Doug Wiken at Dakota Today has this gem:
Aug 23, 2006
**Despite example Republicans to the contrary, scientists find human-chimp differences. Scientific American site reports Nature findings indicating significant differences between humans and Chimps.
That's a good joke. I found nothing objectionable in this post. Indeed, I take it that Wiken and I agree about Darwinian evolution. I would note however that the biggest obstacle to teaching evolutionary theory is the fact that so many Darwinists, not to mention political liberals, go out of their way to make people feel stupid for not believing in it. I think this is unnecessary and counter-productive.
I teach a course on the political and social implications of Darwinian theory. To students who are reluctant (or who simply refuse) to believe in the theory, I point out that scientific theories are instruments to be used rather than articles of faith. It is true that human beings and chimpanzees share about 98% of their genes. The most elegant explanation for this is that Doug and I are distant cousins of every chimpanzee alive today. Somewhere in the past we and the chimp have a common ancestor. That's good enough for me. I see no contradiction between that idea and Biblical faith.
But for those who do see a contradiction and therefore find evolution unpalatable, there is an alternative way of looking at it. It is that the Creator, like an auto designer, did not start from scratch when he produced Chimpanzee and Human prototypes. Rather, he modified a common blueprint. Once that idea is accepted, at least as a working model, then one can focus on micro-evolution, which concerns modifications within an existing species. . Since Macro-evolution (the emergence of new species) is micro-evolution across longer spans of time, one loses nothing by adopting that point of view.
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