Why do people deny evolution?

@DNA Thumbs drive,

what is your home address?

@timur,

None of that, denotes that your CPU is anywhere near mine in crunching power, but at least you didn't lie either.

I can run any meteorological model, and am doing it simultaneously with this.

http://www.accuweather.com/en/us/santa-rosa-ca/95401/weather-forecast/327139

Yawn, enjoy proving that climate change has been happening for 4.3 or so billion years.

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@ehBeth,

ehBeth wrote:

what is your home address?

Gunga's spare room.

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@Lordyaswas,

Lordyaswas wrote:

Gunga's spare room.

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@rosborne979,

You are displaying a complete lack of substance.

As usual.

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@Olivier5,

Olivier5 wrote:

Cheap shots. The Catholic Church has supported evolution theory for about a century. That's good behaviour which should be encouraged. Also, the author unscientifically assumes that God wasn't involved in the big bang. There isn't a shred of evidence for that and there never will be. It's pure metaphysics.

I wouldn't disagree with that, but at the end of the day, resorting to "goddidit" is sloppy reasoning. At the very least, it violates the principle of parsimony. Until there is empirical evidence for such an entity, there is no logically justifiable reason to include it in one's cosmology.

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@FBM,

I agree, but who in his right mind expects the Pope to say that "no, God didn't do it"?

These things are very personal. Some people see God in the laws of nature themselves. "Otherwise, who 'wrote' these laws?" they ask. Plus parsimony is not a fail-proof principle, more a rule of thumb... Not sufficient to ground a metaphysical conclusion. Nothing is in any case, metaphysics being the realm beyond the possibility of any evidence.

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@Olivier5,

Yep. I, for one, do not claim to know for sure that there is no god, creator or otherwise (despite how much I goad the god-botherers here). But I do know stronger and weaker arguments and logical fallacies when I see them. I've been asking the theists here to bring forth a stronger argument for their god hypothesis. Their current ones are fraught with logical errors.

Yes, the principle of parsimony is only a heuristic, but history says it's a pretty good one. As for metaphysics, that term is so slippery that I'm never sure I know how someone else is using it. In one sense, scientific investigation is doing metaphysics, insofar as they're constructing universal theories and laws. But I realize that not everyone would agree with that statement, and I sure as hell don't want to argue about that one.

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@FBM,

The proof of God, exist not in the past, but in the near future, when humanity determines what life will grow on Mars, and can sit back and watch it expand and evolve into new forms..... God will then be proved, not in the past, but by those made in his image.

Think

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@FBM,

Never seen a good theist here. Bible thumpers yes.

By metaphysics i mean any thinking going literally 'beyond physics' (beyond science) in a transcendent (meta) position re. 'physics' aka empirical science. Like theology in a pro-science way (theism stricto-senso eg Liebniz). Like hard core materialism too, i would venture.

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@DNA Thumbs drive,

Check Teilhard de Chardin.

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@Olivier5,

All good, then. Thanks for clarifying what you mean by 'metaphysics.' I once mentioned it - using it in the philosophical sense - in a thread on another forum and a shitstorm ensued. I couldn't figure out why until I learned that the other people were using 'metaphysics' as synonymous with 'woo.'

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@FBM,

Yes, it has a bad reputation of going into wild grand theories of everything and nothing...

Edit: my definition is pretty standard philosophical jargon i think.

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An important distinction between intellectually honest skepticism with regards to scientific claims vs sheer denialism: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/unreasonablefaith/2010/05/skepticism-vs-denialism/

Quote:

Scepticism is integral to the scientific process, because most claims turn out to be false. Weeding out the few kernels of wheat from the large pile of chaff requires extensive observation, careful experimentation and cautious inference. Science is scepticism and good scientists are sceptical.

Denial is different. It is the automatic gainsaying of a claim regardless of the evidence for it – sometimes even in the teeth of evidence. Denialism is typically driven by ideology or religious belief, where the commitment to the belief takes precedence over the evidence. Belief comes first, reasons for belief follow, and those reasons are winnowed to ensure that the belief survives intact.

So far, the theists here a A2K have taken the latter tack, seems.

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@FBM,

Excellent. I need to blow that up into bigger block letters and post it on the wall.

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@farmerman,

They would just deny it. Wink

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well, about those fossils:

let's talk Freud here. Sometimes a fossil is a fossil is a fossil..

What religious fundamental evolutionists do, is they interpret their fossils according to their beliefs and then they don't see that they are pprojecting their religion into it.

There is NOTHING about a fossil that proves evolution exist.

Sometimes a fossil is a fossil is a fossil..

Transistional fossils on the other hand.....................pity they don't exist, or can't be shown.

So, evolution is wrong, shite and bollocks, and evolutionsts talk gobledegook , to try to defnd their religious belief system.

And I always have to laugh when they are trying to defend their rubbish, because TRUTH doesn't have to be defended. Because it is the TRUTH it is not neccesary.

But we are near the ending of this rubbish called evolution theo-ry
( oh well what did 'theo' mean??) Wink

What a relief!

(Only geeks stuck in the 90s still go for homogenised modular time-phases.)

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@FBM,

Quote:

They would just deny it.

Nope, your projecting, religious evolutionists fundamentalist deny the fact that there is no evidence.

Or else tell me exacctly what I deny accoring to you.

(We need a more contemporary reimagining of our total asset mobility.)

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@Quehoniaomath,

Quote:

Denial : It is the automatic gainsaying of a claim regardless of the evidence for it – sometimes even in the teeth of evidence. Denialism is typically driven by ideology or religious belief, where the commitment to the belief takes precedence over the evidence. Belief comes first, reasons for belief follow, and those reasons are winnowed to ensure that the belief survives intact.

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@farmerman,

Do you deny, that the first organism, to leave the Earth, and walk on another world, had billions of genes, and was very complex?

1 Reply

Why do people deny evolution?

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