Deus or Darwin: Randomness and belief in theories about the origin of life
By B. Rutjens, J. Pligt, Frenk van Harreveld. 2010
97 citations recorded by the source corpus.
A simple reminder of the fact that we do not always control life's outcomes reduced people's belief in Darwin's Theory of Evolution. This control-threat resulted in a relative preference for theories of life that thwart randomness, either by stressing the role of a controlling God (Intelligent Design) or by presenting the Theory of Evolution in terms of predictable and orderly processes. Moreover, increased preference for Intelligent Design over evolutionary theory disappeared when the latter was framed in terms of an orderly process with inevitable outcomes. Thus, psychological threat enhances belief in God, but only in the absence of other options that help to create order in the world.
Subfields: History and Philosophy of Science, Sociology and Political Science, Philosophy
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/842cc08a0a6991fd050e7e94340ed22c4ca471ba
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In Sociology and Political Science
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- Markus Quirin
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In Philosophy
Citations in the corpus
- Threat and defense: From anxiety to approach (2014, background): “…to detect structure-conferring regularities exist, then people may resort to closed-mindedness and avoidance of uncertain phenomena (e.g., Jost et al., 2007; Kay et al., 2008; Rutjens et al., 2010; Rutjens et al., 2013; Kay, Shepherd, et al., 2010; Sullivan, Landau, & Rothschild, 2010).”