RE: Heated debate on evolution with brother
January 4, 2017 at 11:13 am
(This post was last modified: January 4, 2017 at 11:17 am by SteelCurtain.)
(January 3, 2017 at 3:13 am)MyelinSheath Wrote: So, my older brother and I were were on a lengthy road trip tonight and we were having deep conversation along the way. He is significantly older than me and often talks to me in a sort of domineering and strident, though not necessarily rude fashion.
Now, my brother is smart in many ways. In fact, in many ways he's a genius. He's a very successful engineer who has led an impressive career and is very accomplished in life. But he is the type who is very attached to his own way of thinking and his own opinions.
Over the course of about four hours in the car we talked about all sorts of things such as politics, computer programming, etc. Everything went fine until I mentioned evolution. Then he kind of lost it. He kept saying that there's no evidence for evolution. That it was all bogus etc. I told him that, yes, in fact evolution is one of the clearest and most well understood things in science. He kept saying that he's never seen one piece of evidence that confirms evolution and that all of the fossils are fabricated. He kept asking why there are no animals currently changing forms, etc. He displayed utter ignorance of the entire concept. But there's just no getting through to him. He claimed that the scientists were trying to dismantle the Christian belief.
At that point I had to just withdraw. There was simply no getting through to him. He kept reiterating that he was open to the evidence, but that there is no evidence. The hostility he displayed was tremendous.
Any tips on good information sources to send him?
Send him to the Smithsonian, so he can see the fossils himself. Just came from there yesterday. They literally have all the fossils you could possibly need to 'prove' evolution. It would be a pretty impressive feat to see all of them and still be like, "naw it's all made up..."
"There remain four irreducible objections to religious faith: that it wholly misrepresents the origins of man and the cosmos, that because of this original error it manages to combine the maximum servility with the maximum of solipsism, that it is both the result and the cause of dangerous sexual repression, and that it is ultimately grounded on wish-thinking." ~Christopher Hitchens, god is not Great
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