Thursday, November 10, 2005

3 Degrees of Separation: Darwin in the News

This week’s Religion and Ethics Newsletter has two articles of interest. The first is about the 6-4 vote of the Kansas Board of Education changing the definition of science to allow for non-natural explanations and challenge Darwin's theory of evolution. Personally I love this. Growing up in a Darwin-only science class was boring.

I know that many people are worried that this change in definitions will force teachers to teach Intelligent Design and Creationism as science. That may be, but, if you have ever read any of the text books in support of these theories, you know they are just as boring as old man-ape Darwin. What excites me about the new definition is that it allows science class to take seriously far more interesting theories of creation, like the Chinese theory that Pan Gu took an ax and hacked his way out of the cosmic egg, and when he died he became wind, water, earth, and mountains. Now there is a theory of creation I can get behind.

Of course in Dover, PA, the Darwinistas sacked the school board that would have allowed our kids to learn about the theory of Pan Gu. Worse still the repercussions of this vote seem to have impacted the Network of Anglican Communion Dioceses and Parishes meeting in a special conference in Pittsburgh.

According to Religion and Ethics Newsletter, this meeting brings together “conservative Episcopalians from the U.S. Church and primates from Africa, South America and Asia.” Whoa! First of all I didn’t know they had primates in South America, but the real thing that worries me is that meeting with these primates seems to legitimize their claim to being the ancestors of us humans.

I rely on conservatives to make the distinction between us and primates. And now they are meeting with them as equals. I am not sure how to respond really.
Or maybe I am being too narrow-minded. After all if Episcopal conservatives can meet with primates from around the world, maybe the rest of us can learn to get along as well.

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