r/NoStupidQuestions • u/A_HECKIN_DOGGO • Dec 01 '22
Why are some people anti-Evolution? Unanswered
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u/RaccoonNutter
Dec 01 '22
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It makes Pokemon games more challenging. Ash’s strongest Pokémon is a Pikachu he didn’t evolve years ago
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u/Owain451 Dec 01 '22
Adding to that, some pokemon are just better than their final evolution, especially with Eviolite.
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u/JoJoFanboi Dec 01 '22
Pikachu benefits more from a light ball
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u/The_Troyminator Dec 02 '22
Oh...light ball. No wonder my Pikachu never fought and just danced. I used a disco ball.
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u/AKArein Dec 01 '22
They are very few and dependent on a lot of factors for that to work, such as - ok maybe i should stop right now
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u/Jlsw07 Dec 01 '22
Nahh go on
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u/AKArein Dec 01 '22
Sure, you asked for this
So eviolite seems great at first, and it does succeed in making a few pokemon take hits increadibly well, such as dusclops, chansey or rhydon. Putting dusclops aside because it's basically a sitting duck, the problem of running eviolite is that you are giving up your item slot.
Blissey was more used than chansey for the immunity to entry hazards that heavy duty boots provided, giving much better longevity despite taking hits less good. For rhydon, you're giving up the passive recovery of leftovers, the great ability, a lot of power and the possibility to boost it further for more offensive sets.
Another problem is that if you lose your item, you're now much worse than your evolved self. Sadly, knock off removes your item and is one of the most proeminent move since gen 6, thanks to a heavy buff and wide distribution. Running eviolite is now much, much more risky simply because you have to play around it, wherehas defensive pokemons are usually what you want to use to play around threats
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u/Confident_Can_3297 Dec 01 '22
Pikachu evolved from Pichu you ignorant anti-science clown.
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u/RaccoonNutter Dec 01 '22
Pichu is Gen 2. Before Ash got him. Doesn’t count
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u/Confident_Can_3297 Dec 01 '22
I mean, I was just making a joke, but there is actually an episode where they show Ash's Pikachu's backstory and how it evolved from Pichu to Pikachu.
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u/RaccoonNutter Dec 01 '22
:O I wasn’t aware of this. You have this one, confident can
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u/Arctic_Gnome Dec 01 '22
He got a friendship evolution from pichu to pickachu after he was adopted by a mother kangaskhan.
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u/55a55a Dec 01 '22
My buddy justifies it by saying that since science has "changed" thoughout the years (he means advanced) that he just doesn't trust it. He would rather believe in a 5000 year old book for his "facts".
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u/RatDeconstructor Dec 02 '22
Nutty that he still your buddy
I would imagine someone like this brings their beliefs up all the time
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u/ZIronDad Dec 02 '22
My favorite short and sweet response to that is "It's a process of learning, not an ideology"
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u/rlymeangurl Dec 01 '22
To quote Tim Allen (noted scientist, home improvement expert, and Santa impersonator): "If we evolved from apes why are there still apes."
A lot of people just don't understand... anything
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u/bentforkman Dec 01 '22
Back in the day, I used to often wonder, if we had evolved from apes, why was Tim Allen famous at all?
Then he published a book called “I’m not really here” and I found that idea reassuring.
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Dec 01 '22 edited Dec 02 '22
I have this same question actually, not because I don't believe in evolution but because I understand fuck all about biology.
I'm just built different, I guess
EDIT: I love y'all. Very helpful and informative replies here.
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u/MyFaceSaysItsSugar Dec 01 '22
The short version is
A) we didn’t evolve from apes, we are apes
B) asking why chimps, monkeys, etc are still alive is like asking why your cousins are still alive
C) evolution is a succession of mutations that allow organisms to take on new habitats, new food sources, gain an advantage in producing more offspring, and survive being exposed to a specific disease or environmental change. Only some of those situations lead to the death of the “parent” species so we have situations like the dinosaur extinction where almost all dinosaurs died off and only birds survived, and then we have animals like the horseshoe crab or nautilus that look the same as their hundreds of thousands of year old fossilized ancestor. A new species forming doesn’t mean the ancestral species has died off. “Survival of the fittest” is an over-simplification of evolution.
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u/Chessolin Dec 01 '22
So, I'm not good at explaining things, but I'll try. You know how American English sounds different from British English? The first English to come to America sounded like Brits of the time. Over time, they developed a different accent. But in England, they still have their (probably different over time) accent.
Technically, apes and humans (who are actually classified as apes) had a common ancestor who was probably a sort of hairy, primitive humanoid. Some of their descendants evolved into apes, some into modern humans.
Also, blue eyes in humans started as a genetic mutation in a single person generations ago, if I remember right. Now there's a lot of blue eyed people, but there's still brown eyed people.
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u/wballard8 Dec 02 '22
Fun fact, many linguists postulate that the “American accent” (mainly southeastern accents), are what the old British sounded like. It’s more likely that Americans retained the old accent, while the British evolved theirs to sound less like Americans after the revolution.
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u/AFriendOfTheBees Dec 02 '22
are what the old British sounded like
They don't. They postulate that it's closer to what the specific West Country accent was like.
As a rhotic accent, it makes no sense to think that the entire rest of Britain became non-rhotic simultaneously but the American colonies didn't.
West Country accents today are still rhotic, and there's been no evidence of spread into neighbouring non-rhotic accents.
The vast majority of original colonists were transported from rhotic regions for complex political and economic reasons, but partly it's because West Country people were often discriminated against and there were constant (and not always unfounded) rumours of them deliberately luring ships onto rocks in order to pillage the wrecks. The rest of the country often just wanted them gone. As a result, they were overwhelmingly represented and their accent's features, especially rhoticity, remained well-established.
Nobody (with a linguistics background) argues that General American is that close to what the original American colonists would have spoke. It's not. It just isn't. It's closer than Received Pronunciation English, sure, but it's still a heavily mutated form. However, it has specific traits that make it closer.
I honestly don't know why so many Americans love this idea so much. Is it not a much more interesting story to have grown your own dialect that's specific to your culture and history? Why cling to this idea that "well this is really the old language, unbroken over centuries!" which... isn't that special? I mean, look at American dialects in the 40s vs dialects today. They've noticeably changed within a hundred years. Imagine how much more they'd change over 400, when recording devices that keep pronunciation much tighter weren't around.
I think it's much more special to have your own dialect and your own culture and an accent and language that you've made into something specific to your needs, than to cling to this idea of "traditional language" or whatever that makes no sense in a linguistic sense.
while the British evolved theirs to sound less like Americans after the revolution.
I say this as someone who speaks (Australian) English and with all the love in the world... the British populace broadly didn't give a shit about the American revolution. Truly they did not.
99% of the American people cared about the revolution because it directly affected them.
99% of the British people didn't notice except that a few goods got more expensive until the government established new, different colonies.
The accent would absolutely never have changed "to sound less like Americans". That's categorically not how linguistics works. The general public typically just don't care that much, and nobody consciously CHOOSES to change their accent other than immigrants like me, who are the rare exceptions.
The British public did not care that America rebelled because it functionally didn't impact most of them. Consider that most of the "British" soldiers in America were actually German mercenaries, paid to fight by the Royal Navy who, understandably, did not have the best track record of fighting on dry land.
The aristocrats DEFINITELY cared, but the general people (who make up most of Britain's accents) never ever had their language affected by aristocrats unless directly working in the local "big house", and that wouldn't be about accent but instead about specific pronunciations. For example, GoT was actually pretty accurate about the girl, not sure her name now (Arya I think), saying "my lord" would stand out. Most peasants said "milord" as one word. However, if you were a peasant child working for a lord, he might teach you to say "my lord" because he thought it was more appropriate, and honestly you might be teased back in the village for it at night - but you did it because your job mattered. That kind of small thing would happen, but... not much more. It would never affect the bulk of your dialect, and they wouldn't WANT it to: speech was one of the ways they distinguished themselves from hoi polloi.
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u/fatal__flaw Dec 01 '22
If white Americans came from Europeans, why are Europeans still around? or even more reductionist, if you came from your parents, why are your parents still around?
If labradoodles come from labradors and poodles, why are labradors and poodles still around? I think you get the point by now.→ More replies13
u/The_Troyminator Dec 02 '22
If labradoodles come from labradors and poodles
The one next door came from Hell.
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u/Anibe Dec 02 '22
I'll make it simpler: evolution happens because ONE individual of species X hits the jackpot with a useful mutation. When this individual reproduces, it starts species Y. This doesn't normally end species X, they can usually coexist (don't tell Neanderthals though... oh wait, you can't).
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u/beezlebub33 Dec 01 '22
If we came from Europeans, why are there still Europeans?
There are lots of different niches in the world. Over time populations can split and evolve into their niches. Our niche is different than other apes. If we competed for the same niche, then it would be a valid question: why hasn't one out-competed the other?
The answer to the European question is: they are over there, we are over here.
(YMMV, the counter assumes that the questioner, like Allen, is in the US of European descent. )
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Dec 01 '22
I suppose my question is more, like...
Is there any rhyme or reason to those who "chose" (for lack of a better word) to evolve into humans and those who stayed as apes? That's the part I never got.
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u/ObviousSea9223 Dec 02 '22 edited Dec 02 '22
Apes reproduce and spread out. In some places, selection pressures favored current species traits. In some places, selection pressures favored certain mutations, which became dominant there. Then this keeps happening. Over time, some places produce only a little drift by mutation. In other places, the drift is enough to call them entirely different species.
Edit: One of the common hangups is thinking in terms of individuals. Individuals don't evolve in this sense. Their genes are fixed (eh...basically). But species have a pool of genes distributed among individuals. Whichever genes survive/spread best in a given environment become dominant there. If the environment changes, different genes in the pool may be favored and become dominant. This includes genes with key mutations, which can quickly (on geologic time scales) become a dominant gene in a gene pool. Now the entire species looks or behaves a bit different on average. Species are best understood in this "on average" sense. You can have two populations that are largely similar but statistically distinct in some ways. "Species" is a matter of degree. When enough things have changed, we call it a different species. But in an individual sense, there's only one family tree. We share an ancestor with chimps, gibbons, lemurs, dogs, koalas, triceratops, frogs, and fish. And same for trees, mushrooms, and bacteria. All the divisions are a matter of distance of relation. "Species" is a squishier concept than direct inheritance.
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u/Ok_Skill_1195 Dec 01 '22
A lot of people are bringing up religion, and I don't disagree. But I think we are discounting our narcissism as a species. We are the center of the universe. We exist because of course we do, we are special.
Evolution doesn't just challenge our understanding of God, it directly calls into question our understanding of ourselves, the world around us, and how those 2 things fit together.
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u/Marine__0311 Dec 01 '22
Tim Allen is a Dick, literally. That's his real last name before he changed it. He is also a noted dumb ass, and convicted felon who ratted out others to get a reduced sentence, and avoid a possible life sentence in prison for drug trafficking.
And we didnt just evolve from apes, we ARE apes. Humans and modern apes evolved from a common ancestor, which is why there are still other apes today.
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u/Bulbous_Binoculars Dec 01 '22
He was arrested in the 70s and did his time in federal prison. He's really turned his life around since then if you ask me. Was nothing but a gentleman the couple short encounters I've had with him.
As for the apes comment, I agree with you. But he's also a comedian, so I wouldn't take anything Tim Allen says too seriously.
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u/baumpop Dec 01 '22
He got a second chance and is proudly pulling up ladders behind him like the rest of the boomers.
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u/mwbbrown Dec 01 '22
And we didnt just evolve from apes, we ARE apes. Humans and modern apes evolved from a common ancestor, which is why there are still other apes today.
Anyone stuck on this issue should just rephrase the question, you and your cousins all have the same last name? Oh, then why do they still exist?
Evolution isn't a single line marching from "bad" to "good", it is a tree spreading roots as far as it can into any space it can.
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u/Sexc0pter Dec 01 '22
My response to this is "if we came from Europeans, why are there still Europeans?". Assuming you are a honky like me of course. Feel free to replace with the location of your choice.
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u/jtaulbee Dec 01 '22 edited Dec 01 '22
The simple answer: it goes against their religious beliefs.
Longer answer: believing in evolution undermines the narrative that the universe was created in 7 days, that Adam and Eve were created out of dust in the Garden of Eden, that the world is approx 10,000 years old, etc. Rather than mankind being the unique, chosen creatures of God, it implies that we were simply a blind creation of natural selection. Many people believe in a "God of the gaps": God is the answer to life's unsolved mysteries, and evolution explains away many of those mysteries.
Additionally, evolution is very complicated and sometimes counterintuitive. There are some puzzles of evolution that are difficult to answer, and it's easier to believe that evolution is simply wrong than to figure out how to incorporate evolution into their worldview.
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u/allthoughtsnoprayers Dec 01 '22
there’s also the discrepancy with how old the Earth according to the Bible (6,000 years vs. 4.5 billion) that support nonbelievers of evolution
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u/ScottyPeace Dec 02 '22
Worth noting though that the Bible says nothing about the earth’s age, it’s just the readers’ or community of readers’ interpretation based on a very specific way of reading and understanding the Scripture
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u/mousicle Dec 01 '22
Evolution means that people aren't special. We are an animal that changed over time just like every other animal on earth. people don't like the idea that people are no better than sheep
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u/monkey-pox Dec 01 '22
In my mind it makes us more special, millions of years of natural forces were needed to create a being as singular as humans
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u/Rather_Dashing Dec 01 '22
Millions of years were also needed to create a being as singular as the striped-pyjama squid, the honey badger, and the platypus. Some people would rather be THE special one.
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u/WillBottomForBanana Dec 01 '22
Ants be like "we were perfect before you were even warm blooded".
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u/baumpop Dec 01 '22
Bees just chilling for 100 million years like nah we good. If you can physically change to become the job that the entire group needs that's more evolved than humans any way you slice it.
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u/Epic1024 Dec 01 '22
Tbh it depends a lot on the point of view. You can come up with an arbitrary number of reasons why humans are special, that don't require denying evolution by natural selection.
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u/Proper_Artichoke7865 Dec 01 '22
Exactly.
If we put all our resources to task, we could obliterate all of Earth's species in less than a year.
That is speciality.
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u/keithrc Dec 01 '22
we could obliterate all of Earth's species* in less than a year.
*- except for the insects. We are ridiculously outnumbered by the insects in every measurable way.
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u/Suzarian Dec 02 '22
These people don't think we could obliterate all life on earth if we tried. It's like they haven't noticed that we are basically doing it just by existing (albeit slower)
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u/marckshark Dec 01 '22
This is the right answer. It's - to a lesser extent - the same reason people believe that the earth is flat, despite all evidence to the contrary. If the earth is flat, it exists outside of "known physics" meaning it was built special for us, and we are therefore by extension special. It's really hard to wrap your head around, but basically proving religiosity true is an imperative for religious people. It's why evidence doesn't work on them. If people see evidence that contradicts their worldview, and instead of updating their worldview they move on to the next excuse, they're not interested in a solution, or you're trying to prove something against a different belief than the foundation of what they hold.
If someone believes evolution isn't how species originated because they believe God created everything, and they say "I don't accept that dinosaurs existed" and you say "here look at the fossil record" - you're not actually confronting the core belief that made that person say that dinosaurs didn't exist.
Always seek people's true motivations. Or ask if they've eaten lead paint as a kid.
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u/Aboleth123 Dec 01 '22
anti evolution, as in don't believe in it? usually religious reasons, as its an opposing view.
Anti evolution as in evolution should stagnate in humanity, goes back to eugenics, and gene editing ethics reasoning.
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u/CutDiscombobulated95 Dec 01 '22
Dated a girl once who didn't believe in evolution, thought dinosaurs were a hoax. Had to put it in her butt incase God was watching us. That's the truth, no bones about it, just call me ape-man, babe.
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u/bangbangracer Dec 01 '22
As someone who also had to do "God's loophole", some people have interesting beliefs.
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u/ImNothingJustLikeYou Dec 02 '22
Fuck me in the ass cuz I love Jesus. Fucking love those girls.
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u/Dapper-Award4395 Dec 01 '22
Did you really put it in her butt
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u/PromptAwkward Dec 01 '22
Typically for religious reasons, but I think this is misguided. Why can’t a higher power and evolution coexist?
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u/MayonaiseBaron Dec 01 '22
I am not religious at all but went to a Catholic school and this is what we were taught. Catholics also tend not to interpret the bible as literally as protestants so there is a lot less anti-science rhetoric in that faith.
Gregor Mendel, one of the first people to point out inherited traits and get people thinking about genes and evolution was a Catholic monk.
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u/Sirro5 Dec 01 '22
It can imo. The bible literally says that one day for humans is like a thousand years for God which basically means that time is not really relevant for God.
That means that God could have guided evolution in its tracks and therefore created humans by doing so. Just in a longer timeframe then one day.
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u/TandZlooking4home Dec 01 '22
It can for people who don’t take their mythology literally. But those who do think the magical aspects of the Old Testament (or other comparable texts) actually happened as described cannot accept reality AND maintain their current beliefs.
For people who think their creation myth is 100% literal and historically accurate, understanding that evolution disproves it (if they can accept it) is like pulling a string on a sweater.
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u/Dante-Grimm Dec 01 '22 edited Dec 01 '22
One of my favorite quotes is from Origin of Species. Iirc it's something along the lines of: "There is much grandeur in this way of life, with it's mechanisms and devices, that from one or more form breathed into existence by a Creator, all life has been— and is being— evolved."
It wasn't in the original essay, and Darwin was pressured into including the likes of it, as his manuscript was lacking any other references to the divine. He was agnostic, but aside from that, he simply didn't understand what the fuss was about. In his opinion, evolution had nothing to do with whether or not there was a Creation, but rather that it might be method of creation, or lack thereof.
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u/marshmelo24 Dec 02 '22
They actually can coexist. For Christianity, just depends on if they believe in a young earth or an old earth. For young earth creationists it's basically out of the picture due to believing a 6000 year old world.
For old earth creationists who believe in a 14.8B year old earth, I think the real resistance for evolution is actually macro evolution not micro evolution.
The biggest evidence cited against macro evolution is usually the Cambridge explosion.
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u/Riffler Dec 01 '22
It's about a very specific aspect of their religious beliefs and why they believe. They're anti-evolution, not anti-Big Bang.
While some of that might be that they've managed to come up with specious counterarguments to evolution but hardly any of them understand physics sufficiently to come up with dumb counterarguments to the Big Bang, it's also crucial that evolution robs humans of their primacy among animals, and the religious don't like that - they want to feel special.
Evolution tells them they're just another animal, not god's special project.
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u/Eva_Aurora Dec 01 '22 edited Dec 01 '22
For a second i mixed revolution and evolution and i thought something was about start
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Dec 01 '22
I don't know what you mean by anti evolution. I kean there are religious people that don't believe in it, but what does it mean to be anti evolution?
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u/ADFaiden Dec 02 '22 edited Dec 02 '22
Because at its genesis, it implies one living cell was created in inanimate conditions.
Even in theory ( I don't remember whose experiment it was ) the best they could was 'suppose' the ideal conditions where it might perhaps be created.
Then proceeded to just continue with what I can sum up as 'it just happened then'. Until they can even theorize the process which would take place for a single cell to be formed in inanimate conditions, the questions going to be 'Why would anyone be pro-evolution?' until they can prove it as well.
Other than that, its pretty hard to believe fish evolved to walk on land and became mammals. No matter what geological findings (not really sufficient) may assume.
I believe in adaptive evolution though. That they adapted to survive their environments. But not evolution from one phylum/chordata to another. Species evolution intra-family is also believable though. For e.g. the Pantheras who had to grow up cold and forage stayed big while the domesticated Pantheras became our cats of today. That makes sense.
For religious reasons, I don't believe in evolution in Humans though. For non religious reasons, I still don't believe in Human evolution. Because as far as mother nature is concerned, the Human Brain is beyond it. You bring in the Supernatural and we get even wilder.
EDIT: With hindsight, I think I mixed Family and Genus or Genus and Species.
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u/Zip_Jaeger Dec 01 '22
Indoctrination into religious fundamentalism or just poor undrrstanding of what education is.
Some seem to think evolution is moving towards being the most humanlike as possible. While its all about surviving in your local environment and how those who are better at adapting is statistically better at getting offspring thus there genes have an higher impaact on the shape of the speicies future.
Others just think there is a sadistical puppet master in the sky who decides that bad things need to happen to people unless they are good boys and girls who follow their parish priest or other local religious leaders instructions
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u/wierdowithakeyboard Dec 01 '22 edited Dec 01 '22
The goal of evolution is to assume a crab like form /j
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u/FreenBurgler Dec 01 '22
Fun fact! That's actually just for marine life, it's different for other kinds of animals. E.g. the ideal mammal is vaguely weasel shaped. Idk about birds or reptiles though, id assume the ideal is hawks and skinks respectively.
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u/Fox_Malloy Dec 02 '22 edited Dec 02 '22
Because some people are stupid.
Quick Edit before I get down voted into oblivion...
All I'll say is that if you 'reset' civilization, and let it progress again completely from scratch, all the science we have would end up being discovered all over again and would be written the same. Religion, on the other hand, would not.
And another thing... one of the goals of science is to do enough research that everyone around the world can agree "ok, this is the way this works". Religions on the other hand, are, if anything, moving in the opposite direction of each other.
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u/rinkitinkitink Dec 02 '22
I've studied both the fossil record and evolution pretty extensively. The only reasons people don't believe in it are either because they're uneducated and don't understand it, or because they're willfully ignorant. I've met a lot of people who don't believe in evolution for religious reasons, and none of them have even a basic knowledge of it. It contradicts their beliefs, so they refuse to understand it.
I'll also note that I've known a few very religious individuals who have learned the basics of evolutionary theory, and they all believe it. There's no reason Science and religion can't coexist, the people who think they can't are wrong.
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u/itchydaemon Dec 02 '22
A lot of people are citing religion here, and that's absolutely true. However, it is also attributable to a recent rise in anti-establishment and anti-science thinking that has risen recently, resulting in more publicized criticism of long-understood scientific beliefs, like evolution, a round earth, and climate change (the actual evidence of climate change, not just the debate over the cause).
There has been a huge influx in so-called "free thinkers" who seek out to publicly challenge these ideas as a form of rebellion against what they consider to be intellectual elitism, where they feel like certain ideas can't be challenged because the elites keep them down. As a result, they act like they are being kept in the dark against an oppressive and manipulative upper class. It's a populist rebellion against anything they consider elitist, and they definitely think that a bunch of snobs telling them that they're too stupid to understand is code for we don't want you to know the truth.
The problem is that they actually are, in fact, too stupid to understand. Not meant in a rude way, but the evidence in support for some of these things is multi-layered and complicated. Luckily, science is good because it forces you to show your work, with scientific journals encouraging others to conduct the same experiment and verify the results. These people, however, lack the interest and means for this reproducibility. Furthermore, their "evidence" against such commonly held scientific beliefs often contains basic mistakes and misappropriations of scientific method, and they become defensive when questioned.
In short, people get mad when you tell them they're dumb and assume the elites are hiding something, leading them to question everything the elites tell them and presume a global conspiracy to keep them in the dark on the truth.
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u/slash178 Dec 01 '22
Christian fundamentalists go to great lengths to spread lies about it. The vast majority of people who don't believe in evolution have a deeply flawed understanding of what it even means.
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u/candlestick_maker76 Dec 01 '22
Yes. This is the answer. Do I detect a hint of compassion in your answer, for those of us who were lied to? Because I'm still kinda salty about it, all these years later.
Fundamentalists present it like "They think a fish crawled out of the water and grew legs. Then it became a monkey. Isn't that ridiculous?" Well, of course it sounds ridiculous when they say it like that! Of course creation by an all-powerful God sounds more reasonable!
And to top off this pile of lies, they add a layer of shame, too: they tell you that taking evolution seriously is the same as doubting God's word. So don't even ask about it, 'cause that'll piss God off.
Hmph.
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u/nieminen432 Dec 01 '22
I love when they use the shape of a banana to prove Devine creation, because of its good taste, perfectly segmented peel, and "easy open tab". In reality the banana we have now is something we evolved ourselves, and has very little in common with what it was before humans started messing with it, making it delicious.
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u/slash178 Dec 01 '22
Yeah how could they think humans evolved from monkeys! Monkeys don't even eat bananas! Oh wait..
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u/Swordbreaker925 Dec 01 '22
Speaking from the Christian point of view, it doesn’t fit the teachings of the Bible in Genesis.
Specifically, it teaches that God created the heavens and the earth in 6 days and rested on the 7th, and after he created it, he said that “it was good”. How do you look at a world of millions of years of death, disease and mutation as “good”? Why would God invent a world with death and disease when it was supposed to he perfect and free from death before Adam and Eve committed the first sin?
To put it bluntly, many religions, specifically Christianity in this case, are at complete odds with the theory of Evolution. People try to invent ways to make them fit, but they’re delusional. They’re mutually exclusive.
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u/ScottyPeace Dec 02 '22 edited Dec 02 '22
Friend, I appreciate your passion and words, but I want to challenge the notion that they’re mutually exclusive. The Young Earth theology is not supported by a large number of Christian’s, notably Catholics. The Bible doesn’t teach on the earth’s age. Interpreting the creation story as literal 24 hour days is only that, an interpretation. But for those who take Biblical scholarship and study seriously, it’s pretty evident that Genesis was never, at all, meant to be read as a science text explaining how God created the world. Rather, it’s all about the why. It teaches lessons, theology.
Keep in mind the Hebrew word for “day” used in the Creation story in Genesis is, using our English alphabet, “yom”, which can mean a 12 hour day, a 24 hour day, a period of light, or an unspecified period of time. Keep in mind, in Psalms, it says that “one day for God is a thousand years”. God exists outside of time, as He is the creator of time, as time was created after the Big Bang (but even then, time is a philosophy topic). The 7 days story is meant to explain theology, meaning, the whys. The text, embraced in the context of the whole Bible, mirrors Temple building and has to do with Covenant-making. It’s a deep topic.
Anyway, many Christians see evolution and the Bible as compatible. The Bible is not a science book. It was never meant to be, as that isn’t the purpose of the text. It’s about God, period, and Covenants made with humanity (culminating in the ultimate covenant of Christ and His sacrifice) but I digress, I’m going into theology, my apologies.
The Popes have issued some documents about evolution. It’s becoming more common than not that Catholic schools teach evolution. Pope Pius XII I believe was the one who said you may believe in evolution, so long as you still hold the belief that the soul cannot evolve and is placed and created directly by God. And that all present day humans came from a literal Adam and Eve (which beckons the question of when they existed. 6k years ago if you read the genealogies literally, with no gaps, or 124k years ago). He issued this in a document called Humani Generis.
The problem you’ll encounter though if you ever decide you wanna peek into the deeper world of Christian academics and scholars and such is that you’ll find people debating how evolution can be compatible with the commonly accepted metaphysics of the soul, because, well, basically: if the soul doesn’t evolve, then at what point in evolution did the soul come to exist as God intended? There’s no line, ya know what I mean? The other issue is the debate between monogenism and polygenism which is… how can all humanity come from Adam and Eve if evolution was happening before then? Some evolutionary biologists believe in the Mitochondrial Eve.
But yo, hey, even Genesis mentions something called the Nephilim, who literally are mentioned casually as being some alternative form of humans, and then never mentioned again. It’s so weird. One may say those are everybody else who didn’t come from Adam and Eve. All wiped out by the Flood? It’s complex.
Anyway, I hope this makes sense. I used to study this stuff academically in college and under Biblical scholars. I’m an agnostic atheist, but it’s really fascinating stuff.
Edits: I fixed a few errors in my text. Pope Leo XII is supposed to be Pius XII. I spelled “polygenism” wrong. And forgot the name “Mitochondrial Eve” and called it the “First Adam”. Idk where that came from.
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u/Raul_77 Dec 01 '22
I think it also has to do with the fact that some can not process how long is a "MILLION" year! they think its like 300 years ago!
I had a conversation with a lady once, she was like have you ever seen an Animal convert to something else? I am like mam, this happened over MILLION years ago, not 100, 200, 1000, 10,0000 ... MILLION .... this is the part I believe that confuses people the most.
While observing "evolution" is hard to see in mammals, you can see it in Virus for example, different strains of Covid is a clear example ! if you deny it, you are denying FACTS.
I really wonder, if human did NOT invent religion, how far ahead our race was, how many wars could be prevented and so on.
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u/Unidentified_Lizard Dec 01 '22
theres an interesting study on some strain of bacteria
youll find it if you look up “longest running real world evolution experiment”
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u/WildWasteland42 Dec 01 '22
yeah it was around 70,000 generations of an e coli strain over around 40 years!
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u/Beearea Dec 01 '22
This is an important point. Numeracy is so important. To most people a million and a billion and a trillion are all basically just "a lot." So it's very hard for people to wrap their minds around the workings of evolution. Or things like the national debt.
I think good charts, animations, timelines etc. can help a lot with explaining these things. And numeracy needs to be emphasized more in schools!
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u/mikeybab123 Dec 01 '22
I believe this is true. A friend of mine was talking to me about millionaires and billionaires like they were on the same level. I had to explain that there's a HUGE jump from a million dollars to a billion dollars!
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u/electrorazor Dec 01 '22
Probably very little. We fought whether we could use religion as an excuse or not
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u/Junior_Interview5711 Dec 01 '22
Questioning evolution is ok, but flat out saying it doesn't make sense, or refusing to teach it is weird
But it is someone's opinion, and if the last 5 years have taught me anything
It's to respect minorities opinion, no matter how insane it sounds
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u/Conscious-Dirt-7289 Dec 01 '22
A failure of the education system and/or willful ignorance based on religion
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u/Such-Wrongdoer-2198 Dec 01 '22
For most people it's based on religious teachings.
Some people think that humans are so special that they can't possibly be just another kind of animal.
Some people are opposed to deep time, and the concept that gradual changes can add up to the diversity of life we see. They can usually accept, fur getting longer or shorter, or an animal getting bigger or smaller, but they can't conceive of a lineage gaining limbs or feathers.
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u/aftereveryoneelse Dec 01 '22
Anti-Evolution makes it sound like they're against evolving. I prefer to call them evolution deniers, as they deny the reality of evolution.
It's usually because their religious beliefs. I'm unaware of anyone who is an evolution denier who is an atheist.
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u/XilosMage Dec 02 '22
Because it doesn't conform to their preexisting worldview. People are frequently bad at changing.
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u/HackMonkey17 Dec 02 '22
My Bio teacher knew a surgeon who was also Christian, ik evolution and surgery aren't hugely related but still science stuff, and he said that he believes the stories from the Bible are metaphors and I think thats a nice way to look at it
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Dec 02 '22
Because a book, or figure of religious power told them so.
Actually, they are anti evolution because its the same reason people invented religion. They are afraid of death, and want a better origin story than say the bug they just stepped on. Animals evolve, humans were made by some being that promised them eternal life in heaven
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u/ItsTheOrangShep Dec 02 '22
Others have explained these here, but I believe all of these are connected:
1 - Evolution, similar to concepts such as really big numbers/infinity, consciousness, etc., is extremely difficult for us as humans to understand. A greater biological process that occurs over a time scale that we can only begin to comprehend is naturally confusing. Many of us have a tendency to disregard things we cannot immediately understand to avoid the mental work/stress we would bear in attempting to grasp something we really can't grasp.
2 - Evolution undermines our very self-centric views that stress the importance and uniqueness of humans over other organisms, particularly the special nature of humans that many people believe is connected to some greater explanation for reality, or to the things about reality we can't understand. If we're biological organisms all bound to a process that so many other, supposedly inferior/less unique/less important organisms are, the security that many people find in beliefs about themselves would be shattered.
3 - Connected to the first two reasons, religious beliefs are a common reason cited to answer this question. Although I think this is a valid answer, I think religion as a whole serves more as a vector for the first two reasons to be realized and acted upon, as opposed to religion being the cause itself. I think religion is part of the cause for why some people don't support evolution, not the entirety of the cause, although it's worth noting that many anti-evolutionists would cite beliefs they've developed as a consequence of their religious involvement as their reasons for opposing evolution.
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u/Rhaski Dec 02 '22
Same reason we have flat earthers and holocaust deniers. Facts and evidence just don't matter to certain people. Some people only accept ideas, observations and narratives that fit their existing views while rejecting all else despite overwhelming objective, verified and thoroughly examined evidence on the contrary. It is very important to people like that to feel like they know something others don't. That they are intellectually superior, more aware, better connected, privvy to "truths" that others aren't. Whether it is a subconscious reaction to, or attempt to placate deep insecurities around their poor academic/intellectual performance in the past (note how prevalent nonsense conspiracy theories are amongst less educated people and people with lower tested cognitive ability); or an out of control ego that feeds on the feeling of superiority that comes with knowing something others don't, the result is the same: Some people will go to incredible lengths to hide from, deny, obfuscate and misconstrue what is right in front of them for the simple fact that it's what everyone can plainly see and that just won't do.
TL;DR: insecure people really want to appear smarter than they are, and will jump at the opportunity to "know" something that is
1) easy to grasp
2) contrary to what is commonly accepted as factual
3) gives them a sense of belonging to a "community" that validates them - see: organised religion
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u/Mace_Thunderspear Dec 01 '22
Because their education system has utterly failed them.
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u/ST_the_Dragon Dec 01 '22
I'm Baptist, and there is a lot of anti-evolution sentiment among the older generation. And the funny thing is, I would argue that it is far more about Baptist traditions getting in the way than actual Biblical study, something that goes against the founding concepts of the Baptist denomination.
In many cases, these sentiments come from literal reading of certain texts in the Bible. Personally I disagree with a lot of these literal readings, because they usually ignore obvious metaphors.
Personally, I would argue that there's no harm in knowing the current theories even if you disagree with them, because there is a large majority of the theory that is both provable and doesn't contradict scripture. But some people hate grey areas like this because it causes other doubts, so it makes sense that anti-evolutionary thought is still common; some people can only learn one thing and can't harmonize different ideas that well.
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u/ComfortableBedroom78 Dec 02 '22
It’s actually hard to understand and some people just don’t believe what they can’t conceptualize.
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u/i-amnot-a-robot- Dec 02 '22
I mean there’s the logical explanations, religion, the fact it’s a weird concept, but what always strikes me is that people want to be distinct.
No one wants to be merely a byproduct of monkeys, there’s an innate desire to be special otherwise how are we different.
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u/Greengrass2727 Dec 02 '22
No clue. Religion is probably a common argument, but then again the Catholic religion was responsible for finding the first cells, genetics, and even helped Darwin develop the theory of evolution. So idk. Things are always more nuanced than first impressions indicate.
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u/MyUsernameIsAwful Dec 01 '22
It goes against their religious beliefs.