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I am one of Jehovah's Witnesses - Please read on before you just dismiss what I have experienced. Going door to door I have meet plenty of people who say "I do

I am one of Jehovah's Witnesses - Please read on before you just dismiss what I have experienced. Going door to door I have meet plenty of people who say "I don't believe in God, we got here thru evolution!". So I ask the simple question which theory of evolution do they think is probably has the right idea. Too often I hear, "Survival of the strongest." or "What? There is more than one theory about how evolution works?". What is clear to me is that to these people evolution is a BELIEF and not something they thought of, it is as much a religion to them as mine is to me. Worse, I can study and agree or disagree with things I was taught, too often people are just blindly accepting because they do not want to put any efforts in.

PartiallyTyped 5y ago
A belief does not constitute a religion, people have all sorts of irrational beliefs, but that doesn't make them religion.
BrightGlow 5y ago
I share your frustration, the people who you were talking to likely also had a misconception of what evolution and scientific theories in general are, or were stating it poorly. It's not accurate to describe it as a "belief" it's more like "best current guess that we have but we'll change our mind if a new guess comes up that is better able to explain things".
ceilingcorner 5y ago
Disappointed that this is downvoted. You are absolutely right: most people don’t actually investigate the origins of their beliefs and just adopt whatever their social tribe believes. The average urbanite atheist knows as much about evolution as the average rural creationist. It is almost entirely a social phenomenon, not an epistemological one.
- AussieWog93 5y ago
  Is this an American thing? I remember being taught the basics of evolution in year 8 or 9 science class in a way that was impossible to misunderstand ("children resemble their parents" + "some parents more likely to survive" => small changes in distribution of traits among each child generation => specialisation to local environment over many generations). I do have a Christian friend who believes that it was God who set the wheels of evolution in motion, but there seems to be little misunderstanding where I am (Melbourne, AU) about what Darwinism is or denial that it's a strong force at play.
  - ceilingcorner 5y ago
    Yes, evolution is taught in schools. But that doesn’t mean the average person can explain how evolutionary theory works beyond a few sentences, in the same way that the average person cannot tell you more than 2 or 3 of the amendments to the Constitution.
- smackeyacky 5y ago
  There is no basis for this assertion. Furthermore, your "average urbanite atheist" probably knows more than you think: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2010/09/28/130191248/atheists-and-agnostics-know-more-about-bible-than-religious https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2010/09/28/130191248...
  - tapas73 5y ago
    Linked article conveniently forgot to mention the relevant footnote from original article: > This may seem paradoxical, since atheists and agnostics have very low levels of religious commitment and yet score very well on the survey questions. However, atheists and agnostics account for a relatively small share of the total number of people with low levels of religious commitment; 4% of Americans describe themselves as atheists or agnostics, while fully 35% have low religious commitment. Atheists and agnostics answer an average of 20.9 questions correctly, compared with an average of 15.4 correct answers among people with low religious commitment who do not describe themselves as atheists or agnostics. Btw survey questions them selfs are a bit nitpicky.. (who cares if jesus realy changed water into wine or if that was just symbolic) Original article: https://www.pewforum.org/2010/09/28/u-s-religious-knowledge-survey/ https://www.pewforum.org/2010/09/28/u-s-religious-knowledge-...
    - smackeyacky 5y ago
      Religious people seem to care quite a bit about whether the bible is literally true. Further to that, some religions also heavily use traditions that don't appear in the bible at all. Catholics, for example, are meant to believe that the sacrament literally turns water and wine into the flesh of Christ. As in, it's actual flesh and blood (Transubstantiation). So either Jesus was a walking breadstick or Catholicism as it is currently practised is obviously wrong. There are so many varieties of Christianity based on "those other christians are definitely wrong" that I guarantee you somebody cares about those distinctions.
lalaland1125 5y ago
The main difference is that for evolution most people can point to (or try to point to) a legitimate source of authority for why they believe evolution is true. Whereas for religion, there is nothing to point to other than blind faith.
- gruez 5y ago
  So blindly believing in something is fine unless you're right in the end?
  - smohare 5y ago
    There’s a big difference between trust in a process that has so consistently yielded results vs something like faith or political adherence. It’s about the foundations upon which those results lie more so than the belief themselves, and also an amenability to update beliefs. If humanity really gets something wrong about how the natural world operates it will usually be revealed. The trust ergo is largely warranted, even if the human execution of said process is flawed. The canard that every individual has to maximally recapitulate the entirety of hundreds of years of human discovery is just absurd. Trust exists at all levels of human intellectual discourse.
- overrun11 5y ago
  Who decides legitimacy and why is a university a more legitimate source of knowledge than a church?
  - raspasov 5y ago
    Perhaps because at a university you can learn skills that you can utilize to create things and outcomes with relatively more predictable results. If you need a complex surgery, would you like to go to a doctor or a priest?
  - jhgb 5y ago
    > why is a university a more legitimate source of knowledge than a church Because knowledge has to be justified in order to be knowledge. Universities produce justifications (in form of repeatable experiments, studies, proofs, etc.), churches don't.
rayiner 5y ago
You see this with COVID too. Many people are only accidentally on the right side with respect to “the science.”
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
chrischen 5y ago
People believe in quantum mechanics not because they personally understand it, but because they believe/trust in the experts. How do the experts demonstrate their authority? ...by making electronics that do magic. The difference between a belief of religious person and say a scientist is that the former asks you to trust them on blind faith while the latter asks you to trust them by proving they have more control over something than you do.
smackeyacky 5y ago
100% no. Faith in religion is a completely different thing to believing the scientific method works. Science is self correcting. Religious faith is, by definition, the surrendering of any and every impulse to question the faith to a higher earthly authority. Those earthly authorities are notoriously unreliable (c.f. history of the Jehovah's Witness "end of the world" scenarios). I know this is hard for religious people to understand, but if you have no belief in religious deities you can't just magic it up out of nowhere. There are people like me who simply can't believe in gods. We just aren't wired that way. I've had well meaning religious folk explain to me that I have apparently "hardened my heart" against (their) god and I need to stop doing that and he will sort it out but it simply isn't true This certainly hasn't stopped people like me being involved in religions but it makes it a bit...difficult. This attitude that somehow the atheists in the community "do not want to put any efforts in" is wrong, plain and simple. There is no effort we can put in.
- lisper 5y ago
  > There is no effort we can put in. Well, that's not quite true. I'm an atheist, and I run a weekly Bible study (which has lately morphed into more of a general theological/philosophical study and discussion group) [1]. Religious traditions are worth studying even if you don't believe in them, if for no other reason, than as a way of better understanding the thought processes of people who do believe in them. [1] https://www.meetup.com/Bible-Study-for-Skeptics-Agnostics-and-Apologists/ https://www.meetup.com/Bible-Study-for-Skeptics-Agnostics-an...
  - smackeyacky 5y ago
    That's not what I meant - I meant that there is no effort that I can put in that would turn me into a deist.
    - lisper 5y ago
      How do you know? Maybe if you studied the Bible you'd end up believing in it. :-) It turns out that you actually can induce subjective experiences in yourself that I believe are similar to what religious people describe as "feeling the presence of God". It's an interesting and worthwhile exercise (though not what we do in my study group, that's a more academic format). But it's worth doing at least once in your life. It actually feels pretty good, not unlike taking certain psychoactive drugs.
raspasov 5y ago
I ask a simple question: why do blood transfusions work?
gaganyaan 5y ago
That seems like a trivial "gotcha" question. I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "which" theory. Do you mean Lamarckism vs Darwinism? The correct answer is that Lamarckism is wrong. Do you mean gradual change vs punctuated equilibrium or similar? That's not a "which theory of evolution", which is why people are confused by your question. It really comes across as a classic "confuse people with trick questions and then try to inject religion into them while they're distracted" tactic. I'm glad I'm done with that sort of thing. Also, belief in evolution is great, faith in evolution is not. Belief != faith, and religious people need to stop conflating them. If someone came up with an alternate theory for how we got here that explained all of the evidence better, I'd have no trouble believing it, because I don't have "faith in evolution" or any such thing.
dqv 5y ago
> too often people are just blindly accepting because they do not want to put any efforts in. Sure but nonbelievers experience the same thing with believers. I was asking a Christian about his interpretation of the two creation stories in Genesis. He didn't even know there were two. Most Christians don't. And they always shut down when I want to discuss in detail the possibility of mistranslation changing their understanding of God. They seem to not understand that it's possible to lose meaning or change meaning when translating from one language to another. Even if you try hard not to. I am totally respectful in these interactions. I'm not ambushing them with questions... I just genuinely want to learn something from someone who apparently should have deep and intimate knowledge of Christianity... and it's always disappointing.
xabotage 5y ago
If the people who believed in evolution more out of faith than true understanding actually did the legwork to remove their biases and objectively study/experiment on the subject, they would come to find that evolution is real. And if Jehovah's Witnesses actually did the legwork to remove their biases and objectively study/experiment on their religion, most of them would run as far away as they could. Some things just have to be taken on faith because life is too short to get a PhD in every subject, but I sure hope the world continues to move towards evidence-based rather than magic-based foundations of default belief.
hota_mazi 5y ago
Just because you met a few people with a fragile grasp of complex scientific topics doesn't mean the science is wrong. Evolution is a fact. It has been demonstrated over and over again, is observable, and has predicative powers. Religion has none of these things, and your particular religion is well known for being absolutely traumatic for people who follow it and even more so for people who leave it.
jhgb 5y ago
> What is clear to me is that to these people evolution is a BELIEF and not something they thought of Everything you consider to be true is a belief. That's the very definition of a belief: beliefs are the things you consider to be true. So you saying that this is a belief to them carries little information.
dang 5y ago
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28656023 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28656023.

PartiallyTyped 5y ago

A belief does not constitute a religion, people have all sorts of irrational beliefs, but that doesn't make them religion.

BrightGlow 5y ago

I share your frustration, the people who you were talking to likely also had a misconception of what evolution and scientific theories in general are, or were stating it poorly. It's not accurate to describe it as a "belief" it's more like "best current guess that we have but we'll change our mind if a new guess comes up that is better able to explain things".

ceilingcorner 5y ago

Disappointed that this is downvoted. You are absolutely right: most people don’t actually investigate the origins of their beliefs and just adopt whatever their social tribe believes. The average urbanite atheist knows as much about evolution as the average rural creationist. It is almost entirely a social phenomenon, not an epistemological one.

AussieWog93 5y ago
Is this an American thing? I remember being taught the basics of evolution in year 8 or 9 science class in a way that was impossible to misunderstand ("children resemble their parents" + "some parents more likely to survive" => small changes in distribution of traits among each child generation => specialisation to local environment over many generations). I do have a Christian friend who believes that it was God who set the wheels of evolution in motion, but there seems to be little misunderstanding where I am (Melbourne, AU) about what Darwinism is or denial that it's a strong force at play.
- ceilingcorner 5y ago
  Yes, evolution is taught in schools. But that doesn’t mean the average person can explain how evolutionary theory works beyond a few sentences, in the same way that the average person cannot tell you more than 2 or 3 of the amendments to the Constitution.
smackeyacky 5y ago
There is no basis for this assertion. Furthermore, your "average urbanite atheist" probably knows more than you think: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2010/09/28/130191248/atheists-and-agnostics-know-more-about-bible-than-religious https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2010/09/28/130191248...
- tapas73 5y ago
  Linked article conveniently forgot to mention the relevant footnote from original article: > This may seem paradoxical, since atheists and agnostics have very low levels of religious commitment and yet score very well on the survey questions. However, atheists and agnostics account for a relatively small share of the total number of people with low levels of religious commitment; 4% of Americans describe themselves as atheists or agnostics, while fully 35% have low religious commitment. Atheists and agnostics answer an average of 20.9 questions correctly, compared with an average of 15.4 correct answers among people with low religious commitment who do not describe themselves as atheists or agnostics. Btw survey questions them selfs are a bit nitpicky.. (who cares if jesus realy changed water into wine or if that was just symbolic) Original article: https://www.pewforum.org/2010/09/28/u-s-religious-knowledge-survey/ https://www.pewforum.org/2010/09/28/u-s-religious-knowledge-...
  - smackeyacky 5y ago
    Religious people seem to care quite a bit about whether the bible is literally true. Further to that, some religions also heavily use traditions that don't appear in the bible at all. Catholics, for example, are meant to believe that the sacrament literally turns water and wine into the flesh of Christ. As in, it's actual flesh and blood (Transubstantiation). So either Jesus was a walking breadstick or Catholicism as it is currently practised is obviously wrong. There are so many varieties of Christianity based on "those other christians are definitely wrong" that I guarantee you somebody cares about those distinctions.

lalaland1125 5y ago

The main difference is that for evolution most people can point to (or try to point to) a legitimate source of authority for why they believe evolution is true. Whereas for religion, there is nothing to point to other than blind faith.

gruez 5y ago
So blindly believing in something is fine unless you're right in the end?
- smohare 5y ago
  There’s a big difference between trust in a process that has so consistently yielded results vs something like faith or political adherence. It’s about the foundations upon which those results lie more so than the belief themselves, and also an amenability to update beliefs. If humanity really gets something wrong about how the natural world operates it will usually be revealed. The trust ergo is largely warranted, even if the human execution of said process is flawed. The canard that every individual has to maximally recapitulate the entirety of hundreds of years of human discovery is just absurd. Trust exists at all levels of human intellectual discourse.
overrun11 5y ago
Who decides legitimacy and why is a university a more legitimate source of knowledge than a church?
- raspasov 5y ago
  Perhaps because at a university you can learn skills that you can utilize to create things and outcomes with relatively more predictable results. If you need a complex surgery, would you like to go to a doctor or a priest?
- jhgb 5y ago
  > why is a university a more legitimate source of knowledge than a church Because knowledge has to be justified in order to be knowledge. Universities produce justifications (in form of repeatable experiments, studies, proofs, etc.), churches don't.

rayiner 5y ago

You see this with COVID too. Many people are only accidentally on the right side with respect to “the science.”

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

chrischen 5y ago

People believe in quantum mechanics not because they personally understand it, but because they believe/trust in the experts. How do the experts demonstrate their authority? ...by making electronics that do magic. The difference between a belief of religious person and say a scientist is that the former asks you to trust them on blind faith while the latter asks you to trust them by proving they have more control over something than you do.

smackeyacky 5y ago

100% no. Faith in religion is a completely different thing to believing the scientific method works. Science is self correcting. Religious faith is, by definition, the surrendering of any and every impulse to question the faith to a higher earthly authority. Those earthly authorities are notoriously unreliable (c.f. history of the Jehovah's Witness "end of the world" scenarios). I know this is hard for religious people to understand, but if you have no belief in religious deities you can't just magic it up out of nowhere. There are people like me who simply can't believe in gods. We just aren't wired that way. I've had well meaning religious folk explain to me that I have apparently "hardened my heart" against (their) god and I need to stop doing that and he will sort it out but it simply isn't true This certainly hasn't stopped people like me being involved in religions but it makes it a bit...difficult. This attitude that somehow the atheists in the community "do not want to put any efforts in" is wrong, plain and simple. There is no effort we can put in.

lisper 5y ago
> There is no effort we can put in. Well, that's not quite true. I'm an atheist, and I run a weekly Bible study (which has lately morphed into more of a general theological/philosophical study and discussion group) [1]. Religious traditions are worth studying even if you don't believe in them, if for no other reason, than as a way of better understanding the thought processes of people who do believe in them. [1] https://www.meetup.com/Bible-Study-for-Skeptics-Agnostics-and-Apologists/ https://www.meetup.com/Bible-Study-for-Skeptics-Agnostics-an...
- smackeyacky 5y ago
  That's not what I meant - I meant that there is no effort that I can put in that would turn me into a deist.
  - lisper 5y ago
    How do you know? Maybe if you studied the Bible you'd end up believing in it. :-) It turns out that you actually can induce subjective experiences in yourself that I believe are similar to what religious people describe as "feeling the presence of God". It's an interesting and worthwhile exercise (though not what we do in my study group, that's a more academic format). But it's worth doing at least once in your life. It actually feels pretty good, not unlike taking certain psychoactive drugs.

raspasov 5y ago

I ask a simple question: why do blood transfusions work?

gaganyaan 5y ago

That seems like a trivial "gotcha" question. I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "which" theory. Do you mean Lamarckism vs Darwinism? The correct answer is that Lamarckism is wrong. Do you mean gradual change vs punctuated equilibrium or similar? That's not a "which theory of evolution", which is why people are confused by your question. It really comes across as a classic "confuse people with trick questions and then try to inject religion into them while they're distracted" tactic. I'm glad I'm done with that sort of thing. Also, belief in evolution is great, faith in evolution is not. Belief != faith, and religious people need to stop conflating them. If someone came up with an alternate theory for how we got here that explained all of the evidence better, I'd have no trouble believing it, because I don't have "faith in evolution" or any such thing.

dqv 5y ago

> too often people are just blindly accepting because they do not want to put any efforts in. Sure but nonbelievers experience the same thing with believers. I was asking a Christian about his interpretation of the two creation stories in Genesis. He didn't even know there were two. Most Christians don't. And they always shut down when I want to discuss in detail the possibility of mistranslation changing their understanding of God. They seem to not understand that it's possible to lose meaning or change meaning when translating from one language to another. Even if you try hard not to. I am totally respectful in these interactions. I'm not ambushing them with questions... I just genuinely want to learn something from someone who apparently should have deep and intimate knowledge of Christianity... and it's always disappointing.

xabotage 5y ago

If the people who believed in evolution more out of faith than true understanding actually did the legwork to remove their biases and objectively study/experiment on the subject, they would come to find that evolution is real. And if Jehovah's Witnesses actually did the legwork to remove their biases and objectively study/experiment on their religion, most of them would run as far away as they could. Some things just have to be taken on faith because life is too short to get a PhD in every subject, but I sure hope the world continues to move towards evidence-based rather than magic-based foundations of default belief.

hota_mazi 5y ago

Just because you met a few people with a fragile grasp of complex scientific topics doesn't mean the science is wrong. Evolution is a fact. It has been demonstrated over and over again, is observable, and has predicative powers. Religion has none of these things, and your particular religion is well known for being absolutely traumatic for people who follow it and even more so for people who leave it.

jhgb 5y ago

> What is clear to me is that to these people evolution is a BELIEF and not something they thought of Everything you consider to be true is a belief. That's the very definition of a belief: beliefs are the things you consider to be true. So you saying that this is a belief to them carries little information.

dang 5y ago

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28656023 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28656023.