One of the most common objections to evolution is that it is not science at all but a humanistic religion devoid of God. This objection is also one of the most foolish, the intellectual equivalent of making faces at one's opponent. This objection, like all the others, is completely without merit, save in the minds of those over at Answers in Genesis and all the like-minded creationist organizations. Ken Ham takes a full chapter out of his little book The Lie: Evolution to engage in this stupid, baseless accusation that "evolution is religion."
How is that supposed to work, I wonder? How can evolution, one of the most important scientific ideas in the history of man, endlessly proven with well-supported evidence, continually proven with new discoveries both in the lab and in the field, become a religion, founded on faith and belief rather than evidence?
I suppose it must go something like this. Evolution is the foundation of a godless worldview in which man came from apes and is free to act like them, something made up out of whole cloth just so Darwin, and those who "believe" in evolution can deny the existence of God and his Laws. Scientists have church too; they call them conferences where they present revelations about the false science of evolution and reassure each other that it is true, not a theory, even though they know it can't ever be proven. And they bar any mention of creationism or Intelligent Design, not because it isn't true but because it challenges the dogma of evolution. That description seems to encompass most of the caricatures that creationists like Ham make up about evolution and scientists who accept them.
Except that, none of the above accusations are true. They don't hold any merit at all. They are lies, told in order to halt the progress of mainstream science and spread the Gospel...not the message of Jesus, though they pay him plenty of lip service, but the Gospel of Ham or the Gospel of Hovind, that if you do not take the Bible literally in everything, including the book of Genesis, that if you do not force yourself (and, with all the evidence available, you must surely force yourself to ignore evolution) and work your mind into all sorts of contortions and meaningless, twisted arguments in order for a literal reading of Genesis to make sense in light of what we know from modern science...if you do not accept creationism, in sum, you are obviously not a Christian at all. You are either an atheist or a liberal compromiser, not worthy of the name Christian.
But evolution, or "Darwinism", is not a religion in any sense of the word. Evolution isn't a key component of the "liberal religion" as the know-nothing Ann Coulter would have it (her book Godless: The Church of Liberalism not only repeatedly attacks "Darwinism" but claims that, for conservatives "Our book is Genesis. Theirs is Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, the original environmental hoax (4)." Charming to see a statement accepting creationism tied so nicely to the anti-environment agenda). Evolution is true; it is supported by fact, both observed in the natural world and in the laboratory. I can quickly recommend four books that set out the evidence for it (Jerry Coyne's Why Evolution is True, Richard Dawkins' The Greatest Show on Earth, Alan Rogers' The Evidence for Evolution and Cameron Smith's The Fact of Evolution) and two that tackle the claims of Intelligent Design (Ken Miller's Only a Theory and Michael Shermer's Why Darwin Matters).
Evolution is hardly the foundation of a "godless worldview" for the simple fact that many scientists who are Christians and accept evolution, to say nothing of the major denominations of Protestantism that accept evolution and also the Catholic Church. The statement that evolution leads to atheism, so heavily used in Ben Stein's awful film "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" simply isn't true based on the evidence. If evolution leads directly to atheism, then why do so many Christians accept it and go on attending church and worshiping Jesus? The statement is an attempted slur, not a reasoned objection, against the fact of evolution.
Man did not come from apes; humans evolved from a common ancestor shared with apes. Evolution no more frees us from moral constraint than any other scientific idea; we are obliged to be moral as human beings who live together in this world. If belief in special, six-day creation is the only thing that keeps you from immorality, then that speaks poorly of your moral compass.
Science depends on observation and experimentation, not revelation. The ideas of science are a framework to explain known facts about the universe and are constantly tested against new information and experiments. Over time, bad ideas that are not supported by the evidence are discarded. The fact that evolution by natural selection remains accepted by science after over one hundred and fifty years of constant testing is a testament to its strength, not the fact that it is "dogma." Evolution isn't a tenant of religious faith for the very fact that it is tested, repeatedly, and it continues to hold up. Areas of this process, of the long evolution of life on Earth, that once confused us are constantly being illuminated thanks to the tireless efforts of thousands of scientists from numerous fields. The gaps in our knowledge are constantly being filled, and all the creationists can do is stand on the sidelines, far away from where the real work is being done, repeating their tired old arguments and continuing to point out these ever-diminishing gaps as evidence that evolution is false. But they are wrong and continue to be wrong by focusing on relatively small "gaps" and ignoring the big picture that Darwin and all the scientists since him have uncovered.
Creationism and Intelligent Design aren't ignored in spite of the evidence, they are ignored because of the evidence! There is no conspiracy of Darwinists to keep them out of mainstream science; they have nothing to add to science! Their arguments have been constantly refuted, and many of their efforts to impose their agenda in schools have been turned back by the courts. Their machinations, from arguing that Noah's Ark is in fact quite plausible to looking for living dinosaurs to attempting to link Darwin to slavery (a practice he detested) would be laughable were there not so many of them, so large a range of well-funded organizations dedicated to spreading this pseudo-scientific tripe. The "evolution is religion" canard is just one of a wide range of arguments that are easily dismissed, though I must admit that I find it odd that, coming from a religious worldview that pretends to be science, calling evolution a religion is somehow supposed to be a strike against them.
How is that supposed to work, I wonder? How can evolution, one of the most important scientific ideas in the history of man, endlessly proven with well-supported evidence, continually proven with new discoveries both in the lab and in the field, become a religion, founded on faith and belief rather than evidence?
I suppose it must go something like this. Evolution is the foundation of a godless worldview in which man came from apes and is free to act like them, something made up out of whole cloth just so Darwin, and those who "believe" in evolution can deny the existence of God and his Laws. Scientists have church too; they call them conferences where they present revelations about the false science of evolution and reassure each other that it is true, not a theory, even though they know it can't ever be proven. And they bar any mention of creationism or Intelligent Design, not because it isn't true but because it challenges the dogma of evolution. That description seems to encompass most of the caricatures that creationists like Ham make up about evolution and scientists who accept them.
Except that, none of the above accusations are true. They don't hold any merit at all. They are lies, told in order to halt the progress of mainstream science and spread the Gospel...not the message of Jesus, though they pay him plenty of lip service, but the Gospel of Ham or the Gospel of Hovind, that if you do not take the Bible literally in everything, including the book of Genesis, that if you do not force yourself (and, with all the evidence available, you must surely force yourself to ignore evolution) and work your mind into all sorts of contortions and meaningless, twisted arguments in order for a literal reading of Genesis to make sense in light of what we know from modern science...if you do not accept creationism, in sum, you are obviously not a Christian at all. You are either an atheist or a liberal compromiser, not worthy of the name Christian.
But evolution, or "Darwinism", is not a religion in any sense of the word. Evolution isn't a key component of the "liberal religion" as the know-nothing Ann Coulter would have it (her book Godless: The Church of Liberalism not only repeatedly attacks "Darwinism" but claims that, for conservatives "Our book is Genesis. Theirs is Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, the original environmental hoax (4)." Charming to see a statement accepting creationism tied so nicely to the anti-environment agenda). Evolution is true; it is supported by fact, both observed in the natural world and in the laboratory. I can quickly recommend four books that set out the evidence for it (Jerry Coyne's Why Evolution is True, Richard Dawkins' The Greatest Show on Earth, Alan Rogers' The Evidence for Evolution and Cameron Smith's The Fact of Evolution) and two that tackle the claims of Intelligent Design (Ken Miller's Only a Theory and Michael Shermer's Why Darwin Matters).
Evolution is hardly the foundation of a "godless worldview" for the simple fact that many scientists who are Christians and accept evolution, to say nothing of the major denominations of Protestantism that accept evolution and also the Catholic Church. The statement that evolution leads to atheism, so heavily used in Ben Stein's awful film "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" simply isn't true based on the evidence. If evolution leads directly to atheism, then why do so many Christians accept it and go on attending church and worshiping Jesus? The statement is an attempted slur, not a reasoned objection, against the fact of evolution.
Man did not come from apes; humans evolved from a common ancestor shared with apes. Evolution no more frees us from moral constraint than any other scientific idea; we are obliged to be moral as human beings who live together in this world. If belief in special, six-day creation is the only thing that keeps you from immorality, then that speaks poorly of your moral compass.
Science depends on observation and experimentation, not revelation. The ideas of science are a framework to explain known facts about the universe and are constantly tested against new information and experiments. Over time, bad ideas that are not supported by the evidence are discarded. The fact that evolution by natural selection remains accepted by science after over one hundred and fifty years of constant testing is a testament to its strength, not the fact that it is "dogma." Evolution isn't a tenant of religious faith for the very fact that it is tested, repeatedly, and it continues to hold up. Areas of this process, of the long evolution of life on Earth, that once confused us are constantly being illuminated thanks to the tireless efforts of thousands of scientists from numerous fields. The gaps in our knowledge are constantly being filled, and all the creationists can do is stand on the sidelines, far away from where the real work is being done, repeating their tired old arguments and continuing to point out these ever-diminishing gaps as evidence that evolution is false. But they are wrong and continue to be wrong by focusing on relatively small "gaps" and ignoring the big picture that Darwin and all the scientists since him have uncovered.
Creationism and Intelligent Design aren't ignored in spite of the evidence, they are ignored because of the evidence! There is no conspiracy of Darwinists to keep them out of mainstream science; they have nothing to add to science! Their arguments have been constantly refuted, and many of their efforts to impose their agenda in schools have been turned back by the courts. Their machinations, from arguing that Noah's Ark is in fact quite plausible to looking for living dinosaurs to attempting to link Darwin to slavery (a practice he detested) would be laughable were there not so many of them, so large a range of well-funded organizations dedicated to spreading this pseudo-scientific tripe. The "evolution is religion" canard is just one of a wide range of arguments that are easily dismissed, though I must admit that I find it odd that, coming from a religious worldview that pretends to be science, calling evolution a religion is somehow supposed to be a strike against them.
Why don't the creationists like Rachel Carson?
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