50 Reasons People Give for Believing in a God by Guy P. Harrison Page A

is popular. Again, it is
important to add that this does not necessarily have anything to do
with intelligence. When a believer is bombarded with creationist
claims and learns little about the science, it's probably not very difficult to come to the wrong conclusions no matter how smart the person
may be.

    The question of what claim is right is easily answered by any
objective observer because creationism has no credible evidence to
support its claims while evolution has strong evidence from numerous
sources. The fossil and genetic evidence that supports the claim that
life evolves is nothing less than overwhelming. It's not as if one little
group of eccentric scientists is over in the corner pushing evolution all
by themselves. This theory has been confirmed by decades of independent work by thousands of zoologists, biologists, botanists, microbiologists, and paleoanthropologists working in many different countries. And they say that nothing makes sense in their respective fields
without evolution as the underlying theory. No matter what some
American presidents may say, the jury delivered a verdict on evolution
a long time ago. The debate continues today only because some
believers refuse to face facts. Within the scientific community there is
no debate. Evolution is real.
    The unusual but resilient believers' claim that evolution is evil is
more difficult to deal with. What does it mean, "evolution is evil,"
anyway? Okay, I agree that evolution is rough. It's part of a horrible
and unfortunate way for life to have to exist because suffering, death,
and extinction are the norm. But my personal distaste for predators,
parasites, and extinction doesn't mean I can simply say, "I don't
believe in it," and it will go away. Life on this planet will continue to
compete, kill, die, and evolve whether we are all Baptists or evolu tionary biologists. But believers are not hung up on the horrors of
nature. When they make the charge that evolution is evil and threatens
to degrade us all, they mean that it is a philosophy or way of life that
rejects their gods. They think that accepting evolution is the godless
road to ruin, a corrupt belief system that will turn us into monsters.
Anti-evolution believers often point to eugenics atrocities committed
by governments against "unfavorable" subgroups within their populations that they wanted to eliminate. Some cite examples of attempts to
use evolution as a justification for racism. However, these attacks on
evolution don't work. Obviously, people who may have tried to use
the theory of evolution to justify murder, racism, or discrimination
were wrong. But rejecting the theory of evolution because some bad
people in the past attempted to use it to justify crimes is illogical. It
would be like rejecting gravity because bad people on a rooftop once
dropped rocks on somebody's head. It would be like condemning all
religions because some of them were used to justify crimes. Nature
works the way it works, no matter who claims to speak for it. If evolution was the rallying cry of every evil person in history, it still would
not change the fact that plants, animals, and microbes evolve.

    Some believers promote the extreme view that teaching evolution
in schools is dangerous because it encourages children to think of
themselves as "lowly" animals and gives them permission to steal,
rape, and murder. Many people have expressed this concern to me. It
is surprisingly popular. Believers seem to be sincerely worried that the
theory of evolution can turn people into savages. There is, of course,
nothing to base this on. Just consider the world's most fervent proponents of evolution-scientists. They certainly do not rape and murder
at a noticeably higher rate than anti-evolution activists. I have no data
to support it, but I would bet that the world's evolutionary scientists
are, on average, more law-abiding than most other groups of people in
the