"Humans came from monkeys" - Cockup or conspiracy?

Question

Hanlon's Razor - never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity.

Is the standard creationist "Evolutionists say we came from monkeys" the result of a genuine misunderstanding of evolutionary theory, or a deliberate malicious perversion of it?

Second, since this is clearly a functioning meme among creationists, what portion of its spread is due to misunderstanding vs. malice?

Answer 1

Both. There are people who know what the theory of evolution says, but they twist it around and lie to deliberately turn it into a malicious perversion of what the theory really says. Then they go and tell others who are IGNORANT the new, re-hashed version. They are just droolingly stupid enough to buy it hook, line, and sinker, without even bothering to try to look up what the theory of evolution actually says before continuing to spread the b/s version to others as ignorant as themselves.

Answer 2

I'm not going to guess. By the way, evolution has nothing to do with the soul and God. Evolution comes from inheritable traits through natural selection. That being said, neither is conceived only made up. "Science Geek: The human mind evolved to believe in God and a soul. Lower primates likely do not have these beliefs, how is evolution the wrong term here?" -you No madam you are wrong. Like I and Science Geek have said, God and soul is not inherited. Quick example for you. -People are not born with Religion, the belief in a soul, Math, writing, reading, science, and time. All of those are learned. This would be correct though. -The human mind evolved, and through it the idea of God and soul was created. It cant be said that the mind evolved to believe in God because the mind can't evolve with ideas, only natural selection.

Answer 3

Well if you were a church that taught the congregation that the Bible was to be taken literally and something came along to threaten that belief, wouldn't you do anything to discredit it- including spreading lies and propaganda to those not capable or willing to study the information and decide on their own?

I believe in the top ranks of the church it is pure malice that they justify as "for the greater good" that causes them to perpetuate myths about evolution. The followers, for the most part, are just used to believing what the church tells them without question.

Answer 4

The malice is demonstrable: all of the creationist organizations are in the business of deliberate lying.

However, it's almost certain that the grassroots creationism - the folks repeating those lies here, for example - is largely simple stupidity. "Lion of Judah", for example, seems to sincerely believe what he writes about this, as does "Catholic Crusader". I don't think that malice is the central problem in either of their cases.

Answer 5

I would say the majority is malice, since you can find the same people reposting the same lies after being corrected several times. I've never seen a creationist admit to being misinformed about this particular misconception.

Answer 6

Let's break this down a little bit.
On one hand, Christian leaders are brilliant manipulators, they understand Evolution, and that it is undoubtedly correct, and deliberately make a monster of it for the sake of religion.
On the other hand, Christian leaders are blissfully ignorant of the truth of evolution, and are thus mistaken about such things.

I can't see the first being the case very often. Religious leaders seem pretty religious to me.

Answer 7

That can go both ways,

Ihave said this before, the debate over Creation Vs Evolution is not about "evidence' as it is about Philosophy, secular man refuses to believe in God so it deliberatly fabricates "evidences' about Evoluton and brainwashes himself into believing his own lies because Mankind refuses to accept that jhe will be held accountable for what he does in this life.

Proof..just watch how many 'thumbs down' I get from this, for each 'thumbs down' it further proves my point, see..it is because they are bias,

Did you look at all the evidence ? completely without emotion or Bias ? did you consider that the evidence might have been fabricated, or do you just accept what is being presented because it is "comfortable for you to believe because it is what you want.

Here is an example

If I gave you evidence to support evolution, you would say "right on, or yea, or agree right off the bat" If I gave you evidence to support creation, you would not be so ready to do so, see....that just proves the Bias in it, YOU cannot have on ounce of Bias.

Answer 8

It's not that they are ignorant, it's that they take any theory disagreeing with the Bible as being garbage, and unacceptable. They refuse to try to understand evolution.

Answer 9

It's purposeful idiocy.

No matter how often they're corrected, they hold on to the moronic fallacy.
In short... they lie.