Editor,
While sitting and studying my biology notes on my lunch break the other day, this question came to mind: If religion has no place in our academic community, then why does evolution?
My point here is not to overtly go through all the contradictions, for most of us have had all of these beliefs shoved down our throats for years. But my concern is for the very educational system that goes out of its way to keep religion out of the educational process. It is difficult, in my view, to differentiate evolution from any other religion. Christianity has the Bible for its teachings and God in the form of the Trinity as the leader. Others have the Quran for their teachings, with Allah as their leader. Evolutionists have The Origin of Species as their reading, with Charles Darwin as their leader. Darwin's theory was made purposely to dispute the age-old thinking of one Creator, and he thus started his own belief system. Evangelical evolutionists will not deny that Darwin created these teachings to dispute the Bible. They applaud him for it, giving credence to another characteristic of a religion.
If the evolutionist's belief is to be true, why isn't their point of reference before Darwin? Why did it take about 75 years after Darwin's
startling revelation for mainstream science to adopt these beliefs? It wasn't until the 1950s that evolution became the widespread thinking in the science community. If this thinking is the way it really happened, there would be some proof of it way before Darwin invented the idea back in the late 1800s. Even the followers of the Quran had sense enough to start theirs thousands of years ago.
Science is too valuable to be mired in such blatant hypocrisy. We can build scientific formulas to come up with cures for health issues without some sort of link between humans and algae - the long lost relative of an evolutionist. We can use science to develop seismograph machines - and other tools - to help with geological concerns without thinking the earth is billions of years old.
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Whatever you believe, it takes faith to believe a set of events that happened a long time ago. It just takes a lot more faith to believe you can visit your great-great-grandparents hanging from a tree in the nearest zoo. If religion truly has no place in the educational system, then evolution does not belong there either.
It seems to me the best possible solution would be to offer both sides and let the consumers - that would be the students for those of you in administration - decide which class to attend.
Dennis Kinzler
UNM student
