Evolution

I wrote this as a comment on another blog (www.stageleft.info, one of the few blogs I read and the only one I join the fray in, a guy I've known for a decade runs it). This topic is important to me:

I am a proud non-believer. Too proud, some where I come from might say. Like those girls I didn’t go out with again after the first date when I heard their answer to (after learning my lesson and being too long in a relationship in the past without asking) “do you believe in evolution”? Two, seriously, answered “No”. I’m still friends with one, but I couldn’t make that kind of commitment after that.

Getting back to the point. You want to hear what creationist folks think is debatable about the theory of evolution? How did the first species magically appear? comes closest to being the only real debatable part of the theory (though even that is beyond doubt the work of God).

And not to generalize too much, but what I have witnessed first hand (more than most non-evolution-questioning folks I would hope) is this:
They don’t know which part of the process they object to outside of it’s not true. God made man and all the animals and plants. And even if evolution does exist it has ONLY happened since He created them, so there is no need to worry about the details. This last tactic has been adopted by many folks unable to reconcile the science with a 6-7000 year old planet.

I have other friends who do no believe in evolution, it’s the nature of my surroundings for many years. The one time a friend let me talk to her about religion and evolution, and listened, and asked questions, she came out of it a little shaken by the examples and science that had been kept from her (or she herself ignored). She was a little stung, but she said
“Wow, you actually make me doubt what I know. I should find out.”
My reply, “Good! That’s what SCIENCE is about! Not being sure, and working and investigating and gathering evidence so that you become more sure!” Her:”Does that mean we’ll never know?” and a pall fell over her face.

It was then I knew. It’s not about evolution, it’s not about God, it’s not about Darwin or maize or monkeys or humans. It’s about not knowing.

Or more precisely, after having been made so certain about everything, it’s about not wanting to not know.

I’ve read On the Origin of Species. It’s fascinating and enlightening. I knew more about evolution and understood it better, and it cemented in my mind the ideas I had about evolution, after reading it (and I took University courses devoted largely and, in the case of “Human Evolution,” entirely to the subject)

What is unfortunate is that many folks who object to it would never even touch the book, let alone let their eyes be subjected to such a blatant example of the Devil’s work.

on a side note: of all the names in all the world, the foremost Creation-evangelist has to be named Janet Folger? If a sense of humour was proof of God’s existence, I’d be a believer.