Why Did You Become...

Logos:
What happened in your past to make you evolutionists and darwinists?

Lenny Flank:
The same thing that made me a Faradayist, Einsteinist, Lavoisierist, and Newtonist.

Ken Rode:
I came to the realization when I was about 8 that the world did not operate on magic.

jrsp8s:
Education, common sense, and curiosity.

SeppoP:
Got an education.

Augray:
Evidence.

Thurisaz:
I was taught to use my brain to think, and I got an education.

Cheezits:
I discovered creationism. :-D

Lee Jay:
I opened my eyes, turned on my brain, saw and evaluated the evidence. At the same time (probably 2nd or 3rd grade), I also saw the built-in contradictions of the various religious accounts of the history of us and our surroundings.

TomS:
A friend of mine told me that he was rather doubtful about evolutionary biology until he read "Darwin's Black Box". This convinced my friend that the biologists were on the right track.

Wakboth:
I was taught science by honest people who were not emotionally wedded to fundamentalism and pseudoscience.

Dan Luke:
I compared the facts to what the Bible teaches about natural history.

Andre Isaak:
...I read up on things and went to college.

Windy:
St. Charles appeared to me as I was riding to Damascus on my monkey.

wf3h:
well, i became a scientist for starters...

Dean Chester:
I read the Bible and attended church and sunday school and when I started questioning the logical inconsistencies I was sent straight to a bible studies class where I did not get straight answers, just obtusifications, and declarations of faith based on hand waving and no evidence.

When a helpful sunday school teacher gave me a book on scientific creation and flood geology I read it and at the end knew the story was bull shit.

Ash:
Education

John Harshman:
I was born into a world with senses capable of noticing what the world was like, and a brain capable of reasoning about it. Then I went to school and learned what some of the previous people with senses and brains had found out. And it all seemed to fit together rather well.

Robert J. Kolker:
Intelligent understand of nature. The laws of nature are God's Will made manifest and clear to mankind.

Desertphile:
It's called "education." Perhaps you have heard of it.

SRNissen:
I was taught about the scientific method, and told which conclusions biologists had come to when applying it to the evidence.

Bobby D. Bryant:
I learned to read.

Greg G.:
I rejected creationism when I tried to reconcile its internal inconsistencies and stumbled across creationist quote mines in context.

Joe Cooper:
Wrote a paper in 7th grade on Mendel

Jeffrey Turner:
It was the lure of the secret handshake and the decoder ring.

Bill Wayne:
I can't speak for anybody but myself, but for me, it was Mark Isaak.

I originally was a YEC. Due to my environment, I believed (or had to believe) that the bible and evolution could not coexist. And since the bible had to be true, how could evolution work? Most of the arguments against it I heard seem stupid in reflection (flood made all the fossils), but at the time I swallowed up anything that disproved it. To make things worse, we had no science class. Zilch. The only thing that remotely resembled it was a pseudoclass where we learnt things like "lead hurts you". Most of my "science" knowledge came from religious teachers, which made it even harder to know anything about it. Thankfully, I'm glad to say I had at least a slightly open mind.

Whenever something I heard (carbon dating is innacurate) was refuted (we don't use carbon dating for Age of Earth), I stopped using that argument and avoided making up ad hoc responses. The main argument I had that, though, was something like interlocking complexity. For example, how could a snake evolve both a venom sac and a hollow fang if both are only useful without the other? Much more importantly, how could the bombardier beetle have evolved, if it's wonderful defense system would have destroyed it if anything went wrong?

When browsing the internet one day, I stumbled on Mark Isaak's discussion on the beetle (http://tinyurl.com/85lna). After reading that, it occured to me I knew almost nothing about how evolution works, and I might be arguing about a false representation. That propelled me to learn something about it, which also made me decide it was the best explanation.

That's all there really is to it. You probably won't read my explanation, but who knows? Maybe you'll decided to research it yourself and come to the same conclusions I did.

Mark Isaak:
I got a good general education.

Denis Loubet:
I determined at an early age to be as rational as I could.

Bill Currie:
My mother (she's a familyist). When I was six or seven she ordered the Time/Life Nature book series. Every two weeks another window on the world arrived in the mail.

'Pithecanthropus erectus':
Kudos to your mother; mine had ordered an encyclopedia of wildlike for me. The books came monthly and I would devour them, learning about range, diet, endangered species status and their place in the evolutionary tree.

Gary Bohn:
I was able to shake off the shackles of religious fundamentalism and started thinking for myself. All it took was a little self awareness, some reading and a lot of reflection.

John Wilkins:
Well several things made me an evolutionist (that is, one who thinks evolution occurred and that the theory explains the way things are):

1. I learned stuff
2. I observed stuff
3. I stopped letting the ignorant tell me what to believe
4. I stopped using theology and scripture as a source of scientific knowledge
5. I met creationists.

Cyde Weys:
About four billion years of history ...

Ye Old One:
I received an education.

Elf Sternberg:
I was born. Apparently, without an ability to swallow nonsense about burning bushes, talking snakes, and men surviving in the bellies of whales.

Elf

Frank J:
For me it was that Commandment that forbade me to bear false witness.

Bob Casanova:
... I got an education and learned the value of critical thinking

dkomo:
Nothing. I don't remember ever believing anything else.

Chris Linthompson:
I went to one of those high schools run by evil atheist satan worshippers.

You know, Jesuits.

J. Pieret:
I grew up and put away childish things.

Jim Lovejoy:
I heard my first creationist arguments, and found out that they sounded batshit crazy.

After that I looked at the evidence both for evolution, and what creationists claimed was the evidnece for creation, and found out that the reason creationists sounded batshit crazy was because they were batshit crazy.

And they haven't gotten any saner since then BTW.

Rolf Aalberg:
...we just studied the evidence and drew our own conclusions, like any reasonably intelligent and clear-thinking person would do.

Eric Root:
Raised in an ordinary mainstream church that had no problem with science, by parents who were both smart and kind.