gene flow or trait development that is inconsistent with natural, not artificial or unnatural, selection. To me assuming guided evolution makes more unevidenced leaps than natural selection does. Which, to be honest, is probably why, more than any other natural science, biologists tend to be irreligious.

So, to the OP at large, evolution doesn't equal atheism. But evolution, I believe, conflicts with more than just a literal Genesis account, but the idea of a creator which does anything more than act as a substitute for abiogenesis.
 

james bond

Well-Known Member
Vestigal Mole, where did you run off to? You cannot answer my questions. Can you answer your own ha ha? You got a 50/50 chance of being correct. I'll let you call someone for help. The floor is yours. What claims do you want to make?

Here's what I wanted from the atheist scientists who run Nature and Science -- to bring in Genesis. What's so hard about that? Give a creation scientist a chance to speak on the origins of life. Isn't life and death determined by 1) religion, 2) science and 3) experience? Let these creation scientists explain their theories? If it's not a valid hypothesis, then what are they afraid of?
 

Jose Fly

Fisker of men
Yes, but only methodologically. I speak of materialism as a metaphysic.

Why are you bringing metaphysics into it, and why just for evolutionary biology?

The idea that environmental pressures result in accumulative changes in a species over generations is not in and of itself offensive to a Christian worldview, it's only dangerous to a certain kind of Protestant fundamentalism. Nevertheless it is not totally misplaced to be suspicious not so much in the principle of evolution itself, but of evolution as a doctrine of a wider materialistic ideology.

So your problem is with atheism, not evolution.

Does accepting evolution necessarily imply an atheistic worldview? No. But can evolution play a part in the propagation of certain kind of atheistic worldview? Of course it does.

I see you expanded on this point later, so I'll put that here....

If the development of the diversity and seeming design of biological life can be understood within a purely mechanistic framework, then you have an explanatory foundation (solid or not is up to you) that logically allows for the wholesale denial any possibility of divine agency in the emergence of that seeming design in biological systems. Life (or rather design) can be 'explained' simply as an accident of mutation and environmental pressures. The atheistic implications are not hard to see once you accept evolution along that sort of line.

The same can be said for pretty much any other scientific explanation for things. Gravitation explaining the formation of planets and galaxies, glacial erosion explaining the formation of u-shaped valleys, plate tectonics explaining the formation of mountain ranges, electromagnetism explaining the formation of molecules......

Yet I don't see creationists associating those things with atheism.
 

David T

Well-Known Member
Premium Member
Well if evolution = atheism; then The Pope and The Archbishop of Canterbury are atheists.
If you want to debate that, please start another thread. This thread is about creationists' belief that evolution = atheism.
The same reason that some scientists believe Darwin or neo Darwinism is evolution, it certainly is not. The Catholic church knows it has a problem with evolution and the internal narrative of the faith, and they correctly assume that it will become clearer over time in God's time. It's interesting to follow Catholic thinking on evolution since they were intimately involved from it's earliest development in the early 1800's before Darwin. Young earth creationism is really neo evangelical more than catholic and neo evangelicalism tends to be extremely, literal, paranoid, hyper individualistic and this hyper reductive. A kind of splintering, that creates splinters that creates more splinters. Hillsboro Baptist in the USA is a famous example. It's not really Baptist congregation but a splinter militant group of baptists. Nuttiness isn't the sole domain of religion but some in it are intent on perfecting it, and labeling God's will.
 
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