“Once you accept the practical necessity of relying heavily on second hand information, you have to modify your view of what a reasonable person would believe to take account of what those around him believed. If you have no training in science and your only information on biotech comes from the popular press, it may not be obvious that a story on mice with human brains cannot be right. If you have devoted your time, energy, and intelligence to living your own life, doing your job, dealing with those around you, it isn’t all that unreasonable to accept as truth what those around you believe about wider issues less directly observed, such as the existence of God or the weakness of the case for evolution. What applies not only to people in the past who couldn’t have known the evidence for evolution but to people in the present who could have but in all probability don’t. I long ago concluded that most people who say they do believe in evolution, like most who say they don’t, are going mostly on faith. As I pointed out in a post some years back, many of those who say they believe in evolution, most notably people left of center, have no difficulty rejecting even its most obvious implications when those clash with their ideology.”
David Friedman, speculating on what is the right way to decide if a person is, or is not, a nutcase.
It’s interesting that so many people who think they’re proponents of evolution discuss the matter in terms of “belief”. I’ve never heard anyone voice a belief that red light has a longer wavelength than blue, or a belief that B-lactam antibiotics work by interfering with bacterial cell wall synthesis. Those statements are instead presented as facts that have been deduced from an examination of physical evidence. The difference seems to be that so many of the most fervent defenders of the theory of evolution are unaware of the (astonishing, voluminous, and altogether convincing) physical evidence supporting the idea. They don’t have knowledge of the evidence, they have faith in their belief, and they’ll fight for their beliefs as passionately as any mujahedeen.
I generally find that anybody of any stripe who is absolutely certain they are right about anything are almost universally clinging to a dogmatic belief and not to knowledge of facts, particularly when they are absolutely certain that those they disagree with are not just completely wrong, but evil for thinking so. Except, of course, for those people I agree with….
Here’s a contradiction I find fascinating. Most people I’ve talked with who support evolution are also environmentalists and are baffled when I note that environmental change, according to their belief system, will bring about greater bio-diversity through the pressure to survive.
On the other hand, most of the people who I talk with who reject evolution are also blase about species extinction until I point out that according to their beliefs those species are gone and nothing will replace them.
Bravo! I’ve encountered this myself; there are plenty of people that express belief in evolution simply for reasons of identity politics: they live in a blue state, went to university, don’t go to church, use Apple computers, drink import beer, and want to continue looking down on the ignorant, redneck pickup-truck-driving Christians they revile. Not one of them can voice even a rudimentary argument in support of evolution or know the first thing about the body of evidence behind it. With slightly different circumstances of birth they’d be just as sure about creationism as they are about evolution now.
The great American 19th century “Common Sense” philosophers (and orthodox theologians) Noah Porter and (especially) James McCosh supported the theory of biological evolution and showed that (whatever Darwin’s personal theological opinions) the theory does NOT contradict the existance of God or the basic doctrines of Christianity.
The orginal “Funedementalists” (the people who wrote and supported the early 1900’s essays on the “fundementals” of Christianity against the evil of the Progressive “Social Gospel”) did NOT oppose biological evolution (indeed some of these writers were actually scientists who produced evidence in favour of theory of evolution).
When was this insight lost – when did there became a choice between traditional conservative Christianity (i.e. opposition to the Social Gospel – and remember that includes George Bush as well as Hillary Clinton) and evolution, between true religion and science?
I am not sure what happened – but it is something that only seems to have really hit the Protestant side.
Most conservative traditional Catholics do not oppose the scientific theory of biological evolution.
It is time for traditional Protestants (people who reject such evil as the “social gospel”) to rediscover the work of men like James McCosh – and later, the original “Fundementalists”, not the anti science people who presently go by that name.