This never happened to me before and I was genuinely taken aback!! That was supposed to only happen to Americans when the stumbled into Creationist territory. I live in Ireland, where although there is a strong(ish) Catholic contingent, evolution is happily taught in schools and there is never even the suggestion that there might be a hint of a reason why anyone in their right mind might even begin to doubt it.
I kinda had a feeling things were going in an odd direction when he said “But how can there be Global Warming when we have had the coldest winter in 10 years?” I had made a joke earlier in the week to someone else that I was waiting to hear that, but I never ACTUALLY thought I would.
But as we were discussing global warming, I used the word ‘Theory’. As I was talking he said “I don’t believe in theories, only facts. And I can prove the theory of evolution is wrong too”. I thought I misheard (as you do) and so I asked him did I hear correctly. He said yes and then proceeded to explain that as man evolved faster than chimps, evolution is wrong because this cannot happen in evolution. Also this situation where one animal evolved faster from a common point has only ever happened to man.
I told him that environmental factors dictate way each animal evolves and the differences between one animal and another. I also pointed out that birds and reptiles evolved from the same ancestor and that the alligator hasn’t evolved in millions of years but the birds have evolved much faster but it fell on deaf ears.
He said but there are lots of holes in the theory of evolution. I said yes. And that is OK. That just means that everything isn’t fully understood yet. But I said the important word is yet. Scientists have been working on evolution for 150 years and I am confident they will find those answers at some point. But for now I am comfortable with the gaps.
At this point he made some disparaging comment about Scientists being in it together and suggested there was a massive cover-up and that they are controlled by the government.
In some way this last comment made the rest of the conversation easier to take. Added to the previous comments he was making about Global Warming (and an earlier one again about another supposed Government cover-up) I realized that there was a bigger picture going on here. That his focus is more anti-government-it’s-all-a-big-conspiracy-they-are-all-out-to-get-us rather than an evolution is wrong thing. At least I hope so.
But it makes me sad (and a little angry) to hear people make statements about evolution that they have heard somewhere, from what they believe to be a trusted source, that are clearly wrong. But they are repeated so often that they just accept them (because they wish it to be true?). At no point do they verify or validate them. It’s the straw man. It’s easier to counter false arguments and evidence for evolution than the actual facts so they stick with them. This ‘proof’ was one of those.
Like I said I was flabbergasted to hear this being said. I admit I wasn’t prepared for it in the slightest. I’m not sure if this will EVER come up again. If it does I can only hope that I can set him straight or at the very least give him something to think about. But it was a sad day to think that in 2010 we are still having conversations like this.
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