“Darwin is the Devil”
Over at Not About Religion, author Todd Hebert reflects on his childhood in an ultra-conservative sect of Christianity, where he “believed Charles Darwin to be a…tool used by the devil to discredit God and the Bible.”
I feel for all the children out there being told lies about Darwin and evolution. It’s not their fault; yet they blindly believe their parents, gaurdians, and *eek* teachers. Here’s an article from someone who was raised with fauly information and grew up to make up his own mind:
Fortunately, as I grew I didn’t take this explanation at face value. I learned that Darwin’s theory wasn’t just about apes evolving into humans. And in the 150 years since the publication of Darwin’s On the Origin Of Species, science has “evolved” enough to expand on this theory, tie up some loose ends, and bring the theory closer to fact.
The reason I bring this up, on Darwin’s 200th birthday, is that many persons believe as I did as a boy. They believe the creation story in Genesis to be literal. They believe the earth to be about 6,000 years old. Adam was created from dust and Eve from Adam’s rib. These were the first two humans. They didn’t evolve from any lower life form.
Though I don’t necessarily agree with the author on his general views about belief, I appreciate the separation of Evolution from Atheism. Evolution can easily exist without a god or belief, but does it have to everyone? Religion can be far more dangerous than belief in a higher power (on its own), as I have previously noted.
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Nice blog.
The problem lies with people who insist on believing the obviously fictitious (or metaphorical, if you will) Genesis story. If you accept that humans evolved from other species, then that whole story about God creating man in His image, and creating all the creatures on Earth, must be conceded to be utterly false.
It *is* possible to believe both that there is a God who created the universe and life in it, and that evolution followed. It’s possible to believe those things because Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection explains the diversity of life but not the origin of life — and certainly not the origin of the universe. But Biblical literalists refuse to “compromise” in that way, I guess because to them admitting Genesis isn’t literally true would open the door to admitting other parts of the Bible aren’t true either.
Myself, I guess I have no trouble with evolution because I see the Bible as BS anyway.
Happy Darwin Day!
Thanks! Yeah, for us nonbelievers, it goes without saying. But that doesn’t mean Evolution should exclude believers.
I have many friends and coworkers who consider themselves a Christian, a Jew, etc (or even just a believer in a higher power without religion). They all seem to accept some form of Evolution.
Happy Darwin Day to you too!