Why don't religious people believe in evolution?

Your belief is perfectly valid and I would venture to say this is the commonly held belief of most christians, especially in the "liberal" protestant churches and, I think, the Catholic and orthodox churches as well.

The minority of christians who reject evolution are those who belong to the fundamentalist protestant movement of which some are Young Earth Creationists who are most passionately against the theory of evolution.

Also the idea of intelligent design is not wholly incompatible with the facts of evolution, that is to say that species have similar characteristics, why couldn't an intelligent designer have used earlier components to construct another being rather than constantly re-inventing components as a computer programmer may use previously written code as building blocks for new algorithms.

Incidentally when I use the term theory of evolution I mean "life evolved from non life and all life can be explained in terms of simpler forms of life"

By the facts of evolution I mean "life forms change and adapt to their environment, and many species on earth have similar characteristics both genetic and physiological to other species".

i'm religious and i never said i don't believe in evolution. the trouble is, a false dichotomy has been built up by all the commentators who don't use their brains. there's a false dichotomy that says precisely this, that you have to either "believe" in evolution, as though that explains everything, and it's a matter of time before science has all the answers; or believe in God, and he must have just magically clicked his fingers and things appeared ready made.

the account in Genesis, is in fact the very best account of evolution that anyone at the time of Moses could have come up with, using the language and concepts that were available. there is nothing more that anyone could have done, indeed, his account was rather propehtic, which aint suprising, cos he IS a prophet for a reason.

evolution anyhow is not a theory, it is a fact of observation. the theory is the theory of natural selection. perhaps in time, this will be largely supplanted by something else, more sophisticated.

the Holy Fathers of eastern Orthodoxy basically said, for all eternity, mans soul may get closer to God without ever reaching the ultimate secrets of God and creation. this works rather like an irrational number, like Pi. we get closer and closer and never get to it.

scientific investigation is the same; the beauty is that God's creation gets better and better understood, forever and ever.

Religion is not a belief - it is a theory. The religious think it is a sheer toss up between believing in God and believing in religion - the former happens via FAITH - the latter is a theory and arrives through EVIDENCE - it is not a matter of personal opinion - evolution exists regardless of what anyone believes. Those who think God started the BB or created evolution - are just not hard liners - and have yet to swallow the whole set of facts that there is no God. God could not have started the BB - it needs NO prime mover - and moreover - you'd have to ask WHO MADE GOD? Evolution functions and arrives without any help from a prime mover regardless of what ignorant opinions happen to exist - the facts are the facts.

I too am a believer in both God and evolution, HOWEVER i believe that there is a massive differnce between the orgin of species and the origin of life. It doesn't suit God's persona to let something else be the cause of creating somehitng He has come to love so much, an analogy i use is a father will never love his nephew as much as his own son. God called us His children because His own hands made us, creating a mechanism which can produce life without spiritual input from the creator is baffling, but i dont think God wanted us to be the product of such a mechanism, the ony reason we are different from the rest of His creation is because He chose to love us, one way of showing it is by making us Himself.

Hope this helps!

Many do accept evolution. Those individuals that do feel uncomfortable with the idea of God using natural laws to create new species, do not like the idea that they share a kinship with other animals. It results in a loss of pride. Contrary to popular opinion, many Christians accepted the idea of evolution even before Darwin published "The Origin of Species". It was part of the "zeitgeist" at the time. Creationism really dates from 1961 with the publication "The Genesis Flood" by Henry Morris and John C. Whitcomb, and reflects the reaction against modernism in the latter part of the Twentieth Century. Needless to say it was poorly received by scientists and theologians, but was a best-seller amongst Fundamentalists.

"Although Young Earth Creationism is today’s primary anti-evolution campaign alongside Intelligent Design, it has only been a popular Christian belief for the last 50 years. Just before and for 100 years following Darwin’s discovery, most Christians in the United States were comfortable with the idea of an older earth, and many found harmony with the scriptures through either the day-age or gap theories."

- BioLogos Foundation

As science and religion have developed, more and more religious people are beginning to believe in the theory of evolution, but there will always be those who refuse to change their beliefs even if there is scientific proof of something. I think that some people think like that because they are so firmly embedded in their religion that they don't want to even contemplate the idea of anything else and are so closed-minded that nothing will convince them otherwise. Some people may have their 'views' drummed into them (ie by overly-religious parents) that they cannot think for themselves and so will not accept the idea of something like evolution

the definition of evolution is to change for the better or to accommodate change to better ones self. but if you think we came from apes your way off track. God sent the flood to destroy all those things (families of Cain) it says Noah was perfect in his generations which means no crossbreeding with monkeys. the fallen angels came down here and violated God's creation by teaching the mixture of animal species, etc. with their great technology they were able to do this. sounds crazy right? well why were there no dinosaurs on the ark then? the bible says that every creeping thing had become corrupt, that includes the animals. we can find bones of cavemen and say look we evolved from them because we see what appears to be various stages of evolution. on the contrary, we are only seeing the results of this. for example if 100% ape & 100% human got together, the result would be 50/50. now if that 50/50 got with another 100% human it would result in a 2/3 mix and so on. thus "evolution" but that's simply not the case. and BTW it helps to read all those hundreds of books that were never canonized to begin with or were later taken out of the bible such as the book of Jasher, books of Enoch, books of Adam & Eve, etc.

Because some people take the Bible too literally. They believe that the whole bible is somehow the whole truth and that all of it should be taken literally.

Or that some of it should be taken literally, definitely not all of it, but Genesis is one of the chapters that should be taken literally.

Some people teach that Genesis should be taken literally word for word. And for the those who listen to those people that say "you should literally take Genesis as a literal translation for the beginning," they are just simply doing what they're told.

Part of the indoctrination process of religion is being told what to think, believe, and take literally from the Bible. Pastors, priests, popes, and family members that a person may look up to as "authorities" on the matter just take other people's word for whatever they want.

That is exactly what I used to do when I was a fundamentalist. I would take everyone else's word for what the Bible meant and I would rarely do any thinking of my own.

When I began to seriously critically think for myself, it was then that I began breaking the shackles that I imposed upon myself from religion.

I did my own thinking and evaluating. I didn't let anyone else do it for me anymore.

You cannot be a Christian and believe in Evolution that is an Oxymoron

Read This

http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/1041/1041_01.a...

And Consider this

Mysteries In Science

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zTXxpXOoe0

The Young Age of the Earth

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-127254205...

The Origin of Man by Dr. Duane Gish

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3FZDysZKFQ

The Origins of Life

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3181822797...

Creation In The 21st Century From Where did these Layers Come (From) 1 of 3 (Global Flood)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZyoXQJ5Al0

Creation in the 21st Century - Overwhelming Evidence 1 of 3

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o226umqLdsU

Skull Fossils - As Empty as the Evolutionary Theory

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Yu5jN897kM

Neanderthals - Smarter Then We Thought

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxL636n3w2o

Dinosaurs: Those Terrible Lizards

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVvGByvp13Q

There are many different Christian sects with differing views on creation and evolution. There are even evangelicals (who tend to be conservative) who believe in theistic evolution of various kinds. The major obstacle is original sin. The Bible seems to indicate that death and the curse on earth occured with original sin. Therefore many Christians cannot reconcile creation with evolution.