Just a plug for you to drop in on de-conversion.com It is a community for people in all stages of doubting or leaving the faith. There are people there who are right where you are or who have been right where you are. You may find some good ideas and support there.

My early life wasn’t quite as sheltered as your own. I went to state schools, so I had a secular education, but my parents brought me up as a Christian and I trusted that what they told me was right. I grew up to be a committed Christian, serving in my church by leading a small bible study group of young people, as well as leading worship at church.

Just under two years ago I left home for university, and it’s been in this second year of universtiy that my faith has come crashing down. In the last month or so I’ve finally realised that I’m now agnostic – I’ve reached a stange where I just can’t accept all the contradictions and threadbare explanations any longer. Yet I feel trapped. My girlfriend has recently undergone a similar journey, so thankfully I’m not alone, but she is the only one whom I’ve felt confident enough to share my thoughts with. In the rest of my life I feel as if I’m living a deception. In my university town I still attend church and play music in the worship group, and as I head home for the summer I’ll no doubt attend my church there. It feels so insincere, but I simply can’t tell my parents and my Christian friends.

This is what particularly resonated with me most from your story – how you’ve kept your atheism from your family for so long. I love my parents – they are the most wonderful, loving people. For that reason I couldn’t bear to tell them that I didn’t believe, for it would cause them such pain and sadness. They’d likely blame themselves, and I wouldn’t want my unbelief to hang over our relationship like a grey cloud. At the same time, it feels so constraining to live a life of deception, and I fear that some day it will have to come to light. Whether I tell my family or hide it from them, it seems to be a lose-lose situation. And it’s not just my family I must deceive – most of my closest friends are Christians, and know my family. There’s a whole circle I must keep in deception. I am liberated yet in chains.

I know that stuff all sounds good to you. Bekah, they are lying to you. That study was never published outside of the ICR. It was never subjected to peer-review. It’s also a rehash of an old line from my YECs days. Back then it was the amount of background 14C in the atmosphere. And back then I bought it hook, line, and sinker just as you have now. It was years later that I found out how much these people were lying. (BTW, I had a Christian fried who told me they were lying back then. I didn’t believe him. I had to find out for myself.)

The ICR (and the CRI) don’t do research. And the only creation going on with them is the creating of elaborate lies.

I know you don’t believe me. I would not have. In a way it’s really very frustrating. To watch someone believe these horrid liars and think them to be defenders of the truth. It’s frustrating because I know that the only way you are likely to finally realize how bad they are (if you ever do) is for you to find out what inveterate liars they are on your own. (That’s what I had to do.)

You seem like a nice, decent person Bekah. And I hate seeing decent folks taken in by a bunch of men who use their education only to defraud people on the basis of their credulity (and that born of decency and lack of the needed knowledge).

I wish my word meant something to you when I tell you they are lying. I wish you could see these men for what they are.

Once again it’s too bad you didn’t stick around to see the research that creationists have been doing on the age of the earth in recent years. One of their findings is that all levels of the geologic column contain intrinsic amounts of carbon-14. Carbon-14 has a short half-life of 5730 years and is used to date organic samples that are up to thousands of years old. The problem (for evolution) came to light when a new method for determining C-14 decay, called the accelerator mass spectrometer (AMS) method, was developed to determine C-14 ages. This method is much more sensitive than the old one and should be able to give C-14 ages up to 90,000 years. This would correspond to a carbon-14 level of 0.001 pmc (percent modern carbon). But a big problem occurred when investigators went to look for procedural blanks to calibrate their measurements against. These are samples that would provide a normal “background” level of C-14 that the tested sample could be compared to. But no matter where they looked in the geologic record, and no matter whether the blanks were organic or inorganic in origin, investigators could not find any samples with C-14 levels that were below the detection level of the AMS equipment. All samples tested contained some intrinsic carbon-14. And what does this mean? Well, if any of the samples were older than 90,000 years then there should be no detectible carbon-14 found in them. The presence of detectible carbon-14 strongly argues that no samples can be found that are older than 90,000 years.

You can read a detailed analysis of this long-age problem in this paper:

http://www.icr.org/pdf/research/RATE_ICC_Baumgardner.pdf

Here’s how the authors of this study describe the situation that uniformitarians find themselves in:

“AMS analyses reveal carbon from fossil remains of living organisms, regardless of their position in the geological record, consistently contains C-14 levels far in excess of the AMS machine threshold, even when extreme pre-treatment methods are applied. Experiments in which the sample size is varied argue compellingly that the C-14 is intrinsic to the fossil material and not a result of handling or pre-treatment. These conclusions continue to be confirmed in the very latest peer-reviewed papers. Moreover, even non-organic carbon samples appear consistently to yield C-14 levels well above machine threshold. Graphite samples formed under metamorphic and reducing conditions in Precambrian limestone environments commonly display C-14 values on the order of 0.05 pmc. Most AMS laboratories are now using such Precambrian graphite for their procedural blanks. A good question is what possibly could be the source of the C-14 in this material? We conclude that the possibility this C-14 is primordial is a reasonable one. Finding C-14 in diamond formed in the earth’s mantle would provide support for such a conclusion. Establishing that non-organic carbon from the mantle and from Precambrian crustal settings consistently contains inherent C-14 well above the AMS detection threshold would, of course, argue the earth itself is less than 100,000 years old, which is orders of magnitude younger than the 4.56 Ga currently believed by the uniformitarian community.”

Since this study was published creationists have tested eleven diamonds taken from Precambrian strata with AMS dating method. All the diamonds were found to contain intrinsic carbon-14 and gave C-14 ages of less than 58,000 years. Because of the very great strength of the crystal bonds within diamonds, it can pretty much be ruled out that this carbon-14 was the result of outside contamination. This result reduces the age of these Precambrian strata from over a billion years down to thousands of years.

Here’s the problem that long-age believers will have in trying to explain this data away. First off they will have to come up with a source for this C-14 contamination that is worldwide in scope. They will also have to provide a source that affects all levels of the geologic column at the same time. And they will also have to provide a source that affects both organic and inorganic carbon materials including diamonds, which are contamination immune. And since experts in this field have been trying for years to come up with a solution to this problem and have had no success, any proffered explanation will have to be something that no one has thought of yet. So I have a feeling the long-age compatible solution for this C-14 problem is going to remain rather elusive for old-earth believers.

OrDover said: “One has tons of evidence on it side. The other has no evidence. It actually builds itself up out of lack of evidence. Creationism says, ‘We don’t know how this happen, so God must have done it.’ ”

Well here’s one last piece of evidence for creation that is based on what we do know about the real world. If we look closely at the information stored within the genome of every living organism we can see that there is an evolution killer present in life itself. That evolution killer is the existence of coded information. Coded information is used in every cell to store the construction and control information for all its machinery. It is also used in transmitting information when messenger-RNA (containing the construction code for a protein) is sent from the nucleus to the ribosomes where new proteins are manufactured. And those ribosomes must then interpret that coded message as they build each protein peptide by peptide. But the fact is that in the entire history of science no human being has ever observed a naturalistic process of matter or energy spontaneously produce an information coding system or produce brand new coded information within an existing coding system. The only thing known to science that is able to generate coding systems and coded information is an intelligent mind or a machine created by an intelligent mind.

It isn’t hard to understand why naturalism is incapable of producing coded information when you consider that coded information is an entirely separate entity from the processes of matter and energy that naturalism works with. Coded information can be inscribed on energy such as in modulated radio waves, and coded information can be inscribed on matter such as in the printed words of a book, but the coded information itself is not made up of either matter or energy. The information is imposed upon that matter or energy by a cognitive mental process originating from an intelligent mind. The will of an intelligent agent causes the matter or energy to be specifically arranged in a sequence that a receiver will recognize as an agreed upon code. The matter or energy contributes nothing to the actual production of the information. Matter or energy is only the medium that is used for either storing or transmitting the information.

Could we consider the forces of nature acting on matter and energy adequate to produce the effect of spontaneously creating the coded information of life? We know that coded information is not made up of either matter or energy. Coded information is entirely made up of the specified arrangement of the matter or energy in the coded message. This absolutely requires will, and purpose, and intent in the agent creating the coded information. Since the forces of nature can only act in fixed ways governed by mathematical laws, and with no purpose in mind, we can conclude that materialistic processes are entirely inadequate to cause the appearance of coded information. Naturalistic processes have no will and they have no intent and so they fail both the necessity test and the sufficiency test for being an adequate cause for the coded information found in life. This means that nothing inside the naturalistic universe was adequate to initially produce the information of life.

The intelligent origin of coded information is so clear-cut that creationists have been able to develop universal laws of information that have never had an observed exception. These laws apply 100 per cent of the time. Here are some of the information laws developed by the creationist, Dr. Werner Gitt:

1) Information cannot be set up, stored, or transmitted without using a code.

2) A code is always the result of a free and deliberate convention. It is a uniquely defined set of symbols, syntax and grammatical structure that has been agreed upon by both sender and receiver.

3) There can be no information without a sender.

4) Any given chain of coded information always points to a mental source.

5) Coded information can never originate in statistical processes. This includes all random trial and error processes, like the mythical process of life evolving from non-life. In every true coded message the sender delivers that message with an intended purpose for the receiver. But it is impossible for statistical processes to ever add meaning to a message.

So based on all the observations that have been made in human history we can say that coded information only results from the willful intention of an intelligent mind. Evolutionists cannot produce a single scrap of empirical evidence to show that the coded information of life arose through naturalistic processes! They can only believe by faith that such an event is possible. But creationists can produce a wealth of empirical evidence that shows the information of life must be the result of intelligent action that is separate from the naturalistic universe. The evidence strongly supports the creationist conclusion that the information of life originated from an Intelligence that is many orders of magnitude greater than the collective intelligence of all humanity. That Intelligence is God our creator.

OrDover said: “ID is NOT a scientific theory because it is unfalsifiable.”

It is quite easy to imagine a scenario that would falsify the theory of intelligent design. All it would take would be the documentation of a naturalistic process spontaneously producing a simple coding system; or, alternately, the documentation of the spontaneous production of functional proteins or RNA through a naturalistic process and without the intelligent intervention of the investigators directing the chemical process toward the desired goal. Either one of these results would be a crippling blow to the intelligent design movement because it would clearly demonstrate that nothing but the naturalistic universe is necessary to get the basics of life started. But I am not worried in the least that either of these events will ever occur.

OrDover said: “However, and perhaps this is a flaw in my character, nothing makes me more sadder than unrealized truth. I know that the answer is out there are available to everyone, just like it was available to me.”

The funny thing about truth when it comes to our origins is that everyone must decide for themselves what “truth” actually is. Whether we’re talking about special creation or Darwinian descent from a common ancestor the events we’re talking about occurred in the distant past. No human was there to observe them and there is no way to recreate them. So evidence for those original events cannot be based on empirical evidence – science that is observable, repeatable, and testable. The evidence for those events can only be based on historical evidence or forensic science. And so any hypothesis or theory regarding origin events can only be supported with a cumulative case of circumstantial evidence. But the big drawback of circumstantial evidence is that it must be interpreted by the observer. And that interpretation will always be dependent on that person’s biases and presuppositions. An atheistic scientist who bases his worldview on materialistic naturalism will always come to conclusions that support his naturalistic bias. Just as a creation scientist who bases his worldview on the existence of the omnipotent Creator of the Bible will always come to conclusions that support what God has told us about the world in His word. In your de-conversion testimony you state that you hadn’t been a Christian for years when you began to investigate the evidence for Darwinism so I’m sure you came to that evidence with your own set of biases based in your unbelief and so it wasn’t hard for you to conclude “that it was 100% truth.”

OrDover said: “But further, macroevolution, or speciazation to use a more accurate term, HAS been observed. You keep claiming it hasn’t, but is has. You can continue to ignore it, but I don’t understand the point of raising a thoroughly discredited objection again and again.”

Here you seem to be confused about what macroevolution is. It is not speciation. Speciation itself is fully accepted by creationists. Creationists have no problem with the idea that one species of finch on the Galapagos Islands diversified into thirteen species. After all, creationists believe that a single dog kind came off the Ark and diversified into wolves, jackals, dingoes, coyotes and all the breeds of domestic dog. Speciation is a non-issue with creationists. As a former young earth creationist I’m surprised you aren’t aware of this. If you want to get informed about what YECs believe about speciation you can check out this article:

http://creation.com/refuting-evolution-chapter-2-variation-and-natural-selection-versus-evolution

What we do have an issue with is macroevolution – the hypothesis that one kind of animal can evolve into a completely different kind. The macroevolution hypothesis is not based on empirical evidence. No scientist was around to observe the evolution of single celled life into multi-cellular life. No one saw fish turn into amphibians or reptiles turn into birds. And in our world today we don’t see evidence that macroevolution is currently taking place. There simply are no animals present on earth that are partway evolved into completely different animals. And when we study the anatomy of animals we never find organs that are changing into different organs with new functions. Every animal is already complete and functional in the environment in which it lives.

When we look at actual observations of what mutation plus natural selection can achieve we find that the results are very limited. In Michael Behe’s new book, The Edge of Evolution, he shows that even fast reproducing malarial parasites have only been found to achieve a single double mutation in a single gene while developing resistance to the anti-malarial drug, chloroquine. The chances of achieving two such double mutations would exceed “the total number of cells that have existed on earth in the billions of years that life is supposed to have existed. In other words, evolution could never achieve this. This is basically ‘the edge of evolution’ the limit to what mutations and natural selection can achieve.” You can read more of the details here:

http://creation.com/review-michael-behe-edge-of-evolution

OrDover said: “There are no known barriers to microevolution. There is no arbitrary stopping point. Eventually, given time, all of the small changes begin to add up. Microevolution results in macroevolution. The only thing that would disprove this is the evidence of some sort of a barrier that stops microevolution in its tracks.”

This is simply wrong. It’s too bad you didn’t hold on to your faith a few years longer. If you had you could have found out that creationists have shown that there is a very big barrier that prevents microevolution from turning into macroevolution. That barrier is the genetic load that is building up in all genomes. In the book, Genetic Entropy & The Mystery of the Genome, Dr. John Sanford shows that mildly deleterious mutations are building up in the human genome at such a rapid rate that our genome is actually decaying towards error catastrophe. In past decades it was assumed that deleterious mutations amounted to just 0.12 to 0.30 mutations per person per generation. At that time it was generally believed that “if the rate of deleterious mutations approached one deleterious mutation per person per generation, long-term genetic deterioration would be a certainty” (pg. 33). But in recent years studies of the mutation rate in our reproductive cells has shown that the actual rate of nucleotide substitutions is between 100 and 300 per person per generation. This means that in the current generation alone at least 600 billion mutations have accumulated in the human race. And we have already inherited hundreds of billions of mutations from the previous generation. This has serious implications for the viability of humanity. I’ll simply quote Dr. Sanford’s conclusion:

Genetic information must erode over time. The actual rate for all types of mutations may be more than 600 per person per generation, and so given a diploid genome size of 6 billion, we should be losing about one ten millionth of our total information per generation (this number is not affected by what fraction of the genome is actually functional)… The genome appears to be a program so well designed that it can tolerate tens of thousands of errors. It is amazingly robust – unlike anything designed by man. But for all that, the genome is still not immune to failure due to error accumulation. In 300 generations (6,000 years), if the rate of loss was constant and at its current level, we would lose about .003% of our total information. This is huge – (90,000 errors) – yet given the extremely robust nature of the genome, it is conceivable. However, if we continued to lose information at this same rate for 300,000 generations (6 million years) we would lose 3% of all our information! This would represent 90 million errors! This is inconceivable. No program could still be functional (pg. 150).

So in 6 million years, the supposed time since our split with chimpanzees, our genome should have reached the point of error catastrophe simple due to the accumulation of genetic load. The genome is simply unsustainable over evolutionary time scales, which means that evolution is impossible. And this conclusion is based on observable evidence. If you want you can read more about this here:

http://creation.com/from-ape-to-man-via-genetic-meltdown-a-theory-in-crisis

I understand the concept here, believe me, I do. It’s called “survival fo the fittest.”

Just to belabor the point, “better” is a very subjective term, as I mentioned above with the dinosaurs. It’s easier to say that the “fittest” survive, but that doesn’t always mean what you would conventionally think of as “better.”

As Darwin said, “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”

That is what makes one fittest.

Just because both views are “theories” (although ID is NOT a scientific theory because it is unfalsifiable) does not mean that they are equal. One has tons of evidence on it side. The other has no evidence. It actually builds itself up out of lack of evidence. Creationism says, “We don’t know how this happen, so God must have done it.” I suppose you also count the Bible as evidence, but obviously that has no bearing on science.

They can never be proven fact.

Wrong. Unproven does not equate with unprovable.

Therefore, you have to accept those theories, to some degree, by faith.

Also wrong. It isn’t a matter of faith, it’s a matter of probability. I don’t accept evolution on faith. I accept evolution on evidence. There is so much evidence that zero faith is needed.

There are some theories about the origins of life from chemistry (which, by the way, is a separate issue from evolution) which have much less evidence. Some are largely speculation. But they are still not accepted on faith. They are accepted based on a correlation of evidence and probability. Although these theories are not as heavily supported, there is still no faith involved. Why? Because I don’t “believe” in them. I don’t accept them as any sort of truth. I recognize them for what they are: theories and hypotheses. They don’t claim to prove anything, just to make an educated guess.

Just because you can reproduce micro “evolution” in a lab does not prove macro evolution.

This statement once again demonstrates that you aren’t understanding how gradual the process of evolution is and how long it takes to work. First of all, evolution is a series of very small changes over a very long time. Microevolution has been observed in both the lab and in nature. There are no known barriers to microevolution. There is no arbitrary stopping point. Eventually, given time, all of the small changes begin to add up. Microevolution results in macroevolution. The only thing that would disprove this is the evidence of some sort of a barrier that stops microevolution in its tracks.

But further, macroevolution, or speciazation to use a more accurate term, HAS been observed. You keep claiming it hasn’t, but is has. You can continue to ignore it, but I don’t understand the point of raising a thoroughly discredited objection again and again. Speciazation happens when two lines of one species evolve in such different directions that they can no longer mate and produce fertile offspring. Think of the difference between a horse and a donkey. This has been observed using animals with short lifespans who reproduce rapidly.

Here’s a short list of only a few of the times macroevolution has been observed:

A new species of mosquito, isolated in London’s Underground, has speciated from Culex pipiens (Byrne and Nichols 1999; Nuttall 1998)

Scientists Discover Fish in Act of Evolution in Africa’s Greatest Lake

Helacyton gartleri is the HeLa cell culture, which evolved from a human cervical carcinoma in 1951 (Van Valen and Maiorana 1991)

Phylloscopus trochiloides around the Himalayas (Irwin et al. 2001; Whitehouse 2001; Irwin et al. 2005).

Not to mention the tons of fossil evidence for macroevolution.

I am not saying that ID is a proven fact. I may personally believe in Intelligent Design, but that’s my choice, just as you’ve chosen to believe in Darwinism.

I didn’t chose to believe in evolution, just as I don’t choose to believe in gravity or Newton’s F=ma equation. I used to believe young earth biblically literal creationism. That I chose to believe in. I didn’t have any evidence for it beyond what I had been taught in church and at Christian school. It was just a personal choice. It was what I wanted to be true about the universe. Actually, it is still what I would like to be true. If I really had a choice, I would choose to believe that a loving God created everything in nature and cares for every creature.

But I was confronted with the facts of evolution, and they are facts I can’t deny. I didn’t decide one day, “Now I want to believe in evolution.” I just came to the realization that my previous belief was not true. Think of a little kid who used to believe in Santa. Do they one day decide that they don’t want to believe in Santa anymore, or are they confronted with so much evidence that their parents are actually Santa that they can’t ignore the truth of the situation?

Now, you can claim that I’ve chosen ignorantly, while you’ve merely accepted the obvious truth, but that would be quite arrogant and I hope you won’t stoop to that.

I’m not claiming you’ve chosen ignorantly, but I am going to hold you to a standard of evidence.

But what you’re suggesting through that analogy is that evolution, without any governing intelligence, “mutates” into better and better versions of the original. I find that extremely implausible.

Again, this is the argument from personal incredulity. Just because you find it implausible does not make it untrue. The evidence is against you.

Just look at us for example. When a genetic mutation occurs, it results in a birth defect. This is going backwards, not forwards.

Mutations are sometimes bad. They’re mostly benign. But sometimes they are also good. When a genetic mutations occurs, it results in blue eyes. When a genetic mutations occurs, it results in the ability to better transport lipids. When a genetic mutations occurs, it results in a decreased risk of myocardial infarction. These are all documented cases of positive mutations, ones that move forward. And most are very recent, meaning documented without a doubt not a matter of archaeology.

But my question has always been, why in natural selection do all things go from disorder to order, when nothing else in the universe does?

This is wrong. The formation of stars and planets are an instance of disorder turning into order. The formation of chemical compounds from individual atoms is an example as well. How about the entire process of nuclear fusion?

You see pure chance, apparantely, but I see the guiding hand of a Creator. I am not saying that evolution isn’t true. All I’m saying is that I don’t believe evolution is possible without intelligent design. The odds are too astronomical.

How do you know the odds? You “believe.” That’s fine. Some people believe in aliens and fairies and psychics. You all have the same amount of evidence, you’re personal feelings and observations. I’m arguing from a different platform. And again, that personal incredulity thing….you can’t argue from it. It’s fallacious.

That’s not what I’m saying though. I’m suggesting that neither of us know! You admit you don’t know where the matter came from, therefore, it could have come from God – but maybe not. Or, perhaps aliens, as some people believe. Or perhaps nothing.

All of these ideas do not share equal footing.

When I look at nature, I see the work of a brilliant Creator. The heavens declare His glory. Why do you have a problem with that?

I don’t have a problem with that. Let me remind you that you started this discussion. I didn’t come to your blog and tell you why I think what you believe is worthy of rejection. YOU came here. YOU had a problem with what I said.

However, and perhaps this is a flaw in my character, nothing makes me more sadder than unrealized truth. I know that the answer is out there are available to everyone, just like it was available to me. I made an about-face change regarding this topic, so I know how powerful the evidence can be.

And frankly, I don’t care what you see when you look at the world. You can’t make an argument based on your personal intuition. Much in this world violates our intuition severely. If we went around making judgments based on such intuitive observations we would constantly be wrong. For example, when you look at the moon, would you have any way of telling just based on your own observations, with no foreknowledge, how it came to glow? People used to see it lit up like Sun and assume that both had internal sources of light. Not so for the moon, it only reflects light, it has none of its own. Another example is the notion of Einsteinian relativity. When you grow up in a place with clocks, you believe that it is obvious that time is static. The clock ticks, always an equal intervals. Nothing in your non-scientific lay person observations could reveal the fact that time is dependent on motion, and that the faster an object is moving, the less time it experiences. Just looking out your window isn’t enough. It won’t reveal the truth of the physical world.

By the way, I don’t give a hoot about your belief in God, or even if you want to believe that God drives evolution. There is no evidence for either, and I will continue to point out how nothing about evolution suggests a creator or a directing force, but that isn’t what really bothers me. What does bother me is the total rejection of any sort of evolution. As you’ve pointed out, there is nothing about evolution that necessarily negate the belief in God. You can still be a Bible-believing Christian and accept the truth of evolution. I would be as happy as a clam if all Christian would realize that.

I might argue about the aspects of evolution that seem ridiculous to me, but I am not actually saying that evolution isn’t true.

You’ve told me that you reject it. Why would anyone reject the truth? And several times you said evolution is impossible. Why would you think something may be true if you call it impossible?

It’s basically – where you see unguided chance, I see guidance. Both viewpoints take equal faith because neither of us have any way of proving how it all initially began. I can’t prove it was God anymore than you can prove that it *wasn’t* God.

This is not true, but I’ve explained why several times already. And again, the two worldviews are not 50/50. There isn’t just as much evidence for YEC as there is for evolution and an earth than is 4.5 billions of years old. Actually, there is no evidence for YEC, except in the pages of the Bible. It in no way conforms to what is observed in the natural world.

The thing really cracked by armor on that was learning that the ICR and CRI and other such folks were lying, a lot, deliberately. Once it was obvious that “the truth” was supported by a lot of lies, I began to look at both sides of the matter. Then it was pretty easy for the evidence to make the case.

It still took a whole lot of years before I began to find the cracks in the faith itself though. And that was a whole different avenue of learning.

Well anyway, I don’t really expect you to undertake to learn about evolution (except from creationists) and I sure don’t expect you to look long and hard to atheism. (The thought of that latter would have scared the daylights out of me only 3 years ago.) Still I can hope. I guess when one gets to finally enjoy the light of real truth, one just wishes everyone else could find it too.

I believe in a young earth (6,000 years) created by God in six literal days. In some of my posts, I refer to ID and Theistic evolution, only to point out that there are many people who believe that God used the process of evolution to create the world. I personally believe that the theory of evolution is utter nonsense, and I am also well aware that theistic evolution is incompatible with a literal interpretation of Genesis, which is vital. Nevertheless, I don’t see a belief in evolution as a legitimate reason for atheism.