Why do people think that they can't believe in evolution?

It seems to be a kind of insecurity that some people have. If they accept that some parts of the Bible are not true, then they have to make decisions about which parts are true and which are not. What if they make the wrong decisions? God could send them to hell!

It's safer just to accept all of it, even the crazy bits.

When I first heard of young-Earth creationism about 20 years ago they had a whole lot of "scientific proofs" that the Earth was not billions of years old. They sounded quite convincing at first but I was able to refute all of them with a little research. Others have done the same:

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html

Yet the creationists are still reeling off the same list of "proofs", over and over again.

The one about the Moon is a classic. I was just able to prove it false in one minute with a calculator!

Sadly, yes. I do not understand how they can handle the cognitive dissonance. You are not well-educated because you do not recognize that theory is the highest level in science. It's not a guess. It is ignorant to say "JUST a theory". The common ancestor of all apes (including humans and chimps) is a monkey and that can be proven to your satisfaction. It does not depend on the theory of evolution. It's a fact. Theories do not have proof which only applies in mathematics. Theories have evidence. There is no evidence of a god of any kind. Theories are falsifiable. That's a feature, not a bug. If evidence is produced that indicates another theory or this one needs modification, then we learned something and are thankful for it. Religion does not have that feature. And it is requred. So creation by a god is not capable of being a theory. Since the discovery of mitochodrial DNA ancestry can be determined by genetic mapping and we don't need bones to verify the theory. Theories make predictions and can be used to develop other theories and open up entirely new lines of inquiry. The theory of evolution is useful because is works, not necessarily because it is fact. Evolution is fact but natural selection is a theory. Bottom line is that it works. God as an explanation doesn't work for us and is not really an answer in that regard. Its an excuse not to think about it.

Not everyone thinks as highly of the pope's connections with God as you apparently do. Particularly Protestants and non-denominationals. When you deny the teaching authority of the Catholic Church, you have nothing to fall back on except the Bible, which clearly says God created the Earth in "six days".

Of course you can interpret all sorts of things out of that. Perhaps the "days" were eons, or the "creation" of the sun on the fourth day meant that the clouds had cleared enough for it to be visible. But each explanation you add to the text takes you farther and farther from what it literally says. That makes fundamentalists nervous. It's a slippery slope down to saying, "It's just a folk tale by ignorant nomads."

There really is no indisputable way to distinguish between the literal and the allegorical parts of the Bible, and the more you push metaphor, the more you set yourself up as a human authority, which doesn't fly in the fundie handbook. They like to keep the interpretation simple, unambiguous and traditional. After all, the theory of Evolution is barely 200 years old, and the Big Bang less than 50.

There are some Christian sects that believe that they have to get back to "fundamentals" and they believe that the Bible is literally true and is the word of god. This makes them reject as false anything that conflicts with the Bible, since they believe it contradicts the word of god.

They loathe evolution since, to them, it calls god a liar by clearly disproving the creation myth.

It never ceases to amaze me that they'll swallow the nonsensical, clearly absurd stories in the Bible without a murmur or a question and bend reality to the snapping point to rationalize their beliefs (ask them to explain Jonah...or Noah...or where Cain's wife came from), but mention this well-supported, widely-accepted, thoroughly researched scientific fact/theory, and suddenly they're the biggest skeptics ever.

@Flexible, the question was about young-earth creationism, most often displayed by fundamentalist Christians. It wasn't a question about the various degrees of acceptance of evolutionary theory by religions around the world.

If you would brush the chip off your shoulder, you'd find that a lot of us don't automatically equate religion with Christianity, do know a reasonable amount about Islam, are fully aware of the skepticism about evolution in Islam, and understand the differences between the religions.

Why do people think all creationists are Bible-huggin' Christians? You fall in your own damn trap of pseudo-sycophantic scepticism every time. You never learn to be broad minded despite all you claim to be.

There ARE some of us who don't think the world is 6,000 years old, and the Qur'an supports that. The earth was created in 6 phases, not six days. We still think there isn't enough proof for evolution. Where are the fossisilised intermediary species*, supposedly in the billions?

The Islamic view on everything, God, evolution, scientific enquiry, and even heaven and hell is vastly, majorly different from the Judaeo-Christian tradition. If you only knew more about it, were you willing to listen, you'd see it is much more acceptable and greatly more accommodating from your stand point than anything else. And it has not just changed its view to accommodate you, but it's been like that for a long, long time.

Evolution has not been proved 100 percent correct. The only reason it is so widely popular today is because people are against Creationism in growing numbers. I think God's tasks could have been what we like to call "evolution"....there are some good points but, as the Bible says, God is the beginning and end so, Nature obeys God. Thanks for the question and have a wonderful day.

There's no reason whatsoever to "believe" in evolution -- you're right, it's been proven by millions of pieces of evidence gathered by millions of scientists over 150 years, and it's an observed fact...but those are reasons to accept it as correct, not to "believe" in it.

The collision with the forming earth that gave us our moon happened about 4.8 billion years ago, by the way...just FYI.

Peace.

note for "chas": every one of your very poor arguments has been debunked a very long time ago. Not even "answersingeneis" considers them valid. You have to keep up, pal!

If someone had actually proven the THEORY of Evolution beyond a shadow of a doubt, it would be all over the news and the internet.

The wording you use in your own question backs me up: "believe in evolution." Ok now, don't get me wrong, I believe evolution is real, but that doesn't make it true. But the point is, if it was more then a *theory* we wouldn't have debates about our BELIEFS (or lack of) in evolution.

That is sort of like asking if people can believe in a flat earth.

Looking at some of the replies I am amazed at how religions cause mental deficiencies; it could not be that all those people have not read and do not think it is more like a mental virus causing a breakdown of analytical thought where anything refutes the religious nonsense.

They don't beleive in evolution because they believe in a literal interpretation f the bible. They look at the "begats" and arrive at a figure of about 6000 years. Oddly enough, while they disagree with most scientists, they are perfectly willing to use the benefits of science, such as insulin, modern medicine and conveniences, etc. Weird, isn't it?