...on your video phone / make a cameo / tape me on your video phone / I can handle you...
I believe in Evolution. I am a scientist by nature and the evidence of evolution is innately unequivocal.
I don't know if I am right but it just makes sense and it is difficult to argue with tangible, sensible evidence such as fossils, carbon dating, and the other processes used to identify the age of fossils.
I am also a Christian but I cannot encourage that Adam and Eve story. It is a beautiful story; interesting and aesthetic, creative and gentle.
But given the evidence of evolution, it becomes just a good story.
I asked my closest friends the other day if they believed in Evolution and they all said no. To be honest, I was surprised. Then I realized that science and religion have been pinned against each other by some ethereal referee, but in my mind, they coexist with finesse. They oppose each other at some junctions and I am not always able to reconcile their oppositions, but they coexist nonetheless.
I have other friends for whom God and religion mean nothing. Not only do they mean nothing, they are also very antagonistic to the idea. And in some ways, I am too. I am quite private about my religion. I don't testify (and I don't know if I find anything wrong with that), I don't "spread the Gospel", I don't believe in missionaries, and I find outwardly religious people to be annoying.
By outwardly religious, I mean those who have constant discussion about God and religion; those who cannot understand why others do not believe what they believe; those who criticize others who do not believe what they believe; those who fight against the full recognition of citizenship of fellow humans beings.I feel that religion is private. One's relationship with God is private. You will be judged for your sins alone. I have therefore never understood why people are so interested in monitoring and modifying the lives of others according to their God's rules.
Homosexuality and abortion are the best examples. I understand that homosexuality and abortion are considered sins. For that reason, one should partake in neither. But in a nation that rests on the idea of separation of church and state, why should gay marriage and abortion be illegal? What is the intellectual answer that explains the oppositions to the two aforementioned issues legality?
If we are to separate church and state, whether the church thinks they are wrong or not is irrelevant. Not all people believe in God and not all people care what the church has to say. Secondly, as a person who believes in God, Suzie Q's abortion or her homosexual partnership will not be on my list of sins for which I have to answer to God, so why should I care?
I have this feeling that God gets annoyed with us sometimes. With all the people dying of disease, starvation, war/terrorism, abject poverty, and lack of education, are we really going to argue about who should be allowed to be miserable in marriage and who should not be?
The world is literally coming to an end. Why do we care so much about what other people are doing? If you think something is a sin, good for you. Don't do it then. Abortion is killing a living thing, I know, but science has allowed us to have such an option. We want a cure to cancer and AIDS and all the other things science can cure in its progression but we abhor things like abortion. It comes with the progress. They can even engineer children.
I understand, but I don't agree that it should be illegal. For those for whom abortion is not a moral question, it should be made safe and standardized. There are some people who do not believe in medicine at all. Should we ban blood transfusions, wart removals, plastic surgery and all the things science provides?
Those things are not totally comparable to abortion as human life is up for debate but I suggest that if you do not agree with abortion that you not have one.
Back to Evolution. Evolution allows for these discussions. When we first arrived on this planet in whatever form you want to believe, we were struggling to survive. We were hunting our food, making shelter in nature, battling the weather and disease...trying to survive.
Now that we have evolved so superiorly, we needn't worry where our meal is coming from, where we shall sleep, how we shall stay well. So now, we get to make each other miserable by ignoring those who haven't evolved into life without worry (developing nations are human beings living in subhuman conditions) and judging people for their differences. People don't worry about what their neighbor is doing when they are hungry as hell and no grocery store in sight.
3 comments:
well.....simply for the sake of being critical, i'm going to point out that for you to say the conflicting ideas of evolution and religion coexist is pretty much unnecessary. Just about everything in the world coexists. They couldn't oppose at junctions if they didn't coexist...idk. i was annoyed by it. but i haven't had sleep.
I disagree that one's relationship with God is private. You may think that it should be private but in actuality what it is, is what they want it to be. Whether it be private or ardently displayed or whatever. It's not for you to render "private".
I'm glad you said, "If we are to separate church and state..." What a big "if" it is. If we could separte the two sucessfully i wonder what the world would be like. But I suppose it would be impossible to know that because bias based on personal beliefs have been around since the beginning of time. Why do we even attempt to believe that relgion and politics can remain separate?
well shaweedah,
1. i don't understand the first paragraph. i will say however, that people are polarized by religion and rarely do you find people who can reconcile their religion with their subscription to science.
2. why can't your relationship with God be private? Who is they?
3. we have to attempt to believe that we can separate church and state and it's kind of dense question to ask. you live in a country that practices it very well, although not perfectly. the fact that you are not killed for writing such a blog entry as i have written is a testamnent to that. therefore, how can you question the separation, imperfect as it may be?
1....let's just leave that alone.
2. Your relationship with God can be private. What I'm saying is, it can be private, it can be out in the open, etc. It's not for you to decide. Each person decides how they wish to convey (not the word i'm looking for) the relationship they have with God.
3. Me, I would like perfection. As much as people to talk about church and state and how we are a country that separates the two, I need perfection in the practice. It's highly possible that I'm mistaken in my information and evidence of the separation. Idk. ijdk.
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