Evolution and god
The question was asked (on an NY Times article), Can you believe in God and in evolution at the same time? which is something of a pet peeve of mine.
My answer:
You can believe in god and understand evolution. Evolution is not subject to belief--you either understand it, thus giving yourself a basis for understanding the rest of biological science, or you don't understand it, leaving no foundation to build any further scientific advances on. If you understand it, you are free to believe "But actually god made the world in seven days and only created the appearance that evolution was the process." If god created the appearance of the process of evolution, one can only assume that he meant us to learn something from it, including the operation of natural and artificial selection and the interrelationship of species, including humanity. So either way you need to learn, study, and understand evolution.
More bluntly, I don't fucking care if you "believe" in evolution or not. But learn what the hell you're talking about.
If humans evolved from apes, how come there are still apes? My Michigan relatives descended from relatives who lived in Minnesota. How is this possible when I still have relatives living in Minnesota?
How can evolution be right when modern evolutionary theory contradicts what Darwin said? Darwin's books aren't the bible--they can be built on, contradicted, expanded on.... Someone, sometime must have figured out that pi equals 3.1415927. Well, now we know that pi equals 3.14159265358979323846... Oh, lord, the first number was off by one on the seventh decimal! It must be completely untrue!
For what it's worth, I don't believe in a 6000-year-old Earth and a literal Genesis (or Christianity in general, actually). On the other hand, nothing in science or religion can prove that the world wasn't created at 11:55AM (US Eastern Standard Time), April 29th, 2008, complete with my memory of having written this post when really it was created ex nihil with the rest of the universe.
My answer:
You can believe in god and understand evolution. Evolution is not subject to belief--you either understand it, thus giving yourself a basis for understanding the rest of biological science, or you don't understand it, leaving no foundation to build any further scientific advances on. If you understand it, you are free to believe "But actually god made the world in seven days and only created the appearance that evolution was the process." If god created the appearance of the process of evolution, one can only assume that he meant us to learn something from it, including the operation of natural and artificial selection and the interrelationship of species, including humanity. So either way you need to learn, study, and understand evolution.
More bluntly, I don't fucking care if you "believe" in evolution or not. But learn what the hell you're talking about.
If humans evolved from apes, how come there are still apes? My Michigan relatives descended from relatives who lived in Minnesota. How is this possible when I still have relatives living in Minnesota?
How can evolution be right when modern evolutionary theory contradicts what Darwin said? Darwin's books aren't the bible--they can be built on, contradicted, expanded on.... Someone, sometime must have figured out that pi equals 3.1415927. Well, now we know that pi equals 3.14159265358979323846... Oh, lord, the first number was off by one on the seventh decimal! It must be completely untrue!
For what it's worth, I don't believe in a 6000-year-old Earth and a literal Genesis (or Christianity in general, actually). On the other hand, nothing in science or religion can prove that the world wasn't created at 11:55AM (US Eastern Standard Time), April 29th, 2008, complete with my memory of having written this post when really it was created ex nihil with the rest of the universe.