The religious problem with evolution

[Fidel_Castronaut]

1) Why not attack other scientific theories, like relativity or gravity or plate tectonics?

Because gravity or plate tectonics don't contradict the Book of Genesis. However, they do attack the Big Bang theory and abiogenesis, and even conservative Christian nutjob Andy Schlafly has attacked the Theory of Relativity, saying (I swear I'm not making this up) that it is a liberal plot in order to get more women to have abortions:

http://conservapedia.com/Theory_of_relat...relativity

Some liberal politicians have extrapolated the theory of relativity to metaphorically justify their own political agendas. For example, Democratic President Barack Obama helped publish an article by liberal law professor Laurence Tribe to apply the relativistic concept of "curvature of space" to promote a broad legal right to abortion.

Ha. That was brilliant.

Regarding why 'they' don't attack other scientific theories.

I would say it's all down to ambiguity. Everyone understand the laws of gravity, at least prima facie in a personal context. If they were seen to be attacking something so intrinsic to everyone's lives then they'd be seen to be (even more) foolish. After all, if asked to prove their hypothesis, nobody would accept (or ignore) the fact they wouldn't, because everyone knows what happens if you think gravity doesn't exist (or whatever crackpot dismissal they came up with); you die.

The ambiguity of things like abiogensis and evolution comes not from the theory itself, but the understanding people have of those theories. Everyone can take evolution prima facie much like gravity, but it's far more complex (arguably) and multi-faceted, at least when people begin to examine it. People have heard of Newton's apple, and they can clearly see the logic of an apple falling to represent gravity.

Thinking about the tree of life, ring species, speciation, and even further down the line to abiogensis and amino acids is simply too much for most people to think or even care about. Most people will latch onto what's easiest for them to understand. eg:

"We evolved from apes" - Ok, job done. I can see the similarity and logic kind of makes sense to me as someone who has no knowledge or interest in biology.

or

"We were created by god" - Parsimonious and defeats any and all attempts to actually look into the real historic science behind our existence. It's lazy, but then again, so are most people.

One contradicts the other. They can't both be true unless one attempts to have one's cake and eat it by saying a 'god' started the process. Which of course is what many people do do, but then again, this can be destroyed by a simple application of Occam's razor.