Brainwashing, better known as religion. Evidence has no meaning!!!

Not enough education, reading, questioning. Too much listening to Preachers who browbeat and dismiss all scientific theorys and facts. Sad but true.

THE POWER OF DENIAL. You can talk about education all you want, but I live in the bible belt where tons of smart people deny evolution (o.k obviously they are uneducated on the subject of ecology.) Anyway,ultimately it can make life seem kind of bleak and it sucks a lot of the mystery out God and religion. My dad is a huge creationist and I have a biochem degree, I eventually stopped fighting with him over evolution and realized he's not really hurting anyone. Fact or not, I realized it was impossible to control what someone else thought.

Because they are entitled to the freedom of choice! Or are they?

Religious interference and complete denial of anything supported by evidence... Some people refuse to believe it because they are pompous. They think they are not animals and could not possibly be related to anything so 'primative' or 'gross' as an ape.... Humans are animals.... deal with it!

1) Because they *know* it is the most probable option. No need to believe here. 2) Because they close their eyes to any scientific evidence which contradicts their "system of belief". Such a system of belief was produced by their education or the community they belong to. For instance, By about 300AD, the idea of a Flat Earth was revived: "Early Christian rejection of the "pagan absurdity" of a spherical earth. This view was held sporadically until about 1300 AD. By 1300, the works of Ptolemy and others arrived in Europe by way of Islamic Spain, and fully restored the Spherical Earth to respectability. Contrary to popular myth, very few educated people after about 300 BC doubted that the Earth was a sphere. While a few early Christian thinkers did try to reject the idea, there is nothing in Christian beliefs that dictates a Flat Earth, in fact it says virtually nothing at all on the matter. " Source and further information: http://www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/~pogge/Ast161/Unit2/measearth.html However, in this case, there is a very accurate description of man's creation in the book of Genesis. But in the Bible, it also looks like the only true God were - at least to 2/3 - a male entity.

Most people who disbelieve in evolution really don't know enough about the theory to even refute it scientifically. In fact, it has nothing to do with evidence or proof. It has to do with protecting their religious beliefs.

The majority of them, I'd have to say, don't believe in evolution for the exact same reason that the majority of those who DO believe in evolution believe in it: IT'S THE FASHION AMONG THEIR SET! The typical person who accepts the theory of evolution as a matter of course, and derides all those who don't accept it as ignorant small-minded bigots, typically knows no more of biology, genetics, physiology or paleontology than most of the creationists he mocks and disdains. He's just been brought up in an "us vs. them" world, where those around him have conditioned him from day 1 to believe that those who believe in evolution are intelligent, educated, and enlightened, while those who reject it are inbred, fundamentalist yokels. Most of the self-professed creationists believe what they do on the issue for pretty much precisely the same reasons -- only replace "inbred, fundamentalist yokels" with "effete pseudo-intellectual communists". (Please note, when the John Birch Society types use the word "communist", they mean Atheist, statist, elitist, secularist ... you know, everything that typifies the Cafe' Set of the American Northeast and West Coast.) Among the people who actually know what they're talking about, the debate hinges on A PRIORI assumptions. Diehard knowledgable evolutionists are what they are because they're absolutely wedded to philosophic naturalism/materialism. The learned who reject evolution do so because it is contraried by the physical evidence and common sense, but then most of them unfortunately make the "leap of faith" that catastrophism (or more specifically: virtually instantaneous speciation following a global catastrophe) requires direct divine intervention, rather than searching for naturalistic processes that might account for the phenomenon.

It takes time and effort to actually learn it. It's much simpler to accept a cartoon version that's presented by creationists - and ridicule it. Also - as I've seen some people on AB say - They believe the Bible, 1 book. There are 1000's of books on evolution. Why they'd have to READ some!