I'm still surprised when I encounter people who reject evolution

[DavidDvorkin]

At least, in certain settings. In this case, it was in a comment thread on a friend's Facebook account. He's a scientifically oriented sort, and I tend to expect such people's friends to be the same. Two of the posters in the thread, though, turned out to be aggressively, dogmatically anti-evolution. One of them sneered about people "who think they're from monkeys", whereas he knows he's "from God".

It's hard to believe this is the 21st century.

[lazarus]

1. he's "from God"?

What, he thinks God reproduced and thus formed the human race? Weird.

[DavidDvorkin]

2. They speak their own version of English.

[muriel_volestrangler]

4. Fairly common in pagan religions

Anglo-Saxon kings tended to claim descent from Woden before they were converted to Christianity, for instance. It always helps the claim to be extra-special.

[Heddi]

13. Hey Laz!!! Haven't seen you around in a while!!!

Hope you're doing well!

[lazarus]

15. hey, Heddi!

Yeah, I took a long break, but I'm back and having fun. I've had two people put me on ignore in less than 2 weeks!

[TZ]

After working with a fellow biologist who was an evolutionist denier

I'm never surprised anymore...His reasons..."Carbon dating isn't accurate"...:eyes:

[semillama]

7. *snarf*

Carbon dating isn't accurate? We're getting +/- 10 year date ranges on carbonized seeds using accelerated mass spectroscopy!

[lizerdbits]

3. I don't understand the fear of the genetic similarities between us and apes and monkeys

Years ago there was something on PBS about evolution where a woman exclaimed she 'wasn't related to no fish.' I don't understand the desire to believe we are super special in terms of how we arrived on the planet.

[Orsino]

14. It's magical thinking.

Some of us prefer to see mankind as something completely separate, and therefore better, from the rest of the animal kingdom, and will do so in spite of a mountain of evidence to the contrary.

[SheilaT]

5. People who deny evolution have

no real understanding of it. They think it says we're descended from monkeys, which it does not. Or they say that carbon dating isn't reliable, without understanding the plus or minus however many years in a carbon dating result isn't unreliability, but science at its best. Besides, no one ever seems to ask them for accurate proof of their claims.

[DavidDvorkin]

6. One problem is that think science is a belief system, a religion

The people I was arguing with said that some people may believe they're descended from monkeys, but they believe that they were made by God. Dating doesn't seem to matter to them.

Later in the argument, one of them said that science is just a collection of facts, and you can interpret those facts any way you want to. I explained the role of theories, as the word is used in the sciences, but I suspect they had stopped reading by that point.

[laconicsax]

8. Really?

[mr blur]

9. At least you don't live in Turkey,

although it is beautiful there.

[DavidDvorkin]

10. Oh, that's depressing

I wonder if it's even worse now.

[ChadwickHenryWard]

11. Same.

It's really astounding that anybody could reject it. It's obvious to me just from a cursory glance at the animal kingdom. Forget the fossil record. Forget molecular genetics (though that's the field that clinches it - DNA is incontrovertible proof; no maybe, no might be, 100% undeniable, undoubtable proof of common origin.) Living creatures show a clear nested hierarchy of forms. We can see a clear progression from fish to amphibians, amphibians to reptiles, and reptiles to mammals and birds. And it's not hard to extrapolate up from single-celled organisms to more complex forms that came after.

Some people continue to doubt. A guy I used to work with had read Darwin and taken plenty of bio courses in college, but still didn't believe. He had attended one of those Christian dominionist schools, though, that teach creationism as though it were the real science.

[DavidDvorkin]

12. Post #11 reminds me that they're also rejecting the rest of science

It's not just the order that evolution creates out of an otherwise chaotic fossil and DNA record. There's also the broad agreement regarding the timeline between a number of sciences.

I've made that argument, but it seems to have no effect. Rejecters still see evolution as something separate, a baseless hypothesis, the dictum of Darwin vs. the revealed truths of the Bible.