Creationism and Christianity

Gone are the days where the Church openly persecutes men and women of science by burning them on stakes and declaring the heretics. However, the clergy has brought this battle between Science and Religion into the boardroom, the courts of justice and yes, even the classrooms.

This so-called war has been going about since God knows when and both sides have a lot to say about countless of issues. Some seem trivial like whether or not the use of caffeine will endanger your immortal soul to the tearing claws of Hell’s demons, others involves matters of life and death such as stem cell research.

However to avoid getting bombarded from both sides I have picked a particular topic that is rather idiotic to say the least. I would like to have a say about this new thing called Creationism.

When it comes to the origin of where life comes from and how ugly monkeys called homo sapiens came about, 10% of the world believes that we are created by a divine being which most of us define as God, 15% of us believe in a theory sprouted up by a biologist/ecologist named Charles Darwin ( though recent research showed that Darwin’s work isn’t exactly his own work ) and the rest of us couldn’t give a rat’s ass where we come from because we have too much crap to deal with right now. Ok maybe I lied about the statistics but you get the point.

In 2004 President Bush made it compulsory for Intelligent Design (Creationism to you and me) to be thought side by side with Evolution so that they may “understand both sides of the story”. Now Creationism is rather tedious to explain so I’ll simplify matters by cutting to the chase so that you can relate to my argument. It basically says dinosaurs and men lived side by side until the big flood came and Noah had to save a pair of each animal as written in the Old Testament.

Laugh if you must but there are literally a few hundred thousands I dare say believes this is true and that number is growing day by day. Carbon testing shows that the bones from the last age of the dinosaurs the Cretaceous Period dates back to at least 65 million years ago.

Anyone who knows American history would also know that the U.S.A was founded by men of Enlightenment. Men who are by the very nature curious about the secular world and wishes to examine everything and anything under the sun. Benjamin Franklin is an excellent example of one of those men.

In the New World they were relatively free from the religious persecution from both the Protestant and Catholic Church. They were free to discover more about science. Some like Lewis and Clark were funded by President Thomas Jefferson for an overland expedition to the Pacific coast and back. They were to label and categorise as many animals and plants along the way. Even the manliest of presidents, President Theodore Roosevelt took a keen interest in classifying birds (though he shot them first before actually doing it).

Now the question is, how did this great country go from being one that encourages research and discovery of new scientific advancement to a country that encourages the little ones to think that some time ago their ancestors rode on a cute baby triceratops to go to work?

You see Christians in general have a certain belief, I quote this from Esquire, in Christianity, the uneducated is prefered to educated. We would rather believe in something that cannot be explained using logic and common sense rather than cold hard evidence.

President Bush was pressured by the Christian fundalmentalist who were afraid that the country was getting too secular. Instead of coming up with a proper way to explain the true meaning of Christianity, they chose a pathway which they think can relate to the young (hence the uneducated) and the young can help spread the enthusiasm to their parents and the vicious cycle continues. Those fundalmentalist are afraid that the book of Genesis would hold no weight against the countless of research done by paleontologists throughout the ages. What makes me sick is the fact that they think that they can bundle up Creationism into some lab coat and call it Intelligent Design and assume it will make a difference. Frankly speaking, it does.

This is history repeating itself. 500 years ago during the time of Galileo Galilei (February 15,1564 till January 8 1642) the Catholic Church held him under house arrest and nearly excommunicated him and declaring him a heretic. The reason? He said that the Earth travels around the Sun (heliocentric) instead of the other way around which was defended by the Church because they think that the Earth is the centre of the universe and everything else orbits around it. Wow how far have we gone since then.

I am not a perfect example of a Christian. I have my faults and learning every single day how to overcome them. But however I do believe that being a Christian means that you believe in God and you believe in Christ. When you believe in something or anything in that matter, you know that the best is expected from you. The Good Lord gave us a mind to use, so let us use it in a productive way. As Christians we should explore our own faith, push its boundaries to its very limits and listening to what other Christians regardless of denomination before telling someone off because he or she questions about our religion. We must not take everything from the Bible literally because basically the Bible is written by Men and though the message from above may be crystal clear, the effector may not function as efficient enough. To put in simpler terms, don't follow blindly.

I am proud to be a Christian and proud that the fact that many scientific advances has been done by men of religion. However, regardless of what moral and intergrity is to any of you, scientific discoveries in any field should only be used for the benefit of mankind and not its destruction.