Many people in the US claim that teaching evolution is a bad thing, because it leads to atheism (and some, like Ben Stein, add that it then leads to Nazism and the Holocaust, but that’s another story). Of course, I don’t think that leading to atheism is a bad thing, because atheism is a “good thing”. However, the question remains: does it?
My answer: in some cases, yes.
The reality of evolution doesn’t preclude the existence of God, much less disprove it. It is certainly compatible with the existence of a supreme being who created the universe, and even with one who also intentionally created life on Earth.
It does, however, affect religious belief in two different ways, either of which can lead one to atheism, and which are why religion often has objections to evolution:
- It removes one of the major needs for the existence of God. One can believe that a divine creator exists simply because we don’t see any other explanation for something — in this case, the existence of mankind. Much like in Douglas Adams’s case, it can happen that you come to the conclusion that human religions are logically incoherent and man-made, but you still believe there must be some kind of creator, since you are aware of no other explanation. But evolution provides one, which resolves the “I don’t see any other way it could have been” argument from ignorance.
- It reveals the holy books are not inerrant. The major monotheist religions are based on their respective holy books, which include creation stories, usually having something to do with “six days”, with mankind as “special” and intentionally designed, and which totally contradict evolution. To put it bluntly: if evolution is real, Genesis is wrong. While not all sects of each religion teach biblical literalism and inerrancy, many do so, and the fact that evolution shows one part of the Bible to be not literally true leads one to a slippery slope: if this part is wrong or can’t be taken literally, might other parts be wrong or non-literal as well? (One particular resurrection comes to mind…) And how can one then know which parts to trust? This kind of questioning leads some to a more liberal form of religion, but others to one simple, “dangerous” question: what if… it’s all wrong?
And thus evolution is opposed. Because they see what it can do, indeed.
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The people who understand evolution the most, understand evolution is a completely natural process, and no gods are required to invent or guide it. In polls of Americans only about 13% accept evolution without invoking a god for it. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that about the same percentage of Americans are atheists. A much larger percent of Americans accept evolution but invoke a god to direct it, which shows how uneducated Americans are. About 50% of Americans completely reject evolution, preferring supernatural magical creation of each species instead. It’s very obvious evolution is a threat to most religious beliefs, especially heaven, a belief feeble cowardly people don’t want to give up. Since they claim animals don’t go to heaven, they don’t like the idea that humans are just animals and not a special creation of their sky fairy.
This evolution leads to atheism idea is probably why so many Christians attack science education. They are losing their war against science and that’s a good thing. The sooner religions go extinct the better. It’s obvious America’s fear of evolution is slowing down human progress and it’s obvious the reason for this fear is religion.
Factual Genesis is Being Overlooked
It would be much better if those that believe in a Creator, would make a call to learn the correct view of Genesis, rather than clinging to their current false beliefs of Genesis.
Theistic evolution calls God a liar, when He specifically told Israel in Exodus 0:11, “For in six days, the Lord made heaven and Earth, the sea, and all there in them is…”. He told them this after defining the work week, in Exodus 20:9. When God told Joshua to march around Jericho for seven days, did God mean something other than 168 hours? If so, Joshua (from the tribe of Ephraim) should be STILL marching around those walls.
The doctrine of Creation Science, is also false, along with “ruin & restoration”, progressive creation, Day/Age, gap theories, and theistic evolution. All are insuccessfully trying to explain the first chapter of Genesis, which they do not understand.
Creation Science begins with hypocrisy, declaring total belief in “literal interpretation” of the scriptures. That sounds nice, until you “put the Word” on their teachings. Where did the water come from on the first day? Did God create the birds on the fifth day before mankind, or after mankind on the sixth day? Did God create the land animals before mankind on the sixth day, or after Adam on the sixth day? On each of the previous questions, “young Earth” believers can’t give an honest answer. They begin to “redefine”
the scriptures in an attempt to make them fit their false beliefs. When cornered, their escape path is to say “God will explain it when we get to Heaven”. That’s living in
a delusion. Agnostics, atheists, and evolutionists need it explained to them NOW, so that they can be part of the church BEFORE Jesus returns.
The problem with young Earth believers is that they are brainwashed into thinking that accepting scientific reality of an “old earth” means denying the seven 24-hr days of the 168 hour Creation Week. Remember the “lack of knowledge” in Hosea 4:6?
Misunderstanding of the Genesis text leads to foolishness when advocating that the mammoths, giant mammals, dinosaurs, and dimetrodons all died in Noah’s flood, which was in 2611 BC. The foundations of a young Christian’s faith is shaken when they are confronted with the reality of ancient geologic ages of Earth’s history, and the 650+ million year fossil record (of death). Genesis does not teach, nor agrees with any “young Earth” doctrine. Biblical Reality
conveys the correct view of Genesis, using “correct” literal interpretation, explaining what God was revealing to Moses (Observations of Moses).
We can remain in denial, which is not getting us anywhere, or we can learn the truth of Genesis, to enable us to expose the false conclusions of secular science. Which is it going to be?
Herman Cummings
ephraim7@aol.com
PO Box 1745
Fortson GA 31808
(Herman Cummings is the author of the book, “Moses Didn’t Write About Creation!”).
Our of curiosity Herman, what do you consider the truth to be? You seem to have called everything else wrong, but never said what you believed yourself.
“It reveals the holy books are not inerrant.” True, very true. But that doesn’t stop people from maintaining their Christian beliefs and cherry picking the Bible.
And then there’s always the ones who believe that God permits micro-evolution but not macro-evolution.
my vote is yes, but evolution along with other science.
the more science i learned, the less i believed. i realized that God was just a made-up character used to cover up things that we don’t understand.
overcaffein8d, I hear ya! I am not a fan of how religion creates invents explanations for things it doesn’t (or can’t) understand. Science is more humble, admitting what it can’t prove and revisiting past conclusions.
See, evolution doesn’t have to lead to atheism but it does because many Xians who still choose to believe god and evolution are chastised and rejected by their own kind for not taking the Bible literally. If they are rejected by their own, it inevitably will turn them off from religion because deep down, they really don’t believe anyways and finally have a reason to quit. It’s a good thing in any case and I welcome any of the rejected with open arms.
I must say, this is a bit silly. This article is not so much about “does evolution lead to atheism?” as it is about “can we change our beliefs enough so that they fit our understanding of reality?” The fact of the matter is, God is obsolete, about as obsolete as his wide-spread adoption signified the obsoletion of polytheism. Sure, you can tweak your beliefs in such a way to accomodate thinking, but evolution as a programme and less as a natural theory founding biology is what explains away God: the very notion of God can be traced anthropologically through human history, a record of how it’s changed according to the context of the times so that it may survive. Yet again, it is adapting for the 21st Century so taht it may prevail further. But the God of today, that of a ‘first cause’ or a ‘progenitor’, is far different than what God used to be: a human-like, willing, wanting, passoinate deity, one of many, whom you were to swear allegiance to above all. God has changed and evolved, and that’s reason enough to believe there is none. Eventually, he will be limited to nothing more than a metaphysical point that plays no role in anything as our understanding of reality furthers itself.
That was perfect, OmegaVader. But, of course, no religious person really wants to admit this fact, although they must realize it on some level, and so continually delude themselves into praying to a non-existant god when they could be doing so much more with their time, like solving real problems with real reprocussions.
OmegaVader: while I agree with most of what you say (e.g. about the idea of God being obsolete, and about how that idea has evolved throughout history), I do think my post was indeed about the question of whether acceptance of the fact of evolution leads people to atheism. And I gave the two main reasons for that, in my view: destruction of one of the major arguments from ignorance (”how do we exist, if not by being designed by a god?”), and proof of biblical errancy (or at least non-literalism, though that is already a coward’s way out to deal with the contradictions).
Evolution isn’t incompatible with theism, but it is incompatible with fundamentalist / literal theism. The moment you accept evolution, either you become a liberal theist, or a non-believer.
Education in general leads to atheism. The less we can’t explain the less reason to yell “God did it!” at the problem
I agree with Jay, education led to my deconversion.
I wouldn’t mean to imply you were wrong to write what you have, Pedro, only that the liberal theist is still fooling himself as much as any other degree of theism. Any metaphysical idea can be concoted and refined to meet the current test of the times, but it doesn’t make it a worthwhile one. Case in point: pastafarianism. There’s no more legitimacy in “one God” than there is in “one flying spaghetti monster who’s noodily appendage created mankind.” You can dress the notion of this ethereal being with wahtever you want, so long as it doesn’t violate the currently prevailing understanding of reality. Similarly, you can undress as much as you want too — but the core point is that there *is* no point to doing so.