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Accepting Evolution =/= Atheism

One thing that I continually come across is the stigma that if you accept the Theory of Evolution as fact, that you MUST be an Atheist. To be blunt, it pisses me off that this persists - Not only do they think they are synonymous, but they associate it with evil. I've come across Atheists who do not fully accept Evolution as the correct theory to describe the diversity of life. Conversely, I know MANY religious folk (including my Catholic girlfriend and her family) who do accept Evolution.

I think most of this has risen from my frequent visits to a Facebook Group called "we can find 1,000,000 people who don't believe in Evolution befor (sic) June" - Ignorance and self-righteous people who continually spout fallacy after fallacy, regurgitating falsehoods they heard from others. I just can't help sticking around that page using my knowledge of geology to not just debate logical fallacies, but to also educate those who truly don't understand how science works.

But I digress. I'm just easily frustrated with people who refuse to look at something from another point of view and think that their opinion is infallible and 100 percent true. Any scientist will tell you that they do not know something with 100% certainty. That's humility - an aspect some religious zealots are clearly lacking.

Tags: atheist, christianity, creation, evolution, facebook, geology, theirishfrog

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Comment by J.P.M. on April 12, 2010 at 6:47pm: Yes, I have to agree here. As a professional scientist who has some dealing with the public I am quite annoyed when people expect me to show deference for the beliefs of the religiously deluded. Are we not living in an age of reason and enlightenment? These people want us to guide our lives according to stone-age mythologies - and we become politically incorrect IF WE DO NOT HUMOR THEM (!). How is human society to advance in the face of such rampant idiocy? This should be a matter of great public concern - an educational emergency even.

Comment by ryan cameron on April 12, 2010 at 5:15pm: Further, tolerance of religion/faith in the context of a given scientific organization actively harms science to the extent the religion is tolerated. Many scientific institutions hold religious titles in name or tradition only and when it comes down to it, have no tolerance for delusion in their work. If they do, as in the "intelligent design" types, their science is clearly flawed to the same extent of their faith.

Comment by ryan cameron on April 12, 2010 at 5:09pm: The theory of evolution is atheistic. That is, it does not imply or suggest the existence of a god, just like basketball, knitting, swimming, walking around are atheistic. All of those do not depend on or imply that god exists, god is irrelevant to every activity outside of religious delusion.

Moreover, evolution is not actively "anti-theistic" in that it does not set out to disprove god either, in spite of being atheistic (without gods/mythos/monsters) because atheism ≠ anti theism. You have to believe in god to be an anti theist or at least believe that god existed at some point.

Ergo, the theory of evolution is atheist in nature, and religiously deluded people are right to fear it, as well as all science. Scientific inquiry directly threatens any delusional viewpoint based entirely on fantasy.

Comment by J.P.M. on April 12, 2010 at 12:44pm: This stems from an implicit fallacy common in the reasoning of religutards that any statement can be made commutative, ie., that you can just turn anything around and it is automatically true in reverse.
All religious people are moral, ergo all non-religious people are immoral.
Theists worship a god, ergo non-theists worship the devil.
All creationists believe in god, ergo all evolutionists do not.
You can go on and on with it.

The only people who fall for this crap are simpletons who have never been taught the nature of logic or how to reason properly.
And there is no shortage of them, as you have noticed.

Comment by Jim DePaulo on April 12, 2010 at 10:30am: To their credit (and they can use all they can get) the Catholic church has accepted evolution for some time.