Church and state: gotta keep 'em separated

Last Thursday I caught ABC's Nightline, which discussed the new push by an incresing number of public schools toward teaching "intelligent design" as an alternative to evolution. The story focused on one example, the Dover Area School Board in Pennsylvania, which has voted to require the teaching of intelligent design along with the "theory" of evolution. In its purist form, intelligent design holds that life is far too complex to have developed accidentally without the guiding hand of an intelligence or a creator.

I guess if I were pushed, I'd probably say that I'd agree that God, an ultimate Intelligence, probably designed the universe in all its complexity. But that doesn't mean that I don't believe in evolution--or that this Intelligence has guided the development and evolution of human beings over millions of years. Why do they have to be mutually exclusive?

What became quite evident as I watched the interviews and coverage of schoold board meetings was that these proponents of intelligent design in Dover were simply viewing this as a foot-in-the-door opportunity to promote full-blown creationism in its most biblically-literal sense. When pressed, many of the board members couldn't convey the concept in their own words other than it meant that God was directly involved in creating the world.

A friend of mine recently mentioned that he had some home schooled high school students taking one of his college biology courses. When he discussed evolution, they bristled quite visibly. The next day their mom was on the phone to question the appropriateness of teaching evloution as anything more than a theory. Her boys, apparently, were in danger of questioning their home schooled beliefs that God created the earth and everything on it in seven days.

I'll weigh in here since this is an excellent (but not the only) argument for the need for separation of church and state. There is substantially strong evidence to support the theory of evolution. Those who take the Bible literally deny this, pointing out that the evidence in the fossil record, carbon dating techniques, traceable commonalities in anatomy and DNA similarities between various species are, simply put, trickery produced by Satan to lead us all astray. In their view the Earth is only about 6000 years old and dinosaurs never existed or were all killed by Noah's flood. It's these delusions and their strong faith that protect their literal interpretaion of the Bible.

Why, oh why, can't all this hard earned scientific evidence be maintained and a simple thought like this suffice: time works differently for the Creator, who over millennia, has guided the development of the Earth to a point where it could sustain life and, eventually, produce a thinking, reasoning human race. Is that such a threat to their faith? There is, apparently, no tolerance for anything that would question that literal translation.

I like the idea that public schools teach evolution and diversity of thought, even though it is always endangered. If you don't like what is universally taught in the public schools, please don't try to ban it or rewrite it or discredit it. There is a thing such as freedom of religion, and there are more than enough Sunday schools to add whatever dogma is required. Then, there's always the homeschool option.

I guess I don't come across as a very good Christian, or maybe I come across as a weak-faithed secularist. But geez, let's teach opening the mind and critical thinking rather than closing the mind and blinding, unquestioning faith. God must have had a purpose for the questioning mind. And while I can't claim that I know what Jesus was thinking, what I take from His message is a gentle and loving tolerance and a move to understanding and helping each other. This rather than judging and controlling others by censorship and manipulation in His name.