to wonder how people can not believe in Evolution .......

[cookielove]

After a discussion at work which actually started about a childs' dress (day nursery) leading onto the duggars and then religion, it came clear to me that several of my work colleagues do not believe in evolution and not only that but also dinosaurs not existing

Now i can understand the more religious people not believing as Evolution and adam and eve clash, but for those who were not religious how can you not believe in Evolution. Its proven.

I mean really how can people not believe in Evolution or dinosaurs.

I quote one of my work colleagues 'well there's lots of dinosaur toys so they must have been real' .... WTAF?

Please tell MN that you believe in Evolution, and dinosaurs ......

To anyone who questions the veracity of fossil dating techniques, I say this: Think of all the hydrocarbons companies and mining companies there are in the world, drilling up oil, gas and minerals. How do they know exactly where and how deep to dig? They hire geologists to work it out, based on a well-known sequence of rock strata, which in turn is based on painstaking and repeated logging of fossil types and isotope dates.

These big businesses gamble BILLIONS on the accuracy of their geologists' work. Do you really think they would risk so much money if they had any doubt about the history of the Earth?

I think it is acceptable to argue philosophically about the mechanism behind the history of life - was it natural selection from start to finish? or the work of God? But the scientific community mostly agrees that life on Earth has diversified and become more complex over billions of years and that humans are descended from hairy apes - to preach any otherwise is a rejection of science.

Too many people have strong opinions that they think are based on science when they haven't even got a basic grasp of the subject. I'm mildly interested in history but I don't go around telling history students they're wrong about some historical detail or other. So I resent people trying to debate evolution when they haven't studied it.

I have had the 'half an eye' conversation with someone who didn't know wtf a trilobite is...

They didn't get in Noah's ark and drowned...

They didn't get in Noah's ark and drowned...
Which was suprising as they were aquatic animals

There's a lot of anti-evolution pseudoscience spouted - people with a bias google and guess what, they find something on the Internet which supports their position!

Rule number one should be - when 'researching' any scientific matter, discard any sources which rely to any degree on religious texts.

My sister was a member of an evangelical church, and I got cornered into a discussion on evolution with the church leader. I was a scientist, and he wanted to prove to me that evolution had never happened. His main argument was that fossils had all been faked by scientists to discredit God. When he realised he was losing his argument, he stopped and said he'd realised I couldn't understand the truth because I'd been possessed by the Deveil. So, he would have to wiat until I was free from my possession before he could continue talking to me.

Ho hum.

Plenty of people with visual impairments will tell you that half an eye (or even just the ability to sense light vs dark) is quite a lot of good actually.

YABU to wonder how people can not believe in evolution.

It's very easy to see how people can not believe in evolution:
they believe in something else instead
or they are not very clever
or they have never had explained to them what "evolution" actually means
or they just haven't bothered thinking about it

It's easier to believe in the things that you can see, the evidence as it were, than something someone just tells you is true even if you'll never see evidence of it in your life.

The scientists who make discoveries all the time and document their findings proving age old philosophers wrong vs people who keep reading from the same book that hasn't changed in thousands of years.

I know which way I lean.

Ramen to all you Pastafarians

I have been touched by His noodly Appendage

Adding to Trills list - you can probably not believe in evolution if you have been lead to think its something to be 'believed in'. Trickle is spot on:

Science is Rational, you weigh up evidence and you AGREE or DISAGREE with a theory

Religion/faith is Spiritual, you BELIEVE or DISBELIEVE in something

Bomerwang - i understand about believing in something you see, but how is it easier to believe in God, (i've never seen him, or seen any evidence of such) then is to believe in Evolution, when there is stacks of evidence.

The book hasn't changed for hundreds of years, but it still doesn't make it right.

Well yes, i agree my wording was some what wrong

I was always flabbergasted that George W Bush, who made his fortune out of fossil fuel, apparently believes the Earth is 5,000 years old. Clue is in the name, dickhead.

For the life of me I don't get why the Americans are forever banging on about the advantage the Chinese are giving themselves with an artificially depressed currency. That advantage will last for a generation, if that. The advantage they get from having an educational system that doesn't have any truck with such bullshit as Creationism is going to see them right for hundreds of years. The Americans really shot themselves in the foot there.

Unfortunately, despite how evolved it is our brain is still not that logical.
We are still under our less rational remains of a "reptilian" brain.

Oh, wait a minute.

Surely, our specially designed brain should be perfect. No?

Grimma, you are quite right
you can probably not believe in evolution if you have been lead to think its something to be 'believed in'.

And that is why I get angry at pseudo"scientific" creationists.

Unfortunately it is quite true that to understand evolution and the mechanisms that lead to it, we do need quite a lot of scientific knowledge (or the right kind).
But usually we trust doctors and most of us doesn't really understand how our body works.

I think one of the big problems has to do with us, humans. We like to think that we are special, that effectively the world was created for us and revolves around us.
Not really true.
It's more reassuring to think that we have a purpose.
Evolution suggests that it may not be so, or that if so, it's less straightforward than the message in the Bible.

OK. Please can someone explain to me, if evolution is real, and man descended from animals... Where are all the half man half animals now?

Traipsing round shopping centrex....

Why are we all 'man', and you never meet anyone who is either further down the chain than you are

Chimps, Bonobos, Gorillas etc are the next in line - don't you watch Planet of the Apes :)

Humans are animals, last time I checked.

The latest research suggests that Bonobos are capable of quite a lot of what we consider as human characteristics.
Except their brain stops growing much earlier, lack a proper opposable thumb, can't speak because their larynx is not built as ours (but they can communicate quite well using sign language), and they don't believe in god.

Where are all the half man half animals now?
They are extinct. 'Evolution through natural selection' - the 'more human' mutants outcompeted the less human forebears.

The other apes are on different paths from our last common ancestor. They are more evolved than us in the ways that suit their evolutionary niches.

Monkeys, same thing but the common ancestor is much further back.

you never meet anyone who is either further down the chain than you are

Because when we did we got rid of them.
Poor Homo neanderthalensis.

Although sometimes I do get the impression of meeting sub-humans further down the chain than I am.
Eg. my ex.

Actually, mirai, although that is now true for humans, it is not true for many current "species".
This is why there is often much discussion about whether some groups of living beings should be defined as species or not. For example, are dogs different species from wolves? But they can interbreed and the "hybrids" are fertile.
Horses and donkeys can also reproduce, but their "hybrids" are not fertile. The same with tigers and lions.
So, examples of species that are still in the process of separating.

In fact, it was only recognised that bonobos were a different species from chimpanzees quite recently.
The same for forest and savannah elephants.

The point you raise about one seamless evolution has also been addressed. Evolution is not necessarily smooth. Hence the theory of punctuated equilibrium. Most species, because they breed freely, remain quite static for a long time. They are more likely to change when separated into smaller communities (and subjected to what we call genetic drift and founder effects), or subjected to environmental change/pressure.

We see it happening all the time, but we can only see it in our life times in things like viruses and bacteria, which evolve quite fast.
But then people call it microevolution, and claim that it's different from macroevolution.

I know a few evangelical Christians who believe every word of Genesis. One thinks God has a great sense of hu mour and planted dinosaur bones....

People that don't 'believe' in evolution are definitely a little bit thick.

I often wonder whether it's worth arguing with people who are wilfully stupid.

However, you could try pointing out to them that evolution by natural selection has been proven to work using lab experiments with bacteria. You could also try asking them how bacteria managed to become resistant to antibiotics if not through evolution. (By the way, when you talk to people about evolution it's important to explain natural selection, as some people have this vague idea that evolution just means that things change gradually over time.)

It's a bit like those that misunderstand 'survival of the fittest' and assume that the biggest/strongest survive...