In popular culture today, religion is seen as nothing more than a way of explaining life’s mysteries without using one’s brain. Many of society’s simplest people find it comforting to, in the words of Pontus Obama, “cling to guns or religion.” Where I disagree is the idea that this is a negative trait. Because radicalism usually leads to unsavory outcomes, it is only human nature to be skeptical of change. Eventually though, enough proof has lined up behind what was once a brand new idea. It is at this point that traditionalists need to accept defeat and move on.

There are many in America who still subscribe to the debunked idea of young earth creationism. Instead of searching for the truth, these people are instead focused on playing the role of the oppressed in a battle that is impossible to win. What if the Catholic Church had refused to this day to admit it was wrong for condemning Galileo’s theories of the universe in the 17th century? I’ll venture a guess that the influence of the church would not be nearly as great as it is today. The refusal of fundamentalist Christians to let go of the notion of young earth creationism is very similar. They need to do what the Catholic Church did: announce that humans make mistakes and acknowledge their misinterpretation of the scripture in question.

God gave us brains with amazing reasoning abilities. Isn’t it a slap in the face of the gift-giver to refuse to use the gift? Continuing to hold on to archaic notions only discredits religion in the minds of the educated.

This is not to say that throwing creationism in the waste basket of history is a retreat by the religious community. Saint Augustine in the 4th Century A.D. postulated that “the world could have been made by God with certain potencies that unfolded in the progress of time.” Genesis does not have to be read literally and most Christians have no problem doing so (including the last two Popes).

As Dr. William Lane Craig (a Protestant Christian Philosopher) explains, science is useful because it can both “falsify and verify claims of religion.” An obvious example of the former was the long-held belief of the church that the sun revolved around the earth. Early theologians had misinterpreted Psalms 93:1, which says, “The Lord has established the world; it shall never be moved.”

Science has also done much to verify the beliefs of Christians. In the 1920s nearly every non-believing cosmologist argued that the earth and universe had always existed (thus doing away with the need for a creator deity), while Christians believed that the universe was created out of nothing a finite time ago by God. The discovery in 1922 by Alexander Friedman that the universe is expanding thus proved a religious principle. Stephen Hawking, the Oxford theoretical physicist, has said that “almost everyone now believes the universe, and time itself, had a beginning at the big bang.”

It’s not difficult to understand why fundamentalist Christians are so defensive about their view of the creation of the universe. Erudite scientists such as Richard Dawkins have planted the idea that a belief in the theory of evolution is incompatible with a belief in God. Unfortunately for Mr. Dawkins, this notion is false.

As Dr. Craig explains in a recent article, “the chances that the universe should be life-permitting are so infinitesimal as to be incomprehensible and incalculable.” The agnostic physicist Paul Davies has written that a change in the strength of gravity, for instance, of one part in ten to the one-hundredth power would have prevented a life permitting universe. The astrophysicist Michael Turner describes the fine-tuning of the evolutionary preconditions as “if one could throw a dart across the entire universe and hit a bull’s eye one millimeter in diameter on the other side.” The quotes are endless, but the conclusion is clear: For evolution to occur, it would have had to be a miracle. Darwin’s theory is evidence for the existence of God.

Lay down your arms fundamentalists, there is nothing to fear.

-Eli Lavicky is a finance senior.