I see this blog as an opportunity to get things off my chest. It will allow me to vent about things that I think about, but I never get the opportunity to talk about. Mostly, that will be because I think about so many ridiculous things, most of which are probably of no interest to anyone else. However, who knows? Maybe my random ramblings will contain a nugget of something to interest someone.
So, one of the things I have often thought about is the annoyance of certain religious people fighting against the teaching of evolution. Now, I just want to state that I am neither a well studied religious scholar, nor am I a well studied evolutionary biologist. My knowledge in either field comes from here: I was raised as a christian, I studied biology in college, and I am a really intelligent person who thinks things. Oh, and I opperate under the belief that religion and science are not mutually exclusive. Each has its own sphere, and they cuddle (methaphorically speaking. Hehehehe).
Honestly, I cannot see what people get sooooooooooo worked up about. Whenever a group of people gets pissy over schools trying to teach evolution, that just shows me that none of those people have ever actually taken an evolution class. Becuase if they had, they'd know that evolution is soooooooooooooooooooo boring, that it'd be too difficult to muster that kind of outrage over the subject. I took evolution in college, at 8am. And let me tell you, it was difficult to stay awake. I don't think it helped that my professor had the most soothing voice ever, and I'm pretty sure he was actually a leprechaun. Mostly, it's just a bunch of charts with different animals on it, like showing phyla, something, something else, genius, species. Oh, and did I mention there was math? I actually liked the math parts. Basically you'd get a population of animals, say 100 had gene X and 200 had gene Y, and in n generations, how many would have what genes. Oooh, REAL blasphamous!
No! In class, evolution was simplified down to this: over time, the frequency of alleles in a population of animals changes. If you understood that sentence (and even more so if you could do the math), you'd be all "oh, duh, that makes sense." Ok, there is that whole survival of the fittest thing, which can upset some people I guess. But if you get past the crazies that want to apply that theory to people, again, it's not anything all that radical or ooooohh, evil. It's just saying that in the wild, some animals have some genes that give them traits (like wing color, speed, size, beak shape) that makes it easier for those specific animals to eat and not get eaten. This is important, b/c if you get eaten or don't have enough food to thrive, well, you can't mate. We all know this. I bet if you were eaten, or hadn't eaten in weeks, you'd find it difficult to mate too. Try it if you don't believe me. And if you don't mate, then you don't have kids, and your gene traits don't go anywhere. See, not that big of a deal. It's like if you put a bunch of blondes and brunettes in a cage with some ravousnes bears. Let's say these bears only eat brunettes. Well, you can bet that the next generation will be mostly (or totally) blonde, since the brunettes will be too busy being bear food to mate and have babies. And, let's say that over many, many generations, this says true, the brunette population dwindles because of the predator bears. I'm pretty sure this makes sense, logically. And it's evolution. So, why all the fuss.
I'll admit, there are some parts that can get more difficult for some super religious types to cuddle up to. I am not here to debate religion, and I totally appreciate and respect people's rights to believe what they want. I can also understand why people get upset about some of the stuff, like people coming from monkeys, or whatever. (Fun fact, it's not actually monkeys, since monkeys are small, and what people call monkeys in this argument are apes. You've be scienced!) And there's that whole disagreement about how old the Earth is, and what not. I can see where that would cause some friction between religion and evolution. But honestly, I feel that's making a mountain out of a mole hill, and focusing on parts of the theory without understand the general ideas themselves. Plus, I have this whole issue with keeping information from people just because you disagree.
I don't care what you believe. I don't want to force you to change your beliefs. But sometimes others want to learn stuff. And you may be surprised what ideas and knowledge can coexist together in a person's mind. I don't think kids should not learn something (especially something agreed to be a valid theory) just because parents don't believe it. Instead, have a discussion, at home. Maybe you could actually learn the material and maybe it won't seem so outrageous to you. If might just bore you enough that the outrage just ebbs away. Who knows? You may even find that you at least like the math. Ok, who am I kidding? No one ever likes math.
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