Why?

NON-CREATIONIST/ID ENTHUSIASTS, PLEASE DO NOT RESPOND!

THIS IS EXCLUSIVELY FOR THOSE WHO REJECT EVOLUTION AND/OR OTHER MAINSTREAM SCIENCES.

I have spent (or more likely misspent) half of my retirement on the evolution - creation/intelligent design "controversy".

I still have no understanding of what causes people to reject mainstream science.

I'm not looking for your alleged scientific justification for rejection, but for your honest feelings about why, even if you did realize that the scientific evidence against your position was overwhelming, you would still reject its conclusions. This is a hypothetical. Please try to entertain it. What I am going on is the remarks of two prominent, intelligent, informed creationists, Kurt Wise and Todd Wood, who both accept the validity of evolutionary and other sciences, but reject them all the same because they contradict their interpretations of scripture. I cannot understand why they do reject them. I am looking for your help in explaining why.

There follow two sections on the views of Kurt Wise and Todd Wood.

Kurt Wise

"I had to make a decision between evolution and Scripture. Either the Scripture was true and evolution was wrong or evolution was true and I must toss out the Bible. However, at that moment I thought back to seven or so years before when a Bible was pushed to a position in front of me and I had come to know Jesus Christ. I had in those years come to know Him. I had become familiar with His love and His concern for me. He had become a real friend to me. He was the reason I was even alive both physically and spiritually. I could not reject Him. Yet, I had come to know Him through His Word. I could not reject that either. It was there that night that I accepted the Word of God and rejected all that would ever counter it, including evolution. With that, in great sorrow, I tossed into the fire all my dreams and hopes in science."
https://creation.com/kurt-p-wise-geology-in-six-days

See also, http://scepsis.net/eng/articles/id_2.php

Todd Wood

"Evolution is not a theory in crisis. It is not teetering on the verge of collapse. It has not failed as a scientific explanation. There is evidence for evolution, gobs and gobs of it. It is not just speculation or a faith choice or an assumption or a religion. It is a productive framework for lots of biological research, and it has amazing explanatory power. There is noconspiracy to hide the truth about the failure of evolution. There has really been no failure of evolution as a scientific theory. It works, and it works well.

I say these things not because I'm crazy or because I've "converted" to evolution. I say these things because they are true. I'm motivated this morning by reading yet another clueless, well-meaning person pompously declaring that evolution is a failure. People who say that are either unacquainted with the inner workings of science or unacquainted with the evidence for evolution. (Technically, they could also be deluded or lying, but that seems rather uncharitable to say. Oops.)

Creationist students, listen to me very carefully: There is evidence for evolution, and evolution is an extremely successful scientific theory. That doesn't make it ultimately true, and it doesn't mean that there could not possibly be viable alternatives. It is my own faith choice to reject evolution, because I believe the Bible reveals true information about the history of the earth that is fundamentally incompatible with evolution. I am motivated to understand God's creation from what I believe to be a biblical, creationist perspective. Evolution itself is not flawed or without evidence. Please don't be duped into thinking that somehow evolution itself is a failure. Please don't idolize your own ability to reason. Faith is enough. If God said it, that should settle it. Maybe that's not enough for your scoffing professor or your non-Christian friends, but it should be enough for you."
More @ http://toddcwood.blogspot.com/2009/09/truth-about-evolution.html