Any Atheists here who at one time denied evolution?

[Cecelia]

I'm curious if there are any atheists here who at one time had denied evolution.  I'd think that it's rarer for someone who denies evolution to change their views on religion than someone who doesn't.  When my husband told me that he was a creationist who didn't believe in evolution, I thought "Oh when you were a kid?"  Because he's a fairly smart guy.  He didn't exactly fail biology.  In fact he had the highest grade in the entire school in biology (he finished the year with higher than a perfect grade).  So I was surprised when he told me that he didn't start believing in evolution until after we graduated.  He said he knew the theory, but didn't agree with it until after he had (oddly enough) watched the movie Dogma.  I thought that was an odd thing to change his mind, but apparently it allowed him to reconcile the idea of God and Evolution.   Apparently for him it wasn't that the evidence wasn't good enough, but that it contradicted his religious beliefs at the time.  

The idea of denying evolution seems to be something deeply embedded in the minds of people.  But I also wonder if perhaps it's actually more likely (logical) people who deny evolution to turn to Atheism.  I mean once you learn one thing you've believed is a lie, it seems like there might be some sort of rolling effect where you start questioning all of your beliefs.  At the same time, those people tend to have deeply embedded beliefs that were instilled in them when they were young, so one thing might not be enough to get it all rolling.

I know when I turned to atheism it was a rolling effect of sorts.  I never denied evolution, but I went from Catholic, to Protestant, to Non-Denominational before finally becoming an Atheist.  And I know my husband's views of Christianity went from more fundamentalist ideas to more abstract ideas that weren't rooted in church or the bible. 

Any Atheists here who used to deny evolution?  If so, what changed your mind? Was it part of what made you a non-believer?

[downbeatplumb]

How can you have higher than a perfect grade?

[drfuzzy]

That was one of my triggers, Cecelia.  One of the first ones.
I was raised fundie Protestant.  I remember assemblies in the Church school I attended, that proclaimed why Evolution was a lie.  My parents believed (even my Father, a very intelligent, college-educated man) that all of the "fossil evidence" was either deliberately faked or misinterpreted.
Then I changed schools.  I went to a public high school and made friends with a girl whose parents were biologists.  When I told them what I had been taught about evolution, one night over dinner . . . they were kind, but I will never forget their faces.  They clearly were looking at me with a mixture of horror and pity.  That - - was significant.  These intelligent scientists were looking at me like I was somehow mentally deficient.
It took a few more years, science classes, and reading, for me to be SURE that my Parents and those Preachers had been very wrong.  That, of course, paved the way to more questions about science and religion.  First stop . . . fundamentalism was wrong.  But even more mainstream liberal Christianity gradually lost its hold.  The idea of Deism and Polytheism and Spirituality and all of that . . . tried, studied, and abandoned.  But I was in my mid-40's before I finally proclaimed that I was an atheist.

[Cecelia]

How can you have higher than a perfect grade?

Extra credit.

That was one of my triggers, Cecelia.  One of the first ones.
I was raised fundie Protestant.  I remember assemblies in the Church school I attended, that proclaimed why Evolution was a lie.  My parents believed (even my Father, a very intelligent, college-educated man) that all of the "fossil evidence" was either deliberately faked or misinterpreted.
Then I changed schools.  I went to a public high school and made friends with a girl whose parents were biologists.  When I told them what I had been taught about evolution, one night over dinner . . . they were kind, but I will never forget their faces.  They clearly were looking at me with a mixture of horror and pity.  That - - was significant.  These intelligent scientists were looking at me like I was somehow mentally deficient.
It took a few more years, science classes, and reading, for me to be SURE that my Parents and those Preachers had been very wrong.  That, of course, paved the way to more questions about science and religion.  First stop . . . fundamentalism was wrong.  But even more mainstream liberal Christianity gradually lost its hold.  The idea of Deism and Polytheism and Spirituality and all of that . . . tried, studied, and abandoned.  But I was in my mid-40's before I finally proclaimed that I was an atheist.

Yeah, I can imagine it's hard.  I mean you are supposed to be able to trust your parents.  Why would they lie to you?  It's hard to start to think "Well, they wouldn't lie to me, but someone would lie to them, and someone might have lied to them, setting forth a chain of lies leading back to someone nobody knows, and who probably had reason to lie"

[Chad32]

When I was a young christian, I didn't really have a problem with evolution. I just figured it's what happened after the flood happened. and I wasn't a yougn earth creationist that thought the flood was 4,000 years ago.

[vorlon13]

I have never denied evolution as an adult (who knows what was coerced from me in Sunday school ?)

but I have denied Lysenkoism.

[robvalue]

People who deny evolution are basically saying that either every offspring is an identical copy of its mother or its father; or else it has random attributes that in no way depend on its parents. This is so demonstrably untrue, that I wonder how anyone can take this belief seriously.

[Alex K]

I have never denied evolution as an adult (who knows what was coerced from me in Sunday school ?)

but I have denied Lysenkoism.

That's pretty low hanging fruit as far as denial goes. Come back when you've denied something gutsy!

[Alex K]

People who deny evolution are basically saying that either every offspring is an identical copy of its mother or its father; or else it has random attributes that in no way depend on its parents. This is so demonstrably untrue, that I wonder how anyone can take this belief seriously.

Yeah, you'd basically have to deny livestock breeding. To be fair though, most people who "deny evolution" (and actually think about it) don't deny that evolution happens at all, just that it does (or even can) account for the historical origin of species from a common ancestor. Hence the micro evolution shtick.

[Aoi Magi]

Even before I learned the term "evolution", that concept was much more plausible to me than the suggested alternative. But I did have some other silly ideas as a kid, like I used to think Adam and Eve were just two of our ancestors who actually got documented and that they actually were giants compared to us. In my defence, this was before I actually read the book of their origin story. After reading... I face-palmed!