Being a decently devout Christian and an avid biology student, Darwin's theory of evolution has always been a subject of argument and confusion in my mind. Going into my freshman year, I had been raised to believe that God made the world and its inhabitants in seven days, with men being made the last day. However, after reading Ishmael and taking a year of honors biology, I was in for a rude awakening. In Biology and in English, I was introduced to a Darwin's theory of evolution, that used man's knowledge of science to conclude that men, like every other animal before it, evolved from another species. We, I found out, came from monkeys.
This inconvenient discovery was not widely accepted following its debut in 1859 in the book "On the Orgin of Species". After his publishing, Darwin was continuely criticized and mocked. I have to give Charles Darwin some respect, it most of been really hard to publish this book and stand by his findings in such a popular chirstian society. Eventually, his findings have been accepted and are the basis of many more current discoveries.
The reason that this discovery rubs me a wrong way is because it conflicts and doesn't agree with the christian belief of man's creation, a belief that I had since I grew up. However, this isn't the only time that science conflicts with my religious beliefs. It seems that for everything Christianity states as the truth, science has something else to contradict it. Whether it be man's creation, history of Jesus, the Jews history, or even god's existence, science and religion can never agree. This puts me in a great conflict becasue I am never able to choose what side to agree with and decide which side tells the truth. My friends and I had a discussion about this issue one night while we were hanging out in a neighbor's backyard. Being all Christian, we all discussed how much of the Christian religion we believed in and how much we disagreed with and chose to believe science instead. We concluded that the Garden of Eden wasn't true, but Jesus's death and ressurection was true. Ever since that day, I am still confused and don't know what to turn to, science, or god?
Darwin, the creator of "The Theory of Evolution", I found out later was also a strict Christian. I would love to find out how he managed to balance both science and religion, and if he had a way of making their beliefs coexist. It seems as if school doesn't do a good job with balancing religion and science, partially because it is a public institute and has no offialiation with religion. I recently have heard of a school's experiment with teaching both the scientific side and the religious side of an issue. Though I'm guessing this school is a private Christian school, I believe that this is a good approach to teaching a subject. If the subject of man's creation was tought like this, through a religious view, then a scientific one, then a student would have the chioce to believe in the one he wants and wouldn't have to feel forced to agree with science's view on history.
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