The factors may be many and varied, but it doesn't readily appear that that individuals who don't accept evolution are motivated out of fear. Many thinking people wonder how the complexity of genetic structures, even at their simplest, could have materialized in life sustaining forms.

There is not only the problem of the development of reproducing and life sustaining forms. There is a severe problem explaining how these reproducing and life sustaining processes remain in place while progressively higher and higher forms of life are allegedly evolving from the lower forms. It is mind boggling to many intelligent inquirers how evolution can hope to explain this.

For instance, our red blood cells would not be able to handle the acceptance of oxygen without the presence of molecules of hemoglobin, nor the release of carbon dioxide without the enzyme of carbonic anhydrase. These are intricately balanced to handle both transferals, although the normal atmospheric pressure exchange for both gases is dramatically different. Yet the solubility of CO2 and O2 in blood plasma and alveolar fluids is exactly right for the balance of transfer to take place.

Co2 normally takes at least a day to transfer fully into water, but the anhydrase makes it occur in a fraction of a second. We can't wait a day to breathe. Death would occur and no transition would take place. How does a baby survive in the womb, if the mother is competing for the oxygen required? The baby's hemoglobin, while in the womb, has a higher affinity to O2 than the mother, but once born the bone marrow switches the baby's hemoglobin produced to the adult type.

How does the evolution model handle these intricacies? Many more puzzling intricacies of sustaining life exist. Life will not go on without these factors in place. To insist upon them randomly occurring, even in billions of years, is a calculation of statistically impossible proportions. It would be alarming to ask an astute mathematical student to create an accurate formula of probability.

In dedicated study of the scientific principles of chemistry, biology and other sciences, it gives pause to many qualified observers to accept the claims of evolution. For the Bible-believing Christian, they see the almighty hand of God creating these intricate forms of life, having no conflict with acceptable scientific procedures. Regarding the endorsement of evolution, the acceptance of "consensus science" among some colleagues in the community should be observed as merely agreeing with each other for mutual support, not as truly accepting scientific procedure. Answer: Another factor influencing people to reject evolution is a readiness to accept some popular, easily made and erroneous assumptions about the analysis of probability. A contributor to another question suggested that the following (paraphrased) is a strong argument against evolution: "Take a fine watch apart and put it in a box. Wait any length of time, and see how long it will take for the pieces to assemble back into a watch." Strange quantum possibilities notwithstanding, few people would suggest that the pieces will ever reassemble into a watch of any kind, let alone a fine one. One major flaw in this as an argument against evolution is the imposition of the design element. [The design element is: I require that these dis-assembled parts reconfigure themselves into exactly what they were before.]

Say that the odds of winning a fictional lottery are one in one hundred million. You learn that you do not hold the one winning ticket in last night's drawing. This doesn't trouble you much; after all the probability of winning is so remote as to be virtually zero. Your choice of numbers when you bought the ticket is analogous to 'design'. No one is able to say when buying a ticket: "What numbers do I want? Oh. Give me a blank; I'll fill in the numbers I want after the drawing." You wait for the numbers-- there will definitely be numbers. But your design is to be holding the winning ones when they are drawn.

One thing that makes this a useful (not perfect) analogy to creation/evolution is that the number of tickets sold does not affect the probability that any given ticket will be a winner, but the larger the number of tickets sold, the greater the probability that there will BE a winner.

Now you learn that a distant cousin DID win the drawing. As a human, this might trouble you a little. While the odds are remote, many, many tickets are purchased for each drawing. Now and then people do win. At every single drawing, a virtually impossible thing happens-- the winning numbers for that game. It happens perhaps two or three times per week. If you would like to try your hand at predicting all at once all of the winning numbers for future games for the next ten years, go for it, but don't expect to get it right. Calculating the probability amounts to taking one hundred million (100,000,000) and raising it to the power equal to the total number of games you are predicting over ten years. Assuming 3 drawings per week, you have 156 games per year give or take for a power of 1560. Let's call it 1500 to improve our odds! Multiply one hundred million by itself 1,500 times. You will get a number containing 12 thousand places before the decimal point. A one followed by only 1 or 2 hundred zeros (perhaps as low as 80 zeros?) is about the estimated number of elementary particles in the known universe. After ten years, look at the collection of winning numbers you have accumulated. There they are. But I'll wager they do not fit the design you tried to impose on them ten years earlier. So a person might believe that he can confidently conclude that based on his calculation of probability, all these winning numbers over the course of 10 years cannot have come about randomly. Of course, they did. At the time that you were making your prediction, the numbers that were drawn for the following 10 yearswere every bit as mind-numbingly unlikely as the numbers you chose. But there they are... not yours, but the ones that turned out. In a similar way, by making some assumptions and by imposing a design retro-actively to the questions of origins and evolution, we impose restrictions on natural processes that aren't there.

In contrast, look at the probability that last week's winning numbers are last week's winning numbers. The probability is 1. Certainty. You didn't predict them, but there they are. This of course is far from the whole story, but it highlights one serious misunderstanding that may lead many to conclude that evolution (and natural theories of the origins of life) cannot be right. We incorrectly impose probability related restrictions on natural processes.

There is confusion in the question between origin and diversity. They are completely different issues. The question of origin is impossible for science as we can never know scientifically what brought being into being. It is of course a faith issue, whether to believe in a pre-existent creator, (who could have used a big bang to bring the universe into existence) or that somehow natural processes and potential sources for life matter, energy, time, happened to exist for no other reason than that they do. The question of diversity of life as we know it however, is one that is subject to scrutiny and scientific evaluation. Creationists sometimes make the mistake of applying faith based and unscientific principles to both theories of origin and evolution and some scientists do a similar thing. They assume that science has made the idea of a creator unnecessary, the creator is not subjectable to verification, and that therefore there isn't one, with the result that confrontation and much meaningless and futile discussion is held over these issues.