ASKED in ignorance please bear with me.....?

Question

Why are some Christians and some scientists always fighting? What are the main theories that disagree? Do evolutionists denounce God, if so, why? Do Christians denounce the big bang theory and so on, if do why? I really would like to know! Sorry this is a dumb question, but I have never been taught this!

Answer 1

No worries, it's not a dumb question. It's a big debate today so it's good you're curious as to why.

Basically scientific people and religous people go about "thinking about things" in opposite ways. Religious people think they "know the truth" and look around at "what is in life" for things to support that truth. Scientific people, on the other hand, look around at "what is in life" and then come up with ideas on "what truth is."

One of the biggest issues in the USA (although we're about the only country left still fighting this one) is over evolution. Yes, you can be a christian and believe in evolution, but there is a branch that insists that the earth is less than 6,000 years old and if you think otherwise, you're going to hell. Since this type of christianity is on the upswing in the USA, it's got scientific people in a panic because they don't want to see intelligence, knowledge and science trampled underfoot because of religious dogmatism. This happened in europe and it was called "the Dark Ages."

Hope that helped :)

Answer 2

I think personally that the fundamental difference between the "god-believers" and the "evolutionists" (who mostly, but not all, do not accept the idea of a "mysterious invisible superbeing" is that the "Believers accept absolutely everything that they have either been taught by others to believe, or that they have read in their main "believer's" literature, which for the most part is The Bible. But it has to be accepted on faith alone, because there is simply no clear and unarguable evidence to back it up. No matter how passionately you BELIEVE that a thing is true, doesn't constitute proof that it is.
Against that, we have the Evolutionists - who think that everything evolved very very gradually over a mind-boggling period of time, and they continue to evolve. I find the evidence of e volution so overwhelming that there is no doubt in my mind, personally, that this IS the way it all happened. Evolutionists a re not ALL atheists. Some believe that the theory of evolution doesn't necessarily completely rule out the POSSIBILITY that some superior being, or beings could have somehow been involved , and that it is only the "how" that w e still do not understand. Faith is the absolute acceptance of what the believers have read or been told by others. But the scientist believes that you cannot possibly state categorically that this or that thing is true, until is has been shown to be true, in a way that settles the matter completely and beyond all possible further argument.
I do come down on one particular side over the other, although I never allow that to interfere with the one totally indisputable truth that we just do not have all the answers. I absolutely believe we are on a journey towards those answers. and that in the meantime we should stop beating the other side over the head and be acting like a bunch of goofy nine-year-olds arguing in the schoolyard....... "I am RIGHT" "are NOT" "Am TOO" etc. etc. etc. LOL
A favorite expression of mine is that every human being has the inalienable right to be the owner of his own mind, and the master of his own thinking and believing, and that it doesn't matter how passionately you believe that YOU are righter than the other guy is, what he believes, and is equally sure of, is still his "property" he owns it, and no other person has the authority to tell him he cannot own what belongs to him. We should not be judging the quality of that other human being as a person, based only on that one single element of belief that he has, or deciding that he is a good or bad person just on that. I'm something of a health nut, but I sure would have missed out on some wonderful relationships if I had checked off my "friend list" all the people who were addicted to junk food and declared their hatred of broccolli LOLOL.

Answer 3

It's all about authority.

There's a percentage, likely small, but disproportionately vocal, of christian clergy who want to present their opinions as THE final authority. They prey on the more illiterate (as in can, but don't read) christian subcultures ignorance of scripture.

They cobble together a semicoherant cosmology through selectively quoting scripture. Carefully choosing only the parts that don't contradict themselves or those that haven't been proven wrong, flat earth, geocentric universe etc. Then they present the gullable with the ultimatem that if their subjective individualy interpreted cosmolgy isn't all true than none of the holy writ is true.

Science comments on the natural world. That is the world than can be experienced objectively through the senses. Done properly it makes no assumptions one way or the other about any supernatural elements in the world which might or might not be.

Biological evolution does not make any commentary about whether or not there are any gods, imps, faeries, or supernatural beings of any stripe. It explains how living things have changed over vast periods of time and by what means they are continuing to change.

Christians may or not subscribe to various scientific theories. It's a matter of personal interpretation. Scientific theories that play to christian cosmology are frequently trumpeted as proof of christianities absolute truth. However the same thing is true of other living religions. You'll see questions in here (yahoo answers) that are really statements about how the koran is proven by this or that scientific discovery. If an idea doesn't play to whatever religious cosmologies it is either ignored or denounced as an evil plot.

There are more than a few atheists who point to scientific explanations as validations of the idea that no supernatural means are needed to explain the universe.

The science itself stands apart from the fray, reporting what it sees reguardless of the editorializing of people who would use it to suit their own activist ends.

Religious theories and scientific theories aren't the same thing. A scientific theory has a verified body of proof behind it, otherwise it's called a hypothesis. The use of the word theory in religious theory is the same as the conversational meaning of the word, a fancy way of saying it's just speculation.

Answer 4

It is a very valid question. I cannot say for sure, but the Christians I know don't fight with scientists (I know one who works in a lab in the hospital) The main theory that Evolution airy theorists (is a better term) and Evangelical Christians fight about is how the earth was created (again using the word "Fight" in a non hostile term) Evolutionary theorists denounce God, Some Christians think God used evolution to create, and most Evangelical Christians believe that God created by Himself (without using evolution) I, for one, do not denounce the Big Bang Theory, I do believe it happened but I believe God made it happen which proves us Christians right that there was a beginning to the Universe.

Last, there is NEVER "dumb questions" sometimes there is dumb answers (mine might be one of them, LOL) but never a dumb question. The only way we beat ignorance is to ask questions, and yours was a great one :)

Answer 5

Evolutionist believe that we were not created but evolved over time to the present day human form, and don't believe in God. Christians believe that they were created by God. As a Christian my few obviously is slanted but here is the way I look at it. Evolutionist tend to be people that are very methodical and need a rational explanation for everything. Since God hasn't directly come forward and introduced Himself as the creator of the universe and human beings scientist are clinging on to the theory of evolution. The problem is, they still after all these years can't prove it. In fact science is doing more to prove the creation theory than Christians have done in years. They keep discovering new complexities that lead them toward the realization that it was intelligently design because something that precise and complex would be impossible to happen by random chance. Yet, still many scientist believe in evolution or other theories that try to explain creation other than a creator. Check out the book "A Case for a Creator" by Lee Strobel. I just read it and it's a great book.

Answer 6

Some Christians and some scientists always seem to be fighting because human nature tells us that "I am always right." Some people will never admit that they are wrong in their thinking. For some Christians, they only believe what is written explicitly in the Bible and for scientists, they will only believe it if science proves it.
I think that if God created our brains, then we are to use it and weigh the facts and compare what science shows with what the Bible shows and draw a thoughtful conclusion from this.
I know that many Christians denounce the big bang theory because Genesis 1:1 says "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."
I also think that some people would find a disagreement with others about anything just so that they can argue no matter what the facts.

Answer 7

The Bible says that God created the world and everything in it in six days and then rested on the seventh. The evolution theory says that man evolved from primordial soup that came together in a certain way to cause a chain reaction that created life. This life evolved over billions of years to change from a one celled organism to all the different plants and animals we have today. For the evolutionist to be correct, they must deny God's intervention and deny the Biblical account. For the Christian to be correct, they must deny that evolution took billions of years and the big bang theory which started the chain reaction. The Christian view is that "an explosion in a junk yard could not create a timex watch" so how could an explosion in the universe create things more complex than that. The evolutionists view is that all that is here could not be created in six days, and that there is no evidence that God exists.

Answer 8

Here is how I see it. Scientists that believe in evolution do not believe in God because we have all evolved, we were not created by someone or thing. Christians, some believe with the scientist, and some don’t. Some think just one day Adam and Eve spouted up… I know most Christian religions think it is ok to believe in the science parts as long as you still believe in God. The way I see it is if there is a God, is he a God to just the Humans? Or does every organism have a soul since everything on this planet evolved from something… Or are the Humans the lucky ones that one day when human race evolved we all got souls?

Answer 9

Your question is not at all dumb, and I'll attempt an explanation. Scientists fight with religious because their sources of "information" are totally different: scientists rely on experimental data, and deliberately exclude supernatural explanations because they lack predictive value; religious accept supernatural explanations, and reject experimental data if it conflicts with their beliefs. Evolutionists do not denounce god -- they simply see the concept as unnecessary. Religious decry evolution, because the theory (now fact -- it's proven) conflicts with their beliefs (an example of what I mentioned earlier). Some religious denounce the big bang theory, notwithstanding the considerable evidence supporting it, because it, too, is at variance with their religious beliefs (particularly the creation tale in the biblical book of Genesis). Evetually, the race will outgrow this tendency toward superstition and rely on logic and evidence -- because that is the only way that civilization can progress.

Answer 10

Here is a the answer to the question: If you don't have any answers then why ask why? Most people question everything for which they do not understand and that is really what it is. In this world we have a lot of people that don't understand anything and the come up with there own theories on things a majority of them are not even sure at all and the ones that are well you know the answers to that....
I hope that I gave you something to think about, we tend to ask when we don't understand and make more out of nothing instead of leaving it alone...