Over the weekend, one of the producers at the station (actually from “AM980 The Believer”, the religious station upstairs from the Patriot) asked me if the NARN wanted to book a couple of segments on an upcoming debate between a Creationist (“the earth is 6,000 years old!”) and an “Evolutionist” (“There is no God!”).

While I was too tactful to say “I’d rather lobotomize myself with a spork” – the producer is a good guy and an excellent producer, and when you’re a host you gotta know how dumb it is to antagonize good producers – there are probably few arguments that interest me less than “Creation versus Evolution”.

Part of it is that there is no conflict between science and an allegorical reading of the Old Testament – and I personally believe that God is glorified no less by recognizing the immensely, exquisitely wonderous and complex system He created (humanity and our existence included) than by chalking it up to six days of cosmic tinkering 6,000 years ago.  The conflict between evolution isn’t really one over the origin of the universe so much as it is about interpretations of history; less a matter of validating faith and science than of competing groups of book critics impotently slapping at each other.

The other part, of course, is that the debate is so badly-informed.  As MPR’s Speaking of Faith’s excellent piece on Darwin’s anniversary pointed out in an excellent program on Darwin’s anniversary last week, Darwin himself never saw the conflict between evolution and faith.

And finally, too many followers on both sides are just so face-palmingly ignorant.

Bogus Doug knows of which he speaks:

In honor of this day Gallup helpfully polled the U. S. public only to discover that only 4 in 10 of us “believe in the theory of evolution.” This is probably not the best outcome anyone might hope for. I mean… if it’s true, you want everyone to see that and believe it. If it’s false (spoiler alert: it’s not), you want everyone to see that and believe it. But that’s not the part that most bothered me.The part that most bothered me is that I know that within those “4 out of 10” are a considerable number of people who believe in something they call evolution, but which is very much at odds with Mr. Darwin’s theory. I met these people when I attempted to help my professor teach “Introduction to Physical Anthropology” as an undergraduate teaching assistant. I was staggered by the number of people flunking our quizzes who insisted they hated the idea of creationism and believed in evolution. (Me the undergrad TA: Hey, that’s fine. Good luck with that anti-creationist stuff. But can we talk about why you got every question describing the fundamental mechanisms of evolution wrong? I mean… I thought we went over this after you failed the last time.)

See, my problem isn’t so much that people understand the theories of Mr. Darwin and choose to reject them. My problem is that so few people understand them in the first place. Including many of those who profess deep abiding belief in them.

The sad thing I reflect on upon the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth is that his scientific discoveries and ideas have gotten to far fewer people than can be measured by Gallup asking who believes in them. And honest to God, the basics of this stuff aren’t that hard to grasp.

They then grow up to comment endlessly on how we need to separate church and state to keep all those ignint fundies out of power.  And/or take PZ Meiers seriously.

This entry was posted by by Mitch Berg on Monday, February 16th, 2009 at 7:38 am and is filed under Faiths And Their Followers, Science. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.