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My head spins at a higher gear as I reflect on the recent educational and political controversies about creationism and evolution. What has been bothering me is that the dogmatic and literal belief that the world was created in six Days and that Sunday is a Day of rest will further educational and social changes focused on the understanding that reality is an absolute entity. And therefore, our kids must learn this absolute reality mostly by memorizing and discerning what is absolutely right and what is absolutely wrong. In this absolute real world there is no room for thinking, imagining and learning; the reality is out there in front of you and you as a kid or as an adult are going to be taught how to think and what to do(1). On the other hand, evolution has been equated to Darwin's Origin of Species and as a consequence life is nothing else but a struggle for the survival of the fittest. As I have already mentioned in previous articles, evolution has nothing to do with the work of Darwin, instead evolution (or life) can be explained as a biological phenomenon(2).

Which theory is right and which theory is wrong? First of all, evolution and creation are theories, and a theory is not either an absolute reality or a truth. What I am interested, is in finding out how I can understand better these two theories to have a better explanation of the world I live in. I have been lucky in this respect, because I just got one explanation from Michael Finley, a novelist, a technologist and a management scientist. In his recent newsletter(3), Finley writes:

When Adam and Eve were driven out of the garden, they knew nothing and had nothing. Imagine their desolation, having to overcome everything: Hunger. Ignorance. Disease. Powerlessness. Isolation...

To survive they fashioned a toolbox of ambitious technologies: Agriculture. Literacy. Medicine. Mechanics. Networks...

So which is right, evolution or devolution? It's hard to doubt the fossil record, which suggests we descended less from angelic beings but from something analogous to e coli...

In few words, Finley theorizes that life is a biological phenomenon, with patterns and relationships in the past, and with patterns and relationships in the now. The past is our evolutionary past, and the now is our creationism. Now, this explanation doesn't include the future, and therefore the future is for us to create through our imagination and our thinking.

References/endnotes

List of relevant articles http://www.ftlcomm.com/ensign

1. The stork brings babies and the Earth is flat, Joe Fiorito, October 31, 2000 National Post http://www.nationalpost.com/search/story.html?f=/stories/20001031/446839.html

2. Biology's Room With a View, Lloyd Fell and David Russell http://www.pnc.com.au/~lfell/roomview.html

3. Future Shoes: "Invisible Angels", November 18, 2000, Finley's Weekly Letter - http://www.mfinley.com

The people used in today's Adam and Eve illustration were borrowed from an Australian naturalism magazine web site http://www.sunandhealth.com.au/