Not in Kansas anymore

Note: The following entry is about evolution. Which means, according to statistics, 44% of you will not agree with this entry. If you're easily offended, you may want to return tomorrow. If you enjoy a good debate, then continue reading...

I was about 3 years old, stricken with chicken pox and confined to the sofa, my mother demanding that I get some sleep, which, of course, I ignored, being 3 years old. As I was sitting there, admist my mothers pleas to not scratch my pox or else I would be permanently scarred (literally), I noticed a National Geographic magazine on the coffee table. On the cover was a hologrammed picture - if you turned it one way, it was a human face; when you turned it the other, it was an ape face. As my mother whizzed by, laundry basket in one hand, phone in the other, I asked her what the word on the cover of the magazine said. "Evolution," she replied, squinting to read the cover. I asked her what it meant. She hesitated, looking for the right way to explain this theory to me. "We used to be monkeys," she said as she continued with her chores. Finally, I sat very still on the sofa, closed my eyes, and tried to remember when I was a monkey.

The state of Kansas is currently undergoing some elections that could decide the fate of evolution in the classroom. It seems that this state is permanently stricken with the anti-evolution bug, stemming from the Scopes Monkey Trial days. It's Creation (read: religion) against Evolution (read: crazy secular scientists). What I don't understand is, why can't they be one and the same? Why must Evolution butt heads with religion? Being a Anthropology major and a Catholic, I don't see why the two must be mutually exclusive.

I believe in evolution. It's a theory, but theories are fairly sound - they are a scientific methodology that is repeated in a systemized process in a variety of conditions - all with the same result. Gravity was a theory before it became a law. And it only became a law because it's been a theory for so long. Relativity is a theory. Atoms are a theory. It's more than speculation - it's about as serious as you can get in science. So there is a lot of proof, fact and testing that has gone behind the theory of evolution. Why is it such a stretch to believe that evolution took place, but it was under God's influence?

I guess you could argue that the Bible says it ain't so. But, again, being Catholic and a contextualist, how do we know that the Bible wasn't merely simplifying a very complex theory? Just as my mother simplified something for a 3-year-old to understand (imagine my reaction if she had sat down and started explaining DNA and mutations and time in billions of years), so, too, others may have found a simpler explanation for the way things happened. Granted, we're related to Apes, not Monkeys, and it's that we share a common ancestor to the modern Ape, but is that important to a bratty chicken-poxed kid?

Just look at bacteria, who have much shorter generations than humans. They can reproduce hundreds of themselves in just minutes, while we take 30 years between generations, so they are like evolution sped up. Look at how quickly they adapt to a changing environment. Some die; some mutate and happen to survive. This is how we get drug-resistant bacteria and new strains of bugs for which we have no cure. It's evolution at a microcosm level. It's Darwin in a petri dish.

Here's the problem: if we don't teach evolution to our children, or even teach it as a serious fact, then I'm afraid we may be thrwarting our growth in the sciences. We may be allowing religion to present a block to turning out scientists and researchers. If we could agree that the two can exist in harmony, then we could allow the flow of ideas and science, and not provide yet another stumbling block to our country's lack of science education. Take the stickers out of the textbooks that say evolution is "theory not fact". Allow our schools to teach science, to teach a grounded theory, and allow people to make up their own minds. Let us use our imaginations to remember when we were Monkeys (or Apes) to encourage our children to find the other nuggets of truth that are out there and advance our culture and our country. And to understand more fully who we are and where we came from. I just hope it doesn't point to Kansas.