Why do many religious groups deny human evolution which is accepted in the scientific community?

Answer 1

Religion and Evolution

Throughout history, religion has not only been used to fulfill people spiritually but also to explain the 'Un- explainable'...

For example, What is lightening? lightening was sent from a god named Zeus because he's angry.

As science shed light on the reasons behind nature and how things worked...people IN ALL CULTURES AND FAITHS began to lose their sense (or need) for faith.

Religion, by definition, is a belief based on some form of aphysical, faith; pretty much believing in something that can't wholly be seen, or heard, or held but something that just is.

Human Evolution has 3 components that cause religious people to question:

1.The first is the sense (even fear or belief) that if the scientific basis of Evolution becomes the accepted norm, people will discount The Bible version of creation...(which according to many people of faith is in direct contrast with one another) and lead people to abandon god.

2. The second cause is this; It's hard to see Macroevolution, and microevolution never makes the cut.

You can talk about the fossil record all you want, or dinosaurs, or how Finches beaks change and adapt over time, or how a set of green eyed drosphilia fruit flies can be manipulated genetically into becoming red eyed over the course of 6 generations- The science is there.

BUT Huge evolutionary changes take hundreds of thousands/millions of years; there is no way for the Science side to show one organism change into a completely different being . Hard to see is hard to prove.

3. The THEORY of Evolution is just that. It is not a Law of science. Although science can prove many aspects, there is no way to bring back a trilobite or snap your fingers and fill gaps in the fossil record. Evolution is scientific and factual...but there is also an element of assumption and questions still exist.

A Religious Point of View:The reason is that evolution is a theory, and not a very good one because it is man's attempt to take God out of creation. It is man's way of slapping God in the face. Even Darwin said at the last, "Those fools have turned a theory into a fact.' That should tell you something. It is when mankind doesn't want to come to God in the way He wants us to that mankind looks for ways such as evolution to circumvent what they should be doing.

Religious groups are not the only ones who deny human evolution. Scientists do as well since it is not actually a scientific fact at all. Religious groups deny it since it is not a fact, nor is it even implied in the Bible anyway and so there is no need either way to 'bend the Bible' to make it fit with the fallible theories of men.

So, religious groups are not in denial, they are in reality. In fact creationist groups are keen not to use fallacious argumentation and actively discourage it. They want to deal with, as Francis Schaeffer put it,' the world that is,' not a made up fairy tale, dressed up in scientific language.

The more evidence that comes to light the more problems are uncovered with the the theory of evolution. More than that, arguments found to be scientifically fallacious, even fraudulent, are still used to support it.

Christian believers also have problems, not with the data but with the way it is interpreted. Hence two people loooking over the rim of the Grand Canyon for example will say two different things. The evolutionist will say 'a little water over lots of time.' The creationist will say 'lots of water over a little time.' Evolutionists have specifically linked evolution to an agenda which is deliberately and militantly anti-christian. Thus it is not science as science that requires evolution to be true, but a philosophy. Not a few leading evolutionists have plainly stated it so.

Christians involved in scientific endeavour do not find the fact of evolution to speak for themselves. They see that evolution contradicts known scientific facts and even more so than in Darwin's day. So it is not really religious groups who are in denial. Proven laws of science, not theories, are against evolution so there is no denial.

A Scientific point of view:"Evolution is a fact; grab some bacteria and a microscope, and you can even do it yourself. There's a reason why 99.9% of scientists use it and why the whole of Biology is based on it too. " A Blend of the TWO It could be argued, and quite fairly, that many religious people actually believe (rather than deny) evolution. That is, as far as the theory goes. The question seems to make the supposition that evolutionary theory is complete as well as being scientific fact. It is scientific, but it isn't complete, and it isn't fact. It's the theory of evolution. Another "answer" to the question was that the theory of evolution is "not a very good one." Nothing could be more wrong. There is a mountain of evidence to support it. Oh, and that's scientific evidence, by the way. Not just rhetoric or philosophical argument.

In addition:

• "Man's attempt to take Go out of creation" is a label. Something that has been spray painted on the theory of evolution like so much graffiti. Who are the taggers who would do such a thing? Myopic fundamentalists would as they run around to rally other like (narrow) minds to the idea that man and/or science is out to prove that God does not exist. Science isn't in the business of proving that God does not exist. Why don't the Chicken Littles see that the faithful hold the trump card? God can do anything. He is omnipotent. Theory can't compete with that. And it does not try.

• With each turn of the spade or stroke of the dust brush, new evidence comes to light. It's happening right now. Somewhere in the world a crew is on a dig, and the next revelation is a millimeter away. Does this new find fill in a gap? No wonder zealots are in panic mode. What are they afraid of? Of what will be uncovered next? The rational person, the thinking person (be he a non-believer or a Christian) is excited about what that next find will be! Aren't you?

• Man uses the power of his God-given intellect to see the world and everything in it for what it really is. And in so doing, he honors the One who gave him the gifts he applies to that endeavor. He neither deceives himself nor others, and neither does he bear false witness by distorting what science is saying to prop up his own ideas.

• From a theological point of view, evolution can prove what it can prove. Nothing less, nothing more. The faithful would hold that nothing will come to pass that will dethrone God. And they would be right. That's the nature of their faith. That's what faith is. "Be ye not afraid...."

Answer 2

1) The glaring lack of transitional fossils has been noted by the evolutionists themselves, such as this statement from the famous paleontologist and evolutionist George G. Simpson; quote: "The regular lack of transitional fossils is not confined to primates alone, but is an almost universal phenomenon."
"The lack of transitional series cannot be explained as being due to the scarcity of material. The deficiencies are real; they will never be filled" (Nilsson, N. Heribert).
"To the unprejudiced, the fossil record of plants is in favor of special creation" (Corner, E.J.H., Contemporary Botanical Thought).
2) Instances of falsifying of evidence by evolutionists, such as Haeckel's drawings, Archaeoraptor, the Cardiff "specimen," and Piltdown Man.
"Haeckel exaggerated the similarities [between embryos of different species] by idealizations and omissions, in a procedure that can only be called fraudulent. His drawings never fooled embryologists, who recognized his fudgings right from the start. The drawings, despite their noted inaccuracies, entered into the standard student textbooks of biology. Once ensconced in textbooks, misinformation becomes cocooned and effectively permanent, because textbooks copy from previous texts. We do, I think, have the right to be both astonished and ashamed by the century of mindless recycling that has led to the persistence of these drawings in a large number, if not a majority, of modern textbooks (Stephen Gould).
Dr. Jonathan Wells published a book in 2002 entitled Icons of Evolution. Dr. Wells states that the book shows that "the best-known 'evidences' for Darwin's theory have been exaggerated, distorted or even faked."
3) Creationists see the "survival of the fittest" and the dating of rock layers by fossils as being perfect tautologies.
4) The fact that some qualified, educated, normal scientists do not believe in evolution. Or at least question it, even if they still preach evolution: "Nine-tenths of the talk of evolutionists is sheer nonsense, not founded on observation and wholly unsupported by facts. This museum is full of proofs of the utter falsity of their views. In all this great museum, there is not a particle of evidence of the transmutation of species" (Dr. Etheridge, Paleontologist of the British Museum).
"To postulate that the development and survival of the fittest is entirely a consequence of chance mutations seems to me a hypothesis based on no evidence and irreconcilable with the facts. It amazes me that this is swallowed so uncritically and readily, and for such a long time, by so many scientists without murmur of protest" (Sir Ernest Chain, Nobel Prize winner).
5) The fact that there is a shared, worldwide tradition among every ancient society that the world was created.
6) Evolving of new species has not been witnessed during known history.
7) Mutations are harmful, not beneficial. One of the tasks of DNA and of long-term breeding is to avoid or repair any changes brought about by mutations. This means that our genetic apparatus is programmed to resist change.
8) Mutations, even if beneficial, do not create new organs.
9) The fact that a great number of fossils have been found in the "wrong" rock-layers according to what evolutionary Paleontology would require.
10) The fact that you need DNA to make DNA. No genetic code can be demonstrated to have arisen by chance, together with the ability to read that code and carry out its instructions. Information does not arise spontaneously; and there is an incredible amount of information in even the tiniest cell.
"A living cell is so awesomely complex that its interdependent components stagger the imagination and defy evolutionary explanations" (Michael Denton, author).
"The astounding structural complexity of a cell" (U.S. National Library of Medicine).
Concerning a single structure within a cell: "Without the motor protein, the microtubules don't slide and the cilium simply stands rigid. Without nexin, the tubules will slide against each other until they completely move past each other and the cilium disintegrates. Without the tubulin, there are no microtubules and no motion. The cilium is irreducibly complex. Like a mousetrap, it has all the properties of design and none of the properties of natural selection" (Michael Behe, prof. of biophysics).
11) The problem of the impossibility of abiogenesis in general. "The concept of abiogenesis is not science. It's fantasy" (J.L. Wile, Ph.D.).
12) The fact that evolution was once used as support for the belief that Blacks (or others) are less than highly-evolved humans. "Darwin was also convinced that the Europeans were evolutionarily more advanced than the black races" (Steven Rose, author). He also "reasoned that males are more evolutionarily advanced than females" (B. Kevics, author).
13. The first and second laws of thermodynamics point clearly to a Creator, since things undergo entropy rather than get more orderly over time.
14. "Radiometric techniques may not be the absolute dating methods that they are claimed to be. Age-estimates on a given geological stratum by different radiometric methods are often very different. There is no absolutely reliable long-term radiological clock. The uncertainties inherent in radiometric dating are disturbing to geologists and evolutionists." William D. Stansfield, Ph.D., Instructor of Biology, California Polytechnic State University.
15. "Even total rock systems may be open during metamorphism and may have their isotopic systems changed, making it impossible to determine their geologic age." Prof. Gunter Faure (Department of Geology, The Ohio State University, Columbus.)
16 a). At current rates of erosion the amount of sea-floor sediments actually found do not support a "billions of years" age for the Earth.
b) The amount of Sodium Chloride in the sea, also, is a small fraction of what the "old Earth" theory would postulate.
c) The Earth's magnetic field is decaying too fast to extrapolate a long age for the Earth.
d) The rate of accumulation of Moon-dust has been measured; and the amount of dust on the Moon was found to be vastly less than what scientists had predicted before the Moon-landings.
e) Helium is generated by radioactive elements as they decay. The escape of this helium into the atmosphere can be measured. According to the Evolutionary age of the Earth there should be much more helium in the atmosphere, instead of the 0.05% that is actually there.Also see:

God's wisdom seen in His creations

More about God's wisdom

Dissent against Darwin

The facts

Discovering Creation

Understanding Creation