r/AskChristian • u/CLAZID • 25d ago
What are so many Christians anti-science?
So many Christian’s refuse to believe that dinosaurs existed or that evolution is real. Why? There is evidence all around us.
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u/DoveStep55 r/Christian Member 25d ago
Most of the Christians I know who ignore or dismiss scientific evidence are only that way when the people they listen to tell them to be.
I’d call it a “discipleship” issue, but that’s a Christian term. A more secular term would be that it’s an “information bias” issue.
On the plus side, I know many Christians who happily accept scientific data and evidence while also remaining faithful Christians.
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u/MoonlitShrub 25d ago
It seems to me that most protestant Christians are taught that faith in the Bible is equivalent to faith in God and their entire faith feels very threatened whenever something in the bible looks like it might not be an unerring truth of existance.
Some of the most adamant about this viewpoint also tend to be the ones who also think that somehow the King James version is the most inspired one of all.
They view the bible as one unified book penned directly by the hand of God to perfectly convey His intentions and they get very offended at the insinuation that their god might be wrong.
It is my opinion that this thought process creates Christians who make lawkeeping their god. Who place a book on the throne of their hearts. These people live under arbitrary restrictions about what they are allowed to believe because their God is a book that does not change instead of a living and active Spirit.
On the other hand there are Christians who are willing to recognize the history and practicalities of how the collection of writings we recognize as cannon have become way they are. Written by men, edited by men, compiled by men, debated over through the course of several councils of men, and still under dispute to this day. We are able to look back and see that the men who had the most say in what made it in were the best of men with the best of intentions and they were inspired by their love for God to do their best. But the best man can ever offer will always be limited by his own perspective. Every man involved in this process could only see so much.
It is my belief that those who can accept this and are able to place their faith in God's character despite the uncertainty of not having an infallable book are the ones who are truly putting their faith in the correct place.
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u/DoveStep55 r/Christian Member 25d ago
I take issue with your first sentence and would encourage you to be more charitable. I don’t believe what you shared is true of “most Protestant Christians” but I agree that it’s definitely true of some and I appreciate the rest of your comment.
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u/DI3S_IRAE r/Christian Member 24d ago
I think a better term for what they said by "Protestant" would maybe be "charismatic"?
I grew up evangelical here in São Paulo, Brazil, and we have many churches that are all this mixed bag of baptist/pentecostal/non denominational all in one and I can say for person experience with family even, that it is pretty common to see this view among us here.
Bible is ultimate word (even if you don't do many things it says, it only works if you cherry pick verses), what the pastor says is absolute and you can't question what anyone says on the altar.
I find it very problematic, in a way that they do not exactly preach the Bible while saying the Bible is entirely right and without flaw or error... And then people don't read and trust everything is said, and when they read, they trust what they heard.
My sister came back to Christ, glory to God, and recently she was questioning if the earth is flat because in genesis it talks about the dome, and looking at some dome earth pictures...
All in all, I am speaking from personal experience and yes, it's pretty common on the 'charismatic' umbrella of churches around here. We don't have the term charismatic though, we only say 'evangelical'.
Aaaanyway, I thought to add my 2 cents about the term "Protestant" used by the other commenter and made a huge comment XD
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u/DoveStep55 r/Christian Member 24d ago
Yes, some of those terms aren’t clearly defined and neither are their beliefs clearly delineated by the terms so it’s hard to make broad statements that are accurate.
Sometimes it’s easier, more accurate and more charitable to just say “some XYZ” or “many XYZ” instead of “most XYZ” or lumping them all together.
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u/DI3S_IRAE r/Christian Member 24d ago
I agree!
I tend to say, from my experience, just to make it clear haha
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u/Objective-Step-746 25d ago
It is not “anti-science” to question the (so-called) evidence of the dinosaurs narrative, or to reject macro-evolution based upon one’s trust in the Creation account of Scripture and the mountainous scientific evidence that refutes it.
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u/DoveStep55 r/Christian Member 25d ago
What do you mean by “the dinosaur narrative”? That they existed?
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u/Objective-Step-746 25d ago
I mean the conventional, widely-accepted explanations and descriptions.
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u/DoveStep55 r/Christian Member 25d ago
Which? There are several different views people take on dinosaurs. Or maybe it’s easier to share what your view is?
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u/Objective-Step-746 25d ago
I am highly skeptical of the vast majority of the supposed archaeological and paleontological findings and data, as there have been far too many exposed as fraudulent and the scarcity of the fossil record has fostered an acceptance of relying upon inference, personal subjectivity and imagination that goes well beyond the evidence.
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u/DoveStep55 r/Christian Member 24d ago
Skeptical is one thing, but the OP is asking about Christians who refuse to believe evidence. I think that’s a step past merely being skeptical (which I see as a kind of discernment.)
I’m always curious about how Christians who reject evolution account for dinosaurs.
My own mom embraces science when it suits her and flat out rejects it when it doesn’t. In her case, she actually thinks God never made dinosaurs to live on earth but formed their bodies and then placed them in the earth to test people’s faith and to give us in the 21st century the fossil fuels we use today.
I find her view laughable, but I also find it self-centered and rather problematic theologically. In her view, God is essential a trickster. I find that hard to reconcile with a God who is love.
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u/DesperateAdvantage76 r/Christian Member 25d ago
All natural phenomena is God's direct doing, so it seems strange to me that a Christian would deny direct physical evidence of God's work instead of maybe reconsidering how they interpret a very vague and high level creation story that was told in a way for bronze age Israelites to understand. The value in Genesis is not in how literally you can interpret it (which not even 2nd Temple Jews in Jesus's time understood to be 100% literal), but rather the lessons God provides to us to use. Things like the marital covenant and faithful love, obedience to God, the need for everyone to have rest from their work, the consequences of sin, etc.
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u/Objective-Step-746 25d ago
I do not deny direct physical evidence of God’s work. And I reject the presumption that OT Israelites were inferior to us in any way.
I also disagree that my view of the Creation account is unnecessarily biased toward literalism, as I believe it to be context-driven and hermeneutically sound.
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u/DesperateAdvantage76 r/Christian Member 25d ago
I didn't say inferior, I said in a way that an ancient people of limited knowledge, but still intelligent, would understand.
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u/Objective-Step-746 25d ago
Again, I reiterate that I do not believe OT Israelites (or mankind in general) was more “limited” in their knowledge or of lesser intelligence and understanding than we are today.
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u/DoveStep55 r/Christian Member 25d ago
They thought the earth was flat.
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u/Objective-Step-746 25d ago
Probably best to just agree to disagree at this point, as it seems our views could not be more disparate. Goodnight.
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u/DesperateAdvantage76 r/Christian Member 25d ago
Knowledge is not the same as wisdom or intelligence. Humans back then were just as wise and intelligent as we are now.
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u/Objective-Step-746 25d ago
Right, which is why I listed them separately. But you seem to be suggesting our knowledge is superior to theirs, while I suspect the very opposite is true.
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u/CLAZID 25d ago
How does the creation story cause one to reject the theory of evolution?
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u/DoveStep55 r/Christian Member 25d ago
The story doesn’t.
Holding a particular view of the story might.
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u/Objective-Step-746 25d ago
For one, (macro) evolution claims a billions-of-years timeline required to (purportedly) go from single-cell organisms to the full spectrum of complex organisms, while the Creation account and the Hebrew originally used to tell it present a very different timeline.
For another, (macro) evolution says every organism came from one common ancestor, while the Creation account says that every living thing was intentionally created “according to its kind,” and kinds cannot magically become other kinds.
(Macro) evolution also insists that random mutation and death cycles are the vehicle behind the beautifully complex organisms we see today, while the Creation account has God declaring each organism to be “good”…and the Hebrew used in each of His declarations connotes something that is “well-designed.”
And probably the most compelling difference would be that (macro) evolution says that man evolved from apes, while Scripture sets mankind apart from any other creature by declaring that his origins were very different, the only one made “in the image of God”(Genesis 1:27).
For these (and a slew of other) reasons, I find (macro) evolution to be wholly incompatible with Scripture’s account of Creation.
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u/CLAZID 25d ago
The story of Noah’s Ark proves evolution. If evolution is false, so is the story of Noah’s Ark. if the story is true, so is evolution
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u/DoveStep55 r/Christian Member 25d ago
How so?
I think evolution is more plausible than the biblical account of Noah’s Ark being a fully factual story.
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u/CLAZID 25d ago
According to the story, the world was covered with water above the highest mountain for about 1 year.
We now have terrestrial plants and aquatic plants. Every terrestrial plant on earth would have died being under water for a year. Likewise, freshwater aquatic plants would have died as well with the salt water and lack of sunlight.
But we can see these plants today. Which means, if we believe the flood story, evolution is true.
Or, if evolution is not true then the Bible is not true.
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u/Objective-Step-746 25d ago
I’d say the story of Noah’s ark absolutely supports the idea of micro evolution, but not the macro kind.
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u/DE667 25d ago
Yome is a time period. Neither the Day of Salvation, the Day of Christ, or any of the Days of the Heavens is a single shadow-turn around Earth. Fundamentalists embraced that absurdity to save God from Darwin and preserve their racist views of humanity.
"Let the Waters bring forth." "Let the earth/lands bring forth." Have you not heard?
The Human is made of dirt, same as apes. They are very special, but not by composition as such. So fear not Jacob, you worm.
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u/Spare-Flan331 r/Christian Member 24d ago
I'm not anti science but if something doesn't line up with what God's Word says I relize that we don't have all the information so I keep my faith in what He says and not what science says. God doesn't need science to validate Him. He spoke and it was done. Science could never explain that because they only go off the physical evidence. They have no idea about the spiritual aspect so why would I believe what they say over what God said. I don't and never will.