[LINK] Creationism = High Carb? Or, The Devil Does Atkins
Based on the community’s continuing interests in diet and religion, I’d like to point out this blog post by the coauthor of Protein Power, Michael Eades, wherein he suggests that biblical literalism tends toward a low-fat approach to nutrition over a low-carb philosophy, by essentially throwing out a bunch of evidence on the matter:
Why, you might ask, is this scientist so obdurate in the face of all the evidence that’s out there? Perhaps because much of the evidence isn’t in accord with his religious beliefs. I try never to mention a person’s religious faith, but when it impacts his scientific thinking it at least needs to be made known. Unless he’s changed his thinking recently, Dr. Eckel apparently is one of the few academic scientists who are literal interpreters of the bible. I assume this because Dr. Eckel serves on the technical advisory board of the Institution for Creation Research, an organization that believes that not only is the earth only a few thousand years old , but that the entire universe in only a few thousand years old. And they believe that man was basically hand formed by God on the sixth day of creation. And Dr. Eckel’s own writings on the subject appear to confirm his beliefs
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Of all the evidence that exists, I think the evolutionary/natural selection data and the anthropological data are the most compelling because they provide the largest amount of evidence over the longest time. To Dr. Eckel, however, these data aren’t applicable because in his worldview prehistoric man didn’t exist and therefore wasn’t available to be molded by the forces of natural selection. I haven’t a clue as to what he thinks the fossil remains of early humans really were or where they came from. Perhaps he believes – as I once had it explained to me by a religious fundamentalist – these fossilized remains of dinosaurs, extinct ancient birds and mammals and prehistoric man were carefully buried by the devil to snare the unwary and the unbeliever. If this is the case, I guess I’ll have to consider myself snared.
In Dr. Eckel’s view, man was created post agriculturally. In fact, in his view, there was never an pre-agricultural era, so how could man have failed to adapt to agriculture?
While there’s a clear persuasive agenda here and I won’t present a full analysis of the situation, Eades also mentions biasing use of language earlier in the article. In particular, beware applause lights and confirmation bias in evaluating.
Interesting, but I’d like to see a survey that looks for whether there are corelations between people’s religious/non-religious beliefs and their beliefs about diet. It’s plausible that those who don’t believe in evolution won’t take paleo arguments seriously, but there are non-paleo arguments for low carb, and I take those more seriously. It’s hard to be sure a priori how similar we are to paleolithic people. We’ve been through some selection and some random change since then.
It wouldn’t surprise if the real connection between religion and low fat is by way of asceticism.
Also, re: Hanson’s farmer-forager concept.
I don’t think you’d see such a correlation yet. As soon as these ‘scientists’ sound the ‘low carb’ == ‘evolutionism’ alarm, you may see a swift realignment from the creationist populace.
I’m not so sure that would happen. Keep in mind evolutionary psychology is extremely controversial even among scientists who are atheists.
Oh, but the truth of the matter is irrelevant. It may be true, or it may be false, but as soon as the faithful get wind of the ‘evolutionism’ connection, they will certainly take the opposite side, just to be sure.
My point is that this will be sufficiently controversial among scientists that by the time it shows up on the creationists’ radar, the connection to ‘evolutionism’ won’t be obvious or clear cut.
We might learn a few things from the fundamentalists’ talent for not compartmentalizing.
I’ve long said that the only religious people I can converse with are the fundamentalists, as they at least acknowledge that truth exists. They may seek it from their holy book rather than bayes and occam but at least they acknowledge it. The ‘liberals’, when pressed hard enough, tend to go into some kind of relativism that really negates the entire notion of ‘conversation’.
That seems like an extraordinarily hasty generalization. What you seem to be saying is that most non-fundamentalist religious people won’t agree to even a common-sense definition of truth; I’m very skeptical of this claim. Have you tried using really really simple examples, like “snow is white”?
You are right. It is a hasty generalization, hence the word ‘tend’. When handled with care, these can be useful.