Did you grow up believing in creationism or evolution and have since then rejected one view for the other?

Question

What made you reject what you were brought up to believe in?

Answer 1

In short, I started with a belief in creationism, became an extremist believer in evolution ... and I still am ... but I have come around full circle to finding a synthesis of the two.

To explain, I was raised Catholic with all the Biblical stories of creation, and took them quite literally. I remember being facinated by the apparent discovery of something that might be Noah's Ark in the ice on some mountain in Turkey, or the analysis of the Turin Shroud. And each time my hopes were dashed as the science showed these things to be quite mundane.

In high school I had a bit of a crisis of faith because I *loved* science. It made such eminent sense. Every single piece of the puzzle fit. I had *great* science teachers in school. Evolution made all of biology make sense. The Big Bang made all of astrophysics make sense. And yet there was this apparent conflict with the Bible.

In college, when I was working on my Math degree, the Bible thumpers got to me. They made it increasingly impossible to accept both the Bible and science ... they basically said, "it's us or science." So I chose science. I could not believe that God would fill the world with so much evidence of evolution, and then expect us to believe it false against the very act of *reason* that He was kind enough to give us. To me, it was a crime against God to acknowledge reason, and then turn away from it.

But then I realized that this choice between faith and science was a false choice put to me by the fundamentalists, not by science. And I resented them for putting me in a position to have to choose between the two. It was that action by fundamentalists that precisely led me *away* from faith. They made faith and theology into a simplistic *cartoon* of what it once was. What counted as deep theological thought had gone from Thomas Aquinas, St. Augustine, and Descartes to ... Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and "Dr. Dino" Kent Hovind?

But then I realized that it was not the Bible that was wrong ... but these fundamentalists who are completely misinterpreting it. I started to see that these people (epitomized by people like Kent Hovind) are the very epitome of False Witnesses ... full of blatant deceit, cowardly tactics, and very little concern for the fact that they are promoting a path of voluntary anti-scientific ignorance ... and in all cases they benefitted personally, financially, and politically, from promoting ignorance to their flocks.

So I've more recently come to the conclusion that science and the Bible are *absolutely* compatible. The only thing getting in the way is if you cling to a rigidly childlike literalism when it comes to reading the Bible. The Bible is so pathetically impoverished when read that way ... deep allegorical meaning is lost to a mundane catalog of literal events. The truly *deep* Truths (with a capital 'T') give way to long lists of decendants from Seth (Adam's third son) to Lamech (Noah's father), or the cubit dimensions of the gopher wood used in Noah's Ark ... mundane unimportant details that are raised to huge importance because these are the details over which literalists choose to do battle with science.

Anyways, I *rarely* discuss my spiritual beliefs on this issue ... but your question was good enough to warrant it. Thanks.

Answer 2

I grew up with creationism. I remember my mom explaining to me that if they taught me about evolution in class that I was to not believe it.

I support evolution because as of right now America looks like a backwards country because we don't teach this major part of science in our classrooms. It is ridiculous to just skip over our own evolution entirely...if you are not religious then you have no explanation at all as to how we got here.

In a way we are bringing religion into schools even though they are supposed to be separated because by omitting the science of evolution, you have no choice but to embrace creationism.

I don't understand why we can't compromise on this issue. Believers in creationism believe that God created the earth in 7 days (well technically 6) yet our children are taught that it formed over billions of years. If we can have both the science explanation and the church can have creationism in this instance, why not in ALL instances? The bottom line is that Creationism belongs in church and Science belongs in school.

Answer 3

I grew up accepting creation, until I was about 10 years old and started doing science and reading science books. The astronomy books I read told me that the light from stars is sometimes millions of years old before it reaches us, so this started me thinking that the Earth and universe could not have been a few thousand years old. Every book I read, from all branches of science confirmed this for me.
When I first read about evolution, it fitted in so well with everything I knew already. Natural selection just makes so much sense, it is logical, scientific, provable, and has a lot of evidence to back it up. It is one of the most elegant and robust theories in science.
And it doesn't rely on just one book as evidence; many researchers over many years worked on it before, during and after Darwin published his theory. In my opinion, the only way anyone cannot support it is by ignoring all this evidence.

Thanks for your question.

Answer 4

I was once a Fundamentalist Christian - a firm creationist. Then, I became an atheist, because of the lack of evidence for the Christian (or any) faith. I began to see every creationist argument to be false. I am now a staunch acceptant of evolution. I don't prefer the term "evolutionist" because it correlates to "evolutionism". The "-ism" ending gives the impression that evolution is a belief, not the fact which it is.

Answer 5

I grew up believing creationism, but learned to reject it through study and the gathering of scientific evidence which allowed me to make a logical conclusion.

Answer 6

I grew up believing god created everything which makes things simple. Now seeing all the imperfections of man and just wondering how things work it is not quite so simple. It is easy to go with the flow and say God created everything but having free will makes me question otherwise.

Answer 7

I grew up believing that God created the world in six days, because my mom used to read us the story of it. When I began to read about science and use my brain, I realized it could not be true, at least in that sense.

Answer 8

Nope, my mother, even though she only had a grade 11 formal education was extremely well read. She brought us up with the truth.

Answer 9

I was raised believing in Christianity and evolution. I still follow Christianity but i seem not to believe in evolution anymore. It seems to me improbable, but who knows.

Answer 10

i grew up a christian and learned about evolution from monkeys in 10th grade. it was and still is a joke to me.