Real Live Preacher wrote a post a couple of weeks ago, titled So you think you want to try Christianity? I would like to invite people that are interested in taking an active part in the little “community” forming around my blog to go and read that post, then come back here and share your thoughts and impressions of it, if you feel you have any interesting thoughts to share. Use an inquisitive, curious mindset. Be nice, don’t be judgemental. Use an “anthropologist’s eye”.

The aim is not to start a debate, the aim is to foster a positive exchange of honest thoughts and ideas, to have a friendly fireside chat with a couple of friends, while we watch the last few flames lick the air, the moon peeking through the clouds, moments before we all crawl into our sleeping bags to listen to the sounds of the night. What do you think?

I might be rather busy and stressed this week — some operator & on-call duties, with a skilled shadow watching my every move. Next weekend, maybe go skiing. I will try to have my next post out within 7 days. Grrr, silly “real life” rears its ugly head again.

For now, I’ll let this clip speak for itself. We should return to this topic a couple of posts hence.

Skeptico has a post titled Sniveling Cowardly Christians. And yes, the title is justified:

Early this month, MySpace again deleted the Atheist and Agnostic Group (35,000 members). This deletion, due largely to complaints from people who find atheism offensive, marks the second time MySpace has cancelled the group since November 2007.
[…]
“MySpace refuses to undelete the group, although it never violated any terms of service,” said Bryan Pesta, Ph.D., the group’s moderator. “When the largest Christian group was hacked, MySpace’s Founder, Tom Anderson, personally restored the group, and promised to protect it from future deletions.”

This originally comes from MySpace: No place for Atheists?, read that or Skeptico’s post for more details. In particular, Skeptico asks:

Where are the “moderate Christians” protesting the atheists’ group’s right to exist? This act shows the religious mindset as it really is – intolerant, authoritarian, cowardly and vindictive.

While I don’t know how tolerant or intolerant the group was, the Humanist Chaplaincy at Harvard University endorsed the group which is a good sign:

The group had its own Wikipedia entry, and in April won the Excellence in Humanist Communication Award (2007) from the Humanist Chaplaincy at Harvard University and the Secular Student Alliance.

And here’s the thing, even if they were intolerant (which they probably were not), I still believe moderate Christians in favour of Freedom of Religion should be prepared to protest the atheists’ group’s right to exist.

So here’s the question: can we get some protest-action going somehow? Can we campaign to get the group undeleted? I don’t know that much about protesting, how would we go about it? I’m not following enough “moderate Christian” blogs, or possibly “emerging church” blogs, to know who to get involved. Maybe, just maybe, Real Live Preacher would be interested in picking this up and writing something beautiful and/or creative and/or just practical about it? I don’t know if he’d want to get involved in Internet politics. Possibly not. Either way, I love his tolerance-promoting post titled A New Abraham and a New Earth. Viva!

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I would not vote for someone who does not understand religion. I don’t care if he’s an atheist or a theist, if he wants my vote, he needs to understand how the population thinks. The Out-Campaign serves only to dilute the meaning of the label “atheist” to the point where it no longer means “I don’t understand religion”. At that point, it becomes harder to discriminate based on how informed or uninformed they are.

South Africa long had the policy of not accepting blood donations from non-whites, purely because statistically, “white blood” was more likely to be AIDS-free. How is that for a can of worms? Statistics, dangerous stuff. Naturally, this policy was forced to change. I don’t know what statistics they now use to determine what blood is “safer” and what is “less safe”. Skin colour is a label, just like “atheist”. It means only what we make it mean. What is wrong with “freethinker”, “post-theist”, “post-atheist”, “naturalist”, or… um… I dunno, a gazillion other words? Ah, yes, we need to “stand together”. I think Dawkins realised he’s all alone (that’s hyperbole, guys), and created the Out Campaign to rally people to his side, when he noticed The God Delusion was not having the desired effect. (That’s just what I think, not necessarily true.)

Anyway, back to the story: I was also unable to tolerate things that seemed silly or wrong, but I hated being judgemental. I’m too compassionate for that. It nearly killed me. So which side do I choose? I saw truth on both sides of the fence. This was really, really tough. But I kept searching. He who searches, shall find. After a lot of grief, I reached a point where I finally understood. Now I don’t even have to “tolerate”, I can simply “love”. Love all of humanity in all of its great diversity. And English sucks, because it only has one word for “love”. Kill the other languages, and you kill lots of wisdom about “love”.

So which side of the fence? You have only to realise that there is no fence!

This train of thought started with Lady Guinevere’s post, Moet asb nie hierdie movie ondersteun nie! Lees asseblief! (Please do not support this movie! Please read!), with a statement like this:

Please don’t take your kids to see this movie!! We need to get the word out about this movie and make sure that no one supports it!!!

This makes me sad. I ask myself, how small must a person’s God be, that they fear watching a movie like this? Maybe they need to recite Psalm 23 as a mantra…

Even though I walk
through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil,
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff,
they comfort me.

Nevertheless, I do understand Lady Guinevere’s fearful reaction. Because parents have been too scared to explore “valleys of death”, they do not know how to provide their children with the necessary guidance to do the same. A child growing up in a very protective, close-minded environment, could find the process of actually thinking, rather fearful. Naturally, we want to protect our children from this fear, so traditional wisdom teaches us to keep them away from it. Beautiful wisdom, the wisdom of compassion, the wisdom of conscious living, the wisdom of Jesus, encourages us to not fear foreign culture. Go, Walk the Streets of Athens (1, 2, 3). Learn to understand “their” culture. In the process, you not only get an improved understanding of your fellow humans, allowing you to live a more compassionate life, you also get to learn more about your own God, and isn’t the pursuit of getting to know your God one of the greatest aims of your life?

I have explored far and wide, and my understanding of “God” has grown tremendously. My God is bigger than that. I suspect Johan Swarts’ God is bigger than that as well. My Jesus has set me free from bondage, free from baggage, given me life, and life in abundance. I so wish you (other fearful Christians, as well as fundamentalistic anti-theists) could experience this freedom, this lack of fear. I really do not care what path you take to get to get there, I just sincerely hope you can eventually get there. Life becomes so much more beautiful, and compassion so much easier.

Lady Guinevere’s concerns are summarised well in comment 14. As much as I would like to respond to that, others have already done a much better job of it than I could hope to do. Please read Christians Shouldn’t Fear Philip Pullman and His Trilogy at Beliefnet, written by a Christian. I repeat, go read it! Thanks to Bertus! for pointing it out. Also consider my (virtual) friend Timothy Mills‘s comment in response to Lady Guinevere’s comment (emphasis mine, and URLs turned into in-text hyperlinks):

Lady Guinevere’s 14th comment is an understandable defensive/fearful misreading of the books.

The books do recast the temptation/fall as a story of growing up and becoming fully human. But then, I came across this idea earlier in the writings of Christian psychotherapist M Scott Peck (Road Less Travelled), so it’s hard to call that an anti-Christian message.

It’s funny that she infers a sexual experience as the climactic event. It isn’t described as such in the book, and in interviews Pullman has directly refuted such speculation:

—–
Interviewer: … I read a review that protested that they consummate their relationship and I thought, ‘I must have missed that.’

Pullman: I don’t know what they did. I wrote about the kiss – that’s what I knew happened. I don’t know what else they did. Maybe they did, maybe they didn’t. I think they were rather young to, but still…
—–

As most Christian reviews point out (fearful or liberal), the Authority of the books is unlike the God of modern enlightened believers in many key respects. The differences are important. The Authority represents the sort of God-belief that has motivated horrible acts throughout history, and continues to do so. I am glad to see that some Christians (ie, the link you give) take this difference as important. I always find it odd when someone (such as Lady Guinevere) says on the one hand “He is attacking my belief,” and on the other hand “What he’s attacking doesn’t look anything like my belief.”

If Pullman destroys readers’ belief in the sort of god depicted in his books, then good: it’s the sort of belief that deserves no respect, and that should be refuted by all compassionate people.

If they inspire humanist values in readers, as exemplified in the heroine and those who aid her, then good: these are good values, whether you see a god behind them or not.

The problem with the 14th comment is that she is only reacting to what Pullman rejects and condemns in his books; she makes no mention of what he promotes. Inquiry. Curiosity. Maturity. Compassion. Determination. Loyalty. Opposing tyranny and evil.

That very last paragraph? That’s the kind of stuff I believe Jesus stood for. In that sense, I feel Pullman is shouting the gospel from the mountain tops. What more could I possibly add to that?

Discuss!

This is a case of finding identity in the label, instead of the concept that the label is supposed to point to. What do other people hear when you say this? This is what some people hear:

I’m a person that believes the world is 6000 years old, that Adam and Eve’s children committed incest, that a genetic bottleneck occurred on the Ark, that the air pressure was a billion times what it is today because all the water of the flood was “above” the atmosphere before the world-wide flood, that God came down and had sex with an engaged woman, that if a Christian prays for a nice, sunny day, that God will punish all the non-Christian farmers by not providing rain.

If this is what you meant, great… However, if this is not what you meant, you have just miscommunicated to some of your audience. That is the problem with labels, the problem with diversity in members of your audience. If you want to de-stigmatise the label, that’s great, however, that still requires people getting to know you first, rather than your labels. Once they know you, you can tell them what your label is, and they might understand what you mean by that label. The label is not as important as the concept it is supposed to be pointing to.

For more on the misunderstandings of the label “Christian”, check out Get the Good News Right.

For the time being, I’m providing a free translation service on this website. Feel free to use it. However, my time is limited, so it may take some time before I get to your request.

Best wishes, God bless, Shalom,
Hugo

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The only difference between theists and atheists, is that we speak different languages.

This post proved much more difficult to write than I had hoped. The draft I wrote nine days ago, when I sketched out my schedule, was completely inadequate. In fact, there really is a lot of ground-work and foundations that should have been laid before I tackled this post. As such, this post became a long one…

The Search for God

Humanity as a whole, has been “searching for God” possibly for longer than the age of the earth according to creationists. This search has been a journey that has passed along many potential “destinations” en-route. Still the journey does not end, understanding develops more, our “relationship with God” continues to change and grow.

A long time ago, the polytheistic understanding of “God” was common. “God” consisted of a whole pantheon of gods, and humanity was at the mercy of the soap-opera playing out on Mount Olympus (or equivalent). As the power shifted amongst the gods, the humans’ loyalties also shifted, to whichever god then supposedly had the upper hand.

(Dealing with middle-eastern religion now:) A contrasting, revolutionary perspective of “God”, is that there aren’t many different gods that need to be worshipped. “God” became understood to be a “single entity”. Monotheism revolutionised human culture, and removed a lot of insecurity. Humans were no longer at the mercy of the big soap-opera in the sky.

I feel this really is less a case of humans being “atheistic” about all the other gods, than it is an understanding that consolidates all the gods into one God. A development, an improvement, in our understanding of the abstract notion of “God”, that thing “beyond human comprehension”. This is why that cliché popularised by Richard Dawkins irks me so much: “We are all atheistic about all those other gods, some of us just go one god further.” If I hear that many more times, it might start to irritate me as much as some creationism seminars do…

What is the difference between Islam, Judaism and Christianity? All three are monotheistic, all three worship “the only God there is”. Defined that way, they all have to be worshipping the same God (the only God there is…) The difference then, is merely in their understanding of that one God. Each of the three think they have a better understanding of that God than the other two. Possibly all three claim “God is beyond our comprehension”.

The (controversial?) question then becomes: might each not learn something about God from the other?

My discussion here is the difference between “atheism” and “theistic belief as a whole”, rather than between “atheism” and any particular form of Christianity. There is already great diversity within the Christian tradition. If I recall correctly, there may be something like 33000 different denominations? Many of these denominations probably think they have a monopoly on The Truth. Denominations with such monopolies on truth, should not bother trying to reach atheists, in my opinion. This post is addressed to the more humble denominations.

Humble denominations recognise that there will necessarily be diverse understandings of something that is “beyond human comprehension”, and recognise that inter-denominational conversation would be valuable to understand “God” more accurately. Each group can learn from every other, and in the process each group can also teach.

Christians that are humble enough, will be able to recognise there is value to be found in Islam and Judaism as well, that Christianity does not have a monopoly on “God”, and that each religion can learn from every other. In the process, again, each religion can teach. Only once the Christian has learned from the Jew what they believe and what they do not believe, can they open up a conversation which is mutually beneficial, where the Christian can maybe teach the Jew of other aspects of “God” which they might have missed, and vice versa of course. Amongst others, Brian McLaren has opened up such inter-faith conversations. He goes so far as to say:

“I don’t believe making disciples must equal making adherents to the Christian religion. It may be advisable in many (not all!) circumstances to help people become followers of Jesus and remain within their Buddhist, Hindu, or Jewish contexts.” –A Generous Orthodoxy (found on Theopedia.)

I have yet to read A Generous Orthodoxy. Many more conservative Christians do not like Brian McLaren’s earlier works much. Do not let that frighten you away from The Secret Message of Jesus though, I have seen reviews saying something along the lines of: “no matter what your perspectives were of Brian McLaren’s previous works, you should give The Secret Message of Jesus a chance”. (amazon, kalahari)

To get back to the point, then, Christianity is very diverse. Monotheism is even more diverse than that. Pull in Polytheism, Deism and Pantheism, and in-betweens such as Panentheism, Pandeism and Panendeism… and you realise how broad and diverse humanity’s understanding of “God” is. And each tradition surely has at least some fragments of “The Truth”.

So, what about atheism then?

Godly versus Godless

I lack the right words, unfortunately. “Godly” and “godless” are not perfect, but they will have to do for now. Consider this Dutch quote:

“Ateis: zonder God,
maar niet goddeloos.”

Filosofie Magazine (hat tip to Auke at Psychohistorian).

Translated: “Atheist: without God, but not godless”. This defines the essence of what I mean by “godly” and “godless”. I am suggesting we could talk about two kinds of atheists, the godly kind, and the godless kind.

Atheism has been stereotyped, stigmatised or demonised in certain circles. The impression the word “atheism” gives in such circles, is someone without appreciation, without a sense wonder, someone who lacks humility or has no appreciation for mystery, someone who is not at all thankful or appreciative of his or her existence (because they supposedly show no thanks to “God”), someone that lacks a sense of morality, an immoral person.

What such theists are effectively doing, is projecting their worldview onto the atheist, and then adding an anti-God sentiment. In the theist’s worldview, the concept of “God” encompasses all of the aspects mentioned in the previous paragraph – claim you have no belief in “God”, and they think you are throwing out all of the above. They think you are a “godless” atheist. There may be “godless” atheists, but I have yet to meet one… on the other hand, I know many “godly” atheists.

What is a “godly” atheist, then? “Godly” atheists do have an incredible sense of wonder and awe at the majesty of the universe, sometimes much more so than the theist. Sometimes the atheist is much more aware of the incredible mystery that is out there. Often atheists have an incredible sense of thankfulness and appreciation for their existence. This may be hard for the theist to believe, as the theist directs his or her thankfulness and appreciation towards a personified God. (Humans understand how to be thankful much better, when dealing with a “person”, or a “personified” entity. “Personifying” things is a very human thing to do.) The atheist’s thankfulness and appreciation is more abstract, directed at “an unknown god” if you will. The lack of a clear notion of a personified God to whom the thankfulness can be directed, can even lead to a more overwhelming experience of appreciation and “majesty”.

Some atheists have an incredibly strong sense of morality as well. Some details may differ, they likely think fundamentalist religions’ homophobia is an example of immorality, or that discouraging contraceptive use or HPV vaccinations are some of the most immoral things done in the name of religion. Atheists are often shocked to hear that some Christians would not think twice about cheating on their spouse if it were not for the seventh commandment.

CS Lewis argues for the existence of God based on the existence of morality. Effectively, he defines the source of morality as “God”. The atheists have morality, they have a source of morality, why not call that “God” then? There has long been a tradition of attributing things we do not understand, to “God”. What’s wrong then with an atheist calling the mystery in the universe, the “original cause”, that which is beyond our comprehension, “God”? Can we personify the abstract thing to which atheists express their thankfulness and appreciation, and call that “God”? Some call any sense of a “higher power”, even our community or interconnectedness, “God”.

The only difference, therefore, is that atheists have a different understanding of “God”. I personally don’t feel this difference is greater than the diversity already found within theism and religion, which is why I state “the only difference between theists and atheists, is that we speak different languages”. In the language of the theists, “God” has a rather specific meaning. Because of this, the atheist does not use the word “God” to describe his or her notion of “God”, as it could be too misleading.

In “3001: The Final Odyssey”, Arthur C. Clarke had a thousand years of history to play with. He used this freedom to remove religion, and even ban the word “God”. (If the notion of banning the word “God” frightens you, what do you think about the notion of banning the word “Allah”?) However, they still needed a word with which to refer to “God”, abstract notion or not, so they created a new word…

Concluding Remarks

Understand the language differences, and honestly and humbly investigate what you can learn about God from an atheist. (After all, if God can talk to you through the mouth of a donkey, surely God can talk to you through the mouth of an atheist?) Learn what the Gospel is, go find out what Jesus taught. Then, we can have us a conversation.

What exactly is the “Good News”? Evangelising Christianity is about sharing the “Good News”. As such, it is important that the news is actually good. What might seem like good news to you, might not seem like good news from another perspective. It is important to understand this. As mentioned last time, it is important to look at it from an atheist’s perspective. This exercise may also help you understand the good news better yourself.

Below is a video titled “Kissing Hank’s Ass”. Be warned, this video tries to offend. Do not let it offend you, otherwise you will be unable to learn anything. Learn to turn the other cheek. Furthermore, I suspect if you are offended, it might be as a result of viewing it with an egocentric perspective. Instead, look at the video with compassion or empathy. Place yourself in the atheist’s shoes, try your best to understand how the atheist thinks. Also avoid the trap of feeling “pity”, that would also suppress a good understanding. Only when you understand how they think, will you have any chance to actually converse with them in a meaningful manner.

The clip is just over seven and a half minutes long. If your bandwidth is limited, you may read the script that inspired the video clip instead. There is also a sanitised version available, which replaces the words “ass” and “shit” with “butt” and “snot”. (The video clip also includes profanities. If such things bother you, read the sanitised version instead.)

…

It is now assumed that you have read the script or watched the video clip. If you have not yet done so, go do it! Also, think it over. Maybe come back to this post later, even.

…

What I think you should have learned from this (please share what you learned, let’s have a discussion!): “you are going to hell” is not Good News. All too often, however, this is the core of the news that evangelicals give to atheists. “You are going to hell (but I can show you how to avoid it).” There is no way you will get them interested with such news. Amongst other things, they do not fear a literal hell. So, what to do?

If this is a problem you are facing, it may be that you do not fully comprehend what aspects of the gospel would be considered good news by non-believers. I would suggest you read The Secret Message of Jesus by Brian McLaren (amazon, kalahari). That should get you started. I believe a lot of it is based on the work of NT Wright, a Bible scholar. I have yet to read NT Wright’s stuff itself, however, to the scholarly minded (or even the atheist), I could recommend reading Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time by Marcus Borg (amazon, kalahari), another Bible scholar. If you are in the Stellenbosch area, you are welcome to borrow my books.

If either of these books do not increase your respect for Jesus or your excitement about or your understanding of his message, let me buy you a meal at a decent restaurant if I know you personally, otherwise a cup of coffee or something similar, or maybe a beer: I’d like to hear your feedback.

Please be friendly in the comments. That doesn’t mean you can’t disagree, I love friendly disagreements. This blog is my home in cyberspace, and you are my guests – ideally, my friends even. (If we have not yet met, maybe we should…) Be sure to give a valid email address.

I suppose one of the biggest accomplishments an Evangelical Christian could hope for, is to convert a hard-core atheist to Christianity. The biggest problem is that evangelical Christians and atheists do not speak the same language.

The most important thing you need to do, before you start sharing with atheists, is to learn how they think. Like Paul, you need to walk the streets of Athens, you need to immerse yourselves in their culture, to walk their streets, to see and understand their altars “to an unknown god”. Only once you understand, once you can speak their language, will you be able to share the Good News. In fact, only then will you be able to fully understand the Good News yourselves. I repeat, the crux of the matter is this:

You need to learn to think, like they do.

This more or less concludes the advice in the first post in this series. Continue thinking until next time, and please keep in mind that arguments such as this one by Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort:

are not at all effective. Such arguments will merely turn you into the laughing stock of the rational scientific world. (Update: If the clip stops working, try e.g. a Google search for ray comfort banana.)

This series will continue next week, when we will look at the gap in communication between atheists and Christians. We will show you what not to do, how not to share the Good News, as it will immediately push them away. The third post is the clincher, and will accomplish what Kirk and Ray can only dream about. Please share this series with your friends. May the world become a better place, may the kingdom come!

Give me a seeking atheist who is passionate, in love with Christ, and willing to give his or her life to being a disciple over the “typical” American evangelical who sits in church, yawning, and is nothing more or less than a standard member of our culture.

Doesn’t this just make you think about what it means to “follow” in the footsteps of the famous mystic from 2000 years ago? He was a person that questioned the status quo, that encouraged people to think (speaking in parables and asking questions much more often than actually giving straight answers), to measure things not according to the rules and regulations of scripture, but to measure them according to values and principles, love and compassion.

It is very much possible that a number of atheists follow those principles much more successfully than many Christians. Your specific notions of what or who “God” is, does not play as big a role in your ability to follow “the way” as many people seem to think. I don’t particularly care what notions you have about “God”, I care more about what you do with those notions.

As Wikipedia points out, “other fields of science, such as cosmology and earth science, also conflict with literal interpretations of many religious texts”, yet, “evolutionary biology has borne the brunt of these debates”. Considering evolution is obviously harder to accept than its necessary preconditions, I often think it makes more sense to shift the discussion to the Age of the Earth instead.

Consider this quote from Augustine (apparently the originator of the phrase “Love the sinner and hate the sin”), written around the 5th century CE:

Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, . . . and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking non-sense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn.

A more thorough quoting can be found on Wikipedia, the version I used, I found in one of the responses in the Index to Creationist Claims on The TalkOrigins Archive.

Of course, Augustine was arguably a Young Earth creationist, but you can’t blame him, living in the 4th/5th century. His warning from 1600 years ago applies as much to our knowledge as it did to theirs, and our knowledge includes “the world is 4.5 billion years old”. It also applies to physics, chemistry, geology, astronomy, cosmology, molecular biology, genomics, linguistics, anthropology and archaeology, all fields that have some conflict with Young Earth creationist perspectives.

Some people do not realize there is such conflict, due to not being educated on such matters, and can therefore not be blamed for believing what they do. (Some may be blameable for some related things though: shunning education or critical thinking, or arguing about things they really know nothing about.) In some cases, then, it should be useful to educate people on such matters. I think it is also important to point out that there really shouldn’t be a conflict between their Christianity and their acceptance of science. (Of course, the anti-theist might disagree. The anti-theist might prefer it if all religious people were literalists, as literalistic religions really are such easy targets. )

I am also certain that accepting evolution does not decrease your chances of going to heaven.

A note about my context: What I see most often in my town and among friends that reject evolution, is Biblical literalism and Young Earth creationism. As such, that is what I will be discussing most often. Similarly, with respect to other religions, I mostly write as a “Christian”, with an audience of Christians in mind. I do also know people that do accept that the earth is old, but still doubt or reject evolution – they seem to be a minority however. We do not have a strong intelligent design movement, I suspect that is mostly limited to USA? (And yes, I placed “Christian” in inverted commas. There has been, for close to two millennia, some disagreement about what that label exactly means. Some of the more than 30 churches on Stellenbosch claim there really are only a small handful of these that are “real churches”.)

For my international readers, a little background on why this relevant to me: I’m studying at Stellenbosch University, South Africa. Stellenbosch is situated about 50km from Cape Town. The town is host not only to a University, but also to a diversity of churches. Apparently there are more than 30 Christian congregations of various denominations. Many of these (I’m being optimistic here) are not in conflict with science, rational thought, and critical thinking, but a couple are, and pride themselves in it. In certain groups of friends, the greater majority rejects evolution and embraces young earth creationism (and most of the rest are not prepared to stand up for evolution). Some embrace the “fundamentalism” label as something positive. (Maybe in a similar way as I might embrace “geeky” or “nerdy”, using some specific definitions of those words, but rejecting others.) There was some controversy at the beginning of the year, when the student newspaper, Die Matie, published an article titled “Dosente bevraagteken Shofar”, roughly translated “Lecturers question Shofar”, one of the pentecostal churches that denounce evolution. (If there is interest, I can write a bit about it, though some translation of articles might be necessary, and my time remains limited.)

Enough background, which I’m sure made my supposed “bias” in the matter rather obvious (to those that consider it bias). Let’s state it directly. I accept the theory of evolution as our best explanation thus far, and this post is obviously written from that perspective. This isn’t the place for a debate, “debates” just waste time. If you want some arguments, take a look at TalkOrigins’ An Index to Creationist Claims, responding to creationist claims from the perspective of mainstream science, or look at Answers in Genesis, arguably the leading site on Creationism. (Somehow, it pains me to link there. But I’ll get over it.)

So, why do people reject evolution (including theistic evolution)? Thoughts on “deeper” reasons behind such rejection, can be found at old posts (2005) on 3quarksdaily, majikthise and pharyngula. I found these three links at darwiniana.

3quarksdaily:

My explanation is simply this: Human beings have a strong visceral reaction to disbelieve any theory which injects uncertainty or chance into their world view. They will cling to some other “explanation” of the facts which does not depend on chance until provided with absolutely incontrovertible proof to the contrary.

majikthise:

Mostly, evolution makes people uncomfortable because it explains how life could have emerged without any external purpose or design. Evolutionary explanations are threatening to people who assume that naturalistic explanations undercut meaning in life. If we assume that we were designed by some creator, it follows that our existence has at least some built-in purpose. At the very least, we could say that we were designed by someone for some reason. It wouldn’t necessarily follow that we were designed for any good reason, of course.

pharyngula:

Ultimately, what brings people together to reject evolution is a sense of identity and belonging to a group that has a non-rational anti-evolutionary dogma as a part of their social toolkit. It’s not assessment of the evidence that drives them away from science, it’s entirely because the evidence challenges a facet of the beliefs they recognize as distinguishing elements of their tribe. In a war between reality and their social group, they cling to their subculture. It actually makes sense, in an evolutionary and biological way: an isolated human being is not a particularly viable unit, and it’s the cohesion of the clan and tribe that is more important for long-term success.

Please go and read the original posts for more on these ideas, read on for my list of “shallow” reasons.

In the light of these possible “deep” answers, I’m rather shy about the more “shallow” reasons I want to list. I’d like to think I’m being more “practically minded” because it’s rather close to home. (Many friends typically reject evolution, and many members of my extended family are also very likely to.) Maybe I’m just being silly, of course, if symptomatic treatment is ineffective and the “deeper” reasons, the origins, are the true power behind the rejection. (Discussing symptoms might help make the root cause more accessible though?)

Reasons (“shallow” reasons) why people reject evolution:

1. uninformed (lack of knowledge with regards to evolution)
2. misinformed (believing another evolution-denier, who might fall under another category)
3. apathy towards, or rejection of science (favouring some other form of authority, possibly their church’s leadership, despite being informed)
4. a perceived threat to cherished beliefs/memes
5. a perceived controversy in the scientific community, making it “more arbitrary” which perspective (of two “equally valid” perspectives) is chosen.

These reasons do intersect in places, and it is usually a combination of reasons. Some examples that do not fall into this list, so that this list can be lengthened? Or might this list be shortened? I don’t think so?