MODERN TIMES

The irony is that fundamentalists surely acknowledge that nature, the human brain, and reason are among God's gifts. What could be more Godly, for example, than the attempt by contemporary scientists to understand the creation of the universe by observing the heavens themselves? Did sacred revelation suddenly cease 2000 years ago? Indeed, it seems egotistical and presumptuous to allow creationist dogma to trump the evidence from both God's universe and our God-given brains. Why do fundamentalists so despise the notion that we are connected through evolution to the rest of God's Earthly creations, that indeed God created humans and evolution is the way he/she did it?

Creationism promotes the worst form of pollution, namely pollution of minds. A person who is convinced that eternal damnation is a possible consequence of rational thinking is likely to shun rationality, and thus forfeit the very faculty that most makes us human. As the Enlightenment forerunner Galileo put it, 'I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.' America's future will be dim if fundamentalists win their home-grown holy war.

Creationism, Modern Times, by Art Hobson, NWA Times 28 May 2005