On Evolution. OR, Kirk Cameron, your heart's in the right place, but your head's up your ass. OR Jesus in six Yuenglings or less.

There's a currently a video circulating the internet which stars Kirk Cameron, telling people that a few days before the anniversary of Darwin's “The Origin of the Species,” that he and his colleagues are going to be circulating a copy of the book that contains a new introduction. The video goes on to state that a large number of college professors teaching certain classes are atheists, and that Cameron and company are going to circulate this new version of the book to show our college students the opposing arguments to evolution alongside Darwin's work. The majority of the information Cameron outlines about the new introduction is just a series of ad hominem attacks against Darwin, such as he was a racist, or has ties to Hitler. By Cameron's description, it also appears that the new introduction will outline intelligent design, so that our youth will be able to figure out the correct truth, which Cameron claims is intelligent design, for themselves.

The prospect that I continually fail to understand, is why creationists can't seem to accept evolution. Creationists appear to have some deep rooted fear that any science that would question God is some kind of witchery meant to destroy religion by disproving it. This leads to a cataclysmic rift between faith and science, which spawns far too many loud arguments and far too little thoughtful debate. Religion as a whole needs to stop hindering the pursuit of scientific knowledge, because such knowledge should not be able deny or disprove faith.

As science as a whole disproving faith would be a long and complicated affair, let us simply deal with the current bane of creationists: evolution. It would appear the root of the creationists' desire to discredit evolution stems from the conclusion that if evolution were somehow confirmed, it would contradict the Bible's claims that the world is less than 10,000 years old. This can easily be refuted. If one is willing to accept that God is all powerful, and that he did indeed create the world in seven days, than one should just as easily be able to accept the fact that God would be able to create such a world with the evidence of and potential for evolution.

One could even go so far as to proclaim that God created such evidence to encourage doubt. If a world existed in which everything simply appeared overnight, there would be less reason, if any, to doubt God's existence. If faith were concrete, then it would not be faith, it would be fact. In the Bible itself, it becomes apparent that God does not want us to have indefatigable proof of God's existence. One of the most prominent instances of this resides in the fact that whenever Jesus is asked for a miracle as proof of his divinity, said miracle is not given.

A simple explanation for God's refusal to give us absolute proof of existence is perhaps stemmed from a desire for the free will of humanity. From a Christian, Jewish, or Muslim standpoint, this is evidenced by the fact that God put the tree of knowledge in the Garden of Eden. If it were the desire of God to have us all as mindless robots of love and worship, God could have easily not put the tree in the garden, or, in his omniscience, stopped us from consuming its fruit. The reason God did not do as such can be attributed to the fact that love freely given, and not earned, has little, if any, value. It stands to reason that ten people loving you for who you are is worth more than a hundred loving you because they are told to do so.

Throughout the Bible there are many instances where God is revealed to people, thus evoking a love of fact and not faith. It is important to acknowledge that while this is done from time to time, it is never done to humanity as a whole. While God does appear to some, it is only, at best, to give information and teachings to humanity; to encourage faith. Such is only done in a very centered area of the Earth, leading one to wonder why God's existence would be revealed to so few, if God's word were truly so grand. One could speculate that the reason this is done is to encourage more doubt. If European explorers had come to Asia, Africa, or America, and found the population already echoing their own religious beliefs, it would leave less reason to doubt God.

In the end, the reasoning to doubt or not doubt God is all speculation. The root of the matter lies within one's faith. If the very growing expansion of human knowledge is a threat to one's faith, then perhaps it is time to accept that faith is not a static book of be all end all rules and truths, but instead is a living, breathing organism. If faith were meant to be proven, proof would have been given to us.