Why is Satan always blamed for evolution?

[Jase]

From the creationism forum:

I don't quite understand your last paragraph, but I consider the tenants of macro-evolution to be the works of Satan. What better way to errode God's word and peoples faith in a creator.


Why is it that just because creationists don't understand evolution, they insist on claiming it's the work of Satan?

Evolution is the most well supported theory in scientific academia, even more so than the theory of gravity or atomic theory. This includes so called "macro-evolution". By claiming that Satan is responsible for such a powerful and solid theory that is followed by the majority of the world, including most Christians is certainly attributing a lot of power to him. For Satan to have such power, one would seem to think that argument makes him on par with God. How could Satan completely mold God's creation, without God stopping him?

To claim that macro-evolution errodes peoples' faith in a creator seems erroneous to me. There are certainly many other factors that lead people to fall away from faith and God, including lack of evidence, problems with the Bible, unanswered prayers, evil, etc. One need not blame it all on evolution. IMO, creationism is far more damaging to the faith than macro-evolution could ever hope to be. Anyone with any modicum of a scientific education would be completely turned off by anyone claiming Christians rest their trust in such dubious figures and organizations as Kent Hovind and AIG.

The Gospel events have far far far less evidence supporting them than any physical evidence relating to the age of the Earth, evolution, or cosmology. So anyone claiming the Earth is 6,000 years old or evolution is false is certainly a difficult person to trust regarding such matters as the Gospels, where evidence is extremely scarce. Perhaps creationists need to take a look at what their beliefs are doing to Christianity. Do they really think they are helping by holding to such antiquated views?

 

[metherion]

Well, from what I can understand from the YECs I have talked to, this is why:

Evolution is (supposedly) the root of all bad ideas: atheism, homosexual acts, amorality, divorce, racism, intolerance, divorce, et cetera. Therefore, it is something that drives people away from God. Supposedly.

It also contradicts a literal reading of Genesis. This creates a bunch of people who have fallen into the "excluded middle" logical fallacy and believe that since evolution doesn't go along with said literal reading, it states the entire Bible is false. This also would drive people away from God (were it true).

Since the idea supposedly drives people away from God, it must be evil. Since all evil originates from Satan, evolution must originate from Satan.

It is, however, entirely untrue.

Metherion

 

[Deamiter]

Wow, so if evolution were to be rejected worldwide, all these evils would cease? Do these evils not exist where evolution is not taught (in many third world country schools) or were they less prevailant in places like the Soviet Union where Lamarkianism was taught in place of evolution (Lamarkianism was the idea that traits gained during life could be passed on -- i.e. if a giraffe stretches for a leaf every day of its life and gets a longer neck, it's children will have longer necks)?

Dogma like this is very useful for constructing firey rants against the evil of the world to whip up support among followers. It's utterly baseless and worthless when you sit down and look at what it's actually claiming though, and it's a shame that so many Christians have been lead to believe that evolution is such a primal evil when we could be spending our time fighting the real problems that existed well before any understanding of evolution!