Expert: Jeffrey Eldred - 7/3/2009

Question
Do you know of any atheists or atheist organizations that are against the theory of evolution and/or the earth is 4.5 billion years old?

Answer
The answer depends on what you mean by the term "atheist", but by conventional usage, the answer is no.

All the term actually says is "those who do not believe in God", but both the majority of people who self-identify as atheist can be also defined as scientific naturalists (people who think that exists has an observable effect in the physical world and the scientific process can be used to evaluate such claims). While they use the term atheist to describe themselves (because it is well known term and it is the main difference between them and everything else), their approach to identifying truth is best described as scientific naturalism, with atheism as a logical consequence of naturalism. People who do not believe in God but have supernatural or psuedo-scientific beliefs typically do not identify themselves as atheists and certainly express views that are not endorse by prominent atheist organizations.

Scientific naturalists include all well-known atheists: Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, PZ Myers, James Randi, Michael Shermer, Dan Barker, Pat Condell, Paul Kurtz, Ellery Schemp etc.

All well-known atheistic organizations also endorse scientific naturalism: American Atheists, Center for Inquiry, Skeptic Society, Secular Coalition for America, The Brights, Council for Secular Humanism, Freedom from Religion Foundation, Internet Infidels, James Randi Educational Foundation.

Quote by Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation[1]: "In fact, 'atheism' is a term that should not even exist. No one ever needs to identify himself as a 'non-astrologer' or a 'non-alchemist.' We do not have words for people who doubt that Elvis is still alive or that aliens have traversed the galaxy only to molest ranchers and their cattle. Atheism is nothing more than the noises reasonable people make in the presence of unjustified religious beliefs."


So the question of whether there are any of these scientific naturalist atheists that reject the theory of evolution and/or the earth is 4.5 billion years old is the same as whether or not there is any significant faction of the scientific community engaged in biology and cosmology that rejects the theory of evolution and/or the earth is 4.5 billion years old. The answer to both of those questions is "No". There is no modern scientific basis for the rejection of the theory of evolution or the age of the universe. Anyone who holds such a belief is unaware of the science or would rather have a religious belief that cannot accommodate the natural world than accept the physical reality. There has been no peer-reviewed paper published in either subject that challenges these notions in recent times

The "Science Made Easy" series of youtube videos aims to provide a detailed explanation of the two scientific views and how we know this, but no background is presumed:
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=DB23537556D7AADB&search_query=made+easy

The "Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism" series of youtube videos repudiates several common ideas propagated by creationists to challenge one of those two scientific views:
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=258CAE2F4546AA95&search_query=foundation...

Other resources on the subject of evolution[2][3] and the age of the universe[4][5] can be found in the links at the bottom.


Now I started by distinguishing scientific naturalistic atheists from other people who do not believe in a God. There are some of this remaining group who reject the theory of evolution or the age of the universe but do not do so for scientific reasons. The remaining portions would be 1)Postmodernists, 2)Conspiracy theorists 3)Scientologists 4)Lysenkoists. Keep in mind that the opposition of the scientific naturalistic atheists to these groups is even greater than that of religious creationism.

Postmodernists are people who do not believe science is credible because it originated from flawed or culturally biased Western tradition. They believe observation bias has corrupted the validity of results and interpretations, that funding as provided a motive to subvert the truths, or that the world isn't as regular as everyone thinks it is and science is ignoring where it deviates. To me these people have little understanding of how science works to eliminate these sorts of biases and little understanding of just how much science has advanced the species. If science is not a religion, but if science were a religion, it would be the only one that regularly produces accurate predictions of the future and miracles to everyone everywhere regardless of belief. The postmodernism's criticisms of science has been thoroughly critiqued[6].

Conspiracy theorists think that any science that contradicts their obsession is a lie created by those in power who don't want people to know what the conspiracy theorist knows. Very often there is a readily available way for the conspiracy theorist to conduct their own science or independently verify the science that they doubt, but of course they seldom attempt to do so (for example, the Flat Earth Society and hollow earth theorists). It should go without saying that these are usually people far removed from mental stability and opinion worth considering. In any event, depending on their obsession, some of these people are theists and some of them are atheists. For an excellent account of the bizarre mentality of these individuals, I recommend Michael Shermer's "Why People Believe Weird Things"[7].

Scientologists are people who do not believe in a God but they do believe in souls (called Thetans) and aliens with technology comparable to God. They are willing to contradict any science necessary to follow what L Ron Hubbard said things were. In Hubbard's book Scientology:A History of Man, this includes the age of the universe, and by some aspects of the theory of evolution. Obviously, their organization acts somewhere between a cultic religion and dictatorship (see below) and they have no rationale for their assertions.

Contrary to what creationist propaganda would assert about the dangers of subscribing to evolution, Stalin and the USSR rejected the theory of evolution [8] (for that matter, so did Hitler and the Nazis[9][10], but Hitler was a theist). The pet theory of life's origins by the USSR was called Lysenkoism. Lysenkoism was basically another form of the discredited theory Lemarckism, which held that adaptions made by adults of a species to their physical forms (exercising, becoming aware of dangers, learning to walk) are passed down to the children (physical strength, phobias, instinct) rather than the genetic attributes that determine those dispositions. Since the study of genetics, Lemarckism went from implausible to impossible, but the real answer was not what Stalin was interested in giving the public, so it didn't matter to him. To this day, Russia ranks highly among nations with people who don't understand evolution, but I am not aware of any current ideological movement there to suppress the teaching of evolution.

[1]http://www.amazon.com/Letter-Christian-Nation-Sam-Harris/dp/0307265773
[2]http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/
[3]http://evolution.berkeley.edu/
[4]http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-age-of-earth.html
[5]http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/rossuk/ageEarth.htm
[6]http://www.thewychefamily.com/beliefs/postmodern-science.html
[7]http://www.amazon.com/People-Believe-Weird-Things-Pseudoscience/dp/0716733870
[8]http://www.skepdic.com/lysenko.html
[9]http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/08/hitler_the_creationist.php
[10]http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200601.txt