Why do many Christians have such trouble understanding the concept of evolution?

Question

Many of my Christian friends are able to have a deep and abiding faith in God and Jesus AND understand evolution. But so many others see evolution as a religious belief that's in opposition with Christianity. I don't get it.

Answer 1

People treat the theory of evolution as if it were a fact because evolution IS a fact. Currently the neo-darwinist theory only has minor details to be polished and argued about.

Why some Christians have trouble accepting it?

This is just my personal opinion, but I think it's mainly because those so-called Christians don't have a proper education or have a low cultural level. This can be seen, for example, in the fact that a large number of "creationists" don't know the proper, scientific meaning of the word "Theory", and mistake it for the "colloquial" one. From Wikipedia:

[wikipedia]
In science, a theory is a proposed description, explanation, or model of the manner of interaction of a set of natural phenomena, capable of predicting future occurrences or observations of the same kind, and capable of being tested through experiment or otherwise falsified through empirical observation. It follows from this that for scientists "theory" and "fact" do not necessarily stand in opposition. For example, it is a fact that an apple dropped on earth has been observed to fall towards the center of the planet, and the theory which explains why the apple behaves so is the current theory of gravitation.
[/wikipedia]


Another factor is possibly an inability or unwillingness to look for the truth or to contrast ideas. That, mixed, as I mentioned earlier, with an improper education, leads to errors such as reading the bible in a literally way.

That unwillingness to look for the truth might be caused because some people who consider themselves Christians don't have but an artificial inherited faith, which they must keep through the repetition of words and the traditions they were taught, and which they are afraid of losing if they start thinking for themselves and trying to understand and think about what they received.

Proof of that is the obvious refusal to accept that the bible is not "perfect" and scientifically precise. The ones who claim it is, obviously have not read the bible thinking (as I said, denial).
The most clear example of this might be in the Genesis. God allegedly creates the world in 7 days. God creates the animals first. Then manking. In the Adan and Eve chapter, however, God creates them both *first* and THEN the animals. Yes, feel free to check this. Though I suppose few will, because, as I said, most people who read the bible in a literally way simply refuse to accept the facts.

Answer 2

Their problem is that they don't understand what the limits of belief are or that they even exist. They think that a belief can justify anything they believe in, as though it were a source of truth. They don't see the difference between belief and knowledge and confuse the two.

The reason why they think that is that they have never ever understood the importance of verifying truth, and that verifiable truth is superior to any belief. Why? Because beliefs cannot be verified, so there is NO way to separate true beliefs from false beliefs. No way.

Christians are not alone in this problem. Any religion suffers from the same problem. Beliefs are just inferior ways of orienting one's life or determining truth.

But it is understandable, although not excusable, why people are satisfied with their beliefs. Their beliefs allow them to fool themselves about death, which they are very much afraid of. They think that they actually will have eternal bliss after they die, because of their particular beliefs, no matter how absurd the idea is. They think this because they exclude themselves from those who don't share their beliefs. So they isolate themselves and only associate with people with the same beliefs, so that they don't have to confront any reality that they are fearful of. Their beliefs are, in fact, nothing more than membership in a club of fear.

So beliefs also share the same defect in that they isolate people and tend to create divisions among people. Beliefs do not unify people. They even create divisions within their own faiths and all faiths tend to subdivide or splinter. This is the nature of beliefs. Hinduism, one of the oldest religions, is a good example of the extensive splintering that occurs over a long period of time. Islam, one of the younger religions has Sunni and Shiites and a few other splinter groups. But even Islam will continue to splinter over the ages as all religions do. Christianity and the Jewish faith are also splintered and will continue to splinter even more.

But back to the issue of Christians and evolution. Christians think that their beliefs can supplant verifiable knowledge. Evolution has been verified many times over and is the core to modern biology. It would be impossible to imagine a modern biology without evolution. Christian beliefs offer no useful alternative. You cannot base a science on wishful, unverifiable day dreaming.

Answer 3

Many fundamentalist Christians and Catholics take the readings of the Bible literally. This becomes ludacris when you take into account the millions of transcription errors that happened over the hundreds of years before the printing press was invented; also there's the issue of the languages -- the standard English Bible is a far cry different than the Greek original because of vocabulary and grammar limitations. Anyway, for a long time there has been a rift between science and religion. That is changing with ideas like Intelligent Design and the study of Quantum Physics/Mechanics. Some Christians are not ready to step outside the black and white safety zone they were raised in and open their minds to other possibilities. Till then, we must say, "everyone's perfect where they're at" and let it go.

Answer 4

I understand what your saying regarding evolution. I'm taking a Theology class right now and we had to write a paper on the evolution subject.

One of the main point the instructor stated:
God created the Heavens and Earth. God knows how old the earth is, He created it. Man cannot measure and/or compare the earth using technology. Man can make an attempt, but will never have the answer.

God is Omniscience an attribute of God alone. It is the quality of having all knowledge (Isaiah 40:14). Omnipotence, Omnipresence, and Omniscience represent the nature of God concerning His relation to the creation.

Answer 5

I've studied evolution. I've studied creationism. Both aren't so far a part.

Scientists want it to be unlike creation because creation is lead by religion, not fact.

Some Christians want creation to be unlike evolution because evolution is lead by fact, not faith.

They threaten the very existence of each other. Why believe in evolution when it attacks what you believe? The way we debate religion gives evidence to the way we feel that we have to defend our opinions.

It's going to come down to the fact that both stories ARE similar. They both start with chaos--do you know how many religions have a creation story that begins with chaos?! The beauty of everything is that the Bible and science AREN'T different!

In the old testament, if your translate it from Hebrew, there is mention of an ancient bird that is a fossil. They match...science and religion match.

There's SO much we can learn from each other, but in the end it's going to be the science that will tell us the HOW and religion that will tell us the WHY.

Answer 6

I was raised and taught that we were created by God, specifically God created Adam and Eve. I have problems with evolution because it does contradict the Bible. I will never consider evolution as even a possibility for my creation and I am not a super-christian I just have an issue with the entire theory of evolution. My child will never be taught this as well.

Answer 7

you simple cannot put evolution and a "fundamentalist" ( i do not like that term) position of the bible arm in arm.

if you eliminate the biblical story of creation, of a literal adam and eve, of a literal expulsion from a literal garden of eden, etc. then you rip apart the enitre bible, not only casting doubt on all scripture but completely contradicting the clear teaching of jesus, paul, peter....

you cannot have evolution and the bible. the bible clearly states that before the fall of man , there was no death. death only came as a result of adam and eve's fall. so there is just no way there could have been any evolution prior to adam and eve's existence.

you gotta choose who you are gonna believe....

your christian friends are simply dismissing the dilemma that they put themselves into and choosing to ignore it.

you gotta choose. you can't have it both ways.

whether evolution is a religious belief or not makes no difference. it is based on false data, poor evidence, and fanciful conjecture.

you gotta choose. god will hold us responsible.

god bless!!

Answer 8

Very dangerous issue to address. A question of faith and physical world (two incompatible worlds not meant to share the same constructs). It is difficult for a believer to bridge a gap of what is in the holy scriptures (bible and specially Genesis) and scientific discoveries. Genesis is very clear on what happened and for a believer to take some of it and not other elements is not easy. It opens to question the validity of the whole. If you believe in the bible then you need to believe in the entire bible not just the parts that are convenient to oneself. My believe is that those Christians who believe in evolution have rationalize the message of the bible, the context in which was written and its intended audience. Yet, how can we do so, if we believe they are the very words of God.

Answer 9

The churches I attend do not believe in it, but in college, I learned that you could still believe in both. That really help me. I believe that God did not put everything in the bible and that so many things are left unknown for a reason. I don't know if all of evolution is true or not, but if it is, then many people will be shocked. lol

Answer 10

Dogma makes its own understanding.

Once you take the Bible as literal, any discussion of the age of the Earth being even as old as human artifacts flies out the window. Of course, by these extremists' standards, you and your friends aren't really Christians since you don't believe that a 1769 English edition of the Bible is the true word of God.