{"id":34240,"date":"2016-04-03T20:37:46","date_gmt":"2016-04-04T00:37:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/?p=34240"},"modified":"2016-07-22T11:07:28","modified_gmt":"2016-07-22T15:07:28","slug":"its-time-to-think-about-whether-evolution-really-happened","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2016\/04\/its-time-to-think-about-whether-evolution-really-happened.html","title":{"rendered":"It&#8217;s Time to Think about whether Evolution Really Happened"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><blockquote><p>I\u2019m always surprised\u00a0at how much rancor is directed toward \u201ccreationists\u201d\u2014those who deny that evolution, whether on the macro or micro level, is the best explanation for the diversity of life on our planet. I\u2019m also surprised\u00a0at how certain\u00a0many biologists are that evolution occurred\u00a0(Jerry Coyne, to give a prominent example).<\/p>\n<p>Yet although\u00a0I am the first to admit that I have no formal training in science, I think I\u2019ve read enough to know that there is\u00a0no credible evidence for the reality of evolution, and that arguments can be made that evolution is\u00a0a purely mythological notion, derived from earlier ideologies, which\u00a0gradually attained \u201cfacthood.\u201d As a historian, I\u2019ll say\u00a0that I don\u2019t regard the evidence that evolution occurred\u00a0as particularly strong\u2014certainly not strong enough to draw nearly all scientists\u00a0to that view. It\u2019s almost as if rejecting evolution\u00a0brands you as an overly strident religious person, one lacking \u201crespect\u201d for science. There\u2019s an onus against creationism\u00a0that can\u2019t be explained by the strength of evidence against that view.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I am pretty sure that, if the above had been posted on a blog anywhere, Jerry Coyne would be the first to recognize that it is nonsense. And yet <a href=\"https:\/\/whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com\/2016\/04\/03\/its-time-to-think-about-whether-jesus-really-existed\/\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Coyne himself<\/a> has, sadly and ironically, written much the same thing as I posted above, yet about the historical Jesus. <a href=\"https:\/\/whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com\/2016\/04\/03\/its-time-to-think-about-whether-jesus-really-existed\/\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Click through to read it<\/a>, and then please come back and help me understand how someone who is a champion of scholarship in one domain, can be a champion of fringe pseudoscholarship in another.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019m always surprised\u00a0at how much rancor is directed toward \u201ccreationists\u201d\u2014those who deny that evolution, whether on the macro or micro level, is the best explanation for the diversity of life on our planet. I\u2019m also surprised\u00a0at how certain\u00a0many biologists are that evolution occurred\u00a0(Jerry Coyne, to give a prominent example). Yet although\u00a0I am the first to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":37311,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[137,64],"tags":[3217,4646,4656,5662,5677,7853,9719],"class_list":["post-34240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-evolution-science","category-mythicism","tag-evolution-science","tag-historical","tag-historicity","tag-jerry-coyne","tag-jesus","tag-mythicism","tag-pseudoscholarship"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>It&#039;s Time to Think about whether Evolution Really Happened<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I\u2019m always surprised\u00a0at how much rancor is directed toward \u201ccreationists\u201d\u2014those who deny that evolution, whether on the macro or micro level, is the best\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2016\/04\/its-time-to-think-about-whether-evolution-really-happened.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"It&#039;s Time to Think about whether Evolution Really Happened\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I\u2019m always surprised\u00a0at how much rancor is directed toward \u201ccreationists\u201d\u2014those who deny that evolution, whether on the macro or micro level, is the best\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2016\/04\/its-time-to-think-about-whether-evolution-really-happened.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Religion Prof: The Blog of James F. 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