Tuesday, January 03, 2006

New Pet Peeve

I have this observation.

Whenever I talk about evolution, church going friends either clam up or just say a quick "but I don't believe that".

Not all of them. Just a noticeable number.

I'm not anti-christ or anything. But cause I'm agnostic. Just like I am agnostic about the whole evolution theory....

So today during lunch when we were talking about backaches and I casually mentioned that well, our skeletal frame isn't built for walking on twos. Someone said, really? So I joked, well, evolution 101 leh. christian friend then went, I don't believe that.

I think I can respect people from different religions or even those, like ignorant me, who don't have one. But with respect to sticky issues like stem cell studies, genetics manipulation and evolution, I can approach them with an open mind. For those who subscribe to certain faiths, they are fully committed to their respective beliefs. I respect that. But by believing in one mode, they have excluded themselves from other possibilities. I am sure everyone's happier.

There's a piece that I have yet to compose fully which is about how it seems rude to be fervent about your religion. I think there is nothing wrong with that. I mean, it's akin (to me) to fans of backstreet boys or F4 or 5566 wearing t-shirts with the band members' face printed on it. It's sacrilegious, blasphemous even! But the emotions involve is kind of the same right? And this whole bullshit about not wishing merry christmas and replacing the greeting with a religious neutral greeting like happy holidays or season's greetings is being way too politically/religiously correct for anybody's comfort.

1 comment:

Reborn said...

Not all Christians behave that way. The ones mentioned may simply be uninformed or mis-informed.

Concerning human evolution, the Catholic Church has a more definite teaching. It allows for the possibility that man’s body developed from previous biological forms, under God’s guidance, but it insists on the special creation of his soul. Pope Pius XII declared that "the teaching authority of the Church does not forbid that, in conformity with the present state of human sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions . . . take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution, in as far as it inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter—[but] the Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God" (Pius XII, Humani Generis 36). So whether the human body was specially created or developed, we are required to hold as a matter of Catholic faith that the human soul is specially created; it did not evolve, and it is not inherited from our parents, as our bodies are.