Lancer

So why evolution?

The thing is, I have recently learned a little bit about the creationist controversy in public education in the US and to be honest, I found it very odd. I mean, evolution as a theory stopped being controversial a long time ago in scientific circles and is now considered a pretty fundamental aspect of biology.

Then again, it is just an aspect of biology. Why is it so important anyway? What does it have to do with conservatives or Christianity?

Well, I understand it like this: the bible says god created man and animals and everything else over a period of time described in the book of Genesis. That conflicts of course with reality. But a lot of things in the bible do, and Christians and Catholics always find a way to ease that conflict: they say it is either symbolic, a translation issue, a matter of interpretation or just god working in mysterious ways.

Why not do that with evolution? Just say the talking snake and the ribgirl are symbolic and be done with it. A compromise: the bible says something that does not really make sense in the real world but it is still true because it is an allegory. They do that with a lot of stuff anyway.

Creation however, is different.

You see, if the creation myth described in Genesis is not literally true (snake and all) then there is no original sin. That is the core of the issue and the part where we (are supposed to ) depart logic and start proving myths with myths. Because without the original sin, the story of Jesus Christ is suddenly not so powerful. After all, if Jesus did not die (but not rally) on the cross to rid mankind from the original sin, then why? Or did it redeemed us of all sins? (in which case, sinning ahoy).

So man evolving pretty much negates the need of Jesus Christ.

We must also take into consideration the mentality in which the death of a person atones a sin: it is the mindset of a time when people offered animal sacrifices to make things right with an angry god. That is really common among old religions and is now universally regarded as primitive at best. But check out the Deuteronomy. This is particularly interesting because it sheds some light as to why Jesus was the Lamb of God. It was a sacrifice made by god to calm the anger of an offended god-- which just happens to be himself.

That is titanically weird on it's own right, but we must go back to the point where I was going: creationism is the attempt to give the creation myth of Genesis some varnishing of scientific legitimacy. It fails catastrophically, of course.

Evolution denialism is almost unique to the US, and it creates quite a few conundrums. If you take evolution out of the equation of the way you understand biology you end up with a very funky version of it. And you are forced to make ever more outlandish statements just to keep the whole thing as consistent as possible.

Imagine someone stating that they don't believe in say, cellular division. Listening to the way they explain how plants grow and how wounds heal would be pretty crazy.

It is very similar with the explanations given to biology without evolution, you get a worldview that just doesn't fit the facts. It messes everything up.