The author, myself, and most other students saw the creationist signs in the Brickyard on Monday, although our reactions to them may be different. Like the author, I, too, must preface my disgust with the party that I am writing against by saying that I am religious, and I, too, believe that science and religion are reconcilable. The only difference is that the party I am writing against is the author of the column.
I can tell by his vernacular that the author is a good at rhetoric: He used every negatively connotative word in the dictionary to describe the scene. Who could possibly agree with those “uneducated fundamentalist,” “pseudoscientific… evangelists” “peddling nonsense?” The pen is where my respect ends, however.
His statement “I’m not going to lecture you about… evolution” disguises itself as a benefit to the reader, while it is actually just as illegitimate as he claims the evangelists are. Should we find ourselves in 1000 A.D., the argument he presents would be just as valid in proving that the Earth is flat. His argument states that: [the belief] is the commonly accepted belief and many people smarter than I believe it. Lack of support for one’s belief is one of the greatest fallacies that exist in argument.
The author then claims that “evolution is no longer a debate,” saying that “[he is] qualified” to say” it. When 46 percent of the population (Gallup, May 2012) still disagrees with your perspective, it is still very much a debate. The author draws comparison to Einstein’s General Relativity as to prove that just because something is “just a theory” doesn’t mean that it isn’t true. The author forgets that General Relativity is wrong, and most physicists know it. Relativity
fails to explain the actions of Special Relativity, and until both theories are combined into a Unified Theory, they both shall remain wrong.
It is also clear that as soon as the author recognized that the signs were from “Christian Scientists,” he stopped reading. He failed to see that they acknowledged his arguments, and even said that evolution exists and is a force in nature. The author claims that “they assert that if you really believe in God, you won’t believe in mainstream science.” The signs clearly supported mainstream science and even went into a discussion on the plausibility of the co-
evolution of the circulatory system. As soon as he saw something that he didn’t like, he shut his mind to anything but the stereotypical view of what he saw. He directly says that he would prefer “creationists… not say what they want.” By his view, only the (liberal) mainstream should be allowed on campus. He fails to acknowledge that without the freedom to explore beyond the mainstream that we would not have evolution, DNA, cars, computers, rockets or even colleges themselves.
The author wraps up his rant against both religion and the First Amendment by saying that “Religion and Science should bring people together… [and we shouldn’t] let these people tear us apart.” Ironically, he did far more to tear ‘us’ apart than those in the Brickyard ever
did.
Ross Williams, freshman, computer engineering
