Friday, February 17, 2006

Faith in Science: I've always been a big proponent of the separation of church and state, especially keeping religion out of the classroom. And when it comes to the debate of intelligent design versus evolution, I often use the phrase, If you don't teach biology in church then you shouldn't teach theology in science class.

Well, now comes a story about hundreds of churches that celebrated Darwin's birthday and praised his teachings. They credited Darwin for turning religion into an actual faith and for keeping Christianity in reality.

God bless them for doing that. With all the extremists of the Religious Right bashing the very concept of evolution, it's good to see some intelligence in the religious world.

Blogger Fmodo points out that religion and science aren't always in conflict, and that there can be fanatics on both sides. Religious nuts will kill to keep people ignorant of science, but rabid secularists have used social darwinism as an excuse for eugenics and other unbelievable horrors.

I still don't want intelligent design taught in school. But it won't hurt for science classes to concede that there are still many unanswered questions, namely on the origin of life, and how life became so complex. Then students should be encouraged to find the answers on their own.