Friday, November 18, 2005

Religion and Science

I don't always care for Charles Krauthammer's opinions, but this one in the Post makes some excellent points. Read the whole thing.

How ridiculous to make evolution the enemy of God. What could be more elegant, more simple, more brilliant, more economical, more creative, indeed more divine than a planet with millions of life forms, distinct and yet interactive, all ultimately derived from accumulated variations in a single double-stranded molecule, pliable and fecund enough to give us mollusks and mice, Newton and Einstein?

Amen. I am very religious, and yet I have no problem with evolution. At conservative, religious BYU, I studied evolution taught by church-going professors, and never did I notice any student or faculty uproars over it. It was just education as usual.

I'm afraid that many people who shriek against evolution are misinformed about it. For example, you still hear the old "man didn't descend from monkeys" argument. (Not true - evolution does not say that we descended from apes. These types of people are an embarrassment to me, and make all religious people look uneducated and uninformed. However, if you don't want to believe in evolution - fine, that's your perogative. But don't be so afraid of it that you try to keep it out of the schools (Wouldn't that be a little like trying to keep prayer out of schools - something these same people want?). If you truly have a fundamental religious belief against evolution, teach your child what you believe at home. Sooner or later they will have to decide for themselves what they believe, and a few days of high school bio class shouldn't "corrupt" them if you have taught them well. For my part, I will teach my children to pray at home, and expect that they will survive 7 hours at school without prayer! I will also teach them that religion and science can coexist.

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