February 12, 2009 will mark the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin, who among other things wrote the scientific watershed On the Origin of Species, giving generations of scientists and Bible fundamentalists something to argue over. But it doesn't have to be that way.When I was at Malden Catholic High School, I took a great class, Western Civilization, taught by Brother Joseph Britt, CFX. Going to a Catholic high school was the last place I would have expected to hear any friends of Darwin. And yet, Brother Joe dispatched the whole issue quite simply.
He said there is no reason why God could not have used evolution as a method of creating the world. Furthermore, as measured time as we know it was not developed until recently, the differences between "man-time" and "God-time" could be radically different, which could account for the differences between the billions of years of scientific measured time and the 6000 years of Biblical time.
This was a revelation to me, not only for the explanation itself, but for the open-minded approach to integrating science and religion. Thanks Brother Joe!
Sadly, that explanation is SO reasonable and make SO much sense, it could never be accepted by die-hard Bible folk. Here's some links teaching kids about creation in a that special faux-friendly, anti-logic kind of way that makes me ill:
How old is the earth according to the Bible?
"Evolution — meaning that such diverse creatures as whales, worms, hummingbirds, hadrosaurs, platypuses and presidents have evolved from the same first life-form — is a belief system. It certainly has not been proved to be a scientific fact."
"There are many thousands of highly qualified scientists who believe that the Bible's account of creation is more in harmony with true science than is the theory of evolution."
This site also attacks poor Brother Joe's theory and said Darwin's evolution concept was some kind of attack on the Bible rather than pure scientific research.
Keep preaching the word, Bro.
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