Science vs. Faith

by Lisa E. McLoughlin

Forget 9+% unemployment. Forget $14.5 trillion debt. Forget backdoor amnesty by Presidential fiat. Please focus your attention on an issue which is critical to your daily existence: Which political party is smarter? Is it the people who believe in Darwin's Theory of Evolution in the strictest scientific terms sans any theistic influence? Or those who believe Intelligent Design is a credible theory worthy of consideration? Which leads us to the next question: Should both theories be taught in American public schools?

Recent exchanges on the presidential campaign trail have been in the news, designed to make Republicans look like Neanderthals who evolved from the "wrong" side of the jungle. My extremely left-wing brother-in-law (think of us as Alan Colmes and Monica Crowley) recently linked an article on Facebook which prompted a lengthy and rather heated, back and forth.

I love a good debate, especially when it involves education and what we should teach our children. I also enjoy winning a good debate shutting down Liberals by stumping them with an unanswerable question. My question, which stunned my lovably belligerent relative into Facebook silence was: Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

As a child, I recall this question being posed to us in school. Of course, there were no computers or Google back in the Jurassic Age, but it was fun to try and come up with an answer based on our primitive knowledge of biology and our developing interest in the process of reproduction.

The wise and oft quoted Aristotle said;

"If there has been a first man he must have been born without father or mother – which is repugnant to nature. For there could not have been a first egg to give a beginning to birds, or there should have been a first bird which gave a beginning to eggs; for a bird comes from an egg."

Let's take a look at what some schools are using to address this age old question today:

Aaaaaand we're back ..... to Evolution vs. Intelligent Design.

Therefore, the answer to whether we should teach only evolution or both theories should be clear - the answer is BOTH - since neither has been proven to be true beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Our country was founded on freedom of religion. Our public schools are supposed to educate our children, make them knowledgeable and, to use a popular educational buzzphrase, to become critical thinkers. If science cannot definitively provide the answer as to where first man or first chicken came from, how can our public schools forbid the intellectual exploration of Intelligent Design? Where is the open-mindedness factor which we know, only Progressives possess? (snark, snark)

The desire of the Progressive movement to cast those who believe in Intelligent Design over evolution as "myth believing idiots", is insulting to people of faith. Science has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt how a given species may mutate to adapt to its environment and survival of the fittest. Dr. Watson's discovery of the DNA double helix and mapping of complete genomes has solved untold mysteries that were previously beyond human comprehension. I doubt there is any God loving American who doesn't accept Darwin's theory on natural selection. It is not only common sense but has been proven through skeletal remains and the study of ecosystems. But the question of how the first anything came to be on planet Earth remains unanswered. Let us consider the words of Charles Darwin himself, from the conclusion of his NYT best seller Origin of Species:

"There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone circling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved."