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Last Updated December 6, 2003
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History of My Involvement in Creationism vs. Evolution
How'd I get involved in Evolution vs. Creationism? Well, as is the case with all of topics that will eventually be listed here, I blame Catholic School. Don't misinterpret this to mean that I attended an "old-school" Catholic school. No, the Biology class I took did teach Evolutionary Theory and not Creationism. I'd always had an interest in this debate. There was one instance, in my Junior year, which spurred me to take an active stance on it.
In my Junior year, all students took a mandatory course of Theology that entailed one quarter of World Religions. We learned about Buddhism and Hinduism, mainly. My teacher was very liberal, so all of the information was presented "as it was," with no Christianity-promoting remarks attached. At the end of the year, we all had to do a project on one religion of our choice. This was a big part of our grade, and it included a presentation.
The presentation could include a variety of audio/visual aids, including speakers. One of the pairs in my class did a presentation of Lutheranism, with one of the girls bringing in her Lutheran pastor to briefly speak about Lutheran beliefs. This guy seemed pretty nice, he had a good speaking voice that sounded very sincere. My first impression of him was that he was a pretty loving person.
When he actually started speaking, though, my first impression was totally destroyed. He regaled us with tales about how every non-Christian was going to Hell, because rejecting Jesus was rejecting a savior who had spilled his blood for humanity. You know, the standard Bible-belt Christian bullshit. I was shocked that he could come out and say that all non-Christians were going to Hell with such authority, conviction and, most of all, casualness. He acted as if they somehow deserved it and simply waved their eternal souls away to a fiery pit.
What shocked me even more, though, was that he actually believed that the Universe was a paltry six-thousand years old! I just had to raise my hand and ask him how he could say that, in the face of scientific evidence which showed, well beyond a doubt, that the Universe was billions of years old. When I asked him this, he responded by saying, "Well, carbon-dating is proven wrong every five years." I decided against bringing up the fact that we could see stars millions of light-years away, and thus, because of the time it takes light to travel, the Universe must be at least a few million years old. I was simply too dumbfounded that he, someone with no scientific backgroundwhatsoever, was actually questioning a universally-accepted fact in the fields of both astrophysics and geology. Who did he think he was? Oh, right, a man of God.
Anyway, that's the incident which really spurred me to get involved with this debate. Another big one was the Kansas Board of Education's decision to remove Evolutionary Theory from their biology textbooks in 1999. This has since been overturned, but the fact remains that, even in today's wonderful world of science and technology, people still cling to religious fables like the Genesis story to explain things to them. Then, I read an essay, following the decision, written by a Mr. Mike Wong, an engineer, who'd written a rant on the subject that eventually grew into its own site. Reading through it spurred me to take an even more active stance on the topic and to research it further.
My history in this debate leaves off with the establishment of this web site. Granted, there are a ton of other sites on the internet about this and other topics, but it's nice to just say things in your own style. Plus, it gave me a chance to learn HTML.
