Thursday, February 16, 2006

Vatican and Intelligent Design

kudos to the Vatican for saying that I.D. and evolution are not the same thing, therefore they are not incompatible with each other, but also that I.D. is not a scientific theory. This has never seemed like one of those tough pieces of doctrine that we should have issues with, but, strangely enough, we do.

Evolution is the scientific theory about how we got here; I.D. is the religious explanation. I was raised on both and can believe both. My first (and only) serious doubts about this was when I was about 10 and was reading our Childcraft books (remember those?). One of the books (I think it was people and places, but whatever) had both the creation story from Genesis and the story of the Big Bang. I thought, "hmmm. Can I believe both?" After reading the stories again, I decided that I could, just because one was science and one was God. Turns out my ten-year old reasoning worked pretty well, because that's really what it boils down to. Now I had some friends in h.s. who didn't do any of the projects in the evolution unit because they didn't believe it; my bio teacher avoided the whole thing by just not teaching it. But either way, it seems like this is all a moot point. If you want your kids to grow up with creationism or I.D., read them the Bible and send them to church. They'll learn about evolution in school. The two can coincide--it's not hard. Let's just give this one a rest.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This is something I feel pretty strongly about, being a scientist. I, too, have always thought that these two ideas can easily coexist. I can deal with older people (like my grandmother) not getting evolution, but younger, well-educated people frustrate me when they try to get "intelligent design" passed off as a scientific theory we should teach in schools. They just give the rest of the level-headed, smart Christians a bad name.