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Bryce Mitchell has had a shocking amount of success in the UFC after entering into the promotion as an also-ran on the Ultimate Fighter: Undefeated back in 2018. Despite his limited success there—and a squeaker of a majority decision to secure his contract after the show—’Thug Nasty’ is now 6-1 inside the Octagon, and firmly entrenched as a fixture in the division’s rankings.
This weekend, he’s preparing to take on fellow top-ranked featherweight Dan Ige. As the two men get ready for battle, Mitchell sat down with former UFC champion Michael Bisping and former title contender Anthony Smith, where he showed off one of his other talents: a willingness to believe just about anything.
UFC’s Bryce Mitchell claims evolution is Satanic
It would be easier to chalk Bryce Mitchell’s rejection of the last 150+ years of scientific study and theory on the evolution of man up to his religious upbringing and education if it didn’t coincide with so much of the other nonsense that the UFC featherweight tends to spout off on whenever given a chance.
Whether it’s a belief that COVID-19 was manufactured by the US government so that they could “try and take our guns,” or that the Earth is flat and the moon landing was faked, Mitchell has shown a repeated willingness to jump in on the conspiracy meme of the moment.
“NASA is fraudulent,” the UFC featherweight wrote back in April. “They’re evil. thats why their logo is the tongue of a snake. They make up lies like big bang and moon landings cause the elites don’t want you to worship God!”
So, when the UFC fighter took some time in his recent interview to get mad about evolution, it should hardly come as a surprise.
“Oh, here’s where I wanted to go with this, Bisping,” Mitchell said, unprompted. “Here’s where I want to go with this. And you don’t have to elaborate, or anything. Do you believe that we evolved from monkeys.”
“BULLSHIT! THAT’S BULLSHIT!” Mitchell started screaming after Bisping said “yes.” “It’s bullshit, it’s a lie from Satan! It’s a lie from Satan, brother! You have been tricked, you have been deceived. We are not coming from monkeys. We are the apex predators.”
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The roots of Darwinism and evolution
Leaving aside the whole idea that an “apex predator” is an offshoot of food-chain theory—something devised by zoologist and animal ecologist Charles Sutherland Elton and with its foundation just as firmly laid in scientific method as Darwin’s evolution — it has to be noted that Darwin himself was an extremely religious man.
Raised by Unitarians, but educated with the intention of becoming an Anglican member of the clergy of the Church of England, Darwin himself was a very orthodox believer. Biographies of his life have stated that he firmly took The Bible as a literal text, and looked to find explanation and example of God’s divine works in nature rather than chalking the unexplained up to ‘miracle.’
The voyage Darwin took and the work he did undeniably ended up shaking the foundations of his faith, but even still, Darwin remained a believer in God. And while the Church of England may have been mixed in its reaction to Darwin’s publicatiosn, for many decades it was not uncommon for men of faith and conviction to see science as going hand-in-hand with divinity. In fact, within the scientific community, it still isn’t.
It’s much more the purview of American Evangelicism to see scientific theory as an outright threat to belief in the Almighty. That battle has played out in the American court system for decades now on a wide range of topics, and it has left in its wake a hard-line fundamentalism. In this UFC fighter’s case, that kind of religiosity can’t be ignored, but even most people who hold to that kind of religious thinking don’t imagine that the world is flat. On that front he’s just nuts.
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