A Clash of Beliefs Essay -- Science Creationism Religion Essays

A Clash of Beliefs The earth and all the life on it was created in seven days, at least this is what I was taught growing up in a Catholic family. This was everything I knew, until in fifth grade when I first heard about evolution. I could not understand the concept, and my mother would not tell me what it was because she did not believe it could be true. Over the next few years I gradually learned more and more about evolution. As I learned about Darwin’s magical thing called â€Å"descent with modification† my upbringing began to come into question. How could everything I had grown up learning be true if there was all this concrete evidence against it? Gradually, this questioning began to fade away. I had reached an impasse and my religious beliefs fell by the wayside. Sure, I went through the motions, going to mass and achieving my confirmation. However, the end of my sophomore year in high school I had really begun to doubt my faith. Soon after my confirmation I completely stopped going to church since I felt that I could no longer believe what they were telling me. Evolution has become my basic belief about how every organism in the world has become what it is today. Darwin’s Origin of Species basic premise is that species have evolved (descended) from a common ancestor. The strictest Catholic belief is that all species are exactly the same as they always have been which ignores any and all fossil evidence. Even the remarkable similarities between reptiles, birds, and dinosaurs are not acknowledged. An excerpt of Jack Holt’s essay The Dinosaur with a Thumb on Its Nose shows exactly the things that the Catholic Church is not willing to accept: â€Å"Cuvier realized that each major group of animals had its own distinctiv... ...efuse to believe in evolution. There is an overwhelming amount of fossil data that supports this. Even the speed at which a virus (for example the influenza virus) can change supports evolution. It is this evidence that completely changed my belief system. Works Cited Darwin, Charles. 1979. The Origin of Species. Gramercy Books: New York. Holt, Jack. 2002. The Dinosaur with a Thumb on Its Nose. 22 January 2005 Available: http://www.susqu.edu/satsci/Paths-of-Science/DINOSAUR-WITH-A- THUMB-ON%20ITS-NOSE.pdf National Academy of Sciences. 1999. Science and Creationism: A View from the National Academy of Sciences. 25 January 2005. Available: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/religion/revolution/index.html Paul II, Pope John. 1997. Evolution Revolution. PBS. 25 January 2005. Available: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/religion/revolution/index.html